Was it really just four months ago that John Terry made the costliest slip of his life, as Chelsea's Champions League dreams crashed around it and blue tears of anguish spilled onto the sodden Moscow turf?

Time might be a healer, but new Blues coach Luiz Felipe Scolari will be keen to make sure the wounds of that penalty shootout defeat to Manchester United last May do not close too quickly.

The clinical performance displayed by Chelsea on the opening match day of the UEFA Champions League group stage was the product of a team that is hurt and hungry.

By contemptuously swatting aside French side Bordeaux 4-0, the west London club proved there will be no hangover from one of the most painful defeats in its history.

Scolari left fans scratching their heads this week by claiming every trophy Chelsea is competing for, including the Carling Cup, has equal importance. However, you can guarantee his billionaire Russian owner sees things differently.

Roman Abramovich covets the Champions

June 14 was a nice day for the Los Angeles Galaxy. The sun shone, nearly 40,000 fans turned up at McAfee Coliseum in Oakland and the Galaxy thumped three unanswered goals past the San Jose Earthquakes.

At the top of the Western Conference standings and with its big players starting to fire, Major League Soccer's most high-profile team appeared to finally get its act together on the field.

Three months later, the Galaxy has reached arguably the lowest point of its tumultuous history. Saturday's 2-0 defeat to the Kansas City Wizards was L.A.'s 12th straight game without a win, a club record for ineptitude that is mutating into a monster.

That June day in Oakland seems so long ago that the Galaxy must feel like it happened to someone else. In some ways it did.

Back then, Bruce Arena was taking it easy at home, Ruud Gullit was in the dugout, Alexi Lalas was overseeing the whole operation and Carlos Ruiz was still a Los Angeles player.

Now Arena is the man who has inherited the almighty

The response to Brian McBride's return to Major League Soccer this summer was befitting for a favorite son coming back home.

McBride's signing with the Chicago Fire was greeted with a general level of delight around the league and touted as an example of his desire to put something back into U.S. soccer in the twilight of his career.

However, strange as it seems, all the well-wishing and praise of McBride's generous character is in some ways selling him short.

That's because the 36-year-old's return to the U.S. is far from being a farewell tour or a chance to collect some back-slapping before slipping off into retirement. He wants to win.

"I came here because I want to win a championship," said McBride in a telephone interview with Yahoo! Sports. "First and foremost, that is what I am here for. If the other stuff comes with it, like putting something back into the game over here, then that is fantastic.

"But most importantly, I am still as hungry as ever. If I didn't still have that

When United States head coach Bob Bradley celebrated things going the "right way" and Landon Donovan said Wednesday's 3-0 World Cup qualifying victory over Trinidad and Tobago was "ideal," it was hard to disagree with them.

The Americans were dominant and decisive at Chicago's Toyota Park and the smiles on the faces of the players and coaches were full of satisfaction after a job well done. All appeared well in the world of U.S. Soccer.

However, a deeper look beneath the surface of the U.S. national team begs a vital question: While the team clearly is on the right path to reach the World Cup, is it taking the right steps to succeed in South Africa in 2010?

Without any doubt, Bradley's first objective must be to reach the World Cup. Anything else would be an unmitigated disaster and drastically could stunt the progress of soccer in America.

Yet the public is hungry to see the team not only reach soccer's showpiece event but also perform strongly. A repeat of the dismal first-round exit

Roy Keane was an uncompromising and imposing figure as a soccer player, and he is trying to take that mentality into life as a head coach in the English Premier League.

From a grim corner of northeast England, Sunderland boss Keane's single-mindedness this week has had long-reaching repercussions – all the way across the Atlantic.

By standing in the way of his club striker Dwight Yorke from performing for Trinidad and Tobago in Wednesday's World Cup qualifier, Keane unwittingly has given the United States another boost in a campaign that is already chugging along nicely.

Yorke took part in T&T's 1-1 draw with Guatemala last weekend but was recalled to England instead of being allowed to join his national team colleagues in Chicago.

Keane put pressure on Yorke to put club before country and return to the United Kingdom ahead of Sunderland's weekend clash with Wigan.

At 36 and in what is likely to be the final season of his playing career, Yorke understandably is unwilling to make waves,

In his advancing years, Fidel Castro has retreated from public life and turned his hand to writing editorials for Cuba's state-run press.

The Cuban dictator loves writing about his political enemy – the United States – and he loves writing about sports, but he has yet to combine the two by penning any comments on the U.S. men's soccer team's visit to his island for a 2010 World Cup qualifier this weekend.

Many of Castro's musings are unwittingly humorous, like when he insisted Cuban taekwondo star Angel Matos was right to kick a referee in the head following a controversial decision at the Olympic Games.

However, there is one statement from a recent Castro column that U.S. coach Bob Bradley and his team would do well to heed ahead of Saturday's game at Havana's Estadio Pedro Marrero.

"I do not hate other human beings," Castro wrote. "But I hate vanity, egocentricity, selfishness, arrogance, smugness, the absence of ethics and other tendencies human beings are born with."

Bradley's

In the mad, mad world of the English Premier League, change is the only thing that stays the same.

Salaries, transfer fees and club valuations escalate at a rate that long ago fled the realms of reality. And then you wake up one morning to discover mere billions are no longer enough.

Suddenly, Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich finds that his 11-digit bank balance can't spare him from a metaphorical smackdown in the Premier League playground.

Suddenly, Manchester City – that's right, Manchester City – is the hottest story in world soccer after plucking Brazilian superstar Robinho from the clutches of Chelsea, the first of what promises to be many multimillion-dollar signings.

The EPL is a sporting behemoth, with its corridors of power populated by the heavyweights of the business world. There are Russians, Americans, Egyptians, oil men, financiers and magnates drawn in by the promise of a slice of global television revenues and even greater riches.

To turn such an organization on its head

CARSON, Calif. – When he faces the most controversial decision of his career over the next few years, Kobe Bryant could find advice and inspiration from an unexpected source.

David Beckham.

Bryant, the Los Angeles Lakers superstar, has stated his intention to test the waters in Europe at the end of his current deal in 2011 and indicated he may be prepared to walk away from the NBA and seek a lucrative contract across the Atlantic.

NBA players have made the switch to Europe before. Dominique Wilkins did it in the 1990s and 2004 lottery pick Josh Childress left the Atlanta Hawks this summer to play in Greece.

However, if Bryant was to make the same move it would be a truly ground-breaking development, a global icon stepping into the unknown and potentially spawning a seismic change in the established order of North American professional basketball.

The only sporting parallel that can realistically be drawn is with Beckham.

Fifteen months ago, the world's most famous soccer player left