World Cup qualifying in Europe is too easy. I know that sounds ridiculous given some of the results over the weekend—France losing to Austria, Italy needing stoppage time to nip Cyrpus, and England being rescued against Andorra (again) by five inspired minutes from Joe Cole—but in all likelihood those teams are all still going to make it to South Africa. England will probably even be there to compete.

Look at a map of Europe circa 20 years ago. I count 18 countries currently in qualifying that weren't even there when Bush XLI was telling us to read his lips. In fact in Group Six, England's group, the only other country you'd find on that map (provided it didn't specify the Soviet republics) is Andorra. And they didn't start competing in qualification until the 2002 World Cup cycle. It's like England drew the equivalent of four iterations of Kansas City Royals split-squad teams.

The fact that England will struggle isn't a reflection of any depth in Europe. It's a reflection of England sucking. This was the second (and consecutive) time they were unimpressive against Andorra. Most of Andorra's national team comes from players at Andorra FC. And while domestically based, AFC currently plays in Spain. In the third division. England should have been able to outscore Vince Young's Wonderlic against Andorra. Ergo: England is shit. Sorry, shite.

But they will probably still qualify. They'll finish behind Croatia, have a nervy home-and-home against maybe Poland or Sweden, get bailed out by a late strike from Frank Lampard, draw into a ridiculously easy WC group, detach from reality and start talking about a run to the semis, then lose in the round of 16 to Argentina. Really, it's so predictable it can turn an idiot like me into Kreskin. This is not to pick on England, they've given the world Calculus, penicillin and the Clash. Personally, my life has benefitted greatly from two of those things. That England can be so incredibly mediocre and still advance to South Africa for 2010 just proves the point about Europe.

In fact, qualifying out of CONCACAF, the U.S.'s region, might be tougher than coming out of Europe. And I'm being serious. I'm not saying we're better than England or that CONCACAF is better than UEFA. Our region is overrated and the United States is a second rate soccer nation (although what nobody ever adds is that there are about 12 rates in world soccer, so second is not that bad). More importantly, on the biggest stage, the US shits the bed almost as a rule (but take note Joe Morgan, we're super fucking consistent).

Here's why we have a tougher road than the Euro nance boys: the U.S., we will go topple another government. And I'm not even talking about the last sovereign nation we invaded apparently so our elected officials could hand out no-bid cost-plus contracts to their poker buddies. Vietnam, the Phillipenes, Iran, Chile, we'll destabilize a government and do it without much thought to the long term consequences. Within our qualifying region, we've tinkered in the national affairs of Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, Panama. We regularly force our national soccer team to go where we've disposed of legitimate leaders. It's kind of hard to play in places where they'd like to kill you for fucking up their countries.

Look at the U.S.'s two matches to this point. Game 1 degenerated into an elbowy bloodsport in Guatemala. Game 2 we traveled to a country we've methodically driven to economic ruin over five decades. Neither host thought enough of us to even bother turning on the stadium lights. Hell, we go to Mexico and our players get pelted by Ziploc bags filled with urine and feces. Name one venue where England's players are are likely to get pelted with urine bombs. One stadium besides Wembley that is.

And this is exactly what World Cup qualifying should be. Politics doesn't make strange bedfellows, it makes awesome sports. Even with the mild surprises in Europe over the weekend, the matches were all painfully boring (cue predictable jokes in 1, 2...) . And that's easy to fix: You meddle with another country, you face them in qualifying.

England should have to play Argentina until the seas rise so high that the Falklands aren't on any map that doesn't also include the Mariana's Trench. They held colonial power over Ghana and Nigeria. Excellent. Every World Cup for the foreseeable future would be free of the Three Lions.

Sure there's a shelf life here—Italy shouldn't be paying for Caesar's imperial ambitions but Belgium should still be paying for Leopold's—and some cases will require some gerrymandering—there are just not enough days in the FIFA calendar to allow Germany to face every country they've tried to invade—but who decided that geography should be the criteria by which this gets organized in the first place? Nobody smart. That's who. Align the qualifying groups by political conflict and there will never be another lifeforce-sucking scoreless draw like Saturday's Denmark v. Hungary match. And, bonus, Brazil can pretty much cut its national defense budget to zero.

US Squeak Past Cuba [Goal.com]

Meet the new world power in soccer, the United Arab Emirates. Actually as people, they suck at the game. The national side is currently 104th (out of 208) in FIFA's World Rankings. But the Emirates have something more important than athletic skill. They have money, obscenely large piles of it.

And while clubs across Europe were scrambling to get one or two player moves finalized before the Monday night close of the summer transfer window—think of it as roughly the equivalent of the MLB trade deadline—the Emirates' Abu Dhabi United Group made the biggest move by buying 30 players in the form of Manchester City FC.

They also bought Robinho. Yeah, sorry we messed that one up, but it's hard to fault us when Chelsea were so confident they would land the Brazilian that they started selling his shirt on its website.

To most Americans, the biggest news in all of this might be, yes, there is another team in Manchester beside United. Think of City as a bit like the L.A. Clippers. They were in the second tier (what's now the Championship) as recently as 2002, and haven't won anything of consequence since 1970. This analogy is a bit imperfect as, until Sir Alex Ferguson showed up at Old Tratford in the mid-Eighties, United were also a bit like the Clippers.

The sale of City, though, wasn't a total shock seeing how the previous owner, former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, was a fugitive from justice in his homeland and had at least $1.5 billion in assets frozen this summer. Worst case, City might have been following in the footsteps of Leeds on a freefall down the divisions. Best case, they miss a few (more) payroll payments.

Now, that's not really going to be a problem. In fact they'll probably start installing fountains in the front office lobby that dispense printer ink. The Abu Dhabi United Group is part of the larger Emirates state-held investment fund Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA). And that guy above, Dr. Sulaiman Al-Fahim (soon to be known as Dr. Evil) is the new face of City. And evil.

Al-Fahim is being referred to as the "Donald Trump of Abu Dhabi." He's the CEO of a real estate development group (his Doctorate is in Real Estate Investment). He's got his own reality show and he likes hanging out with Hollywood stars. The difference is Al-Fahim is only 31 and—guessing here—he doesn't have a shitty toupee under that keffiyeh. Oh, and he has upwards of $1 trillion at his disposal.

Sort of. With assets rumored to be over $1.2 trillion (the equivalent somewhere north of the GDP of Canada but south of that of Italy) ADIA is the world's second largest institutional investor. How much of that Al-Fahim will have access to for running City is TBD. It'll be a small fraction of that number, but it's still going to be more than enough to make things fun.

In less than 12 hours of ownership he broke the record for a British transfer fee by ponying up £32.5 million to snatch Robinho from Real Madrid and from underneath Chelsea. This seemed to be little more than an ante, though, as Al-Fahim immediately singled out Fernando Torres, Cesc Fabregas, Thierry Henry, and David Villa as potential City targets for when the next transfer window opens in January. Think of it like Mr. Burns putting together the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant soccer team.

Just for the fun of showing how much ludicrous cash he has to spend Al-Fahim said he'd be willing to drop £135 million (~$240M) for Cristiano Ronaldo, dwarfing the already ridiculous £90 million valuation that Real Madrid put on the Portuguese queen of the queers. But ridiculous is relative as that money represents about .016% of the total funds under ADIA control. Put another way, say you're an I-banker with a spanking new MBA and a first year gig making $150K, that's the financial outlay equivalent of you taking your girlfriend to a movie, about $25. If you live someplace besides New York or L.A. you can probably splurge for the popcorn.

With a net worth estimated at about £16 billion (~$29B), Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich, the previous standard for over-inflated spendgasms, might suddenly find himself feeling relatively poor. And soon his ridiculously stupid transfer sums might seem quaint by comparison. And Abramovich knows stupid. He dropped £30 mil—the previous transfer record—for Andriy Shevchenko, who scored all of nine times in two seasons (that's not good) at Chelsea before being shipped back to Milan this season on loan.

Not that spending equals winning, but as Abramovich (and the Steinbrenners) have figured out, it sure fucking helps. It's only one player acquisition (so far) and a questionable one at that for the price—Robinho's a nice player and all, but he's only got 25 goals in 100 games at Madrid—so while order among the Big 4 of the Premier League hasn't been upset yet, there could be one fewer Champions League spot to go around, and soon.

[Ed. Note: While ADUG was set up by ADIA (actually still trying to confirm this for certain), the former is a private equity company that is largely funded by outside investors. So, ADUG proper might not have access to the bottomless pit of Emirates state money. However, where Al-Fahim is the face of the deal, the main player behind the scenes is Sheikh Mansour, a member of the Royal Family of Abu Dhabi. So the new City ownership will still likely have access to as much money as they wish to spend.]

Manchester City to Bid £135 for Ronaldo [Guardian.co.uk]
The Donald Trump of Abu Dhabi [Luxist.com]

David Hirshey Michael Bertin writes regularly for Deadspin about soccer.

Arsene Wenger would have made a good captain for the Titanic. That has less to do with any nautical skills that he may or may not have, than it does with hubris. This is an Arsenal side he has claimed in print has the ability to win the Prem this year. Then, in the second match of the campaign, Arsenal not only loses to a Fulham club that avoided relegation last season on goal difference alone, but looks bad doing it.

Here's how awful Arsenal's performance on Saturday was: It ruined this post. No really, it did.

I knew I had a busy weekend, and the slate of EPL games looked pretty chalk (oops). So I put together a few hundred words centered around England's fortunate mid-week draw against the Czech Republic and their impending World Cup qualification struggles. It had wit, geopolitics, subtle patriotism, and a Clash reference. It was pretty brilliant.

Just in case I don't get an excuse to break it out in the future, here's the gist: I don't fucking care. Really, why so much of the soccer discussion in this country is still focused on England's national team is beyond me. They aren't very good (Uruguay has more World Cups, folks) and, worse, they are boring. Plus, we stopped being their colonial toady a long time ago. Remember they were dicks about the taxation without representation scheme so we threw their tea into the water, then waited a couple of centuries before stealing the idea back as a revenue strategy for financing sports stadia.

Anyway, I couldn't reasonably take shots at Tottenham week 1—which, after the Sunderland loss (ha ha) clearly weren't cheap—then turn up today and not even address what happened at Fulham week 2. Okay, I could, but then I'd be a bigger dick than King George III only without the advantage of being dead so as to avoid all of this. No, it won't be all Arsenal every Monday but, like I said, I couldn't exactly hide from it this week.

So here goes: Arsenal were outplayed. It doesn't hurt to say it so much as hurt to have to acknowledge that they were somehow outplayed while maintaining about 70% of the possession. I don't even speak French and I could read Wenger's mind during those panicked second half sideline shots. "Merde."

They're thin at midfield. Everyone knows they're thin at midfield. It was pretty apparent after a subpar and nervous opening week win over West Brom they're thin at midfield. So what does Wenger do with two weeks left in the transfer window? Buy another midfielder? No, he starts Denilson, who proceeded to give away more balls than the Kick for Nick project (yeah, it's a clumsy analogy but I'm trying to be altruistic and, you know, grow as a person). For all of Wenger's talent-spotting abilities, he also manages to unearth the only Brazilians who suck at fútbol.

And it's not like there's a hedge here in that Fulham's victory is at least a victory for American soccer. Of the five Yanks on Fulham's squad last year, three are gone. Of the two remaining, one, Clint Dempsey, no longer starts, and the other, Eddie Johnson, has yet to make the game day roster. Clearly, if Roy Hodgson is allowed to continue managing at Craven Cottage, then the terrorists win.

So if week one was about tempering enthusiasm, after two weeks this much seems certain: there might be far fewer givens on the table this season. Something Aston Villa and Blackburn also learned on Saturday.

Thus far only Chelsea has gone out and won the matches on grass that they looked to win on paper. Unless Arsene buys someone substantial before the summer transfer window closes up this week—and that appears to be unlikely—he'll be rearranging the deck chairs until Fabregas (and Rosicky) gets healthy.

Okay, it might not be that bad, but Fulham? Really? Merde.

If the season were to end today Stupid Fucking Bolton would be going to the Champions League. A corner of the universe just started to fold in on itself simply because that sentence was typed. If...

If my aunt had a penis she'd be my uncle, and my actual uncle would then be a homosexual. Bolton has a better chance of winning the Eurovision Song Contest than than they do winning a Champions League spot.

I'm sure Chelski fans are already printing up t-shirts and Roman Abramovich's girlfriend has probably handed him a list of sculptors he can commission to immortalize Big Phil in bronze, but this weekend represents all of 2.6% of the season. And the last time I checked (about 10 seconds ago) Michael "Zweiter Platz" Ballack still wears a Chelsea jersey, so yeah, let's not overreact.

Similarly, Scousers are likely sweating their side giving meaning to the phrase 'subtraction by addition' as their new high-priced striker stopped a certain goal from their old (okay, last season) high-priced striker. But the latter bailed Liverpool out (again) and there's ample time left for them to assume and put a lock on their rightful fourth place spot.

Even United's decision to suck at home doesn't necessitate much hand wringing. Last year they opened by drawing against Reading—currently residing in the "Where are they now?" file (Answer: the Colaship)—and they still managed to, you know, win the league title. It was infinitely amusing to watch Sir Alex squirm as he slowly realized that, without Cristiano Louganis or Carlos Tevez, his side is just an overpriced Blackburn, but that's only because all my hatred of that man is derived entirely from the fear of his teams.

One week. Small sample size.

Unless your rooting interests lie in North London. And I'm not referring to a dull 1-0 win over West Brom.

I say this not because Tottenham are my supposed nemesis, I merely derive pleasure from saying this because they are my supposed nemesis. Now, I've never met Relegation Zone Mikey, I only know of him through my predecessor's lore, but I pity his mom, or whoever is still in charge of changing his bed sheets.

The second worst defense in the league last season spends $100M bringing in players and still can't stop anyone from scoring. That's probably because none of the high profile players brought in during the summer transfer were defenders. If I didn't know better, I'd think Tom Hicks had taken over at White Hart Lane, not Anfield.

"Hey, we've got no pitching. Let's say we trade Edinson Volquez for Josh Hamilton."

I can already here the retorts of "5-1." The only thing worse than being willfully ignorant is being predictable. Or maybe it's living in the past. I'm not exactly sure how to construct a solid existential hierarchy. I am sure how to construct an SAT analogy. Lucy:Charlie Brown::Reality:Tottenham's Top 4 Talk.

If you're a Spurs fan, there's no way to silver line a 2-1 loss to Boro, because it was actually more like a 3-0 loss. David Wheater's first half goal was just plain taken away from him, unless getting felt up like Michael Kors at the Pride Parade is now a foul on the person getting felt.

In case you had stopped watching by that point, you needed the other team to beat its own keeper just to get on the scoresheet. Oh, and this was Middlesbrough. There name translates into English as "Twelfth Place." They've cracked the top half of the table once this century. Boro. Destroyed you.

And to make it even worse (or better), you're trying to unload your only proven Premier League striker. Even so, while he's still on your team, he'd probably be more effective if he spent more time on the pitch than on the pine. Unless Juande Ramos knows something we don't. I mean I don't watch much La Liga, so maybe in Spain you're allowed to score from the bench.

So, it is only 2.6% of the season. It's just significant enough to be dismissive of until the season ends and you're two points short, or you're Tottenham.