Monday Morning Cannon Fodder

ENGLAND:

Barclays will no longer participate in the Premier League sponsorship arms race, following the expiration of their league sponsorship next season.

Louis van Gaal has made Phil Jones better, and Roy Hodgson has made Chris Smalling dumber.

According to British Transport Police, Manchester United fans are the worst behaved in the Premier League. Unsurprisingly, Leeds fans are the worst in England (link courtesy of Do Not Link, so the Telegraph gets no pageviews)

Look what Thierry Henry can still do.

EUROPE:

The FA will not be permitted to lay a wreath in Turin on Tuesday as a memorial to mark the 30th anniversary of the Heysel disaster, because Italy is planning their own memorial in May.

Zinedine Zidane says he'd like to manage Real Madrid one day. At the rate Real goes through managers, that may happen sooner than later.

Oliver Bierhoff says Lukas Podolski made a mistake going to Milan.

MLS/US:

This was a weekend of late winners in MLS, as DC United, Real Salt Lake, and most annoyingly the Vancouver Whitecaps scored either late in regular time or deep into injury time to claim their respective three points. Great for the neutrals, I guess.

Is it finally time to retire the myth that MLS is a retirement league?

The Cascadia Cup is a fan-owned, fan-run trophy contested by Vancouver (the current holders), Portland, and Seattle. A few years back, MLS tried to trademark the name "Cascadia Cup", and in response the supporters' groups for the three teams formed the Cascadia Cup Council to own the trademark to the Cup name and likeness. An agreement was reached with MLS that the Cascadia Cup name would be owned by the Council, and no party would be allowed to monetize the name of the Cup without permission from the other party.

This weekend was the first Cup match of the season, Portland vs. Vancouver. Prior to the game, the Whitecaps announced a new product - a Whitecaps-branded scarf featuring the Cascadia Cup logo. Thanks to a technical glitch, permission to do this was not denied by the Council in time to stop the scarf from happening; when this was discovered, it became A Thing. Fortunately, the Whitecaps and Southsiders (the main supporters' group) came to an agreement that satisfied both parties.