Hertha Berlin will be playing in the Bundesliga next season after winning promotion this year, but Alfredo Morales will not be with the club. Morales signed a two-year deal with FC Ingolstadt today.
“Ingolstadt is a young, up-and-coming club with great potential,” Morales, who joined Hertha at age 10, told the club website after the deal was announced on Friday. “It was time for me to make a new step, I felt it in my gut. I want to do my part to help FCI continue moving forward.”
The move to Ingolstadt means the 23-year-old will stay in the 2. Bundesliga and will likely get a shot at more playing time. Morales appeared in 23 first-team matches with Hertha Berlin across all competitions over the last three seasons, including 10 games in 2012-13.
Ingolstadt currently sit in 11th place in the 18-team 2. Bundesliga this season with one game remaining. Fellow Americans Edson Buddle and Amaechi Igwe have played at the club in prior seasons.
Wikipedia fun fact: The club nickname Die Schanzer has a military background, meaning trenchmen or rampartmen.
While we are talking about Americans signing in Germany, Steve Cherundolo signed a one-year extension with Hannover 96 as expected.
Anthony Brooks and Alfredo Morales both went 90 minutes for Hertha Berlin, while Joe Gyau came off the bench for St. Pauli as Hertha Berlin won 3-2. Here is six minutes worth of highlights.
Charlie Davies got the start and went the full 90 minutes in Randers’ 0-0 draw to OB today. It was his first start in a top-flight European league since before his car crash with Sochaux in 2009-10. As Howie pointed out to me, Costa Rica has played two WC Hex qualifiers on American soil since his last start. Let that sink in for a second.
After playing some games with the U-23 team in the Regionalliga, Bobby Wood came off the bench and played 31 minutes in 1860 Munich’s 1-0 win over Erzgebirge Aue today.
Landon Donovan is back with the LA Galaxy and spoke to the press today. He is hoping to get back with the USMNT in time for the three qualifiers in June.
The Birmingham Mail has a story on Will Packwood and his road to recovery.
The US-Mexico game drew the highest World Cup qualifier match ratings in ESPN history. And here are the field-level highlights of last Friday’s game against Costa Rica. A friend of the site also sent in some photos from the game that I should hopefully have up tomorrow.
Swedish Superettan side IK Brage have signed central defender Tyler Ruthven. Ruthven last played with the New York Red Bulls in 2012.
Bob Bradley has Egypt on the right track so far in their quest to qualify for the World Cup.
And good luck to soccer journalist Brian Straus. Staus was let go by the Sporting News along with some other writers this week. Whether you enjoyed his now famous article from last week or not, we need more people like him following MLS/US Soccer. Hopefully someone smart picks him up. Maybe I can convince him to come to this site and pay him in high fives.
Howie is out of the country and having fun at the moment.
Matt’s Pick – Jozy Altidore (AZ Alkmaar – Dutch Eredivisie)
Jozy scored his 16th league goal of the season (21 across all competitions). How many players have more goals in the Eredivisie? Two. How many players have more non-PK goals in the Eredivisie? One.
Jon’s Pick – Alfredo Morales (Hertha Berlin – German 2. Bundesliga)
Morales was so unimportant to Hertha Berlin a few months ago that they let him take part in the United States’ extensive January camp. Whatever he learned there must’ve taken. Morales made his first start of the season for the club and played all 90 minutes of a 1-0 victory that keeps Hertha in a promotion place.
You might have seen me post a bunch of the videos already this weekend, but you should probably follow @EveryTouchFooty on Twitter. He/she/it has been posting some great videos of various American players and their every touch in games from this past weekend. If they continue to make these videos, you can expect me to post a lot of them as they give you a decent idea of how someone played aside from the normal 2-3 minute videos with only the goals from the game.
The US U-20 team kicks off its World Cup qualifying today at 5:30 PM Central on Fox Soccer. US Soccer gives us two videos. One with Tab Ramos talking about the roster and another about the team returning to Puebla to train.
Staying with the U-20 theme, Marc Pelosi had to leave his Liverpool U-21s game this weekend with an injury. And it looks like he broke his leg. That probably knocks him out of this summer’s U-20 World Cup if the US are able to qualify.
Landon Donovan is set to return to the LA Galaxy in late March. No word if/when he plans to return with the USMNT. I’m guessing we won’t see him in a US jersey until May or June.
Alfredo Morales made his 2012-13 senior team debut with Hertha Berlin this weekend. And here is a photo of him and Anthony Brooks celebrating the occasion. Hopefully he is talking in Brooks’ ear about how great it is to play for the USMNT.
I posted some goals from some friendlies last week and it looks like Brian Span has scored again in another one. Hopefully Span can convert this good form into playing time with Djurgården as he appeared in only nine games last season.
Lester Dewee has continued to play/train/trial with Bodens BK and has scored some goals. You can see some photos of some recent friendlies here and a video interview with Dewee right here.
And finally, Robbie Earle thinks Brek Shea can have some success at Stoke City.
According to this German report, Alfredo Morales has been called into the USMNT camp for January. Morales is still looking for his first senior-team cap with the US and while he is not getting any first-team playing time at Hertha Berlin (only one appearance in a German Cup match, while playing 10 games with the U-23 team in the Regionalliga), I guess it doesn’t hurt to call him in for January’s Camp Cupcake.
The US U-20 team will also have a camp this month. Tab Ramos will call in some players for a week-long camp to be held in Puebla, Mexico from January 14-22. The team will have two games against Panama in preparation for Feburary’s 2013 CONCACAF U-20 Championship.
Both Ramos and Klinsmann have not announced a full roster for either camp yet.
NY Red Bulls youth product Ismar Tandir has signed with French club Sochaux. The 17-year-old was born in Germany, but also holds US and Bosnian citizenship. He has never played with the US at any youth level and is expected to appear with Bosnia’s U-19 team this year.
Greg Seltzer decided to make 10 predictions as we enter 2013.
Some random stats and stuff that I was tweeting last night.
Clint Dempsey has now scored 54 Premier League goals since making his debut on January 20, 2007, 11th most in the EPL over that time frame.
Brad Guzan has allowed 17 goals over his last four games, the most allowed in a four-game span in the Premier League since Derby County’s Roy Carroll allowed 17 in a four-game span in 2008.
On the flip side, Guzan has averaged 3.79 saves per game this year, fifth most among goalkeepers who have played 10+ games in the EPL.
I missed this goal, but Alfredo Morales scored a goal in Hertha Berlin II’s 4-1 win over Torgelower SV Greif in German Regionalliga action.
A few things regarding the USMNT and the Hex. CONCACAF will have a draw for the Hex within the next 30 days. Steven Goff lists out all the fixture dates. Jurgen Klinsmann told Alexi Lalas that Camp Cupcake (RIP?) should be shorter, fewer players and mainly players who will be participating in February’s qualifiers. And here are some field-level highlights of the US’ win over Guatemala.
The last USMNT game of 2012 will be November 14 in Russia and Brian Sciaretta lists some “new” players he wouldn’t mind seeing getting a chance in that game.
Michael Adubato recently talked to Oguchi Onyewu about being patient at Malaga.
And this article is a few weeks old, but J.R. Eskilson introduces us to Maki Tall. Tall is a 16-year-old French-American forward who is scoring goals for Le Mans’ U-19 team.
There were two goals scored this past weekend for those that don’t know how to scroll down and see the highlights. Matt Taylor scored for the second straight week in Germany, while Michael Orozco Fiscal scored his first goal of the season for San Luis.
I also posted some highlights of Anthony Brooks and Alfredo Morales in a friendly against Juventus. It is looking like the U-20 center back, Brooks, could be in the starting lineup for Hertha Berlin in their season opener against Paderborn on Friday.
Also of note from the weekend, Charlie Davies came off the bench in Randers’ 2-1 win and Bobby Wood scored twice for 1860 Munich II in the Regionalliga. And in Finland, Christian Eissele scored four goals, while Daniel Stevens and Joey Spivack each scored once in Kemi Kings’ 8-0 win over Warkaus. Once the bigger leagues start up in the next couple weeks, I will bring back the full The OT Report for the weekends.
Rangers manager Ally McCoist said this weekend that Alejandro Bedoya was talking to Swedish side Helsingborgs about a transfer, but Bedoya’s agent denied the report to Yanks Abroad.
Geoff Cameron’s UK work permit appeal hearing has been set for August 8. Here is a random photo of Cameron in Stoke City training gear.
Chad Barrett will be headed to Norwegian club Vålerenga on loan through the rest of the 2012 season. Vålerenga also holds the option to buy at the end of the loan.
The US U-20 team finished fourth in last week’s Milk Cup after losing to Chile in the third place game.
Brian Sciaretta gives us 23 guys he thinks is Jurgen Klinsmann’s favored USMNT sqaud as of today.
I also want to point out that I might be light on posting and tweeting for the rest of this week as I make my annual summer pilgrimage to Chicago starting tomorrow to visit some family and friends (as well as check out Lollapalooza again).
It was only a friendly, but Anthony Brooks started and played 84 minutes, while Alfredo Morales came off the bench in Hertha Berlin’s 2-0 loss to Juventus. Here are some highlights.
If you follow us on Twitter, you probably noticed that we were pretty busy today as a bunch of different Yanks decided to score goals between league play and preseason friendlies. Well, here is a little rundown on what happened.
* Josh Gatt came off the bench and scored a goal for Molde FK in their 2-1 loss to Viking, although Gatt had to leave the game early with a thigh injury (highlights here).
* Terrence Boyd made his official debut at Rapid Vienna and walked away with two goals, one assist and one near goal off a bicycle kick as Rapid Vienna won 4-0 (highlights here).
* Herculez Gomez kicked off his 2012 Apertura with the game-winning goal in Santos Laguna’s 2-1 victory over San Luis (highlights here).
* Matt Taylor has returned to the German 3. Liga and scored a goal in Preußen Münster’s season-opening victory over Wacker Burghausen (highlights here).
* Over in Finland, Christian Eissele scored his eighth goal of the season in Kemi Kings’ 2-0 victory over TP-47.
* And in Iceland, Evan Schwartz scored his second goal of the season in Víkingur Reykjavík’s 3-0 win over BÍ / Bolungarvík.
That is just the goals in league play. A couple other Americans scored in preseason friendlies today.
* Both Maurice Edu and Alejandro Bedoya scored for Rangers as they won 5-1 in a closed-door scrimmage against Albion Rovers.
* Joe Gyau has been playing well Hoffenheim this preseason and notched another goal in a 2-0 win over SV Waldhof Mannheim. Here is a photo of Gyau from the game.
And while some guys didn’t score, some younger guys took a bigger step today.
* Will Packwood went the full 90 minutes in Birmingham City’s 2-2 draw to Borussia Monchengladbach in a friendly (highlights here).
* Royal-Dominique Fennell made his senior team debut for Stuttgarter Kickers in their 2-1 loss to Hansa Rostock to start up the 3. Liga season (highlights here).
* Both Alfredo Morales and Anthony Brooks played 90 minutes in Hertha Berlin’s 3-2 win over Norwich City in a friendly.
