The US beat England in a thrilling 1-1 tie to open the World Cup.

That’s a bit tongue-in-check, of course, but certainly the outcome is being considered a “win” for Team USA (indeed, I’ve received a congratulatory email for the “soccer success” from a European) and a crushing disappointment for the country which invented the sport.

The record will show it was a tie, but it was hardly that.

One found renewed confidence; the other is going to feel the heat back home.

The United States and England played to a 1-1 draw Saturday night in the World Cup, with the Americans rallying when Clint Dempsey scored on a blunder by goalkeeper Robert Green and U.S. goalie Tim Howard withstood a second-half barrage by Wayne Rooney and his celebrated teammates.

Steven Gerrard put England ahead in the fourth minute, blowing past Ricardo Clark to beat Howard from short range. But Dempsey tied it when Green fumbled his 25-yard shot that skipped off the ground twice.

“It was a difficult game,” Gerrard said. “I think the important thing in the first game is not to lose. Unfortunately we’ve let a poor goal in and we couldn’t go on and get the winner.

As an American, where even meaningless games in sports with 162-game regular seasons are played until someone wins, the idea of ending a match in the most important championship tournament on the planet in a tie still boggles the mind. But that’s the tradition in this game, where scoring opportunities are few and far between.

China coach Shang Ruihua is questioning the eligibility of South Korean player Park Eun-Sun for the upcoming women’s Asian Cup and has urged authorities to conduct a gender test, local media reported.

“If Park is participating in the Asian Cup we will definitely appeal to the AFC (Asian Football Confederation) to test her gender,” Shang told Chengdu Business Daily, a paper from the host city of the May 19-30 tournament in southwest China.

Park has been selected for the South Korea training squad after a five-year retirement. The 1.80m (5 ft 11) striker scored 13 goals in 11 international matches she played for South Korea before retiring in 2005 at 19.

However, her power and voice have raised doubts in some players and coaches.

“Her voice is too deep,” said Chinese player Li Jie.

My voice is too deep to be mistaken for a woman’s.

Hat tip- NC47 at ROK Drop who writes- “I don’t know if China should be asking for any type of qualification tests on athletes considering their history of cheating at sports.” Cheating is cheating, and should be reported by whoever observes it.

The rest of my original post is below

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The attack on their team bus by gunmen resulted in three deaths. From AP-

Hosting the African Cup of Nations was Angola’s chance to show it is recovering from decades of war, but tragedy struck as gunmen sprayed bullets at Togo’s national team, killing three people and forcing its withdrawal from the soccer tournament.

Africa’s main soccer tournament was expected to open as planned on Sunday, even though players from other countries expressed shock at the ambush on the Togo team bus as it traveled through Angola’s restive oil-rich Cabinda province.

“We have goose bumps … who knows what is going to happen to us,” Amade Chababe, assistant coach to the Mozambique national football team, told AP Television News as the squad passed through Johannesburg en route to Angola on Saturday.

In South Africa, the local organizing committee of the World Cup said the attack had no relevance to the upcoming global sports event that starts in June. Spokesman Rich Mkhondo said FIFA views Friday’s attack as an isolated incident that could have happened anywhere in the world.

That’s a awfully dumb thing to say. How many machine attacks on buses full of athletes have happened in other parts of the world. I’m too far away to know if this is an isolated incident but will note that a violent civil war took place in Angola starting in 1975 and that it lasted almost 30 years.

The attack in Angola, a former Portuguese colony, killed an assistant coach, a team spokesperson and the bus driver, according to the team and the Togolese government.

“Despite this, the championship will go on,” Angola’s sports minister, Goncalves Muandumba, said.

In 1961 the entire U.S. Figure skating team was killed in a plane crash as they traveled to the World Figure Skating Championships. As a result the World Championships were canceled that year. How many of the other participants really want to go on after this tragedy. Won’t any victory feel bittersweet in the end?

It is perfectly understandable why Togo felt the need to withdraw. I don’t understand why this soccer tournament has to go on after this tragedy instead of being postponed.

Gunmen in an area plagued by separatist violence opened fire Friday on a bus carrying Togo’s national soccer team to a tournament in this southwest African country, wounding at least six people including two players, an official said.

Some players said they wanted to pull out of the African Cup of Nations tournament following the violence, but an official in Angola said it would go ahead as planned.

Togo’s bus in a convoy from Congo was six miles across the border in Angola when it came under fire. The bus driver died in the 30-minute ambush, according to Togo captain Emmanuel Adebayor, who was not hurt.

One player said they were ‘machine gunned like dogs’. Some players have expressed a desire to leave. I hope they don’t and pray the two wounded team members make a speedy recovery.

Former Manchester United winger Albert Scanlon, one of the ‘Busby Babes’ who survived the 1958 Munich air disaster that killed eight team mates, has died at the age of 74.

Scanlon stayed with United after recovering from his injuries, making 127 senior appearances and scoring 35 goals.

Soccer authorities in Cyprus say all fans will need to show state identity cards to buy tickets for domestic league matches in a bid to curb violence at games.

Wednesday’s announcement follows weekend clashes between fans of rival Nicosia clubs APOEL and Omonia that left a 20-year-old man critically injured.

The Cyprus Football Association says ID card numbers will be printed on tickets starting late this month as a means of identifying hooligans and enforcing banning orders.

I seem to recall how photo identification was proposed by some American officials aways back. Also as a means of protecting the public. How well did that policy work on September 11, 2001?

Serbian President Boris Tadic faces a fine for allegedly drinking champagne at a stadium with his sports minister and the head of the soccer federation.

Judge Zoran Pasalic said Tuesday the three are requested to appear in court on Dec. 1.

Drinking alcohol at and around sports venues is illegal in Serbia and fines range from $150 to $1,500.

Police filed misdemeanor charges against all three officials after photos were published of them holding glasses filled with champagne after Serbia’s 5-0 victory over Romania last month in World Cup qualifying.

Tadic said he drank no champagne and just made a toast. I don’t care, throw the book at him.

You can turn off the snark now.

New Mexico women’s soccer defender Elizabeth Lambert has been suspended indefinitely after engaging in rough play — including hauling an opposing player to the ground by her pony tail — in the Lobos’ 1-0 loss to BYU in the Mountain West Conference semifinals.

Lambert is prohibited from taking part in practices, games and conditioning, coach Kit Vela announced Friday.

“Liz is a quality student-athlete, but in this instance her actions clearly crossed the line of fair play and good sportsmanship,” Vela said.

Video footage of the game shows Lambert, a junior, committing a series of excessively rough plays, including kicking, tackles, a forearm shiver to the back — in response to an elbow to the ribs — and yanking BYU forward Kassidy Shumway to the ground by her hair.

Lambert was assessed a yellow card during the 76th minute, apparently for tripping.

Lambert apologized for her actions.

Here’s a video of what happened. Warning the audio isn’t too good.

Her actions may have been provoked but are still uncalled for. I do think Lambert could have a future in another sport. How good is she at ice skating? Watch out Mountain West women’s hockey players.

The Tanzania Football Federation (TFF) has imposed life bans on four premier league referees and fined a club US$10,000 after it found them guilty of corruption.

The officials allegedly received around US$200 from premier league side, Majimaji FC, to fix their match against Mtibwa Sugar last month.

Majimaji, who eventually won the game 1-0, were fined US$10,000 for their misconduct.

The TFF spokesperson Florian Kaijage claimed that the club also covered the officials’ accommodation and gave them air tickets for their journey back to Dar es Salaam from Ruvuma in Southern Tanzania, where the match was being played.

Match officials are normally given money by the TFF to cover their return travel by bus to games, for their food and accommodation as well as a small allowance.

The referees say they planned to give the money back.

But the match referee, Othman Kazi, insisted to BBC Sport that they were given a bribe but never planned to keep the money.

“Majimaji brought us the money, but we refused to take it, then they threw it at us,” he told BBC Sport.

“We then decided to pick up the money and handed it over to TFF.

“We are the ones who reported the incident, how can they ban us?”

The TFF says the bribe was never reported to them. All I can say to this muddle, is if the bribery took place, Majimaji FC should have faced worse sanctions than a $10,000 fine.

Maybe a lifeguard should have run on the field and declared no goal.

A beach ball from the stands floated on the field in the opening minutes of Saturday’s Sunderland-Liverpool game in the Premier League. It might as well have been a set piece for Sunderland.

Sunderland’s Darren Bent took a shot that Liverpool goalkeeper Pepe Reina appeared to have covered. But Bent’s ball hit a large red beach ball, deflecting past Reina and into the net.

The goal, coming in the fifth minute at the Stadium of Light, stood. No referee – or lifeguard – waved it off.

The video can be found here. It can not be embedded.

China’s soccer officials may suspend the Super League after an outbreak of swine flu at one team.

Players and staff of Chongqing Lifan, including Dutch coach Arie Haan, were confined to their training base in western China after 11 players tested positive for the H1N1 virus, the newspaper Titan Sports reported Friday.

Chinese Football Association organizers are considering a series of contingencies for outbreaks, including suspending the season, said Titan, citing association documents.

Such quarantines are usually lifted after one week if no one else tests positive for the virus. Chongqing’s confinement began on Thursday, it said.

It is said Swine Flu in China so far has been pretty mild. The reaction of local officials isn’t a match. If you believe Chinese propaganda news reports, no one has died of the H1N1 virus in the country. Then why place a soccer team or even an entire hotel under quarantine?

Danish soccer player Jonathan Richter has had the lower part of his left leg amputated, six weeks after he was struck by lightning during a reserve game.

The FC Nordsjaelland defender’s condition is improving and he will “very soon” be moved from the intensive care unit at a Copenhagen hospital, his family said in a statement posted Tuesday on the club’s Web page.

It said he “was making great progress” but gave no further details on the 24 year old.

Richter was struck during a brief thunder storm July 20 while playing against second-tier team Hvidovre. He was placed in an induced coma for 10 days.

Richter joined FC Nordsjaelland in 2005. The club is currently eighth in the Danish league standings.

Let’s pray Richter has a speedy recovery from his surgery.

BEIJING — A Chinese high school team that won an international girl’s soccer tournament last week in Turkey had secretly bulked up its squad with players from the junior national team, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

The team from Daping Junior High beat other high school squads from Turkey, Brazil, Sweden, and Italy in early round matches, before defeating a team from France in the semifinals and a German side in the final, Xinhua said.

While several of the junior national team players did attend Daping, the bulk of the team representing the school was made up of junior national team players who did not attend the school, according to the report issued late Thursday.

Maybe its time for a few sports organizations to issue a short term ban Chinese competitors. It would send a message that this cheating won’t be tolerated any longer.

Mun In Guk scored the only goal Wednesday to help North Korea move a step closer to a 2010 World Cup berth with a 1-0 win over Saudi Arabia in Asian qualifying.

It was a deserved victory for the nation that made its only appearance at the World Cup in 1966. The three points gives North Korea seven from four games to share the Group 2 lead with rival South Korea, which plays third-place Iran later Wednesday.

With the top two teams from the group to qualify directly for South Africa 2010, Saudi Arabia is fourth with four points and in danger of missing out on the Cup for the first time since 1990. The United Arab Emirates trails in the standings.

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North Korea next hosts the United Arab Emirates on March 28, when Saudi Arabia travels to Iran.- Associated Press

It is good North Koreans are getting better at soccer. A few years ago they tried to kick a referee after a game and missed.

The horror ordeal began when three masked gunmen surrounded Martins at a petrol station near his plush apartment in Lagos, Nigeria, late on Monday night. The player, who is now recovering in Italy, said: “I didn’t know their mission but they looked scary and mean. My nerves were completely dead when I saw the guns.” The terrified Magpies ace tried to reverse his car to get away but was blocked by another car parked behind him. Gunshots were fired at the windscreen and through the passenger window. Martins’ mate Remi Onipede was hit but the St James’ Park hero managed to run for cover before cops arrived. The gang did not steal the car and Martins now believes their motive could have been murder — as payback for him missing a recent international — rather than robbery. He said: “If you are attacked by armed robbers, they only threaten you and take whatever they want but these guys were only after my life.

Fortunately, no one was killed in this occurrence. Its amazing that some of these soccer (and Raider) fans can get so worked up over their team they fell some uncontrollable urge to commit random and non-random acts of violence against just about anyone.