I won’t sit here and say that I haven’t lost my cool during a soccer match before (that would be a total lie), but there’s no excuse for this level of aggression. In this clip, Arlington Shirley of North West Rankin High (Ms) is just pummeled (and not in a good way at all) by Zach Windom of Gulfport High (Ms).

I feel bad for Zach’s teammates as they really were impacted by his bad choice and he should, really, be forced to the sidelines for the rest of the year. You just can’t do stuff like that, if you let it happen in sports under the guise of “aggression,” you’re sugar coating some serious anger issues. They’re right there to see.

Zach, man, you’re bigger than the kid, you’re probably stronger than the kid and you had to punk him out like that. It’s a contact sport, dude, and his contact (from what I can see in this clip) was all legal. It would have taken you far less time and energy to just walk away, but now this will probably cost you a lot. I just hope you learn from this and move on.

Well, that’s hilarious. Seriously, that ball took a hop worse than RBNY’s Danny Cepero’s, so I really think we can stop focusing on this “once in a lifetime” thing. Poor keeper, though.

Sounds preposterous, right? Well, you would be dead wrong.

German goalie Jens Lehman really needed a potty break during Stuttgart’s Champions League match with Unirea Urziceni on Wednesday night.

So he ducked behind some advertising boards and went to the bathroom right in the middle of the match, which they won 3-1. [via]

Guess you could say that they opponents scared the piss out him. Hahahahahah ha.

…

I had to do that once, but it was in college and there were no boards. Embarrassing story.

The World Cup 2010 Match Ball, the Jabulani. Best part about this one: the only way that Jon Conway ever gets his hands on one is to purchase it.

Eff that guy.

Translated literally, “JABULANI” means “to celebrate.” I will be celebrating our awesome World Cup draw tonight, that’s for sure.

Press release and quotes from Kaka, Frank Lampard and more “after the jump” (more…)

If I didn’t know it better, I would think that there was NO global recession. Today, FIFA announced the amount that the World Cup winner’s home federation as the top prize in next summer’s WC: $30 million.

Jeebus effing eff. Giving away a total of $54 million for the WC final (as the runner-up will be receiving $24 million) in a nation that is pretty well decimated by poverty is just plain gross. There’s just no better way to say it.

“Soccer’s World Cup organizers said prize money for next year’s edition in South Africa is being raised by 61 percent from the last tournament, to $420 million.

World soccer’s governing body FIFA revealed the figures after an executive committee meeting on Robben Island, off the coast of South Africa.” [The Original Winger]

Photo Credit: Seth Binsted/The Breeze

In today’s MLS Expansion draft, we expected to see Amado Guevara, Frankie Hejduk or Eddie Robinson taken to help coach Peter/Piotr Nowak build the nucleus of what should be a pretty decent team in Philly next year. Instead, we saw a good, scrappy bunch of kids (including RBNY’s Nick Zimmerman) leaving their digs for “greener” pastures in Philadelphia.

There were no superstars taken, no former league MVPs. No players with U.S. national team caps, or players with multiple all-star appearances, or even players with ties to the Philadelphia area. When the final list of players chosen by the Philadelphia Union was announced, we were treated to a group of MLS players who could make up the type of tough and tenacious team that Nowak likes, and Philadelphia fans will want to root for. [SBI]

The fact that Zimmerman was left exposed (eff you Jeff Agoos!) makes me very, very angry. The new sporting director is on his way (believe me, it’s no damn secret who it is!) but we couldn’t find a way to hang on to a kid that had proven that he got it. We didn’t let Sassano or Sinisa go for similar reasons and dammit, I wanted Nick around. Now that $5 thing I bought off that kid in the Giants Stadium parking lot isn’t worth $h!t.

Ugh.

On top of needing a new hairstylist (wtf was up with this mane???), David Beckham needs a new “puffer”. That’s what little kids call inhalers, isn’t it? Any way, David and the LA Galaxy lost the MLS Cup Championship last night to Real Salt Lake on penalty kicks, the first time in league history.

14 years of long ball and boring soccer from the likes of Bruce Arena, the New England Revs and DC Scum and it’s taken this long for a penalty shootout for the title?

Yikes. Color me shocked.

Yeah, he definitely got a hand on that one. Bad refereeing and terrible that something as crucial as a WORLD CUP QUALIFYING MATCH should come down to a missed call.

Thierry Henry is one of this generation’s legends of European soccer. The 32-year-old striker has been a member of the French national team since 1997 and has scored over 50 goals for Les Bleux – to say nothing of his nearly 230 goals in club play. He was one of the faces of Gillette shaving products stateside and has also been featured in innumerable soccer advertisements here and overseas. He’s also, as FOX SPORTS notes, guilty of one of the most flagrant uncalled handballs in the history of international play; step aside, Maradona. [Sports by Brooks]

You got to finish matches early and make it so that those blunders cannot effect the outcome as they will happen. Obviously.

The Univ. of Stony Brook Men’s Soccer team advanced to the America East Championship game over Hartford by a score of 3-2 in a penalty shootout. That’s not the cool part.

I actually know Dan Gaspar, Univ. of Hartford coach, but his keeper is a total weirdo for his cartwheel trick. Just saying that my tricks with blades of grass and my “Laurel and Hardy routine” were far better than this is. Word.

[Stony Brook v. Hartford Men’s Soccer Semifinal Shootout aka Cartwheel Guys h/t The Original Winger]

We’re not going to sit here and say that this type of play is acceptable, but this level of “bush league” play in WOMEN’S COLLEGE SOCCER is so…so…completely hot. In case you need a point of reference, the above clip features New Mexico’s Elizabeth Lambert (15) beating the ever-loving crap out of BYU’s Kassidy Shumway (21) in the Mountain West Conference semifinals. Here at IHJC, we only encourage this type of brutality against our namesake (only kidding, sort of) but it’s important that the kids understand that while jostling on and off the ball will always be a part of the game, stuff like this most certainly shouldn’t.

Even still, chick fighting is pretty hot, right?