Time for another Midweek Myriad, also known as “stuff that happened while I was at Disney World.” I’ve saved the most serious item for the end, which is either “building suspense” or “burying the lead.”
SOCCER: Americans move at transfer deadline, with only 1 of 4 going in the “right” direction
U.S. fans longing for more Americans to succeed in Europe are thrilled that Michael Bradley is leaving Bundesliga bottom-dweller Borussia Moenchengladbach on loan to mid-table Premier League club Aston Villa, though playing time is far from assured.
More worrisome are the players making what ambitious folks would consider something less than a “lateral” move. At ESPN, Jeff Carlisle worries that Jozy Altidore and Eddie Johnson are following the same career path of loans without upward progress. Carlisle doesn’t even mention Freddy Adu, who is mentioned in a similarly downcast piece by Soccer America‘s Paul Kennedy.
Altidore’s move isn’t bad, really. He’s not seeing time at Villarreal, and he gets to hop into a title race in Turkey with Bursaspor. The snag is that the club also signed Scottish striker Kenny Miller.
Johnson is a few years older and settling into Championship-level soccer. Nothing really wrong with that, and no one’s looking to him as the future at forward for the U.S. national team these days. He’s on loan from Fulham to Preston North End trying to save the club from relegation.
The stunner is Freddy Adu, who quietly went on loan to Rizespor in Turkey’s second division. Even Adu’s harshest critics would’ve had a hard time predicting that he’d be so low on the European club ladder at age 21. I’d say Freddy has to set the Turkish second division on fire to put his career back on track, but in Turkey, the fans usually set the fires.
What’s strange is that no one can really tell us why Adu’s career has taken such turns in the past couple of years. For a while, his European misadventures were easily explained — he couldn’t break into the lineup at Benfica, and he was in a terrible situation in Monaco with an American-education club chairman who brought him in without seeing if the coaching staff had any interest. But we don’t know why Greece’s Aris lost interest in him or why he couldn’t latch on anywhere else in this transfer window.
And this just in (HT to Grant Wahl): Robbie Findley, newly transferred to Nottingham Forest, may be out three months.
SOCCER: NASL, fans damn the torpedoes
The NASL is undaunted (see Brian Straus story) over an initial rejection of second-division sanctioning and the need to start a Carolina team from scratch after previous owner Selby Wellman, a leading figure in the NASL breakaway, was unable to find a a supplemental or replacement investor. The RailHawks trademark sold on eBay for $14,999.
NASL fans also are undaunted, releasing a letter to U.S. Soccer complaining about the lack of D2 status. Kenn Tomasch calmly shredded the letter, mostly by reminding NASL fans that you have to play a few seasons, or at least a few games, before boldly proclaiming yourself a model of stability.
TRACK AND FIELD: Millrose Games surprises
– Ethiopia’s Deresse Mekonnen ended Bernard Lagat’s domination of the mile.
– Jamaican sprinters were a step ahead of the Americans in the men’s and women’s 60.
– The USA shot put train keeps rolling: Youngster Ryan Whiting upset Christian Cantwell, Reese Hoffa and Adam Nelson.
Recaps from the New York Times and Universal Sports, plus full results. (Big round of applause for the Millrose site for putting its results on one easy-to-read page rather than making us click for every event. Take note, track and swimming organizers.)
In less entertaining indoor track and field, some U.S. athletes went overseas after sleeping on the floor at JFK and lost to other international “teams” at the Aviva International in Glasgow. The biggest upset was a repeat from last year, with Britain’s Jessica Ennis beating Lolo Jones in the 60-meter hurdles.
MORE MYRIAD HEADLINES
– Winter X Games: Shaun White, Lindsey Jacobellis and Kelly Clark are still really, really good at snowboarding. The only surprise in that trio: Clark landed a 1080. Nick Baumgartner upset Seth Holland in the men’s snowboardcross.
– Soccer: Ridge Mahoney points to a major issue that could derail the Cosmos-to-MLS train: the league’s lucrative adidas deal. (Update: Grant Wahl, who has done the most extensive interview on the Cosmos to date, says the club has prepared to go adidas if it gets into MLS. Ridge’s piece is still worth reading as a reminder of how much power adidas wields.
– Handball: Olympic champion France keeps rolling, winning another men’s world title with an extra-time win over Denmark. Spain edged host Sweden for third, and Croatia beat my buddies from Iceland for fifth. All close games in the world championship of the sport that have the highest popularity-to-English-language-coverage ratio in the world. (AP)
– Figure skating: The highlight of the U.S. Championships in my beloved former hometown of Greensboro was Alissa Czisny’s remarkable comeback from afterthought status to win a battle of three former national champions. Christine Brennan, who has stuck with the sport through thick and thin, has the analysis.
– Ski jumping: Not sure what to make of the fact that Sarah Hendrickson has been at the forefront of a strong U.S. showing in international competition this year but managed only 18th in the World Junior Championships.
– Luge: No stunning world championship for the USA’s Erin Hamlin this year. She finished 14th. (AP)
– Freestyle skiing: Hannah Kearney’s World Cup moguls win streak stands at five heading into the World Championships in Park City.
– Cyclo-cross: Katie Compton took second in the World Championships. Holding this event in cold mud just seems especially cruel.
– Wrestling: Olympic champion turned Biggest Loser competitor Rulon Gardner is still hawking a 1 1/2-pound sandwich and challenging people to eat it with fries and a massive drink in 20 minutes. Maybe Rulon’s hoping to match legendary competitive eater Takeru Kobayashi, who is still skinny. (AP)
Last and not least …
At BigSoccer, Bill Archer has annoyed a lot of Canadian fans, and they have the prerogative not to be Bill’s buddies.
But aside from my own “Bill’s a good guy once you get to know him” story, I can say this — if you care about the sport, you should be reading Bill’s blog. I’ve yet to see anyone else in the Americas, from basement bloggers to professional journalists, do as much work in compiling disparate reports on the issues of FIFA, CONCACAF and other international soccer bodies. I would say to my fellow journalists — Bill is doing what we should be doing.
This piece on the utter travesty of Qatar’s Asian Cup final is a prime example.
If someone can offer valid reasons why organizers locked the gates before kickoff, separated families and brought out the riot police, fine. Let’s hear from them. But let’s not act as if this isn’t news.
We the American soccer media/blogosphere shouldn’t be moving on so quickly from FIFA’s extraordinary World Cup decisions to an exclusive focus on the MLS preseason or slobbering all over the latest EPL transfers. My challenge to all of us: Keep watching FIFA and Qatar. If Qatar is an absolutely unsuitable host for the Cup and FIFA is an unsuitable guardian for the game, these things can be and must be changed. Silence won’t get it done. If Al Jazeera can talk, so can we.
Thanks, Beau. To be fair, I wouldn’t use the word “calmly.” Now that I look back on it, I wish I’d just written the second post instead of the first one yesterday in the immediate aftermath. But my thoughts were fresh and honest, so there you are.
Concerning the Asian Cup Final and the issues it had. Is it really proper journalism to critique the event in a vacuum?
It likely should be noted that there were strong critiques of attendance in major blogs and newspapers in all English language countries even before the tournament was over. The low attendance, many citing the pathetic Saudi 3rd match’s mere 2,000, was seen as a reason that Qatar should never have been awarded the hosting rights. Whether these critiques were fair or not is immaterial, as they were certainly premature.
With Qatar hosting three of the nations that competed against it, but only one speaking a language I know, I would assume that there were at least critiques from their media, if not their officials.
So the week prior to events of Egypt the decision was made to over-sell the Final, and over-sell it by far. The Final would also feature the royal family as it is a premier event in the nation.
But sporting events do not happen in a vacuum. Real life sometimes happens. In this case what had been seen as a singular revolution in Tunisia became revolutions and protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan and Yemen. Dictators and Monarchists throughout the Arab world had to be more concerned with their safety than they had in years.
Every large gathering of youth would have to be suspect. Police presence would increase out of necessity. It would be foolish to not prepare for a riot or protest.
So we have an environment with nearly 10,000 extra seats sold, the presence of a royal family and riot police. Does any of a bearing on 2022? Almost certainly not. FIFA won’t allow over-selling. The unprecedented dominoes of revolution are unlikely to last more than a decade.
Of course, none of that means that the Asian Cup was a success for fans.
But you’re defending a bad decision (locking the gates) by pointing to a previous bad decision (overselling, an accusation I hadn’t seen elsewhere and would like to see linked if you have it, especially given other reports I’ve read saying many seats were empty). That’s like saying we should forgive someone for stealing my laptop because he’s just trying to cover the cost of breaking my window.
The bottom line is that they failed to prepare for the crowd. Preparing a secure entrance for the royal family is part of that preparation.
And if you take the game in bigger picture of geopolitics — a valid point, given soccer fans’ role in Egypt — then angering a mob that just wants the seats for which they’ve paid is hardly the best way to maintain stability.
Locking the gates was purely a foolhardy choice forced on by the royal attendance combined with larger security issues of the current Arab world.
I’ll search through my twitter timeline and al-jazeera reports, but I had read that they sold 37,000 tickets to the Final.
There was also a failure in that their false assumption that the Final crowd would be similar in more than base demographics to those acting in the larger Arab protests. Qatar is wealthy, there were many foreigners in the crowd, many families.
But they did prepare as if it was going to be that kind of crowd.
Saddens me to see Bernard Lagat slowing down – been watching him for a couple of decades now since he ran for Wazzu.
I see Lagat won the 1500 this weekend in New Mexico – not washed up yet after all!
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