Every World Cup produces a few players who thunder onto the world stage, and then become hot commodities for pro teams with money to spend during the summer transfer window.

The 2010 World Cup production of these hot prospects was less pronounced than in earlier cycles. Existing stars like Netherlands’ Wesley Sneijder and Spain’s David Villa improved their lot, no doubt, but the winner of the money pot for younger less known prospects seems to be Germany’s 21 year old striker Mesut Ozil, who currently plays for Werder Bremen. How do you know when you’ve made it? One indication is that Sir Alex Ferguson is calling to bring you to Manchester United. If that isn’t enough, both Arsenal and Tottenham are in the mix. Ka-ching.

Read more at dailymail.co.uk

SI’s Georgina Turner has a good column on the prospects of Manchester City reaching the top four, or even higher at the end of the upcoming BPL season.

According to Turner, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, City’s owner, has shelled out a total of $430,000,000 thus far to build the team into a championship contender.  Manager Roberto Mancini goes into his second season with the weight of all that money on his shoulders, and expectations to at least make Champions League for 2011-2012.  Fall short, and his tenure will likely come to a conclusion.  Fair or not, that is the way it is now – Even Sir Alex Ferguson was given six years to build Manchester United into the organization we have today.  There is much doubt that Mancini will be given this kind of leeway when hundreds of millions of dollars are on the line.

Read more at sportsillustrated.cnn.com

Center-back, right-back and midfielder Alex Bruce, son of Sunderland manager Steve Bruce is set to join Leeds United after a transfer of undisclosed value from Ipswich Town.

According to Leeds manager Simon Grayson, Bruce had been the target of a transfer dating back to last year, but Ipswich were only now willing to let the deal happen.

More from leedsunited.mad.co.uk

An undocumented offer by Premier League newly promoted Blackpool for Swansea star defender Angel Rangel has been rejected.

More at sportinglife.com

Sheffield United striker Darius Henderson may be out for six months with a serious hamstring injury, according to team sources.

According to manager Kevin Blackwell, the hamstring is torn and will require surgery to repair it, and a significant healing time. The news comes at a bad time as United prepare to face Cardiff City in next week’s opener.

More at thestar.co.uk

There are three kinds of managers in international football – the quiet, deliberate and calculating tactician like Spain’s Vicente del Bosque, the modern and stylish German Joachim Loew, and the flamboyant, jovial player’s coach who rides the tide of emotional ups and down that only international football can bring us. Of course, Argentinian Diego Maradona is in the latter category, and despite wrangling the powerhouse in blue and white stripes back on track in this year’s world cup, today he was unceremoniously dumped by a group of men he has known as friends and team-mates for many years.

The World Cup-winning-star of yesteryear claims that national team director Carlos Bilardo and association president Julio Grondona plotted to fire him following Argentina’s ungraceful 4-0 loss to Germany in the quarter-final, even though outwardly there were signs that he would be re-signed as the national manager. “They called me to put out a fire, and we put it out,” Maradona said. “Grondona lied to me. Bilardo betrayed me. While we were still in mourning, Bilardo worked in the shadows to throw me out.” According to Maradona, his continued employment was tied to firing seven of his assistants. Maradona refused to do that, according to media reports, and the decision was made to not bring him back.

From a personal standpoint, I hate to see him go, he brought life to a somewhat dull tournament in South Africa this summer. Who doesn’t enjoy seeing someone like Maradona dancing after a goal, mucking it up with the fans, and claiming to “run naked on the pitch if Argentina wins the tournament?” (Thankfully we were spared that…)

In the end, Argentina had nearly enough to win it, but fell short against a surprisingly tough German team that over achieved with youth. Lionel Messi did not have a particularly great tournament, and that may have been the difference, but plenty of other stars, like the often unstoppable Gonzalo Higuaín, and the fleet footed Carlos Tévez stepped up and took La Albiceleste right up to the base of the mountain. Take away Maradona’s passion and, in my opinion, they wouldn’t have made it that far.

Sunderland manager Steve Bruce wants to use his good relationship with the 28 year old Wigan defender to convince him to re-join him at Sunderland.

More at football.co.uk

From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_(ball)

Most modern footballs are stitched from 32 panels of waterproofed leather or plastic: 12 regular pentagons and 20 regular hexagons. The 32-panel configuration is the spherical polyhedron corresponding to the truncated icosahedron; it is spherical because the faces bulge due to the pressure of the air inside. The first 32-panel ball was marketed by Select in the 1950s in Denmark. This configuration became common throughout Continental Europe in the 1960s, and was publicised worldwide by the Adidas Telstar, the official ball of the 1970 World Cup.

The familiar 32-panel soccer ball design is sometimes referenced to describe the truncated icosahedron Archimedean solid, carbon buckyballs or the root structure of geodesic domes.

Balls are usually stitched from non-waterproof plastic, similar to the design of the modern volleyballs and Gaelic footballs, and laced to allow access to the internal air bladder.

The official FIFA World Cup football for Germany 2006 matches was the 14-panel Adidas +Teamgeist. It was made in Thailand by Adidas, who have provided the official match balls for the tournament since 1970, and is a “thermally bonded” machine-pressed ball, rather than a traditionally stitched one. Adidas will continue to supply the official football for the 2010 and 2014 World Cups. In 2010, the ball’s design received criticism, with former Arsenal goalkeeper Bob Wilson describing it as a “beach ball” responsible for a rise in errors by goalkeepers.

Another ball with an innovative pattern is the 26-panel Mitre PRO 100T.

There are also indoor footballs, which are made of one or two pieces of plastic. Often these have designs printed on them to resemble a stitched leather ball.

Oldest

The oldest discovered football, thought to date back to 1540, was discovered in the roof of Stirling Castle in 1981 and is made of leather (possibly deer)and pig’s bladder. It has a diameter of between 14-16cm, weighs 125 grams and is currently on display at the Smith Art Gallery and Museum in Stirling, Scotland.

Chip-enabled ball

The Chip-enabled football is a football which was invented by Adidas, the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated circuits in Erlangen and the company Cairos Technologies. The ball contains an integrated ASIC-Chip and a transmitter for the transfer of data. The chip is suspended in the middle of the soccer ball and sends a signal to a receiver at the referee’s wrist once the ball passed the outer goal-line.

The first tests were performed in Nürnberg. The stadium is equipped with twelve antennas in light masts and other locations distributed around the arena which collect data that is transmitted from the chip. The antennas are connected to a fiber optic cable which routes the data to servers in order to analyze them. The system was first used during the FIFA U-17 World Cup in Peru.

According to an article today at goal.com, from a story appearing in The People, Liverpool manager Roy Hodgson is hedging his bets against a possible exit from his star striker Fernando Torres, by contact Atletico Madris about a possible 15M pound transfer of Uruguayan Diego Forlan.

Torres is expected to fetch up to 50M pounds in a transfer, however, Hodgson has made statements in support of keeping Torres in red for next season and beyond.  50 million may be too enticing to walk away from.

More at goal.com

Columbus Crew Stadium

The 2006-2007 MLS offseason has been considered by some to be the most productive in the history of the league,^[7] and there were a number of changes made to the league, which have brought about an increase in the league’s ability to compete financially as well as on the field. The league announced a youth development initiative,^[5] which will require youth development programs for all of the league’s teams. The hope is that by being able to sign up to two of its own youth players to the senior team each year that the league’s teams will have an incentive to improve the quality of the league’s talent in an organic way that will also benefit the league through transfer fees for outgoing players. Perhaps the first example of a success in “home-grown” talent development was New York’s Jozy Altidore, who rose to prominence as one of the league’s most skilled young strikers before fetching the league’s record transfer fee in his move to Villarreal in 2008.

The league also announced “Game First”, a series of initiatives aimed at improving the league in several ways. One of the most immediate changes is that U.S. Soccer hired the first full-time professional referees in league history.^[8] Another part of “Game First” was the creation of an official league anthem similar to other competitions from around the world. There are two versions of the MLS Anthem, an orchestral version that is performed before every regular season game and an orchestral chorus version that is played before the MLS All-Star Game and MLS Cup.

The 10th official Supercup was also destined to be the last one for quite some time. In the years that followed it was replaced by the League Cup, which also then vanished from the Bundesliga schedule due to too narrow a time gap in off-season. This year, 2010, the Supercup is back again.

Read more at www.bundesliga.de:
Supercup 1996: incredible shoot-out finale

After seven years in the hot seat at Werder Bremen and two close runs in 1983 and 1986, Otto Rehhagel finally hit the jackpot in 1988, leading the Hanseatic port side to the Bundesliga title.

Read more at www.bundesliga.de:
Supercup 1988: Bremen win on the road

In 1987, ten years after the first, unofficial meeting of the Bundesliga champions and DFB Cup holders, the German FA gave the Supercup its official blessing. The two matches played up till then – Borussia Mönchengladbach against Hamburger SV in 1977 and HSV against Bayern München in 1983 – had been organised by the clubs themselves.

Read more at www.bundesliga.de:
Supercup 1987: off to a thumping start

The 1992-93 Bundesliga season finished in a rather curious fashion. After topping the standings for 32 consecutive matchdays from the start of the season, Bayern München were overhauled by Werder Bremen. Despite beating VfL Bochum 3-1, they dropped to second place on goal difference as Werder racked up a 5-0 home victory over Hamburger SV.

Read more at www.bundesliga.de:
Supercup 1993: Reck finally saves the day