Balotelli’s latest moment of madness (the ref definitely didn’t see it!)

Another weekend of big matches in the English football calendar and another Monday morning where the football doesn’t make the headlines.  Or so it would seem if you picked up a paper or flicked open an English based website to see the face of Manchester City’s bad boy striker, Mario Balotelli staring back at you thanks to his latest run-in with indiscipline. But in this case the incident did have a big impact on the game itself, and it was certainly  a relief for it to be something other than the brandishing of fake cards by players, or indeed managers. Balotelli’s stamp on the face of Spurs midfielder Scott Parker — “Scott has a lovely cut on his head,” said his manager, Harry Redknapp — should have seen the City player sent off. As it turned out the referee missed it, Balotelli stayed on, won a penalty and stepped up to convert it and win the game for City. Cue the outrage from Redknapp.

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You spend one weekend away from the hurricane that is the Toronto FC news making machine and return to find all sorts of little stories to read about as the season draws closer by the day. From the great news that defender come midfielder Richard Eckersley is on the verge of leaving English side Burnley and signing on a full-time basis for TFC to the fantastic news that the CCL quarter final game at the Sky Dome against LA has now sold more than 35,000 tickets. Fears of large collections of empty seats are subsiding by the day it would appear as the club have even taken the step of releasing an extra 1,000 tickets.

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Too much of this, not enough football

Did anyone watch the latest ‘El Classico’ yesterday between the two sides in two-team-Spanish-football that win anything? The tikki-takki-tappy-toe provayors of poessions football and the two yard pass, Barcelona, and their jealous bad-guy rivals lead by Jose Mourinho, Real Madrid? If I’m honest I’ll admit I didn’t even know it was on until I read someone talking about an incident during the game on Twitter and later in the evening I glanced up from my iPad to see the goals when the highlights came on TV, but otherwise I just couldn’t find myself being drawn to it because, as was proven against last night, the football is secondary to the nonsense.

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Following last weeks Super-Duper Draft the MLS teams were back at it this week in the Supplemental Draft. Joining last weeks draft picks Luis Silva and Aaron Maund were midfielders Michael Green (New Mexico), Arthur Ivo (Southern Methodist) and Mike Mazzullo (Columbia), and defenders Nickardo Blake (Connecticut) and Mykell Bates (Santa Clara). All are likely to be invited to training camp though none from the Supplemental Draft are likely to make the team for 2012.

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Defender come midfielder, Mikael Yourassowsky looks resigned to become little more than a footnote in the history of Toronto FC after the club announced today that the 28-year old Belgian had been waived. Playing in 21 league games and making just 13 starts the footnote in which I refer to will be his loan goal for the club in the Canadian Championship against Vancouver that won the team the competition. For that I thank him and wish him well wherever he ends up (Montreal and Vancouver aside!).

Mancini tries to inform the referee as to the decision to be made

Is it just me or does it seem that by the year… no wait, scratch that . . . by the week, yes does it seem that by the week footballers are getting more petty and more hyocritical? If it isn’t players like Wayne Rooney demanding a transfer one season in order to get a pay rise only to score a goal last week and celebrate by kissing the badge, or Arsene Wenger complaining that a Swansea player dived to win a penalty against his club, considering what his club have done in the past, then it’s Roberto Mancini and his waving of imaginary red cards and other players having the cheak to complain about it, or the same man moaning about two-footed tackles on opponents…

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The club website announced this past weekend that ticket sales for the CCL game against the Los Angeles Galaxy have surpassed the 25,000 mark meaning that this game will set an attendance high for the club for a home game in what is our first home game away from BMO Field. Attendance records are set on tickets sold and not by how many people actually show up. With a capacity of 54,000 (going off the capacity for NFL games at the stadium), it’s still someway short of a sellout but with seven weeks (yes just 7 weeks!) to go there will be optimism that they can get at least close to capacity.

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Concacaf have made a minor tweak to the Champions League from next season reverting to eight groups of three teams and doing away with the qualification round. It means that should TFC win their Canadian Championship group against Edmonton, Montreal and Vancouver they will progress into one of the eight groups. The new format which is being brought in to ease fixture congestion for the sides involved, will not allow American and Mexican teams to meet one another in the group stages from which the top side from each group will qualify.

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This is always one of the business weeks of the MLS off-season, highlighted of course by the Super Draft on Thursday. Toronto went into the draft with two first round picks up their sleeve and despite questions as to whether they might trade one or both, they held onto them and picked up two young prospects — Luis Silva (no relation to David!) with the fourth overall pick, and Aaron Maund with the 12th overall pick.

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