Soccer Watch

Congrats to the Austin Aztex after the Austin ISD board of trustees approved a contract Monday making House Park the team's home stadium for its PDL season beginning late April or early May. The Aztex also announced their first tryouts, by invitation only, to take place March 10. Contact Ric Gran­ryd at [email protected] for info.

A couple of former Aztex were on the Major League Soccer transfer list this week: Real Salt Lake picked up Yordany Alvarez from Orlando City and dealt Jean Alexan­dre to the San Jose Earthquake.

The U.S. Women qualified for this year's London Olympics in style, trouncing Costa Rica, 3-0, and Canada, 4-0, to finish the qualifying tournament with a 38-0 goal mar­gin in its five wins... The U.S. Men, meanwhile, won a pair of 1-0 exhibition games last week over Venezuela and at Panama. Small steps, perhaps, but hey, that's a three-game win streak for first-year coach Jürgen Klinsmann. Next up is a sterner test: Feb. 29 against Italy in Genoa.

Sadly, Women's Professional Soccer voted Monday to suspend the 2012 season, with hopes of resuming in 2013. WPS was entangled in legal wranglings with dissident team owner Dan Borislow all year, and apparently chose to cancel the season rather than letting his magicJack franchise back into the league. Great publicity all around, eh?

Wales national team manager Gary Speed, 42 – found hanged in his garage on Nov. 27, days after sending a text about committing suicide – may not have actually done so, a coroner's inquest found on Mon­day. Instead, the coroner wrote, he may have hanged himself by accident after "nodding off" while he sat on the garage stairs with a rope around his neck.