* Welcome to Philadelphia Piotr (Peter to the papers here) Nowak. He said all the right things at his introductory press conference on Friday, even mentioning the Sons of Ben and their President, Bryan James, by name.
Nowak, as speculated, is not a “head coach”, but a manager. Not only will he be responsible for the fitness and playing style of the team, he will also be responsible for identifying talent and bringing it into the club at the Senior and Junior levels (more on the Union Academy and kids playing for the club starting in their early teens in a future column).
Nowak will meet the fans at Tir Na Nog in Center City on Wednesday night. All are welcome and you can be safe assuming that there will be a lot of light blue there. The team set up the event from 8 to 10 which perfectly leads into the US World Cup qualifier against Costa Rica.
* Speaking of the SoB’s, and heck Comcast SportsNet does all the time, Bryan James did a 25 minute interview with Denver sports radio this past week. Former National Team star Marcelo Balboa hosts the weekly From the Pitch show. Listen here starting at the 28th minute.
* The US Men have two important qualifiers this week. They face Costa Rica in Saprissa Stadium in San Jose, CR on Wednesday, then return home for a Saturday clash in Chicago v Honduras. The team had been training in Miami to acclimate to the tropical weather before heading out.
* Barcelona withstood 9 minutes of pressure from Manchester United, counter punched with a goal and then played attractive and effective football for the remaining 80 minutes.
* Finally, for those learning the game, there are set periods across the world in which players can be bought, sold, or, very rarely, traded. These are called transfer windows. The European summer transfer window opens July 1 and closes at the end of August and their winter transfer window only lasts one month, January. The MLS transfer windows are January 15th to April 15th and June 15th to August 15th.
Think of transfers like this, remember a couple of years ago when the Sox and Yanks were hot after a Japanese prospect and they had to pay an astronomical fee to the team that had him under contract to let him break that contract? That’s the transfer fee. Then the team has to negotiate a new contract with the player.
Then there are the words that make everyone happy “on a free”. Basically being available on a free means that the player is a free agent and it won’t cost the team negotiating for his services a dime beyond the actual contract.
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