Soccer Miscellany

From the department of all Barca, all the time, a fantastic photo of the champions accompanied by a piece reminding us that sure, the Catalan idealism the team embodies is not always as genuine as we might like it to be . . . but its mythic resonance is what matters in the end.

In football news of the dark and bizarre, the director of west London's Queens Park Rangers tells a court of being forced at gunpoint to resign his position. Arrests were made during a match against Sheffield United. And we thought we had ownership problems with the Timbers.

Andy McNamara, radio announcer for the Timbers, posts on his blog that he will be doing webcasts for Timbers home matches with a possibility for away matches. See the schedule at SportsJuice. These broadcasts have been very uncertain, so this news is better than nothing...unfortunately, the faithful will generally be at all the home matches. We wait anxiously for further news about games on the road.

Over at the Guardian, Marina Hyde finds a way to blame Margaret Thatcher for Wayne Rooney's broken metatarsal (reaching all the way back to the assasination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in the process). We here at a pretty move are all about being able to shake our fists and darkly mutter, "Thatcher's Britain!" as a sort of catch-all response to injustice (which Rooney's injury clearly is); it's a relief to know we can pin this one on the Iron Lady as well.

The most important item of soccer miscellany: Timbers play tonight and tomorrow night in PGE Park. Don't miss it, P-Towners!