News and Notes: Agogo, Johnson, Bradley, Wegerle, etc

• Junior Agogo an MLS almuni who was decent with Colorado and a washout with San Jose scored the game winner for Ghana last night int heir African Nations Cup triumph over Namibia. Agogo now plays back home in England (he is English but was eligible to play for Ghana through his parents) for Nottingham Forest.
• Eddie Johnson will become I believe the first native Floridian to play in the Premier League when he makes his Fulham debut. Roy Wegerle, a longtime Tampa resident was born in South Africa and Joe Max Moore who lived in Miami for a long time was born in Tulsa. In addition Cory Gibbs a Plantation native (around the corner from me) was on Charlton last season but of course was injured all year.
• Michael Bradley is on pace the shater Wegerle’s record for the most goals scored in a European first division by an American. Wegerle scored 18 goals for Queens Park Rangers in the old first division the year before the Premier League was formed. (Bradley currently has 12 league goals in the Dutch First Division) Wegerle became an American citizen during the course of that season so you could argue his record technically doesn’t count, but as someone who had watched Wegerle and his brother almost ten years earlier here in Florida, they were both always plenty American in my eyes.
• Eddie Johnson credits Clint Dempsey with his move to Fulham. According to an exclusive video on US Soccer’s official website, Johnson credits Dempsey with convincing Roy Hodgson to pursue him, and then convincing Johnson himself to make the move when EJ had of course in the past rejected moves to Benfica Real Sociedad, and Derby County among others.
• MLS continues to pursue Latin American based players with National Team experience during this transfer window, which means the overall level of talent in the league among foreign players is likely to reach its highest point this season since the 1996- 1998 time period when virtually every non-Brazilian foreign player in MLS had National Team experience. In the 2001 to 2006 time period very few MLS internationals had been regular contributors to their national team set up.

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