Soccer – Regular Guy

The American Soccer Conversation Problem

brian — Fri, 17 Oct 2014 12:25:24 +0000

NOTE: The headline and first few paragraphs are different than when I first posted this. I swore Alexi Lalas said something that Taylor Twellman said. But my main points stand – Klinsmann is not talking about anything new when there are plenty of new things to discuss.

Those of us who have followed soccer in the U.S. for many years have gotten used to former men’s national team player, former general manager, and current broadcaster Alexi Lalas taking up whatever opinion suited him at the moment. It’s what makes him a divisive figure, among other things. But at halftime of last night’s MLS game on ESPN2, ~~he outdid himself~~ I thought he outdid himself.

~~While he argued both sides of the Juergen Klinsmann-Don Garber kerfuffle, he~~ Taylor Twellman pointed out that Klinsmann was hardly the first men’s national team manager to bring up issues such as where America’s top players should ply their trade to best maximize their talent. Less than a minute later, as Lalas and Taylor Twellman took the obvious line of “it’s good to have these conversations,” Lalas credited Klinsmann for asking questions that we haven’t heard before.

I initially thought Lalas had made the first point, but have re-watched the video and see he didn’t contradict himself. Even though I was initially wrong on that, an important question remains – is Klinsmann really asking questions we haven’t heard before? He also said some of these questions are ones we don’t want to hear the answers to. I disagree with that. We’ve heard all the answers and then some.

In recent weeks, Klinsmann has been lauded by some for addressing promotion/relegation, speaking “truth” to how Landon Donovan didn’t reach his true potential by staying in MLS and criticizing Clint Dempsey and Michael Bradley for making a similar decision after their years in Europe.

These aren’t new conversations. They aren’t even interesting conversations. These topics have been well worn for years. They were staples of the heyday of Big Soccer. Hell, I had to endure the “players in Europe are by default better than MLS” back in 1997 in a bar in Hanover, Pa., when some clown told me how the future of the national team rested on the shoulders of Jovan Kirovski alone simply because he played on ManU’s reserves.

Klinsmann has done nothing new. Every topic he has addressed has an easily accessible history for anyone with access to Google. Maybe they are important topics to him, but they are hardly new, and the opinions expressed by both sides are far from ground-breaking.

And this is why Lalas needs a new schtick. American soccer fans have discussed these things to death. That’s not to say there’s nothing to discuss and American soccer is sitting pretty with no obstacles on their way to world domination. Let’s just use some critical thinking skills to focus on some other things.

Like why does Klinsmann only criticize the career path of 2-3 players? If he’s such a big picture guy, why does he zoom in on Donovan (personal connection), Dempsey (spurned his advice) and Bradley (father was former coach)? Why not lambast Graham Zusi and Matt Besler for a long-term pledge to MLS? Why not wax poetic on the decisions of Mixx Diskerud of Aron Johansson? Why not tell us all the bad moves Timmy Chandler has made? Twellman did bring that up some, but we need more of this.

And why focus just on what the players do? Why not take on the culture in Europe which still makes it harder for US players to truly succeed? Why not issue a challenge to managers who ditch Americans so often at the first bump in the road? Why not take on agents who sometimes have no Plan B when their player’s first stop doesn’t work out?

Instead of people worrying about promotion and relegation – a pipe dream – why not take a look at youth programs that invest in the development academy program, but offer nothing substantive beyond the U-18 level? Why not encourage those teams to get involved in USL PRO or the NPSL? Why only focus on how MLS teams develop players?

Why simply pillory MLS for playing through FIFA international dates when that practice is actually growing in other countries? Brazil played through this break. Costa Rica had a full schedule the day after a friendly. The Copa Sudamericana played its Round of 16 during the break! Maybe the discussion should be on scheduling in general instead of “Garber sucks.”

We shouldn’t ignore the fact that a career in Europe can do good things for some players, but we also shouldn’t focus on picking the nits out of this one subject that is far more complex than the current discussion allows. And the people who pretend they are thought leaders shouldn’t pretend this is a new conversation. Maybe we need to send some of them to Europe to learn how to truly discuss the sport.

Coming Off the Ledge

brian — Tue, 10 Jun 2014 13:40:36 +0000

Sixteen years ago, I remember going out on a ledge.

At the time, I was working as a sportswriter for this very newspaper. In fact, I was only a few weeks from the end of my full-time employment at 135 Baltimore Street. That job change and the risk I took are not connected.

I sat down to write a column and knew I might not get the best reception for my topic. I had probably done it before, giving me some insight into the potential backlash. I forged ahead nonetheless.

My column focused on the upcoming World Cup in France. I professed my love for the sport at a time when many folks really didn’t care about the impact of the naturalization of defender David Regis and how that would affect the US team in the summer of 1998. (Spoiler alert: It played a role in our awful last-place performance.)

As I begin to finalize my plans for the 2014 World Cup, I know that I will have many more people sharing my interest than I did in 1998. No one really got upset at that column, which I might add had a tremendous name drop of young defender Leo Cullen, a player some thought could be a shining star for future US teams. He ended up being a marginal pro.

I feel grateful that I got in on the ground floor of soccer fandom in the US. My fraternity in college had a bunch of players on the varsity team, which infected me with the bug that really exploded in the mid-1990s.

Since then, I have seen the US team play a bunch of times in various locations. I have flown to Columbus, Ohio, and made a kamikaze drive to suburban Boston to root on our national team. I have also fretted alone in my basement during World Cup games and hugged strangers in bars when things have gone well.

I have a network of friends spread across the country who I have met through watching games or at least arguing about them online. I remember the times when we had to follow games through the message board commentary of someone who had the hard-to-find broadcast of an important game.

That’s why writing about the 1998 World Cup represented some sort of risk. Now, I will be able to stream the games on my phone at work. I can choose from multiple public parties showing the games I want to see. I can bring up the US team in casual conversation without worrying that people will think I’m weird.

I mean, I know people will think I’m weird, but it will have nothing to do with talking about soccer.

The World Cup will occupy a lot of my thoughts for the next month, which is nothing new. But the differences between previous iterations and this year’s event are kind of stark.

If the US beats Portugal in their second game, I will celebrate in a bar with a large crowd. When we upset the same team in 2002, I watched alone in my house, careful not to wake up anyone else and sporadically running upstairs to post on a message board.

I’m glad that I don’t have to go out on that ledge anymore , but I kind of miss it.

Comcast Hates Logic

brian — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 17:30:59 +0000

I sat down last night to do something I really didn’t want to do, but felt I had to: order the pay-per-view broadcast of the U.S. soccer team’s World Cup qualifier in Guatemala.

The game was only available that way because of the rules which give the home team all television rights. The Guatemalan federation sold the rights to Traffic, a Brazilian company with an American office. They specialize in being player agents and managing television rights. They are also the most evil, disgusting people in the world when it comes to American soccer, but that’s another screed for another day.

I didn’t want to fork out the dough, but just have a compulsion to watch these qualifying games. So I found the pay-per-view listing on my Comcast system and settled in. The screen had a button which said “Buy,” so I clicked it. That led to another screen with a button which said “Buy.” I clicked that one also and found myself staring at a third screen. I needed to call in to order the program.

Why the hell do they have Buy buttons if you can’t use them to buy something? I had to translate the 1-800-XFINITY number to digits (not a big deal, but still annoying), find an old bill to log in to my account via the phone system, then had to find my wife’s Social Security number since the account is in her name (and she was asleep) and they won’t let you do anything without that.

And they still almost couldn’t hook me up. Apparently, our account was not authorized to buy pay-per-view events. I don’t know why. I don’t remember setting that up. Even if I did, there should be some notification of that or it should disable the multiple buttons that say “Buy” or it should give me the opportunity to authorize the box using the account number or something. If Comcast can send me a message on all three of our boxes every time there is a boxing or MMA match for sale, they can figure out how to get me to call without stringing me along until the end.

Thankfully, Carmen, my new favorite customer service rep, came through for me, authorized my account and got me the game before kickoff. She even sympathized with me about the illogical nature of having a Buy button for something I needed to call in to buy. Why does the logic always exist with the CSRs and not elsewhere in situations like this?

Book Review: Soccer Dad

brian — Wed, 30 May 2012 17:50:17 +0000

I know why I put “Soccer Dad” on my list – the title and the price. But I don’t think I really knew what I was getting into when I bought it other than it was about soccer. That seemed like enough of a reason for me.

But W.D. Wetherell‘s commemoration of his son’s final season of high school soccer ended up justifying my decision even if I had moments where I wanted to just give up. That had nothing to do with the story since I’m a sucker for a good sports story. So let’s get some of the bad stuff out of the way. I had a big problem with Wetherell’s connection to soccer.

He represents a kind of soccer fan which drives me nuts – the Europosuer. I know it’s a good three hours from his home in New Hampshire to the home stadium of the New England Revolution, the closest Major League Soccer team, so I didn’t expect him and his son to have season tickets. But for a book which espouses how amazingly special soccer is, I’d expect at least a passing mention of the top domestic league.

We got nothing. Not a single word. I’m cool that his kid has learned by watching Manchester United and other English teams, but it just irks me that people who have such a connection to the sport blatantly ignore it when it sits just a few hours from their front door. The Revolution appeared in their third straight MLS Cup final during the fall chronicled by the book. They had a reason to pay attention to the sport within the country and seemingly chose not to. I don’t even remember a mention of the U.S. national team. That’s no way to raise a young soccer player – constantly looking elsewhere for examples of success.

So that’s one of two personal complaints from me. I really did enjoy the book although he does sometimes seem like he acts as if he’s above the elites around him by not being as elite by them which only makes him sound more elitist. That only gets in the way a little bit.

In the end, he does a wonderful job chronicling a very special season for his son and his teammates. Because of his understanding of the sport and the nature of a small-school community, he really conveys the ups and downs well. He admits from the beginning that he does not have the proper perspective and backs this up by pretty clearly showing how even he can get caught up in things too much with opposing fans.

I thought one of the best decisions Wetherell made was including some excerpts from his son’s journal about the season. We got a look at what a kid sees from that situation. With a nationally-covered cheating scandal at his school, the pressure of college selection and the difficulty of being a star player, Matt Wetherell (who finished a sucessfull college career) added that extra touch with his recollections.

The book caught my eye and kept my attention because of soccer, but it will stay in my head because of the connections that family and community play in the lives of the people in the book. That’s what makes it work.

MLS Needs to Keep Reserves in Reserve

brian — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 10:57:23 +0000

As is common with the American soccer fan, much attention this pre-season has shifted toward something completely ancillary to the success of the game in the United States. And I worry that unlike screams for single table to make the league “authentic” or promotion and relegation to sate a small few (while killing any real chance for new long-term investment), that the league will give in on this one way too soon.

The topic this time is the MLS Reserve Division. The league announced recently that the secondary circuit would feature 10 games per team again this year. A small cadre of fans howled in disgust. Then a few more intimate gatherings between team officials and fans revealed that the schedule may double as soon as next year to 20 games and could come to resemble a “second division” of MLS. This news comes at the time when Inside Minnesota Soccer put together a really comprehensive of how the reserve system could fit into growth plans that The NASL and USL have (Part 1 and Part 2).

My big question to all of this is really a simple one – why now? I’m not arguing that MLS doesn’t need to consider changes for the reserve division. I just don’t see why things need to change drastically now, especially with the 20-game model Nick Sackiewicz floated at a meeting with Philadelphia Union supporters.

Let’s break that down. Teams are having trouble fielding full reserve teams now with 30-man rosters. If you double the amount of reserve matches, you probably need a minimum of six more players on each team. At the lowest salaries, that’s somewhere around $250,000 per team. Add in ancillary costs, benefits, an expanded staff, travel and game costs and we’re probably talking upwards of half a million dollars per team per year just to expand the reserve system. In short, expanding the rosters to accommodate a larger reserve league could cost between $5 and $10 million for the league. Each year.

For what? Will adding a bunch of games for non-starters (games which the teams could actually arrange on their own above and beyond the MLS Reserve schedule) really generate that much money? Will transfer fees for first-team players increase because the rookies get more games? Will anyone really notice except the most hardcore fans?

I know the Reserve League needs to grow. If the league and teams continue to pump money into the home-grown system and academy teams, these guys need to have a viable alternative to college. The question is, does it make sense to create that alternative right now?

With six new players for each team, that eats up (theoretically) half of the money the league (well, SUM really) reportedly gets for the NBC television contract. Now adidas did double down on the league and youth development a couple of years ago, but can we wait to see how that pans out via the academies and home-grown players first before throwing money at the reserves? We need to remember this league is still in growth mode and a key component of growth is knowing when to step back and let the seeds you have planted build strong roots.

The television contracts all come up after the 2014 season. If things continue to move forward, the positive energy surrounding MLS, a solid World Cup run and the potential announcement of the 20th team would make those deals much more valuable than they are today. Isn’t that the time to push for expansion of the reserves instead of now?

Let’s Make a Deal

brian — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 18:27:10 +0000

The previous post shows the unbridled joy which people experienced after the U.S. scored to beat Algeria yesterday. People don’t often get that excited about soccer in the U.S., but the nature of the World Cup means that new fans will watch the action because of what’s at stake.

With the U.S. headed to the knockout rounds and television ratings breaking records, let’s try and come to some sort of agreement about what will happen when this run ends for Bob Bradley’s team.

I don’t know what I, one behalf of hardcore soccer fans, can offer other than promises that we can try and tone down the more obnoxious members of my side. I can’t guarantee results, but we can try to make those guys get out of your face if you don’t make soccer more important than everything.

In exchange, I ask just one thing. It’s not that hard. It will actually require you to do less than you’re doing during the World Cup. Just promise me you will try to do this one thing for me after we’re eliminated.

Give a shit about pro soccer in America.

You don’t have to buy season tickets to a Major League Soccer team or plan your life around men’s national team friendlies or get a tattoo or anything. Just care about the pro leagues across the country.

Some will make you think otherwise, but we have pretty good professional soccer in the U.S. with some pretty passionate fans. MLS has teams in just 16 markets with three expansion teams planned for the next few years. The lower divisions have another 15 or so team. Then there are amateur and semi-pro leagues which you can take a look at.

Just do something. As much fun as those scenes in the bars look, the real fun of watching soccer is going to an event and making a difference in person. Imagine seeing a goal like Landon’s scored in an MLS stadium. The stakes won’t be the same, but it’s still fun as hell. If you can’t do that, though, pick an MLS team and watch when they show up on ESPN2. Watch every game they show or just once in a while. Just do something.

The guys on the team which won yesterday got there for a number of reasons. A small part of that is the support they received from fans who have made high-level soccer a success in America. And don’t listen to any moron who tells you soccer isn’t successful. It is and has been. Those people just set such an artificially high bar that nothing will ever qualify as success if they could determine things.

Tim Howard, the goalie who started the fast break which led to the goal yesterday, currently plays for Everton in the Premier League in England. Before he went overseas, he played for the MetroStars in MLS. Before that, he played on a minor league team in New Jersey, suiting up for the first time before he graduated high school. That’s the kind of system we need to keep supporting.

Soccer isn’t going to disappear in the U.S. The roots have grown too deep. But just think how much better we can be if the support of the pro game – and the levels which feed it – grows as a result of these new fans. Every little bit can make a difference if you would just do something instead of waiting for the next World Cup.

Words Fail Me

brian — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 00:43:35 +0000

World Cup Time

brian — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 20:24:53 +0000

I wrote this for last week’s column, but forgot to post it. I intended to blog a lot during the World Cup, but have just been too distracted. Hopefully I will be better this week.

If you see me over the next month or so and I look a little more distracted than usual, I have a good excuse.

It’s World Cup time.

In past year, I might have had to explain the reason, but now I feel confident most people have seen the advertisements and know that soccer fans like me have a lot on our minds these days.

The tournament actually started over the weekend, giving me the opportunity to immerse myself in the fun right away. I had to write this before the weekend so my idea of fun may have changed based on the result of the American team’s first game on Saturday.

On the weekend, I actually enjoy that the games take place in the morning and early afternoon. I don’t have to wait for the action and enjoy watching with a hot mug of coffee as much as I do with a cold glass of beer.

The flip side is that I will struggle to stay focused at work when the games take place during the day the rest of the week. In the evenings, I will try to catch up on as much of the action as possible. This is where drinking coffee while I watch games comes in handy.

I’m not one of those people who will try to avoid the scores all day so I can watch the games “unspoiled” when I get home. Part of the fun is talking with friends about what happens. I just don’t have the kind of patience and discipline to hold off on doing that until midnight when I have watched all the day’s action.

You can see that this event is about more than soccer. It’s about planning and organizing your schedule. There’s a lot going on here. Everything fell into place for me late last year when they determined the schedule, allowing me to plan vacation days for the U.S. games. That’s when the countdown started for me.

As the tournament got closer, I cleaned up my Man Cave, got plenty of snacks and drinks and dug my USA scarves out to use as chew toys during the more tense parts of matches.

I don’t expect everyone to get it. In fact, I know not everyone will get it. I’m not one of those soccer fans who thinks everyone has to enjoy the sport. If you’re not geeked up over the next four weeks, that doesn’t bother me at all.

I hear people on the news saying that ESPN is trying to make people like soccer against their will, but nothing could be further from the truth. They’re just trying to make people like me happy.

So don’t expect me to beat you over the head with reasons why you should find the match between North Korea and Brazil fascinating. I won’t bore you with my opinions on the television commentators for this year’s event. You won’t hear a word from me about why the New Zealand-Slovakia match intrigues me even though they are pretty weak teams.

Just do me a favor and don’t tell me how little you care. I have a lot on my mind these days. It’s World Cup time.

Can We Just Stop Now?

brian — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 00:41:00 +0000

For some reason, the topic of soccer’s popularity draws some people into entrenched opinions more than Sarah Palin, especially those who want to focus on the negative. Soccer fans like me hear how the sport isn’t popular and never will be and ESPN is shoving the World Cup down the throats of an unwilling public who doesn’t want to watch the sport.

After the ratings for the first two days of the event, can we just stop this silly argument. No one is forcing anyone to do anything unless we’re talking about how soccer haters will need to open their eyes and face reality.

Soccer is popular in the United States. To get deeper is more complicated (and we’ll get to that later), but it’s undeniable.

The US match against England drew almost 13 million viewers on ABC alone. The numbers for Univision and ESPN Deportes are not available yet. That’s higher than every Stanley Cup final game and close to the NBA Finals numbers.

But the success goes beyond the obvious jackpot of a high-profile US game on a Saturday afternoon. Every game with numbers available for ESPN on Friday and Saturday has hit or just missed the 2 million viewer mark. Greece-South Korea on Saturday morning almost made it. South Africa-Mexico drew 2.6 million (and another 5.4 million on Univision for 8 million total). Nigeria-Argentina drew 3.73 million viewers. France-Uruguay drew 2.86 million.

Sure, it’s the World Cup, but it pretty much smacks down any juvenile argument that soccer isn’t a big deal. To put the numbers in perspective, the Argentina-Nigeria game has a shot at being on fo the top 25 cable programs viewed all week, a list traditionally dominated by iCarly, Songebob and the WWE.

The problem soccer has replicating this is that between the World Cup tournaments, the few million people who watch the sport on a regular basis- a number which probably is equal to those who regularly watch sports other than the NFL and college football regularly -all split off to watch their own leagues.

There’s no easy to way to add up the number of people watching Major League Soccer, the English Premiere League, the Mexican First Division, La Liga from Spain, the Brazilian league and the many other leagues available on cable or satellite these days. So the sport’s critics pretend that the big audience only exists in some shadow conspiracy by ESPN every four years.

The numbers don’t lie. The weekday numbers may drop some, but I bet they continue to show strength across the board for the World Cup. There are a lot of soccer fans in America. Not every baseball fan watches the same games between the World Series so don’t expect all of us to focus on one thing between World Cups. We’re here. There’s a lot of us. Just deal with it.

More Than A Soccer Match

brian — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 10:39:45 +0000

The World Cup started yesterday. Most people probably know that. If you’re not into it, that’s OK. Believe it or not, most soccer fans don’t care about your negative opinion of the sport. Just let us enjoy the games, OK?

But today is different. Today isn’t about whether you like soccer or not. We play England today in a real World Cup match. We have played them in friendlies before, but the teams have not met with anything other than false pride at stake in 60 years. That time, we pulled off a monumental upset.

American soccer has come a long way since then. A win today would still rank as an upset, but it’s much more plausible than in 1950. Well, to everyone except the English. That’s why this game means so much.

These are the people who make fun of us for using the word soccer even though THEY INVENTED THE FREAKING WORD. They had a huge controversy when their ex-captain slept with the ex-girlfriend of another player. Hell, we had our captain in 1998 sleep with another player’s wife. During World Cup qualifying. That’s hardcore.

So this is about a lot more than the game on the field. This is about establishing respect, once and for all. This is about a captain named Carlos playing defense alongside a guy named Oguchi. This is about the 20-year-old son of Haitian immigrants teaming up with a white rapper from West east Texas to try and score goals.

We have a guy named Herculez on our team, for God’s sake. How can you not get behind this team?

So turn on your TV at 2:30 eastern time and watch the game on ABC. I don’t give a shit if you like soccer or not because this isn’t about soccer. This is about America. We like holding a grudge for more than 200 years.