I know they say too much of a good thing can be bad for you, but hey - two soccer blog carnivals on the same day! Goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooal!

The American Soccer Carnival hits its 3rd edition over at The Fool’s Prerogative with a number of quality posts about ‘The Way Forward’ for US Soccer.

The Football/Soccer Carnival kicks off its premiere edition over at A Funny Old Game with a lot of talk about recent pre-season transfers in Europe.

So be sure to pay a visit to the bloggers of the day in each carnival and spread around some links!

The Football/Soccer Carnival is planned as a weekly event, so be sure to get your submissions in by Sunday. The next topic for the American Soccer Carnival should be posted soon. Check their blog carnival profile for updates. If you have a topic suggestion for the next American Soccer Carnival, email it to Zathras. As always, you can read the latest carnival, archives, and submit to future ones using the Soccer Carnival links in our sidebar.

As many of you know, one thing that drives me crazy is people who tar an entire segment of something based on the bad behavior of a select few. Lest we forget, not ALL parents of kids in sports are ‘Sports Kids Moms and Dads‘. So, lets just say I wasn’t thrilled to see Jamie Trecker talk about summer soccer camps and decree

the idea that these soccer camps help kids become better players is a very dubious proposition at best and at least unproven by the performances of current American soccer players. They also can be harmful.

and

Speaking purely about soccer (we can’t comment on other sports), the majority of these summer soccer camps don’t seem to provide much benefit. It’s clear that the vast majority of them are NOT developing better players

Wow. What have I been sending my kids to?

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I’ll admit that I tend to read political blogs a bit more than is healthy. But you often find 2nd tier stories being talked about that you might miss from the MSM. The one thing they ALL have, however, is some level of dissent. Look around the Soccersphere and, well, we don’t.

No, I don’t think soccer blogs need to be like their political big brothers with vitriol being spewed from left and right. However, a little dissent can be a good thing. There is some incredible writing out there from soccer bloggers and a lot of good ideas. But with all that is going on right now, there’s no way we all agree with each other. Yet I find very few posts where a soccer blogger says ‘So and so had this idea and while I agree with some of it, I think this might be a better option.’ The beauty of this is it adds insight and further ideas to the debate AND gets the debate in front of more readers and bloggers.

So I was thrilled to see D at the DCenters being a true dissenter. Debate the ideas. If you don’t agree with some, well that’s cool.

And that’s what I’d like to see more of: Make the case. Even if I think you are wrong, at least you will have offered concrete steps which are implementable actions, not platonic ideals. Why and What are great places to start, but recommend the How. That’s the challenge for all of US Soccer at this point.

Damn straight. Don’t hold back when you have an idea - if you care enough to write about it, make the case for it. Does that open you up to dissent - sure it does and that’s a good thing. The risk is some may fall into fits of anger and start to attack the bloggers themselves (like many political blogs do). I hope we’re smarter than that, because healthy debate can be a good thing.

With two different carnivals coming up this Monday, we’re going to see a lot of interesting ideas floated from a lot of different blogs, some of which have been published within the past few days. Many of you are bound to disagree with some of the things talked about - so say so. We all just need to make sure we keep the debate civil lest we fall into the same trap many political bloggers have or some posters on other *cough* ‘Big’ sites.

Are you game?

Nice to see the Italians are working so hard to shake their reputation of winning by whining.

The Italian clubs implicated in a match-fixing scandal have had their punishments slashed on appeal.

Lazio and Fiorentina have been reinstated to Serie A - but with points deductions increased from 12 to 19 for Fiorentina and seven to 11 for Lazio.

Juventus’ hopes of overturning demotion to Serie B were dashed, but instead of starting on minus 30 points, they have only had 17 points taken away.

AC Milan stay in Serie A, with their penalty cut from 15 points to eight.

Milan have also been allowed to play in the Champions League qualifying rounds this season - having originally been barred from Europe.

I personally thought relegation was a perfect punishment for these clubs. What they did was inexcusable and deserved a major punishment (The BBC has an excellent overview of the scandal). All this does is slap them on the wrist. Juventus will either remain the whipping boy or they’ll get back into Serie A too. Mark my words.

In the past two months we’ve seen our US Men’s Team head to Germany, exhibit mostly conservative play, get schooled, and lose their head coach. While many may be distressed by this turn of events, I see an opportunity for a new beginning and fresh start. In keeping with the topic of the upcoming 3rd American Soccer Carnival, let’s talk about The Way Forward for soccer in the US, from the perspective of youth players.

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Other Websites: Soccer articles and other sports info are available at SportsPundit.com. Read about the teams, vote for them or submit your own comments.

I swore to myself I wouldn’t post another word about ‘the headbutt’. But these aren’t my words. They’re joe’s:

even though Zidane’s headbutt was absolutely shameful, I am a huge fan of it. Bad for his legacy, great for soccer. Pardon monsieur, don’t apologize to the children. Are you kidding? Little kids love ramming their heads into shit! Especially into other little kids! Little kids get it, and this thing will only increase their love of the game.

The Headbutt added an incredible flavor and color to a mostly drab World Cup. People who hate soccer are still talking about it. Because it was awesome. The shamefulness of his exit only adds to the incredible audacity of it.

Little kids love ramming their heads into shit! Especially into other little kids! As a father of 4 kids, no truer words… I almost snorted Pepsi out my nose reading that. Too funny. Not that I’m advocating them doing it or anything.

Being a sports parent is an interesting endeavor. You want your kids to succeed at whatever they do and when they choose to play sports, you are instantly thrust into this balancing act between encouraging your kids and not being viewed as one of ‘those parents’. There are a few bad apples in every bunch, including youth sports. Some parents DO take it too serious and can ruin it for their children while embarrassing themselves. But they are the exception by a long shot. The problem is the few are so visible, combined with things like that stupid Bravo reality show Sports Kid’s Moms and Dads, many people assume if you’re a parent of a kid in sports, you’re one of ‘those’ parents.

However, if you’ve never had a child in sports, you probably don’t realize what an interesting experience it can be, especially in youth soccer.

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I tend to think of myself as a fairly informed person when it comes to web technologies, services, blogs, etc. I ran websites back when ‘The Web’ was still called ‘The WWW’ and the webserver of choice was from CERN. So did I ever feel silly when I was reading ThroughBall and realized I didn’t know what a blog carnival was. Even worse, the SoccerSphere has TWO of them and I had never even noticed. Sheesh! Sometimes I wonder about my feeble ol mind.

You mean you haven’t heard of a blog carnival either?

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Couldn’t resist posting this. Our 1 year old is a soccer nut (there’s a shock ). He was practically born on the soccer fields (he was born in late August, nuff said). I think his first outing to the fields happened when he was 5 days old. Needless to say, if he sees a ball of any kind, he’s going to run over and kick it. He loves to ‘borrow’ a skills ball from an older sibling and kick it around the house barefoot. Well, yesterday morning he decided he was going to put on his older brother’s cleats and give it a go. He dragged the cleats off the shoe rack and found himself a soccer ball (A size 4 no less, Soccer Dad is SO proud!). Yes, he was actually kicking the ball around the mud room with those huge cleats dangling on his feet. Too much. After dinner we had GolTV on watching some Columbian Futbol, so the little one plops down and watches. As soon as he heard GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAL!!! He jumps up, says ‘Yay!’ and starts to clap. Be afraid.

I wanted to welcome everyone stopping by from Triangle Soccer Fanatics. Jarrett is taking a short break and gave On The Pitch a shoutout, plus he included our feed in his sidebar (thanks Jarrett!) Spend the weekend browsing around if you’re new to On The Pitch. I’ve got a bunch of stuff queued up for the coming week so I hope you’ll stick around or grab our RSS feed to stay tuned in. 

The World Cup was clearly a success in the US. The final match between France and Italy drew over 17 million viewers (more than Game 6 of the NBA finals) The only downside to this is we’re still likely to be stuck with Dave O’Brien for a LONG time (2014). With John Harkes heading to New York, the one crew many enjoyed listening to (led by J.P. Dellacamera) is now split up. So rather than complain about it, we should do something about it. The coach in me says what Dave needs is an intensive training program so when the Women’s World Cup rolls around next year he’ll be ready.

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I really don’t think FIFA should start handing out suspensions for verbal taunting or provocation. The precedent is spooky. But the little devil on my shoulder let out a big Gilliard like BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH when I read that Materazzi had gotten suspended for 2 matches thanks to his antics in the final. I know, I know, its wrong as a rule but in this case - sweet justice!

Sorry for disappearing like that after the final! It’s been a hectic couple of weeks with limited computer access, so consider this a catchup post.

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The Guardian has a new article up where Sepp Blatter, President of FIFA, admits he used to dive when he played. Granted, most strikers have dived at one time or another I expect and you have to give Sepp credit for trying to cut back on diving in the World Cup. However, there is some irony here so I had to pass it on!

"I was not a perfect player, I have to say, being a striker," said Blatter. "I tried … to get some advantages by joking with a player and then falling down by saying ‘but he touched me’. And in fact it was not that. I did it."

Before the World Cup, Fifa instructed referees to clamp down on any diving and playacting, with Blatter claiming: "Diving is worse than shirt-pulling or tripping. It is betraying the players and the referee. I’m in favour of red cards for diving."

You gotta give him snaps for being up front about it. I think we can all agree that FIFA’s attempt to reduce ’simulation’ in the World Cup didn’t go very well, but it is a worthwhile goal and here’s hoping they get better at penalizing divers.

Luis Bueno has an article up at CNNSI where he talks about the difficulties that CONCACAF nations face on the world soccer stage and also talks about they many common ’solutions’ that have been proposed to lift CONCACAF out of the world’s soccer basement.

Numerous theories abound on how to fix the region’s ails, on how the U.S. can consistently compete at World Cups, on how Mexico can take a space alongside Argentina and Italy as a true world power. Nevertheless, those theories are an exercise in futility. For no matter what happens this fact will remain unchanged: A CONCACAF nation will never win a World Cup.

Now that’s a bit defeatist overall. You improve if you strive for great heights. But even I admit that I doubt we’ll see the cup go to a CONCACAF nation in my lifetime. That doesn’t mean we should stop trying though. Luis touches on many common ideas for improving CONCACAF…

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