The usual touches of sadness and gladness, accompanied by the glow of excitement and the groans of disappointment come back to me from the soccer year that was 2011. There were occasions ...

A very curious business, this "conviction" of Liverpool's Luis Suarez for racially abusing Manchester United's Patrice Evra.

Reading the soccer rule book -- or any rule book -- is not really anyone's idea of having a good time. But someone has to do it once in a while, so I'll save you the trouble with a quick skim through the latest version of FIFA's "Laws of the Game."  I shall call them rules, though.

Within the last eight days Barcelona has stamped its superiority on world soccer in a way that brooks no argument. Pep Guardiola's team is simply irresistible.

The most baffling moment of the college final arrived during halftime. Charlotte's coach Jeremy Gunn was telling us that he felt "the first half went well for us" and that what was needed in the second half was "to keep making life difficult for our opponents." Well, fair enough, not exactly the most sophisticated approach you'll ever hear, but I doubt anyone who had seen much of Charlotte was expecting anything too clever.

Bruce Arena, I'm delighted to announce, has returned to being Bruce Arena. After a season in which his Galaxy gave us game after game of very dull, very un-Arena-ish games, he has now had his say -- a very invigorating, straight-talking, totally Arena-ish say -- on a topic that has long cried out for such a comment.

U.S. Youth Soccer's "official" response -- if that's what it is -- to the latest medical studies on possible brain damage resulting from heading the ball sounds dangerously complacent.