THE SOCCER REPORT
Chelsea host Manchester United in Carabao Cup; Houston Dynamo, USWNT name new managers
Oct 30, 2019, 6:55 am
THE SOCCER REPORT
The Houston Dynamo officially announced the appointment of former U.S. Men's National Team midfielder Tab Ramos as the club's new Head Coach last Friday. Ramos arrived in the Bayou City on Monday and has begun to plan for the 2020 Major League Soccer season.
It’s official Dynamo fans. Tab Ramos is your new head coach! #ForeverOrange— Houston Dynamo (@Houston Dynamo) 1572022723.0
The Dynamo were not the only ones with a new manager as the U.S. Women's National Team announced the appointment of two-time NWSL Championship winning coach Vlatko Andonovski. The 2019 NWSL Coach of the Year takes over for Jill Ellis, who took the USWNT to back-to-back FIFA Women's World Cup titles.
🇺🇸 Officially Official 🇺🇸 @ussoccer hires Vlatko Andonovski as the new head coach of the #USWNT.— U.S. Soccer WNT (@U.S. Soccer WNT) 1572291965.0
The U.S. Men also had positive news of their own to share. Sergiño Dest, the 18-year-old Ajax defender, revealed his intent to play for the United States over the Netherlands. Dest had played with the USMNT earlier this year but is yet to be permamently tied through an appearance in an official encounter. Dest also played with the youth national teams of Team USA, including under Ramos at the 2019 U-20 FIFA World Cup.
All in for the 🔴, ⚪️ & 🔵❗️ After featuring for the @USYNT at the #U17WC and #U20WC, Sergiño Dest will continue in… https://t.co/ReA0CQzNY8— U.S. Soccer MNT (@U.S. Soccer MNT) 1572276042.0
Here is the rest of the soccer ongoings from the past week:
The MLS Cup Playoffs have one finalist decided after Seattle Sounders upset LAFC on Tuesday night. Seattle will play for the championship at Atlanta or will host Toronto, depending on the results of Wednesday night's match.
Conference semifinals results
The 2019 NWSL season came to an end as the North Carolina Courage succesfully defended their title with a 4-0 win over the Chicago Red Stars.
After weeks of concern from U.S. Men's National Team fans over the playing time of Christian Pulisic, the 21-year-old American prodigy scored his first goal for Chelsea F.C. - delivering three in the process. Pulisic became the second U.S. player with a hat-trick in the EPL and the first since Clint Dempsey.
The Premier League resumes this coming weekend but first, English clubs are taking part in the League Cup - known also as the Carabao Cup - during the midweek slate.
Top six: Liverpool (28), Man City (22), Leicester City (20), Chelsea (20), Arsenal (16), Crystal Palace (15)
Scoring leader: 9 - Jamie Vardy (Leicester City)
Assists leader: 9 - Kevin De Bruyne (Man City)
Updated through October 29 matches
Top six: Barcelona (22), Granada (20), Atletico Madrid (20), Real Sociedad (19), Sevilla (19), Real Madrid (18)
Scoring leader: 7 - Gerard Moreno (Villareal) / Lorenzo Garica (Real Betis)
Assists leader: 4 - Leo Messi (Barcelona) / Santi Cazorla (Villareal)
Top six: Monchengladbach (19), Bayern Munich (18), Freiburg (17), Wolfsburg (17), Dortmund (16), RB Leipzig (15)
Scoring leader: 13 - Robert Lewandowski (Bayern Munich)
Top six: Inter Milan (25), Juventus (23), Atalanta (20), Napoli (17), Roma (16), Lazio (15)
Scoring leader: 10 - Ciro Immobile (Lazio)
Assists leader: 5 - Four players tiedTop six: PSG (27), Nantes (19), Lille (18), Reims (18), Brest (17), Angers (17)
Scoring leader: 9 - Wissam Ben Yedder (Monaco)
Wednesday, October 23
1:00 p.m. - [Serie A] Napoli vs. Atalanta (ESPN+)
1:00 p.m. - [La Liga] Valencia vs. Sevilla (beIN Sports)
2:30 p.m. - [English League Cup] Liverpool vs. Arsenal (ESPN+)
2:45 p.m. - [English League Cup] Aston Villa vs. Wolves (ESPN+)
2:45 p.m. - [German Cup] Dortmund vs. Gladbach (ESPN3)
2:45 p.m. - [German Cup] St Pauli vs. Frankfurt (ESPN3)
3:00 p.m. - [Serie A] Juventus vs. Genoa (ESPN+)
3:00 p.m. - [Serie A] Udinese vs. Roma (ESPN+)
3:00 p.m. - [English League Cup] Chelsea vs. Man United (ESPN+)
3:00 p.m. - [La Liga] Real Madrid vs. Leganes (beIN SPORTS)
7:00 p.m. - [MLS Cup Playoffs] Atlanta United FC vs. Toronto FC (FS1, FOX Deportes)
They’ll be watching in Canada, not just because of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, though the NBA’s scoring champion and MVP favorite who plays for Oklahoma City surely helps lure in fans who are north of the border.
They’ll be watching from Serbia and Greece, the homelands of Denver star Nikola Jokic and Milwaukee star Giannis Antetokounmpo. Alperen Sengun will have them watching Houston games in the middle of the night in Turkey, too. Slovenian fans will be watching Luka Doncic and the Lakers play their playoff opener at 2:30 a.m. Sunday, 5:30 p.m. Saturday in Los Angeles. Fans in Cameroon will be tuned in to see Pascal Siakam and the Indiana Pacers. Defending champion Boston features, among others, Kristaps Porzingis of Latvia and Al Horford of the Dominican Republic.
Once again, the NBA playoffs are setting up to be a showcase for international stars.
In a season where the five statistical champions were from five different countries, an NBA first — Gilgeous-Alexander is Canadian, rebounding champion Domantas Sabonis of Sacramento is from Lithuania, blocked shots champion Victor Wembanyama of San Antonio is from France, steals champion Dyson Daniels of Atlanta is from Australia, and assists champion Trae Young of the Hawks is from the U.S. — the postseason will have plenty of international feel as well. Gilgeous-Alexander is in, while Sabonis and Daniels (along with Young, obviously) could join him if their teams get through the play-in tournament.
“We have a tremendous number of international players in this league,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said earlier this season. “It’s roughly 30% of our players representing, at least on opening day, 43 different countries, so there’s much more of a global sense around our teams.”
By the end of the season, it wound up being 44 different countries — at least in terms of countries where players who scored in the NBA this season were born. For the first time in NBA history, players from one country other than the U.S. combined to score more than 15,000 points; Canadian players scored 15,588 this season, led by Gilgeous-Alexander, the first scoring champion from that country.
Gilgeous-Alexander is favored to be MVP this season. It'll be either him or Jokic, which means it'll be a seventh consecutive year with an international MVP for the NBA. Antetokounmpo won twice, then Jokic won three of the next four, with Cameroon-born Joel Embiid of the Philadelphia 76ers winning two seasons ago.
“Shai is in the category of you do not stop him,” Toronto coach Darko Rajakovic said after a game between the Raptors and Thunder this season.
In other words, he's like a lot of other international guys now. Nobody truly stops Jokic, Antetokounmpo and Doncic either.
And this season brought another international first: Doncic finished atop the NBA's most popular jersey list, meaning NBAStore.com sold more of his jerseys than they did anyone else's. Sure, that was bolstered by Doncic changing jerseys midseason when he was traded by Dallas to the Los Angeles Lakers, but it still is significant.
The Slovenian star is the first international player to finish atop the most popular jerseys list — and the first player other than Stephen Curry or LeBron James to hold that spot in more than a decade, since soon-to-be-enshrined Basketball Hall of Famer Carmelo Anthony did it when he was with New York in 2012-13.
“We’re so small, we have 2 million people. But really, our sport is amazing,” fellow Slovene Ajsa Sivka said when she was drafted by the WNBA's Chicago Sky on Monday night and asked about Doncic and other top Slovenian athletes. “No matter what sport, we have at least someone that’s great in it. I’m just really proud to be Slovenian.”
All this comes at a time where the NBA is more serious than perhaps ever before about growing its international footprint. Last month, FIBA — the sport's international governing body — and the NBA announced a plan to partner on a new European basketball league that has been taking shape for many years. The initial target calls for a 16-team league and it potentially could involve many of the biggest franchise names in Europe, such as Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City.
It was a season where four players topped 2,000 points in the NBA and three of them were international with Gilgeous-Alexander, Jokic and Antetokounmpo. Globally, time spent watching NBA League Pass was up 6% over last season. More people watched NBA games in France this season than ever before, even with Wembanyama missing the final two months. NBA-related social media views in Canada this season set records, and league metrics show more fans than ever were watching in the Asia-Pacific region — already a basketball hotbed — as well.
FIBA secretary general Andreas Zagklis said the numbers — which are clearly being fueled by the continued international growth — suggest the game is very strong right now.
“Looking around the world, and of course here in North America," Zagklis said, "the NBA is most popular and more commercially successful than ever.”