FLUFF: The Rumor That Will Not Die; Conway's Jab

With signs finally suggesting the Zidane-to-MLS rumors have finally died, Ives Galarcep turned in a column for ESPN dubbing it a shame that the French great will likely never come. He notes the money Zidane was looking for (big), noted the reasons (Beckham's fault, the bastard), and gets a bit into why the money Zidane requested wasn't out of line: "Would you listen to anything less than $15 million if a player you knew you were clearly better than was making $25 million a season[?]"

An incidentally-related article, from the Boston Herald if you must know, touches on an upside Galarcep saw for Zidane coming out of retirement:

"Zidane headbutted Italy’s Marco Materazzi during the World Cup final and ended his career with a red card. France lost to Italy on penalty kicks."

That that's the last line in the article bears noting: this is the footnote of Zidane's life.

Turning away from Zizou news, a quick interview with Red Bull New York's Jon Conway showed a bit of what the upstart 'keeper is all about. When Metrofanatic asked about how Conway felt about his situation with the arrival of Ronald Wattereus, his answer was telling: "No difference than last year when I was here. 36-year-old ex-international. We'll see how that goes." The kid has got balls, if nothing else.

Descending further into "Fluff" territory, SoccerAmerica wrote a respectable piece on four of this year's rookies: Bakary Soumare (Chicago Fire), John Cunliffe (Chivas USA), Abdus Ibrahim (FC Dallas), and Maurice Edu (Toronto FC). No offense intended to any of them, but you could copy/paste the quotes from 90% of sports articles and get substantively the same copy.

Now in the realm of pure fluff, Ian Plenderleith, of USSoccerplayers.com fame bumped into the Kansas City Wizards' Players' Wives Club (third section, by the way). I only call this fluff in terms of its direct relation to the game itself. It actually sounds like a pretty cool thing.

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