I find the "club v. country" debate, at least when it comes to players, to be terribly tedious. It only seems to matter when a big club is involved, and while they have a right to be upset about their investments getting hurt while on national team duty, they know the deal when the sign world class talent. Don't want to risk losing a player to an injury picked up while he's away playing for the glory of his country? Then don't sign internationals.

I'm using a facetious argument, but I do feel frustrated that we must go through the nonsense of it all every time. Of course I bring all of this up because AC Milan President Adriano Galliani wants the USSF to pay Oguchi Onyewu while he recovers from a knee injury sustained in the United States' draw with Costa Rica last night. Galliani's moaning makes me want to scratch my eyes out; suck it up, Milan.

• Expect the World Cup bidding race to get awfully smoky over the next year, as much of the stuff will be blown around. FIFA leadership, bid organizers, and political figures will be blabbering on about this bid and that, saying little of consequence while making a lot of noise. Case in point: Sepp Blatter telling Russian President Vladimir Putin that Russia has a "good chance" to win one of the two World Cups up for grabs. Russia may very well have a shot at hosting in 2018 or 2022, but that doesn't mean that Blatter is revealing anything. Telling a powerful, and intimidating, figure like Putin that his bid is strong is while visiting his country is just being polite.

• From The Stanford Daily, a lament from an English ex-pat that the American sports franchise system runs counter to the "American Dream". I agree for the most part, but I don't really see the point of attempting to connect our social ideals to the way that professional sports business is conducted. From the very beginning of pro sports in America, rich men with selfish interests and total control have dictated; the distance between our major population centers, even in the late 19th century when baseball went professional, simply didn't allow for the "open" model of clubs that sprang up in England. America has always been about business from the very beginning; the rest of the world just took longer time to come around to that reality, allowing for the proliferation of clubs that the author writes references. But it's clearly about business now, and the idea that starting up more teams and instituting promotion and relegation (in this case, in American football) will fit more with American ideals doesn't jive with me.

• Although we saw a few missives on the nonsense that surrounded the TV rights for the US-Honduras match ahead of the game, I never got around to writing an opinion on the way FIFA handles them myself. This will have to be my stand-in, though I don't know that I would have used quite as much hyperbole in describing the momentum lost by not having the game be widely available in the post-Confederations Cup evironment: "Just as the sleeping giant awoke, it was laid back to rest." Still, it's not a bad line, and I agree with the sentiment of the piece that FIFA needs to reconsider their broadcast rights rules.

Deep Cuts appears every weekday, and highlights American soccer-related items from around the web. If you have a story for Deep Cuts (even shallow ones), you can send it along to matchfitusa@gmail.com.