Views are my own and are not reflective of my employer at the time. Retweets and Likes are not endorsements or shared opinions. Proud Cumbrian.

Chicago
Joined February 2011
I literally have no interest in this while they are top of a table. Managers lost their jobs, players/staff lost out on lifechanging days & supporters were robbed of celebrating seeing their own teams win titles. And everything is carrying on as if it’s normal. Sham of a league.
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Exclusive @TheAthleticFC Chicago, who said an emphatic “no” to FIFA for men’s World Cup, submit paperwork to enter bidding race to be part of the women’s World Cup in 2031. Chicago, along with Portland, were not included in the bid book but are now IN. nytimes.com/athletic/7694800…
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#cf97 youth club alumni
Did you know? Twin brothers Anthony Markanich and Nick Markanich faced each other in yesterday’s match between Minnesota United and Houston Dynamo FC. #MLS
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The @NCAA D1 Cabinet voted today to pass the two-semester playing season for D1 Men’s @NCAASoccer . I get it but I don’t agree with it. I hope the women’s game doesn’t adopt this same model in the future. #CSTruth
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Happy Birthday to those that celebrate #cf97
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Parton Lad retweeted
𝘼 𝙣𝙚𝙬 𝙘𝙝𝙖𝙥𝙩𝙚𝙧. 𝘼 𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙣 𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙙𝙚𝙧. The Island FC names Long Island native Larry Sunderland as the first Sporting Director in club history. He’ll lead our sporting vision ahead of our July 2027 @MLSNEXTPRO debut. 📰 TheIslandFC.com #AllForTheIsland
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🚨NEW LOWER PRICES! ❤️‍🔥 So many fun plans for the #cf97 anniversary party on Friday 10/9! An exciting discussion panel with @chicagofire legends, silent auction, new #s8c merch, and the unveiling of the new Brimstone Cup display at @SoccerHouseHQ 🔥 🔗 bit.ly/2026FireAlumni
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Curiouser and curiouser As @DamianHastie points out, in 2015 the US depts of Commerce, State + Transport launched an inquiry into whether Etihad were receiving govt subsidies Etihad statement to commission was: "The assertion that the Abu Dhabi government paid for Etihad's sponsorship of English Premier League football club Manchester City is … false. In 2011, Etihad and Manchester City entered into a 10-year sponsorship agreement, which included naming rights for Manchester City's stadium. Etihad funded this sponsorship from its own liquidity’
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Definition of sham = A sham is something that is not real or genuine, but is falsely presented to deceive people. #114
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THE PEP FILES. PART 1: The Italian Trap & The Unbending Court Chapter 1: The Flawless Spanish Shield For 11 seasons and 382 matches, Pep Guardiola was the undisputed heart of FC Barcelona. He lifted 16 major trophies, anchored the national team, and dominated European football. In Spain, his drug testing record was spotless, not a single flag, anomaly, or suspicious sample. Then came the summer of 2001. Guardiola left Barcelona for Italian side Brescia. Just two matches into his Serie A campaign, against Piacenza and Lazio, his urine samples triggered an immediate alarm: Positive for Nandrolone, a heavy-duty anabolic steroid designed to accelerate recovery, increase muscle mass, and boost stamina. How does a player spend over a decade in La Liga completely undetected, only to fail a test the second he crosses the border into Serie A? Did Pep suddenly start doping at 30 years old? Or was he using the exact same protocols he used in Spain, only to run headfirst into a legal system that actually checked? Chapter 2: Why Spain Kept Him Clean? During the late 1990s and early 2000s, Italian football operated under the strict oversight of the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) and fearless public prosecutors like Raffaele Guariniello. Italian authorities used lower detection thresholds for steroid metabolites, performed unannounced training ground raids, and treated sports doping as a federal criminal offense. Spain, by contrast, had no centralized anti-doping agency. La Liga relied on soft, predictable post-match urine tests. No Out-of-Competition Testing: Testers only checked players after matches. Anyone using calculated clearance windows, micro-dosing schedules, or "seasonal preparation plans" during recovery breaks was virtually immune on Spanish soil. Legal Immunity: Until 2006, doping was not a crime in Spain. Courts could not issue police search warrants for club pharmacies or seize medical files, while Spanish testing labs faced intense international criticism for a lack of transparency. Chapter 3: The Doctor Pipeline & The Multivitamin Defense Cornered by the Italian Football Federation (FIGC), Guardiola held a press conference declaring his innocence: "A machine says I have taken nandrolone, but I know I didn't." His defense was the classic athlete playbook: "contaminated multivitamins." Who supplied those multivitamins? Dr. Ramon Segura, a professor of physiology at the University of Barcelona and Guardiola's personal physiologist. Segura’s name was already red-hot. Just seven months earlier, Dutch midfielder Frank de Boer tested positive for Nandrolone at FC Barcelona under Segura's care. In fact, the 2001–2002 Serie A season saw a sudden wave of Nandrolone busts: Guardiola, Jaap Stam, Edgar Davids, and Fernando Couto, all pointing to supplement protocols arranged by a tight network of sports doctors. The FIGC rejected Guardiola's excuse, handing him a 4-month ban and a €50,000 fine. Italian criminal courts went further: in May 2005, a judge in Brescia sentenced Guardiola to a 7-month suspended prison sentence. Chapter 4: The Great (Lucky) Escape (2007–2009) Guardiola spent eight years fighting the ruling. In October 2007, an Italian appeal court quietly acquitted him on a scientific technicality, accepting arguments that extreme physical strain could cause human bodies to naturally produce trace nandrolone metabolites, or that testing margins at the time allowed for false positives. The legal drama reached a tense climax in May 2009. Right as Guardiola was guiding FC Barcelona through their iconic treble-winning season, CONI’s anti-doping prosecutor formally reopened the case, calling the acquittal "unacceptable" and summoning Pep back to court. By September 2009, CONI threw out the appeal due to expired procedural deadlines. The case was buried forever. In 2008, Pep Guardiola took over as head coach of FC Barcelona. What happened next is a story for another day..
The Untold Pep Files: A Story of Drugs, Referees, and Dark Money in Football👇 Imagine a story so massive it makes the Lance Armstrong scandal look like a warm-up act. It starts with a single player, spans across three countries, and exposes a decades-long trail of destroyed evidence, "miracle" doctors, and institutional corruption. Welcome down the rabbit hole. 🕵️‍♂️⚽ CHAPTER 1: The Player Who Got Caught Before Pep Guardiola was the master tactician, he was a midfielder for Brescia in 2001. That was the year he tested positive twice for the banned anabolic steroid nandrolone. His defense? "Contaminated multivitamins." Who was the man preparing those exact vitamins? Dr. Ramon Segura, the same physiologist who was working with Frank de Boer when De Boer also tested positive for nandrolone that exact same year. The pattern was set early: win at all costs, and surround yourself with questionable medicine. CHAPTER 2: The Barcelona "Miracles" & Operación Puerto When Pep took over Barcelona in 2008, guess who he immediately brought in to lead the medical staff? Dr. Ramon Segura. At the same time, Spanish football was shadowed by Operación Puerto, the infamous raid on Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes that uncovered 99 blood bags containing EPO. Fuentes openly admitted on trial that he had worked with football and tennis stars, famously taunting the court that naming his clients meant Spain would have to give back their Champions League, European Championship, and World Cup trophies. The Spanish judge’s response? Refuse to let him name names, reject WADA’s appeal, and order all blood bags destroyed under the guise of doctor-patient confidentiality. Add to this: Journalists uncovering full-season "doping preparation plans" for La Liga giants. Real Sociedad’s president admitting they spent €327,000 annually on illegal black-market PEDs. Retracted slips on radio revealing players using growth hormones for "muscle recovery." Spanish football's Golden Era was built, but the paper trail was conveniently burned. CHAPTER 3: The System Expands — Financial Doping & Negreira Winning wasn't just happening on the pitch; it was being secured everywhere else. While the public obsessively meme's about Premier League charges, Barcelona was paying millions to Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira, the Vice President of Spain's Refereeing Committee. When asked in court to provide the "referee reports" they claimed to be paying for, Barca couldn't produce them. They paid off the referees' boss, plain and simple. CHAPTER 4: The Bayern Friction When Pep arrived at Bayern Munich, he tried to bring his hyper-aggressive medical protocols with him. He insisted on sending injured players back to Barcelona to be treated by his preferred specialists. This sparked an explosive fallout with Bayern’s legendary physician Dr. Hans-Wilhelm Müller-Wohlfahrt, who walked out in disgust over Pep’s demands for unnatural, record-breaking recovery times. Bayern’s old guard refused to bend the knee to Pep's dark arts. CHAPTER 5: Manchester City & The Ultimate Machine At Manchester City, Pep finally found a club with zero moral boundaries to stop him. The strategy reached its final, perfected evolution: Financial Doping: Siphoning billions in hidden payments to bypass FFP rules and buy infinite depth. Medical Anomaly: Key players like De Bruyne, Kompany constantly flying to Barcelona to see Dr. Ramon Cugat, mysteriously recovering weeks ahead of human biology norms. Refereeing “controversies” and literally paying off referees like Michael Oliver. When Samir Nasri got caught receiving illegal IV drip treatments in 2016, it was framed as an isolated mistake. THE VERDICT From nandrolone positives in 2001 to 115 financial charges and paid-off referee chiefs today... Pep Guardiola didn't just adapt to elite football. He systematically redefined how to cheat it. You think Lance Armstrong was the biggest cover-up in sports history? You haven't been paying attention.
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According to @PFF, that was a single.
Second home run of the night 44 home runs on the season HAVE A NIGHT, PETE CROW-ARMSTRONG!
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Today and every day, we remember and honor the lives that were lost during the tragic events of 9/11. We will Never Forget 🙏
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Starting the weekend off early with a FREE pop-up at Daley Plaza with Green Velvet and Mike Dunn this Wednesday 💚
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Parton Lad retweeted
👀 Sources: MLS is fully returning to the U.S. Open Cup. All 27 U.S.-based MLS teams will participate in a revamped version of the country's longest-running soccer competition 🏆 Reporting with @benwright for @Backheeled ⤵️ backheeled.com/sources-mls-t…
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The PM has just answered 125 questions in almost three and a half hours, from pubs, to trains to social care and the Parades Commission. He’s answered without notes throughout. His first time at the dispatch box for a decade & a hugely impressive performance.
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Forever grateful! In my farewell match in 2018, I got to play one half for @FCBayern and one for @ChicagoFire 🙏🏼 What a special night ❤️
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Parton Lad retweeted
The name Lake Ontario comes from the Wendat word Ontari’io, which, appropriately, means “the lake is beautiful, the lake is big”. The name is more than 400 years old, predating both the Confederation of Canada and the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America. We know that America is changing. Their trading relationships, their foreign policies, their national monuments, their hydronyms. Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario – then, now and always.
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I was given my name by the Iroquois Nation many hundreds of years ago. By 1660 my name was printed on maps by the Europeans as they accepted the Native name which means Beautiful waters. In 1867 the Canadian government decided to use my name for their providence.
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As the school year gets underway, the FC Dallas Foundation and @CoServ teamed up to pack over 7,000 weekend meals benefitting @FriscoFastpacs!
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Investing in the future, one pitch at a time 💫 Last week, New York City FC joined students, educators, and community partners to celebrate the opening of a new mini-pitch at the shared P.S. 62 campus as part of the NYC Soccer Initiative.
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