LONDON -- This fatuous business of turning simulation, or diving, into the worst crime that a player can commit continues -- and continues to have ridiculous side effects.

LONDON -- There's not much to be said -- well, nothing good -- about the short time that Felix Magath spent coaching Fulham. Seven months in charge, 20 games played, only four of them won.

LONDON -- You may have noticed that Jose Mourinho has plenty to say. You may also have noticed that virtually everything he says has Jose Mourinho as its focal point.

Hard on the heels (and that phrase may soon acquire literal meaning) of the arrival of Jermaine Jones in MLS, comes the news that the Columbus Crew have signed Austrian defender Emanuel Pogatetz. Two players who can -- and I'm picking my words carefully here -- be described as hard men.

A strange business, this Hugo Perez affair. He is no longer the coach of the U.S. U-15 boys national team. The USSF has -- well, what has it done? Fired him? No, not that. Perez is still a full-time Technical Advisor to the USSF.

What is the appropriate response to the Great Purge in Toronto? Does one weep for an apparently doomed franchise as it goes through yet another desperate shake-up? Or is laughter the only way to respond, laughter in disbelief that the club has managed to find so many different ways of screwing things up.