College Soccer

BOSTON — A former men's soccer coach at the University of California, Los Angeles has agreed to plead guilty and admit that he accepted $200,000 in bribes to facilitate the admission of two students as fake athletic recruits, federal prosecutors said on Tuesday.

Jorge Salcedo, 47, is among several sports coaches at universities, including Yale and Georgetown, who federal prosecutors in Boston have brought charges against related to the U.S. college admissions scandal.

The University of Cincinnati dropped men's college soccer from its long list of 19 sports for which it offers scholarships to student-athletes on Tuesday, effective immediately.

COVID-19 was the excuse, and it’s easy as a soccer fan to be outraged over the beautiful game being the first to get the axe, especially with other schools likely to soon follow suit.

But this might be a good thing in the long run for men’s soccer in the U.S.

FC Dallas signed midfielder Tanner Tessmann to a three-year contract with club options for the 2023 and 2024 seasons, making him the 28th Homegrown Player in the organization.

By signing the contract, the 18-year-old is giving up his chance to vie for the kicking duties at Clemson.

A lot of thought went in to @frantanjam5's decision to choose FC Dallas over Clemson.

FC Cincinnati fans had high hopes coming into the club's inaugural MLS season. They had every right to — the club had been riding a wave since its inception three years earlier. In 2016, Cincinnati set an Ohio state attendance record when it played host to Premier League side Crystal Palace for a July friendly. The next year, it upset intrastate rivals Columbus Crew in front of a crowd of 30,000 en route to becoming the first second-division side to appear in the U.S. Open Cup semifinals since 2011. All indications were that this was a side ready for the top division. 

Jill Ellis will make an appearance at her old stomping grounds on Saturday, May 16, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in Memorial Stadium as the 2020 commencement speaker. 

Ellis was the USWNT head coach for five years when she won two FIFA Women’s World Cups, two FIFA World Coach of the Year honors and coached 132 USWNT games, which is the most of any coach. She also has the most wins in U.S. soccer history and is the only person to win consecutive Women’s World Cups.

The body of Eric Birighitti, a 21-year-old soccer player, was found Tuesday, sharks having attacked the corpse after the footballer drowned following a Jan. 2 incident. 

Birighitti, an Australian who played college soccer in the U.S., slipped on some rocks on Jan. 2 and was swept out into the ocean. Despite having a life preserver thrown to him, Birighitti could not be saved, according to reports. 

The MLS SuperDraft is one of the weirdest things in sports. It probably shouldn’t exist, and if the league is smart, the MLS draft won’t exist much longer. To make matters worse, the second pick of the 2020 MLS SuperDraft on Thursday perfectly highlighted what’s so obviously wrong with soccer in the U.S.