Want to make soccer a “top sport” in the USA, Mr. Infantino? Here’s your checklist

Posted on August 29, 2018August 29, 2018 by Beau Dure

Let’s say this first about the White House visit by FIFA president Gianni Infantino and U.S. Soccer president Carlos Cordeiro: The “red card to the media” stunt was disgraceful. Maybe Infantino is unaware that the current occupant of the White House has incited hatred toward the media — not just the usual complaints about unfair stories but a deliberate outright undermining of the work they do, leading to death threats and quite possibly playing a role in the murder of five people at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis — but Cordeiro sure as hell knows, and he ought to be apologizing.

Now, let’s move on to the interesting stuff Infantino said. Basically, he wants the USA to contribute more money to … I mean … become a greater power in world football.

We certainly have a lot of work to do along those lines. Cordeiro needs to get busy putting out the fires in youth, pro and adult soccer (in that order, if he needs to prioritize, though delegating people to solve all three is fine). We’ll never be a top-down country like Germany, but we need to get people on the same page. For more on that, read … every other post in this blog, pretty much.

But before you leave, Mr. Infantino, may I please draw your attention to the following?

1. The 2022 World Cup is a human rights disaster. At this point, I’m frankly not sure I have the stomach to watch it.

2. The 2022 World Cup will be held when fewer Americans will be watching it. You can try to go head-to-head with college football and the NFL, but I don’t think it’s going to turn out well, particularly given No. 1 on this list.

3. FIFA still doesn’t get it when it comes to women’s soccer. Progress on some fronts, perhaps. Plenty of countries give their women’s national team no support. Some are still banning or abusing lesbians. It’s time to hold these federations accountable rather than sitting back because you need their votes.

4. Clean your own house. That means, for example, letting the people who are trying to fix FIFA’s many issues do their jobs.

We can’t hold FIFA accountable for everything — the diving epidemic is an issue for referees and leagues. But you can’t simply expect the USA to make soccer bigger here because you say so. U.S. Soccer can only do so much, even if they’re doing everything right. (Again, they’re not, and we’re aware of that and trying to change.)

Some of this falls on you and your colleagues in Zurich.

Best of luck.

pro soccer, us soccer, youth soccer

U.S. Soccer coaching education: One foot forward, one foot firmly stuck in the mud

Posted on August 29, 2018August 28, 2018 by Beau Dure

U.S. Soccer just unveiled its new grassroots coaching modules for 7v7, 9v9 and 11v11, making it much easier for parent coaches to learn what they need to know for working with players who will go on to become elite players, travel players, adult rec players, youth coaches and fans. It’s an important —

… What? Something else happened?

OK, let’s get back to those coaching modules. They’re worth discussing. But what you may have heard about was the first of two Soccer America interviews with U.S. Soccer technical people about coaching education and youth development. The interview didn’t have any specific quote saying, “Hey, Latinos aren’t interested in doing coaching education,” but the USSF’s bureaucratic language certainly came across as a little dismissive. Something along the lines of “mission vision proactive hey they’re just not signing up assets leverage activation.”

Herculez Gomez, the retired MLS/Liga MX player now doing commentary (including an excellent podcast with Max Bretos) for ESPN, pounced on Twitter.

To imply that Latinos don’t want coaching positions within USSOCCER is insulting.
Regardless of ethnicity -people don’t want to spend bullshit amounts of money on licensing & travel.
Can anyone tell me the amount of money one spends going through @ussoccer coaching “education”? https://t.co/D07QLvRGrR

— herculez gomez (@herculezg) August 16, 2018

One of the many great things Gomez is doing these days is following up on his initial reaction. U.S. Soccer offered up conversations with the people in this interview, Nico Romeijn and Ryan Mooney, and Gomez reported on the conversation on the Aug. 20 Max and Herc podcast.

Romeijn and Mooney clarified and apologized, and Gomez seemed to be satisfied that they didn’t intend to slight any persons of color. That’s not to say USSF’s outreach is as good as it could or should be, and diversity efforts will always require watchdogs.

In any case, the conversation shed light on several other issues, many of them at least indirectly related to diversity.

First: Cost. Excluding travel, which is going to be a significant cost in itself, someone moving up the coaching ranks will pay (according to Gomez — I’ve contacted USSF to confirm, and they did):

C license: $2,000
B license: $3,000
A license: $4,000
Pro license: $10,000.

Yikes.

Now, in fairness, if you’re working for a half-decent professional club or the federation itself, your club will pick up the check. We’d hope. But if you’re trying to break through to those ranks, well …

Second: Difficulty getting pros involved. Here’s where the MLS union got involved …

At least 150, and potentially as many as 200 current MLS players qualify for & would like to take the B license course right now. Not one of them will be able to do so this year, which will be the 3rd consecutive year no B licenses are earned by 1st division players in the U.S.

— MLSPA (@MLSPA) August 17, 2018

MLS Players Union executive director Bob Foose will be talking about that with Glenn Crooks on SiriusXM’s The Coaching Academy on Wednesday.

The good news: The NWSL has taken steps to get its players a good headstart on this path. Details are confidential, and any dissatisfied players should certainly feel free to contact me, but it seems promising.

The Max and Herc discussion took a couple of wrong turns. Gomez was surprised U.S. Soccer didn’t have data on the number of minority coaches taking their classes, saying all employers should have that data. But people don’t take coaching courses to be employed by the federation (excluding Development Academy jobs). They take them to be hired by youth clubs. In some cases, up through the D and maybe even C licenses, they take them to be volunteers. That sounds extreme, but in other countries, you’ll find B-license volunteers. All that said, perhaps U.S. Soccer will consider gathering such info in the future, not because of employment law but because it’s simply a good metric to see how their outreach efforts are faring.

Also, Max and Herc seemed surprised that the federation hired Belgian consulting firm Double PASS. That’s definitely not breaking news.

But the discussion did indeed get a much-needed push forward. And it’s clear from the Soccer America interviews — first with Romeijn and Mooney, then with Jared Micklos of the Development Academy — that we’re still not getting much by way of illuminating conversation from people in Chicago. They’ll tout their new training center’s central location in Kansas City, which is indeed a vital asset if all their prospective coaches are traveling by horseback.

And yet, somehow, progress is being made.

The new “grassroots” modules will never get the attention that the Gomez/MLSPA tweetstorm got. That’s understandable. But they’re giving coaches a good way to get started, and they’re giving parent coaches — usually the first coaches a player will encounter — much firmer footing than in the past.

Sure, I still miss the old F license video series. The new grassroots series, though, is better than the old E and D license.

In the old path, the older the kids you were coaching, the higher the license. So, in theory, you needed a D license just to coach rec soccer from U13 on up. Now we can take the corresponding grassroots class, which is (A) less of a time imposition, (B) can be taken online and (C) presents a new practice approach that is already making my life easier.

The approach is “Play / Practice / Play.” As kids show up to practice, you get them playing small-sided games. (Pause to have them do some dynamic stretching once they’ve warmed up a bit.) Then do a half-field activity — 7v7, 8v6, etc. Then a scrimmage. The biggest difference from practice to practice isn’t so much the “drill” you’re attempting as it is the coaching points you make during each practice.

This is an improvement over the “Warmup with a drill that takes a little bit of time to explain / Small-Sided Game that takes a little bit more time to explain / Expanded Small-Sided Game that’s ridiculously complicated and will never be explained over the course of this practice / Scrimmage” approach, in which we were all supposed to develop practice plans like we’re Fabiano Caruana prepping to face Magnus Carlsen for the world chess championship in November.

It’s certainly not perfect. For one thing, United Soccer Coaches’ Soccer Journal seems like a relic now — it’s full of all the triangles, circles and squiggly lines that take us 10 minutes to understand and half of a practice to explain to our kids. (I did like the “secret goals” exercise in the preseason issue, where each side has to do something before scoring — possibly a cross, possibly a certain number of passes — but the other team doesn’t know what the opponent’s restriction is.)

The bigger issue for many (see “Rondos, The War On”) is the insistence that everything has to “game-like.” And it’s a slippery definition. Having the defense try to clear the ball to any one of three “counter goals” is game-like. Having a neutral player is not.

And the jargon is mind-numbing. We have four “moments” of a game — attack, lose the ball, defend, win the ball. So can you come up with a practice that prepares you for … losing the ball? (Don’t even get me started on the “six tasks of a coach,” which include “Leading the player,” “Leading the team” and the redundant “Leadership.”)

But if you can cut through that, you’ll find something quite useful. The video examples in the 11v11 online course are terrific.

So maybe we could sneak an editor into Soccer House to translate bureaucratic talk to plain English?

youth soccer

High school soccer participation: Good news for a change? No, but …

Posted on August 28, 2018 by Beau Dure

After all the gloomy talk of declining youth soccer participation rates, we got a bit of promising news this morning — high school soccer participation rates are up. (HT: Soccer America)

Naturally, I’m going to throw some cold water on this. But the survey is still interesting on several levels.

The number of high school boys soccer players went up by 6,128, up to 456,362 nationwide. The number for girls also rose slightly, from 388,339 to 390,482.

So why complain?

First, look at one of the sports that’s still ahead of soccer. It’s basketball. And that’s stunning for one big reason — the sheer number of players needed to play. A basketball team can get through a season quite comfortably with 12-15 players. A soccer team really needs at least 20, and 25 or so is better. (The average boys program has 37 kids; the average girls program has 32. Those numbers include junior varsities and maybe freshman teams in counties that have them — hint hint, Fairfax County.)

How is basketball still ahead? Simple — more schools offer it. Many more schools.

Soccer’s 2017-18 numbers: 12,393 schools with boys teams, 12,007 with girls teams. That’s up slightly from 12,188 and 11,823 the year before.

Basketball? 18,510 and 18,171.

That’s thousands of high schools that do not have soccer.

On the girls side, soccer ranks sixth in terms of the number of programs, behind basketball, track, volleyball, softball and cross-country. It’s actually a steep drop from cross-country (15,216) down to soccer (12,007). For boys, even with recent cuts (actually not that many), 11-player football has 14,079 programs, and another 1,407 schools have smaller teams. The 11-man pointyball game is fifth behind basketball, track, baseball and cross-country. Soccer isn’t even sixth. That goes to golf — golf! — with 13,524 programs. Then we get soccer, at 12,393.

Before you ask — no, high school soccer programs aren’t folding because of the Development Academy. It’s a rare high school that has more than a handful of kids playing in the DA, and those schools can easily find players to fill in the rosters.

If anything, the report offers strong evidence that kids are indeed still interested in playing for their schools. Seems like a few thousand schools should try to accommodate that interest. It’s mind-boggling that in 2018, a school with a football field and enough people to field a football team can’t also have a soccer team.

The entire report is an interesting browse, though it’s troubling that they can’t spell “rhythmic,” as rhythmic gymnastics. Five girls in Ohio participate in that.

youth soccer

My assistant ref debut

Posted on August 25, 2018August 25, 2018 by Beau Dure

Is 48 too late to debut in yellow? I guess not. I was the AR2 for two U14 boys tournament games this morning.

Everyone there was a little shaken at the outset because, in the preceding game, a girl fell and apparently broke her wrist in a visibly gruesome way. I made a point of not looking too closely, but her screams were terrifying. The refs (including two who carried over to my game) called off the rest of the game — they had little choice because paramedics had to come onto the field, and they understandably took a bit of time to stabilize before carting her away. I’d never seen an injury like that.

But we went on with the schedule, and I was in the next two games. Here’s what ran through my mind …

1. What the hell? White vs. Gray? And I’m staring into the sun? Yeah, I’m glad I have prescription sunglasses, but holy cow.

2. No offside calls to make yet, but I have quite clearly bungled my first two possession calls. Which way is White going again? Wow, they didn’t train us to make these calls.

3. Phew — OK, an offside call. Had a clear view, and the ref was already set to blow the whistle when I put up the flag.

4. Could we please get these guys off the sideline? I’m going to plow into one of them pretty soon.

5. OK, halftime. And this has been one-way traffic. Should be an easy second half.

6. OK, end of the game. Yeah, that was an easy second half.

7. Yes, coach, I know, we need to get on with it. Did you see or hear the girl with the broken wrist? We’re a few minutes behind. (I didn’t *say* this. At least not like that.)

8. White vs. Purple. This’ll be much easier.

9. Yikes. Two own goals for Purple in a couple of minutes. This could get ugly. And I’ll probably be busy in the second half.

10. (wheeze) yeah …. (pant) … I’m pretty busy in the second half. That dude in White is a master at taking off right when the ball is played, and the center is taking a good look at me every time he gets the ball.

11. Seriously, dude, would you back off from the sideline? I know you’re all warming up for the next game six inches behind me and all, but seriously? I’ve asked you three times.

12. Certainly sounds like an exciting game behind me. Do … not … turn … around. Purple’s going right-to-left, so if they play it out, raise the flag with the right arm for a White throw. And vice versa.

13. Phew! Made it through two games without a major incident. No one made a fuss when I was quite clearly fumbling my way through those first five minutes or failing to outsprint a through ball in the last 20.

I found I had to keep repeating to myself which team was going which direction and reminding myself which way to point if the ball went out. “White, right” was my mantra when the White team was going right-to-left.

And the center — only 25 but clearly experienced — reminded me that my priority is offside, not possession on the touch line. I can try to watch both, but I simply cannot take my eyes all the way off that second-to-last defender.

So I have a lot more to learn. But I enjoyed it. And everyone was congenial, which helped.

Next assignment will likely be a U9 rec game. Gotta read up on the buildout lines.

Your turn, Taylor Twellman.

women's soccer

Washington Spirit report: Meet the new boss …

Posted on August 23, 2018 by Beau Dure

Taylor Smith won the ball at the back and surged down the right channel into open space. Mallory Pugh went out wide. A couple of passes threatened to unlock the Utah defense.

I don’t remember exactly what happened next, but it probably involved Becky Sauerbrunn breaking up the attack.

I bring it up because that may have been the only time Wednesday night that the Washington Spirit looked like they had a chance of scoring a goal. Even a glimmer of hope.

Sure, Rose Lavelle had a couple of dazzling moments, pulling off skill moves usually seen only in coaching clinics in which the coaches are trying way too hard to show they can teach some off-the-wall 360 move. (Calling it the “Maradona” is surely ironic these days given that Jupiter would rotate with more speed than Maradona would.) And Lavelle had a good run going until Rachel Corsie committed a foul that would’ve been a 15-yard penalty in the NFL.

But the stats for this one were just ugly for the Spirit, unless you count saves, in which long-serving understudy DiDi Haracic tallied 10 and was a bit unlucky not to have an unlikely 11-save shutout. She at least made Laura Harvey and company sweat on a cool, almost chilly night at the Maryland SoccerPlex.

spirit-shots — Does the “expected goal” (xG) stat ever go into negative numbers?

With that, I have to confess that the headline is misleading. I did not meet the new boss, Tom Torres. I’m working on a story for The Guardian, and my priority was talking with some Utah folks — including Laura Harvey, who told me she used to deliver The Guardian. Small world.

But the Won’t Get Fooled Again reference is apt. This Spirit team isn’t suddenly going to learn to avoid defensive lapses. Nor is the midfield going to provide any meaningful possession.

So I’m still at a loss to explain why the Spirit felt the need to fire Jim Gabarra now rather than offer him a sideline swansong and then perhaps another job in the organization. And I didn’t get any more answers on what was frankly a weird night at the SoccerPlex. Jen Gordon wasn’t there, apparently for the first time since the Spirit’s debut. Neither was Boyd. Good dog.

I’m pondering the quote from Spirit president and interim GM Chris Hummer from yesterday’s post, in which he talked about starting the process for 2019 now. Does that mean interim coach Tom Torres is a candidate?

Torres’ resume isn’t bad. But my sense is that the restless fan base will want a bigger name or more top-level experience. Also, the Spirit may still have trouble shaking the perception that they think they can get by with the coaching talent in the D.C. area. They caught lightning in a bottle with the then-green Mark Parsons, who had been a youth and high school coach in rural Virginia, but the Spirit otherwise have a track record of overvaluing coaches (and sometimes players — the DMV is not California) from this area. It’s understandable in the academy — nothing wrong with hiring a former player like Lori Lindsey or a mid-Atlantic stalwart like Santino Quaranta — but another perspective would surely help. And this team needs it.

Next stop: Audi Field.

pro soccer

Does firing Jim Gabarra really help the wayward Washington Spirit?

Posted on August 21, 2018 by Beau Dure

When the WUSA went away, Jim Gabarra stayed.

He coached a mix of kids and pros who were hanging around D.C., still wearing the name Washington Freedom. He lugged ball bags around the Maryland SoccerPlex. Along with longtime D.C.-area youth coach Clyde Watson, he worked with local youth clubs to create something of a club system. When pro women’s soccer came back in 2009 after a five-year absence, he remained in charge. He finally resigned after the 2010 season, but the Freedom didn’t continue without him, packing up for south Florida to spend a colorful year under the name magicJack.

He was busy with Sky Blue in New Jersey when the next women’s league launched in 2013. But when Portland lured away coaching phenom Mark Parsons after the 2015 season, he returned to the Plex to take up his familiar position on the sideline.

Today, the Washington Spirit fired Gabarra, who leaves behind a underperforming club with bright attacking stars, an in-form goalkeeper and two big questions:

Given Gabarra’s long service to D.C. women’s soccer, did he deserve better than to be dismissed with three games remaining in the season — all at home, one of them at D.C. United’s new Audi Field?
Will firing Gabarra solve anything at a club that has fizzled horribly since it was seconds away from winning the NWSL championship in his first season less than two years ago?

Former Spirit trainer Pierre Soubrier — also the fiance of Crystal Dunn, who won MVP honors with the Spirit in 2015 before moving on — threw what the kids would call “shade.” Then he deleted his tweet. Gotta love screenshots.

This seems significant in light of all the questions asked over the past two years about the Spirit’s disproportionate injuries. pic.twitter.com/m4u7uPFHaa

— John D. Halloran (@JohnDHalloran) August 21, 2018

An anonymous source gave The Washington Post’s Steven Goff the standard “lost the locker room” quote. Hard to tell how much stock to put in that. In “locker room vs. coach” disputes, the natural inclination is to side with the locker room, but it’s not always right.

The biggest issue, of course, is the scoreboard. The Spirit have two wins, four draws and 15 losses — kept out of the bottom only by winless Sky Blue, coached by former Gabarra assistant Denise Reddy. They’ll need a few results to match or beat their abysmal 2013 season, where a late surge under midseason replacement Parsons saw them move up to 3-5-14. If young superstars Mallory Pugh and Rose Lavelle had been healthy for more of the season, perhaps the team would have more of a cushion above the NWSL basement, but it’s unlikely that the Spirit would’ve made a playoff run.

The timing of Gabarra’s ouster could be related to the upcoming downtown debut at Audi Field. Interim coach Tom Torres surely can’t turn the Spirit into a monster team in five days, but perhaps the recent 4-0 loss in Houston was the sign of a team that had quit on its coach. Maybe a nice, hard-fought 1-0 loss will do more to win over any newcomers to a Spirit game.

Spirit president Chris Hummer, who now assumes the general manager role he also held in 2013 before a two-year exile (disclaimer: I’ve written for Hummer’s SoccerWire in the past), called Gabarra “100% class” and explained the move as such:

We have a horrible record and everyone is responsible top to bottom. 2017 was to be a re-build. 2018 we had a roster that scared a lot of people on paper, but then never got them all on the field at the same time between injuries and call ups. 2019 has to be better, so we just decided to start that process now so we can learn what we can from coaches and players alike in these remaining weeks. All eyes forward.

We have exciting players and a competitive team that has the capability to be very dangerous, potentially in short order. We’re all looking forward to having a BIG night at Audi for our fans and to carry that excitement into 2019 with a winning team again.

We still don’t know if the former U.S. outdoor/indoor national teamer (he was the second-leading scorer, behind Peter Vermes, on the 1989 futsal team that claimed third place in the World Cup) was offered a more graceful exit — maybe a move elsewhere in the organization in advance of three-game swan song that would include the Audi Field game.

We also don’t know how many of the Spirit’s myriad problems can be laid at Gabarra’s feet. We just know the list goes on for a while:

– The defense is nowhere near NWSL standard. Goalkeeper Aubrey Bledsoe is the league’s runaway leader in saves with 99, many of them spectacular. (It’s a credit to Bledsoe that the Spirit have only conceded 32 goals, one better than the perplexing Orlando Pride and six better than Sky Blue.)

– The attackers have managed only 11 goals, none since July 7. In an 0-1 loss to Utah, they managed seven shots, none on goal.

– A trade sending Dunn’s rights to North Carolina for then-national teamers Ashley Hatch and Taylor Smith has backfired, with neither player now figuring prominently in U.S. coach Jill Ellis’ plans.

– Top-three draft picks Andi Sullivan and Rebecca Quinn, the former a D.C.-area local who played for the Spirit’s reserves in her summers while in high school and at Stanford, have had little impact, a reminder of the 2013 season in which several players with glittering college resumes weren’t ready to lead the team in the bruising NWSL.

– The reserve team boasted fewer big names than usual, winning four of six games in the anemic WPSL Colonial Conference but losing a 3-0 decision in its playoff opener. (Still, it’s a program that many NWSL clubs lack.)

– The teams entered in the first year of the girls’ Development Academy lagged behind their peers in the D.C. area, let alone other professional clubs’ academies. Starting a program of this sort in a hypercompetitive area is difficult, but that just makes me wonder why Gabarra wasn’t reassigned to an academy role, where he could use his long-standing D.C. youth contacts to win over the scores of skeptical clubs who didn’t want to get involved with the Spirit’s academies in Virginia and Maryland.

The latter two issues won’t draw much attention, but building from within is part of this club’s identity. It worked with the 2013 midseason promotion of reserve coach Parsons, who ditched the club’s overreliance on youth and brought in more experienced players to lead the way to playoff appearances the next two years. It will probably work in the long run with Sullivan, who isn’t yet back to her “old” self since suffering an ACL tear in late 2016 but has already reached the national team and has tremendous potential.

One example of how oddly things have gone this year is the curious case of Maddie Huster, longtime reserve player and younger sister of the Spirit’s last remaining original player, Tori Huster. The Spirit drafted her, brought her in as a national team replacement player in early June, signed her as a full roster player June 29, then waived her July 25.

With so many oddities and mistakes over the past couple of years, the overarching question is how much blame to spread out between Gabarra, Hummer and owner Bill Lynch. The postmortem won’t be fun, but it may be a necessary step in rebuilding the club moving forward. The Spirit should have learned in 2013 that it can’t rely on youth, even if Lavelle and Pugh are world-class players bound for the World Cup next year. They’ll need to convince free agents to come to the SoccerPlex, which has excellent training facilities and a dedicated supporters group but isn’t as glamorous as MLS-affiliated clubs in Portland, Utah and Orlando.

Maybe Gabarra deserved better. The supporters certainly do.

In case you didn’t know, I wrote a book about the Spirit’s debut season, attending most games and roughly 30 practices. I’ve changed the Kindle price to $2.99, but it doesn’t appear to have kicked in yet. Should be changed within 72 hours (by Friday).

pro soccer

Another option for U.S. games: A European Super League

Posted on August 20, 2018August 19, 2018 by Beau Dure

So the prospect of hosting La Liga games in the USA and Canada is … kind of unlikely?

Let’s look at other options. I’ve long suggested cup competitions could be held here — maybe the FA Cup or Copa del Rey quarterfinals.

How about the Champions League? Or something even bigger?

Coincidentally, the idea of a European Super League that plays on weekends is one of those back-burner items that some (like Arsene Wenger) consider inevitable. And that could open all sorts of options.

Let’s consider the market forces pushing us here:

Supporters, clubs, sponsors and TV networks preferring more Barcelona-Juventus games to more Barcelona-Levante.
At the same time, European soccer needs multiple tiers for these supporters, clubs, sponsors, TV networks, etc.
Included in that: The domestic leagues have proud traditions.
Also, such a league needs a “footprint” — it can’t just be Madrid and Manchester teams playing every week.

Now let’s consider the competitive angles:

If we’re going to have the best playing the best every weekend, we need to find a way for players to get some rest. We can’t just say “OK, Premier League game every Wednesday, Super League game every Saturday, off you go …”
We simply can’t have a closed league here. I’ve run the numbers every which way, as you’ll see below, and it makes no sense. You simply can’t pick 24, 32, even 48 clubs that deserve permanent top-tier status while everyone else is shut out. Sure, you can pick a few obvious clubs — Real Madrid, Barcelona, Manchester United, Juventus — but then it gets complicated.*
While we want this to be the best of the best, we also want a pathway for other clubs. Maybe Ajax builds up to be a Euro power again. Maybe the carrot of European league play draws big money and big talent to a club in a country that doesn’t have a big-time league. Looking your way, Dublin.
Europe’s domestic leagues have too much tradition to pull clubs all the way out of them. What would it mean to be a La Liga “champion” if Real Madrid, Barcelona and a couple more clubs aren’t playing?

In short — what we’re trying to do here is balance the desire for “best of the best” competition with the desire to spread around the wealth and the opportunity. It’s a compromise between a closed Super League and the current system, which still puts the biggest games on weekdays, forces clubs to deal with fixture congestion and has a group stage that could be a little more interesting.

(* – I’m intrigued with the EuroLeague basketball model, in which 11 teams have permanent licenses to be in the league. If you think that model would be a difficult sell to European sports clubs used to a different way of doing business, just look at the list of permanent EuroLeague teams — Real Madrid, Barcelona, Olympiacos, CSKA Moscow, Fenerbahce, etc. But I’m not sure it’s necessary.)

So with all that in mind, here’s what I’m figuring:

A 48-team Super League split into six groups of eight. That’s 14 games per team per group. Below that, a 96-team second-tier Champions League we’ll discuss later. (We’ll call it the Champions League because it will have all domestic champions who aren’t in the Super League — we really want to give everyone a shot.)
Top two Super League teams in each group advance to 12-team playoffs. The four group winners with the best records get a bye to the quarterfinals. The other eight teams have their first playoff games in December … in neutral sites around the world. (Yes, this is where the games in the USA come in.) You could do a two-leg series with one game at a neutral site and the second at the higher seed’s home ground, which would reduce the likelihood of a fluke results. At the other end, the bottom two from each group are relegated.
The quarterfinal games take place in February or March. (You could have more games at neutral sites here, perhaps in venues that are too cold in December.) Then it all wraps up with a Final Four in the last games of the European club calendar.
The reason for the lighter schedule in the spring is so teams can rejoin their domestic leagues. The fall season will be for the rest of the teams in the domestic top tiers to play their way into the spring season — which should make the middle of the table a bit more interesting than it currently is. (No, I haven’t worked out how to apply this to the handful of leagues that play a spring-to-fall schedule. When the Gulf Stream reverses or stops, all of Europe will be playing spring-to-fall, anyway.)
Domestic champions from the top six European leagues make the Champions League the next year. So do the top six teams from the Europa League. (We’ll get to that.)

So who’s in this league to start? Here’s the fun part …

We have two good objective measures from UEFA: the 5-year and 10-year coefficients. (Funny that the latter has “revenue” in the URL.) We also have the FiveThirtyEight rankings, giving us a snapshot of who’s hot right now. (These don’t cover every league, so you’ll see that I do some contortions to account for Shakhtar Donetsk, Dynamo Kyiv, Viktoria Plzeň, Dinamo Zagreb, Vidi, APOEL, Maribor, etc.)

Then I went though results of every Champions League of this millennium — the 2000-01 season neatly avoids the pedantic issue of whether you consider the “millennium” to start in 2000 or in 2001 — and I counted the number of times each team made the group stage. (I also separately counted appearances in the playoff round, which began in 2009-10, but I wound up not using that for anything substantial.)

Here’s a ranking of how often each team reached the group stage. The 2018-19 Champions League is included, with many of these clubs already in the group stage. Some of these clubs are still playing in the qualifying round and therefore could add one; they’re listed below in italics.

All 19: Real Madrid
18: Barcelona, Bayern Munich
17: Arsenal, Manchester United
16: Porto
15: Juventus, Lyon, Olympiacos
14: Chelsea
13: Shakhtar Donetsk
12: Dynamo Kyiv, Milan
11: Benfica, CSKA Moscow, Inter, Liverpool, PSV Eindhoven, Roma
10: Anderlecht, Celtic, Galatasaray, Valencia
9: Ajax, Bayer Leverkusen, Borussia Dortmund, PSG

So to populate these leagues, I’m going to go by this priority:

The top 20 in the 5-year coefficient.
Any of the top 20 in the 10-year coefficient who have not yet qualified.
Any of the top 20 in the FiveThirtyEight rankings who have not yet qualified.
Any club that has been in the group stage nine times in this millennium. (Don’t worry — we’ll ditch this criterion moving forward. This is just for the initial field.)
Go back through in that order: top 30s in 5-year, 10-year, 538. (BUT … we’re going to limit each country to eight teams. Apologies to Getafe and Eibar. Also, no second-division teams qualify.)
I was left with two spots, so I added up the ranks of everyone who had a ranking in all four criteria and took the lowest overall numbers.

You can see the entire 48-team league and the numbers explaining their qualification here. I also did a random draw, splitting the teams into eight pots of six teams and using a random-number generator to come up with the groups. (Limit two teams per country per group.)

Here’s the 2018-19 Super League draw:

Group 1: Real Madrid, Porto, Basel, Schalke, Roma, PSV Eindhoven, Fiorentina, Villarreal

Group 2: Atlético Madrid, Manchester United, Benfica, Tottenham Hotspur, Lazio, Galatasaray, Marseille, Athletic Bilbao

Group 3: Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund, Shakhtar Donetsk, AC Milan, Olympiacos, CSKA Moscow, Monaco, Club Brugge

Group 4: Barcelona, PSG, Chelsea, Bayer Leverkusen, Inter Milan, Celtic, Red Bull Salzburg, Sporting Lisbon

Group 5: Juventus, Manchester City, Napoli, Lyon, Real Sociedad, Anderlecht, Ajax, Fenerbahçe

Group 6: Sevilla, Arsenal, Zenit, Liverpool, Valencia, Dynamo Kyiv, Beşiktaş, Viktoria Plzeň

Wondering about the country breakdown?

8: Spain
7: Italy
6: England
4: France, Germany
3: Portugal, Turkey
2: Belgium, Netherlands, Russia, Ukraine
1: Austria, Czech Republic, Greece, Scotland, Switzerland

It’s a terrific group of teams.

And here’s the matchday schedule:

Aug. 11-12: Matchday 1
Aug. 18-19: Matchday 2
Aug. 25-26: Matchday 3
Sept. 1-2: Matchday 4
Sept. 3-11: International window
Sept. 15-16: Matchday 5
Sept. 22-23: Matchday 6
Sept. 29-30: Matchday 7
Oct. 6-7: Matchday 8
Oct. 8-16: International window
Oct. 20-21: Matchday 9
Oct. 27-28: Matchday 10
Nov. 3-4: Matchday 11
Nov. 10-11: Matchday 12
Nov. 12-20: International window
Nov. 24-25: Matchday 13
Dec. 1-2: Matchday 14
Dec. 8-9: Round of 16 games played at international sites
Dec. 15-16: Round of 16 games played at higher seeds’ home grounds
Dec. 26: English clubs rejoin EPL for Boxing Day fixtures
Late December-January: Other clubs rejoin their domestic leagues
March 9-10: Quarterfinal games played at international sites
March 16-17: Quarterfinal games played at higher seeds’ home grounds
March 18-26: International window
May 28: Super League semifinals, doubleheader at neutral site
June 1: Super League final at same neutral site
June 3-11: International window
June 14: Start of Copa America

So here’s how the domestic leagues fit in: From Jan. 12 to May 25, we have 20 weeks (not counting the international window). Each country can easily fit in 18 league matchdays plus domestic cup competitions.

How the leagues accommodate re-entry from the teams that were busy with the Super League and Champions League is up to them. Most likely, they’d use the fall season to play for spots in the top tier in the spring season.

THE NEW CHAMPIONS LEAGUE

So what of the Champions League, formerly the Europa League?

First, we’re going divide Europe into six regions, as follows (no, they’re not particularly well-balanced competitively, but we’ll roll with it for the sake of letting the occasional team from elsewhere have a pathway to the Super League — the big leagues have plenty of opportunities to get there):

Channel/Scandinavia (9): England, Faroe Islands, Iceland, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland

Iberia/Benelux (8): Andorra, Belgium, France (Monaco), Gibraltar, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain

Central (9): Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland (Liechtenstein)

Adriatic/Mediterranean (9): Albania, Bosnia, Cyprus, Greece, Israel, Italy, Malta, San Marino, Turkey

Balkans/Black Sea (9): Armenia, Bulgaria, Kosovo, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Ukraine

Eastern (8): Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Kazakhstan, Russia

Nearly every country will have at least one team in the competition, as such:

Any domestic champion that isn’t in the Super League.
Any runner-up of a league whose champion is in the Super League.
If the runner-up is also in the Super League, no team from that country automatically qualifies on this criterion — chances are pretty good that country will have another representative in the Champions League, anyway. If not, well, it already has two in the Super League.

And no country will have more than three. Again, this is the pathway for the rest of Europe. The Big Five or Six or whatever already have tons of teams in the Super League.

So once we have all qualified champions and runners-up, and we’ve divided into regions, we’ll fill in the rest from the 5-year coefficient and general history. (OK, I admit — I reached a point at which I was just looking at the numbers and picking the ones that looked best. I’ve spent days on this.).

The full list is here.

One fun possibility for the Champions League: Playoffs among non-champion teams, held in May. Held around the world. More games in the USA!

So we see plenty of possibilities for the USA to host meaningful games here. What are the advantages for European clubs?

In bigger leagues, teams that aren’t involved in European play will spend the fall trying to earn a place in the final 10. So all those clubs that spend each year fighting for a “mid-table” finish? Now “mid-table” could mean making the final 10.
The Champions League will offer a lot of good local matchups. Scottish teams vs. English teams. Belgian teams vs. Dutch teams. Intra-Scandivanian games.
More rest.
A separation of seasons, simplifying things for supporters.
We have a Super League that isn’t closed to Belgium, the Netherlands, most of Eastern Europe, etc.

There are a lot of moving parts here. I’ve spent about 15 hours on this post, and yet I’m sure readers will have suggested tweaks. Have at it.

podcast, youth soccer

RSD short: On Twitter and Cordeiro

Posted on August 10, 2018 by Beau Dure

Today’s podcast sums up why I’m boycotting Twitter and goes into a bit of detail about today’s Guardian story on Carlos Cordeiro’s first six months, particularly Pete Zopfi’s “functional unification” idea.

Just to clarify: I’m not off Twitter because of anything directly affecting me. This is my response to their selective enforcement of hate speech and harassment, and the tipping point is the nonsensical decision to allow Alex Jones to keep posting falsehoods designed to do nothing but turn gullible people into dangerous people.

We’ll see what happens. If they relent and ban Jones, I’ll be back as soon as it happens. Until then, all you’re going to get from me is the occasional automated post showing that I’ve published here and a daily tweet explaining why I’m boycotting.

Here’s today’s podcast …

guide updates

Goodbye Twitter, at least for now …

Posted on August 10, 2018August 11, 2018 by Beau Dure

Quick clarification: Just to make it absolutely clear — I’m not leaving because of harassment directed at me. That’s annoying, but I deal with it. This is about what I describe below.

I’ve been harassed on Twitter. Not to the extent of Sandy Hook families or female journalists. But just enough to know what it’s like. I can hardly imagine what other people go through.

And it’s clear — from the Rose McGowan situation last year and the Alex Jones situation now — that Twitter’s selective enforcement is inadequate at best, deliberately inciting hatred at worst.

So I’m out, aside from two things …

You’ll still see automated posts from my blog feed. It’s a pain to shut those off, and I hope I can return to Twitter someday. The intent here is to change behavior.
I will schedule a post each day explaining why I’m absent.

If you want to interact with me in public, you can always leave a comment on one of my blogs (Ranting Soccer Dad, Mostly Modern Media, Duresport), or join me at my Facebook page. Facebook isn’t perfect, but it’s better than Twitter.

In the meantime, please let me know if Patton Oswalt tweets anything funny.

Duresport.com