No, nobody’s ever going to mistake Carolina Railhawks announcer Dean Linke with Derek Rae, but you certainly can’t deny the man’s enthusiasm. After all, his team has won its first three games, is top of the USL table and has twice gotten the USL Goal of the Week — that one from Sallieu Bundu against the Rochester Rhinos two weekends ago.

Now all this club needs is some supporters. Ebbsfleet United has better attendance than Carolina by a country mile yesterday. Of course, there may have been other factors involved in that…

Germany’s top flight returns after its winter break with plenty of interesting storylines. Can Bayern Munich repeat as champions? Does Cinderella’s slipper still fit Hoffenheim, even with star striker Vedad Ibisevic out for the rest of the season? Can Martin Jol do what Damian Comolli wouldn’t let him do at Tottenham and lead Hamburg to the Champions League? Can Werder Bremen somehow find its way back to Europe?

If you’re an American soccer fan, however, there’s only one real story in Germany right now — Landon Donovan.

The American striker, currently on loan from the L.A. Galaxy, has scored four goals in five friendly matches for Bayern Munich this month, and head coach Juergen Klinsmann seems very interested in keeping him around for at least the rest of this season. After years of living comfortably in L.A., Donovan finally seems interested in proving himself on the European stage, and so far, he’s delivering.

The question remains, though — can he deliver in a European club match that counts? We could find out today, when Bayern takes on Hamburg. (2:30 PM ET, GOLTV) Donovan seems likely to play at least 20-30 minutes in this match. If he manages to score, perhaps we can finally say our little Landycakes is all growns up…

Let’s just hope that if Donovan does pan out in Germany, the Galaxy won’t get greedy and try to force him to come back for another MLS season. An MLS without Donovan is preferable to an MLS with an angry, embitted Donovan who would rather be in Germany.

And yet the thing that stood out the most this weekend might have been this Guardian poll, in which more than 83% of respondents said that finishing 17th in the Premier League and avoiding relegation is more important than winning the FA Cup.

Has it really come to this? Does mediocrity really mean more than winning the oldest, most storied trophy in football? If all that matters is the money, then the answer is yes. Avoiding relegation guarantees a club will earn more than £30 million from the Premier League next season, while a successful FA Cup run brings in only £3.8 million in prize money and a bid to the UEFA Cup, another competition that lacks in prestige and prize money.

Clearly, the FA needs to sweeten the pot a bit if wants to keep the FA Cup from becoming as irrelevant as other domestic cup competitions around the world. Since adding more cash to the pot doesn’t appear to be an option, perhaps the FA can do this — give the FA Cup winner a UEFA Champions League bid.

Don’t scoff. That’s how we do it in America.

You might have heard of the U.S. Open Cup, America’s domestic cup competition. It is perhaps the most disrespected competition in all of football. Don Garber and Sunil Gulati would have killed it years ago if not for Lamar Hunt, one of American soccer’s biggest benefactors. Now they can’t get rid of it, because the winner of the U.S. Open Cup gets a bid to the CONCACAF Champions League. This is how D.C. United got into next year’s Champions League despite missing the MLS Cup playoffs; they won the Open Cup. This gives every club in the U.S. hope for continental competition.

Given the rich history of the FA Cup in England, it only seems fitting that the champion of this competition have a shot at the continent, too. To keep the purists at bay, though, there should be one caveat — only the winner of the FA Cup should get a UEFA Champions League bid. After all, the club that gets to Wembley and lose the final isn’t exactly a champion, now, is it?

As of this season, the top three clubs in the Premier League automatically qualify for the Champions League group stage. The fourth-place finisher goes into the qualifying rounds. So let’s say, for example, that Arsenal manages to overcome Aston Villa and finish fourth, but Villa advances to the FA Cup final to face Manchester United. The Red Devils have already finished in the top three, so their Champions League spot is settled. If Villa tops United in this hypothetical FA Cup final, then they take the trophy and the Champions League qualifying bid, dropping Arsenal into the UEFA Cup. If Man United wins, though, the qualifying bid goes to fourth-place Arsenal, and it’s the UEFA Cup for Villa.

Unfair to the fourth-place finisher? Perhaps. Then again, maybe fourth place shouldn’t be considered good enough. Once upon a time, fourth place in England’s top flight got you nothing but a pat on the head. Fourth place doesn’t get you a medal at the Olympics. Why should it guarantee you one of the biggest prizes in European football? It’s the Champions League. Give that bid to a club that’s actually won something.

The other argument against this is that it would almost guarantee that Big Four clubs end up winning it every year. I fail to see why anyone in the FA would object to that. Wouldn’t they prefer to see Man United v. Chelsea in Wembley than Portsmouth v. Cardiff City? Doesn’t that mean more interest, more ticket sales and better worldwide TV ratings? And wouldn’t giving the winner a Champions League bid result in increased interest in the FA Cup and more exposure for all the stories of lower-league clubs that won the lottery and drew away ties against big clubs? A few people in Exeter might think so.

Of course, this solution might be too radical for some football purists, who would rather shout, “Bring back the Cup Winners Cup!”, than see this happen. Personally, I don’t mind a radical solution. After all, I’m the same guy who advocates pulling the Premier League clubs out of the Carling Cup and creating a separate Premier League Cup, which would allow the Premier League to do the sort of global barnstorming it wants without screwing up the league schedule with this 39th game nonsense. Besides, nobody outside of White Hart Lane really cares about the Carling Cup.

Either way, it seems obvious from that Guardian poll that the FA Cup is in danger of sliding toward the same sort of irrelevance shared by the Copa Del Rey and the Coppa Italia. Perhaps there should be more reward for winning this grand old knockout competition. Perhaps that would make the drama we saw this weekend far more epic. More importantly, perhaps it would make winning a trophy just a little more important than finishing 17th. Success should have greater rewards than mediocrity.

Remember, it’s not just pants — it’s Pantsil!

That might explain why I’m seeing a pattern behind the Dwayne DeRosario trade that took place over the weekend. On the surface, one team is getting better by welcoming home a local hero and proven MLS all-star, while the other is getting younger in the midfield and freeing up cash to bring in a designated player at striker. For some reason, though, I find myself looking beneath the surface here and seeing a league that made this deal happen because it’s decided to get serious about winning the CONCACAF Champions League.

MLS commissioner Don Garber might have told the New York Times a few weeks ago that the CONCACAF Champions League wasn’t that big a deal to the league, but his recent actions would suggest otherwise. MLS changed the qualification format of SuperLiga, inviting the best clubs that don’t qualify for the Champions League to play in that competition. Clearly, the league wants to avoid a repeat of the Joe Public fiasco.

So how does the Dwayne DeRosario trade fit in with this quest to win the Champions League? Consider that Toronto FC has only one qualification path to CONCACAF — the Voyageurs Cup, a competition between the top three (only three?) professional soccer clubs in Canada. TFC’s only competitors here are two USL First Division clubs, the Montreal Impact and the Vancouver Whitecaps. Montreal knocked TFC out in the last match of the competition, won the Cup and went on to advance to the knockout round of the Champions League.

Keep in mind here that both USL-1 clubs made it through to the knockout stage — the other being the Puerto Rico Islanders — while only one MLS club out of four got through, and the Houston Dynamo only survived by the skin of their teeth. Garber can downplay this all he wants, but deep down, MLS officials and team owners have to be just a little bit embarrassed by that.

So how does the DeRosario trade fit into the pattern here? For starters, it instant improves Toronto’s midfield and gives them a proven star that can create scoring opportunities, something that club has lacked in its first two years of existence. This instantly gives TFC a leg up on Montreal and Vancouver in the Voyageurs Cup. MLS isn’t about to let another USL club take from them what’s supposed to be an easy Champions League spot.

Second, it allows Houston to spend big money to bring in a proven goal scorer that can make things happen in the knockout stage now — you can hear Fulham denying Clint Dempsey rumors already, can’t you? — while giving the team a foundation on which it can build for next year’s Champions League. The Dynamo are one of the few bright spots in MLS, and the league clearly wants to make sure that continues in the immediate future.

Now I admit I’m probably seeing things that aren’t there. After all, I support a USL-1 club, and I enjoy watching USL clubs eat Major League Soccer’s lunch every so often. We Carolina Railhawks supporters want to beat the Charleston Battery more than anyone else in the league. That’s our Southern Derby rival, after all. However, when Charleston faced D.C. United in the U.S. Open Cup Final, we backed the Battery 100%. The lack of promotion and relegation between MLS and USL has created a rivalry of sorts between the two leagues, and every time USL puts one over on MLS, it warms my underdog-loving heart.

So in my eyes, MLS appears to be making moves to keep those USL clubs at bay. The last thing Don Garber wants is for casual soccer fans in America to discover there’s another league out there, and that league has clubs in big cities, and those clubs might be pretty good. As the CONCACAF Champions League grows in importance, so does MLS’ desire to keep a rival league from poaching its qualification spots. Changing the SuperLiga qualification format is one step toward this. The Dwayne DeRosario trade looks like another step, even if it might not have been engineered by the league itself. (Of course, since the league owns all its clubs and doesn’t talk much about its inner workings, who’s to say?)

There might be more steps next winter — a larger salary cap, perhaps, or further roster expansion. Some might see expansion as a dilution of the talent pool, but clearly, there’s plenty of talent to be found in USL right now, and I suspect MLS will want to scoop up some of that talent in the next few years. The last thing this league wants is some upstart competitor rustling the bushes, preparing to pounce all over its Champions League bids.

Again, though, that’s just my brain trying to find a pattern where there might be nothing. How does your brain react to this trade?

Truth be told, “Club World Cup” is sort of a misnomer. A more accurate name would be “Club Confederations Cup,” as this competition brings together the winners of every region’s Champions League to compete for the title of “World Champions.” Still, this should seem like a big deal, shouldn’t it? So why am I not quite so excited about it?

Perhaps part of the problem is the tournament structure. It’s a straight knockout competition in which the champions of UEFA (Manchester United) and CONMEBOL (LDU Quito) automatically get byes to the semifinals. So there’s a distinct lack of balance here compared to your typical group stage/knockout stage format — which isn’t impossible to do with six clubs over a two-week span. (Assuming, of course, FIFA would waive the host-nation participation rule, which seems superfluous for a club competition.)

Perhaps the fact that the tournament takes place in Japan prevents me from getting excited, as waking at 5:45 A.M. eastern time (2:45 A.M. on the west coast) for Adelaide United v. Waitakere United doesn’t seem like a priority in my life. Maybe next year, when the Club World Cup moves to Abu Dhabi, it won’t force American and European audiences to tune in during inconvenient times.

But is it the times or teams? The biggest storyline might be in the bottom half of the bracket, where African champ Al-Ahly will face CONCACAF winner Pachuca for a shot at Copa Libertadores winner LDU Quito, and it’s not quite a foregone conclusion which of those clubs will face Man United in the final. Man United, however, will be there, and that talent gap between them and the rest of the competition might be the big problem here. Yes, A.C. Milan is the only European club to win the competition in the last three years, but they steamrolled their opponents last year, and if the Red Devils put in just a little effort — and according to Sir Alex, they will — they’ll likely do the same this year.

Maybe I would care more if I had a horse in this race. The lone capped American in this competition is Jose Francisco Torres, who plays for Pachuca, and you’ll forgive me if I’m not so eager to back a Mexican club here. One day, it would be nice to see an American club in the Club World Cup. Before that can happen, though, MLS has to start caring about winning the CONCACAF Champions League. The fact that the league adjusted the qualification rules for SuperLiga is a positive step, but MLS clubs still have a long way to go (and a lot of barriers in front of them) to be truly competitive in CONCACAF.

But that’s a rant for another day. In the meantime, we’re crowning this year’s world champion in Japan on December 21. Certainly, most clubs’ supporters will be interested in that — although I’m reminded of that Manc back at Fado who said Man United needs the Carling Cup like it needs a hole in the head. Do other United supporters feel the same way? And what about the rest of us? Do we care about this “World Championship,” or are we just sticking to our regularly scheduled domestic league matches through all this?

The brawl apparently started when someone referred to Jones as Juggernaut, the role he played in X-Men: The Last Stand. Apparently, he prefers to be known for his voice work as the rottweiler in Garfield 2 or something. The video after the jump begins after Jones took a glass mug to the face. No doubt, it will bring back memories for Wimbledon supporters.

Anyway, I walk into Fado, scope out the place to find the best spot for watching both Blackburn v. Liverpool and Arsenal v. Wigan, take a seat at the bar… and end up next to the one drunk, mouthy bastard who knows nothing about football. Naturally, he latches on to me and won’t shut up. The more he talked, the more I wondered if I was better off taking up with those grim-faced Gooners on the other side of the pub. Honestly, how does this happen?

Thankfully, drunk guy finally wandered off to the bathroom and didn’t come back, which gave me a chance to move toward people who could actually talk about what was happening on the TVs. Some friendly Mancs soon walked in and set themselves up to watch Man United v. Sunderland. Naturally, we all expected a goal-fest. What we got, however, was a lesson in how to play for a nil-nil draw. Man United held the ball for, oh, about 98% of the first half, while Sunderland sat back in a 8-1-1 formation and did everything they could to keep the Red Devils out of their goal.

The boys at EPL Talk panned Sunderland for this, calling it “one of the most negative and anti-soccer performances in ages.” It’s hard to argue this point, but consider the situation here. This is a Sunderland club who couldn’t stop Bolton from lighting them up. What chance did they have at Old Trafford? With Roy Keane gone and Sunderland desperately needing points, pragmatism had to outweigh idealism here. The best Sunderland could hope for was a draw, and this certainly seemed like the best way to get it.

And in a way, it wasn’t entirely boring to watch — frustrating, yes, but not necessarily boring. Much like the Man United v. Reading match that started last season, neutrals could find themselves drawn into the will-they-or-won’t-they saga. Could the hero get the goal? Could the underdog actually steal a point? In a league match like this, sometimes that’s more interesting to watch than a 4-0 blowout.

Plus, as one Manc told me at halftime, it wasn’t all Sunderland’s fault. “It’s a bloody disgrace,” he said. “(Carlos) Tevez scores four goals mid-week, and he’s on the bench.” It was impossible to argue that point, but at the same time, they probably weren’t expecting Sunderland to flood the back for 90 minutes.

I didn’t stick around to see his reaction to Nemandja Vidic’s game winner at the death, as I had an appointment with a poker table in Atlantic City that afternoon, but listening to the call on my phone while flying down the Expressway — thank you, Slingbox — I imagined he didn’t stand up and cheer, but instead slumped back on the sofa, exhaled and shouted, “About bloody time!” It was just that kind of game. Still, for a club on the brink like Sunderland, the point is to get the points, and sometimes, that has to take precedent over playing attractive football. Come to think of it, maybe that’s why those Gooners in the corner were having such hard time smiling.

Thumbs up to Fado, by the way. Their shepherd’s pie really hit the spot on a cold day in December.

If the boys from Abu Dhabi really want to cause some chaos in January, however, here’s the name that should be on the top of the club’s wish list — Zoran Tosic.

Zoran Tosic is a 21-year-old left winger for Partizan Belgrade and a rising star from Serbia’s U-21 side who just earned his worker’s permit to play in England. He is also the only transfer target of one Sir Alex Ferguson.

At first glance, it would seem Sir Alex doesn’t need a left winger in January, but of course, we’re all working under the assumption that Cristiano Ronaldo is going to be launched like a bottle rocket out of Old Trafford come the 4th of July. (Even if CR7 wanted to be in Manchester right now, he would have to go this summer, since The Webster Rule would allow Ronaldo to buy out his contract in 2010 for about 13 million quid, and Manchester United will not let that happen.) Tosic is already being tagged as Ronaldo’s eventual replacement, just in case Nani either doesn’t pan out on the left or switches positions. The only knock on him is his slight build, but a few steak pies could fix that.

Now imagine if Man City came in and poached Tosic by offering double or triple the transfer fee and wages, just to keep Tosic away from Man United. Wouldn’t that send a message to the people of Manchester that things are changing around here?

It’s certainly not like Man City couldn’t use some help on the left wing. Martin Petrov is out for a while, and Mark Hughes doesn’t really have a replacement on the roster. It’s also not like Man City hasn’t tried to swipe a player from Sir Alex before, either. They almost got Berbatov, forcing Sir Alex into some strange MI-6 tactics to keep the brooding Bulgarian from joining the blue side.

Never mind Kaka, people. That’s a pipe dream. Man City should start the new year by gutting its arch rival to build up its roster. Making a run at Tosic would really send a message to United and the rest of the Premier League, and that message is, “We will bury you.” Hell, they should beat their shoe on the table for extra impact.

Take, for example, this video of Fernando Torres trying to put one past Gerrard — not Steven Gerrard, but Gerrard the dog:

Word in the British tabloids is that the boys from Abu Dhabi are going to sign the dog in January to replace Richard Dunne.

Anyway, here’s just a little bit about me. I am a relatively new convert to this form of football; I rejected it for many years in no small part because I took a corner kick to the groin when I was 13. Nevertheless, I’m all in like Scotty Nguyen now, even though I’m still a shameless bandwagon jumper when it comes to Premier League clubs. (I supported Reading at first, because they were as new to the Premier League as I was, but right now I’m backing Hull City, because I like their whole fiscal responsibility vibe — at least until the Royals get promoted again, anyway.) The clubs I truly support, though, are the USL-1 Carolina Railhawks, because that’s is my local club, and Ebbsfleet United, because I bought in.

I’ll be back with more stuff later, so stick around. We’re going to have some fun here.