Major Link Soccer: Brazil vs. Germany Edition

USA

Did you know the Landon Donovan is not US Soccer's top scorer? The title in fact belongs to Abby Wambach, who has over twice as many international goals as Donovan. For a lot of pundits "men's" serves as a baseline, and "women's" as a qualifier, leading to some confusion.

The potential US Open Cup Semifinal matches have been released. If the Sounders defeat the Timbers, they will host the winner of Atlanta Silverbacks vs. Chicago Fire.

It's fun to look at attendance numbers for MLS to see how much better Seattle is than everyone else. But what about the other leagues of soccer in the US? It turns out you would need to add up the attendance of the bottom 91 listed teams in order to match the Sounders' attendance. Another fun fact: Sacramento Republic FC has more fans at its games (on average) than six MLS teams.

Orlando City SC remain undefeated in USL Pro, sixteen games into their season. They have set the goal of winning both the regular season and the playoffs. Orlando's designs on a new stadium remain in limbo. In case you'd forgotten, they need one more parcel of land to complete their stadium plans, a parcel which belongs to a church who originally wanted 35 million dollars for a property valued at around 700,000 dollars. Orlando fans got in some trouble at a game against the Tampa Bay Rowdies, setting off smoke bombs and starting fights. Four Orlando fans were arrested.

MLS

Instant Replay takes another look at Selfie Gate.

Having recently signed Fanendo Adi and Liam Ridgewell to Designated Player contracts, the Timbers have offered some explanation of their thinking DP-wise.

World

If DeAndre Yedlin were hypothetically to transfer to AS Roma, he could also be playing in a new stadium, which if constructed would be scheduled to open for the 2016-2017 season. The stadium is set to be funded privately, which would make Roma the second Serie A team (behind Juventus) to own their own stadium.

It's been a week since the US's loss to Belgium, and the reflection has yet to stop. Grantland has a piece on the winners and losers of the USMNT. Ronald Blum from the Associated Press believes Klinsmann was correct in his assessment that the US could not win the World Cup.

Eleven people have been arrested and four companies punished in World Cup scalping incidents so far. Perhaps we should be surprised there haven't been more issues.

Daniel Altman, of Foreign Policy and North Yard Analytics, did a Reddit AMA recently talking some about this World Cup, as well as what he sees in the future of soccer analytics.

Alfredo Di Stefano, Real Madrid great, tragically passed away yesterday in Madrid.

Liverpool and Manchester United have released new jerseys, with Manchester United displaying their new sponsorship with Chevy. Liverpool's jersey are made by American lacrosse company Warrior, which apparently makes soccer stuff too now.

Mark Geiger has been named as the fourth official in the Brazil vs. Germany game. I'd actually be cool with him Salazaring Brazil.

The expectations are high for both Brazil and Germany today, meaning that whoever wins will only be "90 minutes closer to the only standard they carried into Brazil 2014."

Even with Neymar and Thiago Silva out, Brazil are still the favorites to win today.

Despite earlier reports, it Neymar will almost certainly not play in the World Cup final, if Brazil is to win today.

FiveThirtyEight.com's model's have correctly predicted all twelve of the knockout round matches, which isn't quite as impressive as it sounds.

Joachim Loew hopes to see an end to the rough play the Brazil has gotten away with so far in the World Cup.