Sport Watch

Filed under: European Soccer, English Premier League

Manchester City’s Shaun Wright-Phillips kicks field goals at Baltimore Ravens practice.

BALTIMORE — It wasn’t surprising to see (and hear) the majority of the crowd at last Saturday’s friendly between Inter Milan and Manchester City at Baltimore’s M&T Bank Stadium supporting the European champions.

Inter is a big-name club that’s established itself globally and toured this country before, along with the likes of Manchester United, Real Madrid and others who routinely spend part of their preseason posing for photos and selling shirts in the U.S. They’re football royalty, one of a select few clubs big enough to earn the attention and support of glory-hunting American fans who want to follow a winner.

Manchester City is none of that. The 2010-11 campaign is just its ninth since returning to the Premier League after a spell that included a drop to the third division. Its best finish since earning promotion was fifth last season, and it hasn’t won a major trophy since the 1976 League Cup. It has next to no cachet or name recognition in the U.S.

But it does have money. Lots of it. And ambition. Since an investor group from Abu Dhabi run by a member of the emirate’s royal family took over the club two years ago, City has found itself in the headlines an awful lot for a club with such modest pedigree. It signed Robinho, Carlos Tévez, Roque Santa Cruz, Emmanuel Adebayor and others, instantly becoming a player in every potential high-profile transfer (whether in reality or rumor).

It is the first English club to emerge with a realistic chance to offer a consistent challenge to the dominant “big four” of United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool. That quartet seems to have captured the allegiance of about 95 percent of “football” fans in the United States.

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Fanhouse Soccer

Filed under: Eagles, Redskins, NFL Training Camp

Donovan McNabb enjoyed a happy debut in Washington Friday night, completing five of eight passes for 58 yards and a touchdown to receiver Anthony Armstrong on his two series as the host Redskins routed the bad and battered Buffalo Bills 42-17.

Kevin Kolb, the young quarterback who replaced McNabb in Philadelphia, was 6-for-11 for 95 yards while producing field goal on each of his series for the Eagles against the visiting Jacksonville Jaguars in a game the Eagles would win 28-17.

Fair to say that both franchises are feeling good about the first results with their new starters at the NFL‘s most important position.

“It was an exciting time,” said the 34-year-old McNabb, the Eagles’ starter for the previous decade-plus. “When you play your first game with a new ballclub it takes you back to the first game you played. Your adrenaline is high and you have to settle down a little bit. The second time we went out … it led to us putting up some points. There are a lot of things we have to work on, but I thought offensively we were able to progress.”

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Filed under: MLS, Los Angeles Galaxy

It’s difficult, if not pointless, to compare Clint Mathis’ career with Zinedine Zidane’s. The two players existed in wholly different parts of the soccer universe, with French legend Zidane being touted as one of the greatest players of his generation, while Mathis was more of a local curiosity, beloved stateside, but seen as an expendable component overseas.

That doesn’t mean that Mathis’ recent retirement isn’t worth feting, however. Styled after the critically-acclaimed feature film “Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait”, the good people at MLS stitched together a short video that details Mathis’ final appearance on a soccer pitch. Shot entirely over the course of last Saturday’s L.A. Galaxy-Real Madrid friendly, Mathis’ final match, this tribute uses footage of cameras trained on Mathis alone, and was edited sans narration. Watch below.

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Fanhouse Soccer