Tidbits

Nashville Still Bidding To Be World Cup Host City

Nashville's LP Field rocking during March's USA v TnT World Cup Qualifier

Butch Spyridon, CEO of the Nashville Convention & Visitors Bureau talks to Tennysean.com about how the bidding process is shaping up to become a host city for the USA's bids for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. The list of possible host cities will be cut to 18 from 27 in December by the US Soccer Federation. Judging from the very successful hosting of the Olympic Qualifying tournament in 2008 and the World Cup Qualifier earlier this year, Nashville, which is less than a two hour drive from Huntsville, has a very good chance to become one of the cities chosen.


MLS Conference Finals Decided

As expected, the second legs of the conference semifinals had much better soccer than the dismal contests in the first legs. In the east, RSL upset defending champions Columbus on Thursday night. After going down 2:0 in the first half and 2:1 on aggregate, RSL stormed back to win 3:2 (4:2). Chicago packed the house Saturday night against New England and brought the fans a terrific result, winning 2:0 (3:2).

Brian Ching's goal to send Houston through

In the west, after an exciting 0:0 draw between Seattle and Houston in the first leg, the second 90 minutes also saw no goals, but Houston would prevail on a sweet swiveling side volley goal from Brian Ching in the overtime for a 1:0 (1:0) win. The second leg of the Superclassico between LA and Chivas would see none of the horrible defensive error from the previous week and a Landon Donovan PK would send the Galaxy through 1:0 (3:2).


Here's the TV line-up for this week's games:

Friday
Western Confernce Final: Houston at Los Angeles, 10 PM, ESPN2

Saturday
Eastern Conference Final: Real Salt Lake at Chicago, 7 PM, FSC


GSC Champs Don't Get Automatic Bid?

UWF and Huntsville native Paul Willoughby (#20) must now wait and hope for a NCAA DII tournament spot.

Here's an article from the Pensecola News Journal discussing the dilemma that the University of West Florida who beat UAH to become the Gulf South Conference Champs face waiting for the NCAA DII tournament bids to be published tonight because the NCAA does not grant an automatic bid to the GSC.