The Austin Lightning are on a long road trip this weekend, at Baton Rouge and Mississippi, before starting a three-week home stand June 15-16.
ESPN Deportes Radio 1260AM is hosting the first COPA 1260 tournament, billed as featuring eight all-star teams culled from eight different local adult leagues. Should be interesting to see a variety of styles of play. Sunday, June 10, 9am-5pm. Southeast Metropolitan Park, out Highway 71 West, three miles past Bergstrom, on the left.
The U.S. men beat China, 4-1 Saturday night, while getting to use a lot of young players; they open their Gold Cup title defense this week with the full squad: Thursday, 8pm, Guatemala; Saturday, 4pm, Trinidad & Tobago; Tuesday, 6pm, El Salvador. All games are live on the Fox Soccer Channel.
No huge surprises in the Euro 2008 qualifiers Saturday and Wednesday – unless you count Copenhagen, where a drunken fan ran on the field, tried to punch the ref, and caused the home team to forfeit a game they had fought back from a 3-0 deficit to tie. I’m guessing that fellow will be lying low for a while. Elsewhere, England got another great game from (Sir?) David Beckham and a needed win in Estonia; pretty much all the other heavyweights held serve, and the European season is now really over – except in Spain, where play resumes this week with two games to play, and a three-team logjam at the top of the standings. Full Euro results online.
This article appears in June 8 • 2007.