The Daily Dirt January 29, 2018: Zlatan alert

It was a pretty exciting weekend of soccer. The magic of the FA Cup was on full display as Tottenham couldn’t beat Newport County, Bayern Munich and TSG Hoffenheim got together to score 7 goals, and the USMNT capped it all off with one of the most uninspired performances this side of Ato Boldon Stadium.

Anyway, onto the Dirt...

National Team News

I feel bad linking to a recap of the USMNT game last night, though Adam Snavely’s is great, it was terrible. At least Bachelor is on this evening.

The U-20 USWNT lost to the U-20 Mexico WNT on penalties in the CONCACAF Championship. The U.S. is booked to go to France for the U-20 Women’s World Cup, but with a budding women’s professional league and a result against the Stars and Stripes in a tournament final, the US women could face more competition from Mexico sooner than may have been expected.

Domestic

Landon Donovan is at Leon, Freddy Adu is training with LV Lights, and Mix Diskerud was transferred to Manchester City. The deal totally isn’t just so that NYCFC can get him totally off the books while it was sinking them in terms of cap space and MLS totally is going to run this to ground to make sure nothing untoward is going on in order to ensure that parity includes teams living with their mistakes.

The Boston Breakers are officially folding after a last minute ownership deal fell apart. The team was in a lot more trouble than it originally appeared. Steph Yang at The Bent Musket has a timeline with commentary about the situation.

Over on Howler James Bridget Gordon, who also writes with Hot Time in the Old Town, has a look at the difficult position soccer writers find themselves in when it comes to having credibility and income while keeping bosses, readers, and sources happy.

Then there’s this...

International

I like LigaMX, if your eyeballs have more room for soccer, I suggest following the league.

Catch up with the results from top leagues in Europe from the Guardian.

Goals of the Weekend

Saturday - Toni Kroos, Real Madrid vs. Valencia - His team may be fighting for a spot in the Champions League and could be shopping for a new manager, but Real can still make music from time to time.

Sunday - Pablo Barrientos, Toluca vs. Cruz Azul: Barrientos punishes La Maquina for it’s less than clinical defending on this ball that hopped across the goal box in LigaMX play.

Sunday - Kevin de Bruyne vs. Cardiff City - at some point KdB has to be in the conversation for best player in the world right?

What to listen to

5 Stripe Final will be debuted today, there are now as many Atlanta United podcasts as there are Atlanta United supporters groups.