WHAT THE? is my weekly Premiership review with only the interesting events that should not have happened in the first place.

I forgot to do my picks this week and will never catch Ross.

I have a few themes that have been coming to light this season. They are a combination of watching the promoted clubs do well (Hull City) and bigger clubs stumble. Or in the case of Tottenham, fall flat on their face. This weekend was perfect.

• Hull City had to play Arsenal at the Emirates. It was Arsene Wenger’s 12th Anniversary as boss. Arsenal had not lost at home since April 2007. Then powerhouse …err… newly promoted Hull City came in and blew it up. Hull City scored two goals in the second half within 4 minutes. Hull City is in 6th place on the table, only 1 point behind Arsenal after 6 games.

• Liverpool beat Everton in the Merseyside derby 2-0. Both goals were scored by Torres in the second half. Not really surprising but a major derby for that crowd.

• Manchester City struggled this week with a loss to Wigan. Man City, your not going to play European ball if you cant beat the teams in the middle of the Prem table. Get it together.

• Oh Tottenham. It is as if you play just to make this column better every week. Tottenham played Portsmouth this week. Portsmouth is a decent team (currently 9th) which means this years Tottenham team would be in trouble. Well, Portsmouth beat Tottenham 2-0. Tottenham is still last in the table after 6 weeks with 2 points and one of the worst goal differentials in the league. Sad.

Rumor on the streets (and The Times) is that Disney is looking into buying the rights to air the English Premier League in the United States. Will it be weird to watch an EPL match right after Hanna Montana?

Actually Disney owns ESPN. The rights to air the EPL are up for bid in January 2009. Currently Fox (owned by News Corp.) controls the rights. Where I live I have to buy “digital cable” at an additional cost to get the Fox Soccer Channel (FSC) to watch EPL games. While FSC does have Serie A games and a nifty nightly soccer news show, I might not buy “digital cable” if I can get it for no additional cost on ESPN.

The renewed interest in buying the rights comes from the postive ratings ESPN recieved from showing the Euro 2008 semifinals and finals. ESPN currently shows the Champions League in the states and selected other competitions.

Forbes says about half a billion dollars if you add up the value of all 13 teams (the study was conducted based on last year, San Jose was not a member of the league yet). To be exact, $485 million. That is $37 million per club on average. But the actually break down is not as flattering, with only three teams turning a profit.

It is also getting more expensive to bring a new franchise into the league. Seattle and Philadelphia are paying $30 million each to add their teams to the MLS. The next two teams will pay $40 million in 2009 to join the league. Toronto, who joined 3 years ago, plaid closer to $10 million to join.

Only three clubs are operating in the black, one of them being the three year old Toronto FC. Here is the list of each club and their financials:

_________________________Value                 Revenue           Operating Income

1. Los Angeles Galaxy:    $100 million        $36 million             $4 million
2. Toronto FC:                $44 million          $17 million              $2.1 million
3. Chicago Fire:              $41 million          $16 million            -$3.1 million
4. FC Dallas                    $39 million          $15 million             $0.5 million
5. New York Red Bulls      $36 million          $10 million           -$4.5 million
6. DC United                   $35 million          $13 million           -$3 million
7. Houston Dynamo         $33 million          $10 million           -$1.8 million
8. Colorado Rapids          $31 million           $11 million           -$2.2 million
9. Real Salt Lake             $30 million           $7 million             -$2.1 million
10. New England Revs       $27 million           $10 million           -$1.5 million
11. Chivas USA                 $24 million           $10 million           -$1 million
12. Columbus Crew           $23 million           $6 million             -$4.5 million
13. Kansas City Wizards     $22 million           $5 million             -$2.9 million

WHAT THE? is my weekly Premiership review with only the interesting events that should not have happened in the first place.

• The big match of the weekend was Manchester United at Chelsea. Man U really needed the 3 points to stay in the hunt for the league (cant believe I am saying that in week 5). A Man U win would also end Chelsea’s 84 undefeated streak at home. Well, the game ended 1-1 so Chelsea kept their streak and Man U sits in 15th place, 7 points behind the leaders (with a game in hand).

• Stoke and Hull City managed to grab points this weekend as they both tied. Hull City is still sitting in 7th place, safely out of relegation territory. Stoke is not as lucky in 18th place on the table, but their tie did come against Liverpool. Probably the best point they will earn all season.

• Manchester City is riding high as their new sugar daddy…I mean billionaire owners gained control of the club. To celebrate they crushed Portsmouth 6-0. Man City is now sitting 5th in the table.

• You didn’t think we would forget about Tottenham did you? Tottenham played Wigan at White Hart Lane and managed a 0-0 tie. This leaves Tottenham in last place with 2 points after 5 games. Well done.

Galaxy 5-2 DC United

It’s exciting to watch two teams with terrible defenses go head-to-head. You get lots of goals, and that’s what Americans want! That, and David Beckham! 

Galaxy broke a TWELVE GAME winless streak to give them a snowflake’s chance in a microwave of making the playoffs. In fact, they looked fairly lethal with their full squad, despite their trademark swisscheese method of defense. DC could have been on par, but they don’t have a counterpart to THE BEST PLAYER PERSON IN AMERICA THE WORLD LANDON DONOVAN.

Each of DC’s goals came within 3 minutes of the first- and second-half starting whistles, which was laughable, as even I gave LA’s defense enough credit to defend the opening lull. Wrong! Diced like a Taco Bell tomato.

And Landon Donovan scored three! All right.

Beckham looked lazy and whiny, like someone that gets paid 100 times more than they should for the job they’re doing. But, he successfully donated a red card to Marc Burch after a questionable foul. I would have given yellow, and I suspect the red was given more to appease the legion of Beckham fans (who screamed every time he was even near a ball; I’m not kidding) than to punish the foul. Conspiracy!

LA FANS: Pray a little extra hard at your shrines this month. And unplug your microwaves. You might make it to the playoffs!

CREW 3-1 RED BULLS

I will dedicate one sentence of credit to Juan Pablo Angel’s superb free kick. There it went.

NOW… did you see Frankie Hejduk make Jorge Rojas look like a COMPLETE DICK??? LOLOLOL I seriously laughed out loud; what a super out-class by the well-capped back. Honestly, if Jorge Rojas played on my high school team and jumped 3 feet in the air in front of a fake shot, he would be benched. And on top of that, he turned his back to the play; this guy would never even have made the team. And my high school team sucked! Bench #13, Osorio. Forever. And Conway: nice job getting chipped inside your own box. Whoops on you.

Robbie Rogers looked just outstanding. His shot was incredible, and it is bittersweet for me to think it will probably be the clip on his reel that lands him a spot in a European league. It was expert-level, and he made it look easy to bruise the side netting from 30 yards and 40 degrees.

And all this was possible without Schelotto setting foot on the field. Why? Because he is the most significant player in the MLS. He doesn’t just play well, he teaches well. In fact, he taught the worst team how to be the best in 2 years’ time.

And big up the Crew Massive. Best cheering section in the league.

WHAT THE? is my weekly Premiership review with only the interesting events that should not have happened in the first place.

This was a bad week for my fantasy picks on Facebook.

• The big game of the weekend was Chelsea and Manchester City (I dont care about Man U v. Liverpool, but I will get to it in a second). The reason? Robinho got his first start against the team he spent all summer trying to sign for. Robinho scored a sensation goal from a free kick to the bottom right hand corner, Cech didn’t even move. Then Chelsea scored 3 goals and won the game.

• New boys Hull City won another game with a 2-1 score against Newcastle. Hull City is now in 5th place on the table after 4 games. Well done.

• Regulated favorites Fulham beat Bolton 2-1. Fulham is currently 7th on the Prem table.

• Liverpool pulled off the upset(?) of Manchster United with a goal in the 77th minute. This leaves Liverpool in 2nd with 10 points and Manchester United in 14th with 4 points. Can you believe that Man U is 6 points behind, only 4 games into the season? I didn’t realized Ronaldo was really that important to the team. No wonder Man U was doing everything they could to keep him.

• The best result of the weekend? Aston Villa 2 - 1 Tottenham. I thought this was funny during the first few weeks but this is bad. Tottenham is now in last place with 1 point after 4 games. Uhh…what? How is that possible? Tottenham doesn’t have Chelsea money but they have enough to buy a place in the top half of the table.

This time last year, thousands of people who never had boners over soccer were nationwide achieving said boners over David Beckham’s transfer to the MLS. His face was everywhere, it seemed. Even I thought, wow this is kind of cool. Maybe it’s the weather, then, that inspired my curiosity last night about the status of Dave’s Hollywood soccer situation.

What I found (or didn’t find) was surprising. A Foxsoccer search turned up nothing recent. Considering they used to have a Beckham Watch feature on their home page, I expected more. I next looked for video of his MLS play on youtube. It took 3 searches before I found one that documented anything in the ‘08 season. Then I checked MLSnet. Next to nothing. From there I visited the LA site; surely the highest paid athlete in the solar system would have piles of face time on his own team’s site. Nope. I even sat through that stupid slideshow, finding in the end only one mention of his name on the Galaxy’s home page (in a chart) and no pictures of his glamourous self (I later discovered that if you refresh the page enough, Dave’s face will appear in the top banner. Like a code for a Nintendo game).

So, what’s the deal? For one, LA is 500% terrible. They’re arguably the worst team in the league, which makes highlights hard to come by. Two, David Beckham is a celebrity before he’s a soccer player in the US. We don’t talk about Katie Holmes anymore because she was interesting LAST year. Same deal. Three, Landon Donovan is on the team. He’s the hometown hero and his face is fucking everywhere. EVERYWHERE. And four, there is a rumor still traveling around that Dave is unhappy with his current sitch at LA. Is the Galaxy PR machine trying to help us forget about him so we don’t cry when breaks up with us next year?

I have tickets to see him play in October. Only then will I know for sure if he is still real. After that, he can leave if he wants!

WHAT THE? is my review column of the World Cup Qualifiers and I only cover the interesting events.

-  The big upset of the day was Denmark coming back from 2 goals down to beat Portugal 3-2 in Libson. How embarrassing. The Danes scored in the 82nd, 89th and 90th minute to seal the victory. Ronaldo was not playing due to the ankle injury but Portugal should have easily won this game.

-  Luxembourg scored in the 86th minute to secure a 2-1 win over Switzerland. Luxembourg is the true definition of a European minnow and this win is a great victory for the country.

-  Miroslav Klose scored a hat trick for Germany but it still wasn’t enough as they tied Finland 3-3. Klose actually scored in the 83rd min. to tie the game.

-  Northern Ireland held a strong Czech Republic to a 0-0 draw to get their first points of World Cup Qualifying.

-  England hammered Croatia 4-1, but the real news came from who scored the goals. Theo Walcott, the Arsenal teenager had a hat trick as he started in place of David Beckham. Walcott does not even start for Arsenal…very interesting.

-  Brazil was unable to get all 3 points at home against Bolivia with a 0-0 tie. Brazil is now in tied for 2nd place in the table, 4 points behind South American group leaders Paraguay.

-  Argentina let Peru score a stoppage time goal in the 2nd half to tie the match 1-1. Argentina is now tied with Brazil with 13 points in the South American table.

That is all from World Cup Qualifying until the next round on October 11th.

FINAL: 3 USA V T&T 0

T&T had a greatly improved 2nd half.

But enough about them.

I’m worried. There’s a curse that has followed this team since at least 2006 and probably back much, much farther. The USA Men’s team has a severe deficiency in scoring during the run of play. And scoring off set pieces against CONCACAF teams does not make up for it. I saw balls at the feet of Ching, Donovan, Beasley, Johnson, and Kljestan in or around the T&T box that should have found net with minimal effort. How many times can a player hit a keeper’s chest and smile about it? You’re not Brazilian. Ronaldinho can laugh when he messes up because he plays for the greatest teams in the world, and likewise, the world knows he is one of the greatest. Dues paid. But Damarcus, just because Landon thinks you’re unlucky doesn’t preclude the rest of us from thinking you’re not good enough to earn the USA some respect in ‘10.

It’s very telling that the United States’ single goal in the 06 World Cup came during the run of play. Telling because in the presence of top-level teams we were only able to put one ball away, and telling because it didn’t come off a set piece.

The States squad has the type of players necessary to compete in 2010: Creative, quick thinkers who adapt and adjust. Adu, Edu, Dempsey, Altidore, and yes, sometimes Donovan, all have what it takes to evolve the program by streamlining our run-of-play play. Beasley too; I’ve seen it before. Ching, Johnson, Lewis… I’m sure you’re great guys but you’re not doing us any favors. Back to the minors with ya. You’ve got something to prove again.

Everyone else, figure out how to work with each other in flux, because that’s the nature of the game abroad. And South Africa will be very, very abroad.