As part of the research for the Ranting Soccer Dad Guide to Youth Soccer, I’ve looked up where every current men’s or women’s national team player or recent call-up played youth soccer.
I started at Wikipedia but then verified every mention of past clubs (not complete, but all accurate!) using college and U.S. Soccer bios among other information. In some cases, I found more clubs on the bios and added them to the list.
Enjoy, and feel free to suggest anyone or any club that should be added.
ARIZONA
Danilo Acosta: Real Salt Lake AZ
Julie Ertz: Sereno SC, Arizona Arsenal (formerly Gilbert SC)
Justen Glad: Real Salt Lake AZ
Ashley Hatch: Legends FC (Calif.)
Brooks Lennon: Real Salt Lake AZ
Sydney Leroux: Sereno SC
—————————————————————-
CAL NORTH
Abby Dahlkemper: MVLA Avalanche
Tierna Davidson: De Anza Force
Lynden Gooch: Santa Cruz Breakers
Nick Lima: De Anza Force, San Jose Earthquakes
Megan Rapinoe: Elk Grove United
Lynn Williams: East Fresno Fusion, CVSA, Bullard Valley FC
Chris Wondolowski: Diablo Valley SC, Mustang
CAL SOUTH
(Historical: Nomads had Steve Cherundolo, Marcelo Balboa, Eric Wynalda, Paul Caligiuri, Frankie Hejduk, Shannon MacMillan, Jovan Kirovski)
Paul Arriola: LA Galaxy, Arsenal FC
Steve Birnbaum: Pateadores, Irvine Strikers
Joe Corona: Nomads
Marky Delgado: Chivas USA, Cosmos West, LAFC Chelsea, ISES Strikers, Arsenal FC
Benny Feilhaber: Irvine Strikers
Ashley Hatch: Legends FC (commuted from Arizona)
Hailie Mace: Eagles SC
Alex Morgan: Cypress Elite, AYSO
Michael Orozco: Irvine Strikers
Chris Pontius: Irvine Strikers
Christen Press: Slammers FC
Christian Ramirez: San Diego Surf, Pateadores, Irvine Strikers
Cristian Roldan: Union Independiente FC (also national high school player of the year)
Amy Rodriguez: Laguna Hills Eclipse, West Coast SC
Brandon Vincent: Real So Cal, Strikers FC, South Coast Bayern
Jorge Villafana: Chivas USA (joined after winning reality show)
Bobby Wood: Irvine Strikers (moved from Hawaii; then moved to Germany at age 14)
Gyasi Zardes: LA Galaxy
McCall Zerboni: SoCal Blues
—————————————————————
COLORADO
Jaelene Hinkle: Real Colorado
Lindsey Horan: Colorado Rush
Ethan Horvath: Real Colorado
Jaelin Howell: Real Colorado
Matt Polster: Colorado Rapids (anywhere in Nevada before that?)
Mallory Pugh: Real Colorado
Sophia Smith: Real Colorado
—————————————————————
CONNECTICUT
Alyssa Naeher: South Central Premier, Yankee United
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DC METRO
Bill Hamid: D.C. United, Premier AC (his father’s club — disclaimer: Ranting Soccer Dad’s son also has played for Premier AC)
Ian Harkes: D.C. United
Ali Krieger: Prince William
Midge Purce: Freestate, SAC, Bethesda, Potomac
C.J. Sapong: Prince William
Andi Sullivan: Bethesda, McLean
—————————————————————
FLORIDA
Jozy Altidore: Schulz Academy, Boca Raton Soccer Club
Alejandro Bedoya: Weston Fury
Morgan Brian: Ponte Vedra Storm (lived in Georgia and commuted)
Ashlyn Harris: Indialantic Force, Seminole Ice, South Brevard United, Palm Bay Rangers
Dax McCarty: Central Florida United
Graham Zusi: FC America (now GPS Orlando)
—————————————————————
GEORGIA
Joe Bendik: Cobb FC/SSA
Morgan Brian: Ponte Vedra Storm (Florida)
Jane Campbell: Concorde Fire, North Atlanta Soccer Academy
Sean Johnson: Atlanta Fire
Kekuta Manneh: Georgia Rush (joined Rush organization in Gambia; later moved to Texas)
A historical reminder here: Four years after Richard Nixon just demolished George McGovern 520-17 in the electoral vote, the USA elected a Democrat named Jimmy Carter.
Granted, the situation had a few unique factors. Nixon threw it all away with Watergate. Carter was a Southern Baptist, making him a little more palatable to conservatives than more modern Democrats. But he had solid progressive credentials and eventually left his denomination for that reason. And the causes of the 60s radicals were certainly not dead.
The point for soccer people? Giving up after the election of Carlos Cordeiro is simply ridiculous.
The Chattanooga summit showed a healthy willingness to innovate, though I still have doubts about the lack of experienced people working with them. Why were so few traditional USASA clubs represented, for one thing?
And now we finally have some extended thoughts — once you battle your way through SI’s obnoxious autoplay video and pop-up ads — from a presidential candidate. Unsurprisingly, it’s Kyle Martino, the “change” candidate who showed more potential than most in bridging the gap between the conservative old guard and the “hey, I just discovered soccer two years ago, and now I know everything — America doesn’t have pro/rel because it’s stupid” contingent.
Martino gives us a behind-the-scenes glimpse at how things went down, including a surprise change of opinion in the youth soccer establishment. But he isn’t griping. He understands why voters broke toward Cordeiro and sees potential in the new president.
And Martino puts the focus back where it really needs to be — youth soccer. He’s jumping into that arena himself, working with Street Soccer USA, where initiatives such as putting futsal goals on basketball courts are a natural fit.
Make no mistake — that’s where the rot lies in U.S. Soccer. It’s astounding to see exponential growth in the amount of soccer on TV and the level of fan interest while the participation level is stagnant or worse. We’re losing recreational players before they can become elite players. And we’re giving elite players a muddled pathway, with the Development Academy and the ECNL playing a giant game of Risk across North America.
U.S. Soccer took a laissez-faire attitude for decades. Then they stepped in with the Development Academy, competing with rather than bolstering programs that had been in place (and developed some damn good players), and a ridiculous birth-year age-group mandate that any veteran of youth soccer could’ve told them was a really bad idea. As Martino points out, these moves alienated and marginalized people who may not have been perfect but had valuable expertise and experience.
Seems like there’s a lesson in all that for the “change” movement as it focuses on the other aspects of change, from promotion/relegation to … promotion/relegation. Yeah, there’s not much else.
Bring the new ideas. Have good honest discussion about them. But don’t marginalize the people who have built things that work. Even the people who’ve built things that didn’t work have experience worth sharing. You learn more from failure than success.
Opportunities are still there. But an “us vs. them” mentality isn’t going to help. Gotta build some bridges if you want to get across the river.
Come up with something akin to the NCAA’s March Madness?
Come up with something that gives soccer clubs what they’re all seeking through promotion/relegation — opportunity?
Let’s point out early — this is not a substitute for a promotion/relegation system. This idea works with open systems and closed systems. It works if the USA remains on the Brazilian calendar or switches to the English calendar.
It does work best if pro soccer has, like the NCAA, a lot of regional leagues. (Or regions within a larger national framework, if you prefer.) We should have that. In a country this size, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to have a national third division, then a national fourth division and so forth. Other countries split into regional play a few levels down the pyramid — Germany and France at the fourth, Spain at the third, even England at the sixth.
In fact, if you prefer a soccer model to a basketball model, just tell yourself we’re modeling all this after the German Futsal Cup.
Here’s the idea: No more MLS-only (or, if we’ve radically changed the league system, no more Division 1-only) tournaments. Maybe not even a national tournament for a Division 2 or Division 3 league, but if someone wants to put together the equivalent of an FA Trophy or special event to crown a “D3” champion, fine.
But this is the tournament that determines the USA and Canada’s professional champion. Each year, we’ll have three top-tier trophies:
Pro League Champion: Determined by league play, wrapping up either in May or December, depending on which calendar we pick.
U.S. Open Cup Champion: Probably determined in August, depending on whether we want this to include “summer league” teams (PDL, much of the NPSL, etc), but that’s another conversation.
Pro Cup Champion: Late January through February.
The format would depend on many factors. But here’s one hypothetical idea:
24 teams: The champion of every regional pro league (D3, USASA, whatever), a couple of teams from D2 and the rest from D1.
Three-team round-robin groups. Everyone gets at least two games that way.
The eight group winners play a simple knockout tournament. Total of five games for the finalists.
Maybe you could also do a 32-team tournament. Maybe double-elimination instead of the round-robin groups. All good.
You could do brackets, like the NCAA Tournament. You’d have the occasional blowout, but you’d have the occasional upset.
It would finish up in late February, one of the deadest times in the U.S. sports calendar. Not yet NCAA Tournament time. Not yet the stretch run of the NBA or NHL. No baseball, aside from autograph-seekers in Florida. No gridiron. (During Winter Olympic years, you’d have a conflict, but maybe creative scheduling could help.)
And every pro team would have an opportunity to win a national championship. Every year. No matter which division they’re in.
Opportunity’s what everyone wants these days. Right?
(This post has been updated three times. I blame Zoidberg.)
After a few weeks of post-election doom and gloom on Twitter, it’s refreshing to see the “change” movement in U.S. Soccer moving forward with something constructive.
The Summit for American Soccer in Chattanooga asked a lot of interesting questions:
Can we have professional teams outside the restrictive Pro League Standards?
Is U.S. Adult Soccer the best gateway to accomplish that?
How do we build something sustainable?
And the questions showed how quickly things have progressed. Consider that, as of a couple of weeks ago, Jacksonville Armada owner Robert Palmer was under the impression that the USASA wasn’t an option.
But it can. And that tweet was in response to me asking why they didn’t follow the lead of the ASL, which has already gone that route, albeit in more obscurity than the people at the Summit would want. (Hey, my Twitter feed is good for something!)
What was missing?
The people who could give the best answers.
A lot of intriguing people with interesting ideas were in the room. But aside from U.S. Adult Soccer president and longtime U.S. Soccer board member John Motta, there wasn’t much institutional knowledge.
(UPDATE: Chris Kivlehan informs me that John Motta wasn’t there. I did learn very late in writing this post — it’s the last paragraph of Nipun Chopra’s report — that some U.S. Soccer personnel were in attendance.
(UPDATE UPDATE: Nipun has clarified that no USSF personnel were present.)
“Good,” you might say. “We need fresh ideas.”
Sure, but knowledge is not a bad thing. Whether you consider U.S. Soccer a flawed organization or an outright enemy, nothing good can come from misunderstanding it. And it’s good to learn from people who’ve tried to do similar things in the past, such as the team owners who were involved when the USISL tried to move toward pro/rel in the past.
(By the way — the MLS/USL partnership is a relatively recent thing, and it might not be as solid as you think. Partnership efforts early in the MLS era were clumsy and quickly fell apart, and people who’ve followed the lower divisions for more than a few years will remember when the two leagues were not close. So seeking the advice of a USL/USISL/A-League team owner circa 1998 or 2005 would not be the same as calling Don Garber.)
And there was one notable absentee: Peter Wilt. The explanation I’ve received from Chattanooga FC chairman Tim Kelly, the organizer and host, is that the summit was geared toward clubs rather than leagues, so there was no need to bring in the man trying to get the third-division (for now) NISA off the ground. Other league representatives — the NPSL’s Joe Barone and a few folks from the ASL — are also club representatives. Yet they found room at the last minute for the NASL’s Rishi Sehgal to participate on a panel called “Soccer Landscape,” which seems odd.
But Wilt isn’t just some guy with a league idea that may or may not work. He’s a start-up specialist: Chicago Fire, Chicago Red Stars, Indy Eleven, indoor teams, etc. He’s also a former USSF board member. And it’s not as if he’s some tool of the “establishment” — he campaigned quite vociferously for Eric Wynalda’s presidential run.
At some point, bringing in people like Wilt and others with experience is simply due diligence. You have to do research on several issues. Having too many like-minded people with similar (and not much) experience in one room can quickly lead to unproductive groupthink. And no, having Stefan Szymanski in the room isn’t going to help — like a lot of economists, he falls prey to thinking solely in terms of economic models and ignores the historical and cultural forces that affect pro soccer as well. (See Paul Gardner’s classic column from the MLS players’ suit, where Gardner memorably shredded the testimony of a sports economist called in as an expert witness and ridiculed players who took the stand and pretended not to know that the league below England’s Premier League is below England’s Premier League.)
Let’s be clear here — the tinfoil brigade in the U.S. soccer community may be declining in influence as thoughtful new leaders like Kelly, Palmer and Dennis Crowley rise up. But it’s not gone. Consider what happened this week, thanks to a Twitter account that appears to have some influence among some of the “change” contingent’s most notable voices:
Which is utter nonsense. The nominees for the Hall of Fame meet specific, objective criteria that are published for all to see. (An omission from those criteria: A nominee who isn’t named on 5% of the ballots in a given year will not be on the ballot the next year. If you find someone who meets the criteria but isn’t on the ballot, that’s the likeliest explanation. The other possible explanation is incomplete records, in which case please let me know and I’ll pass it along to the folks at the Hall. Or tell them yourself. They’re not out to omit anyone.)
I don’t know if that tweet was intentionally misleading, but (A) it would be consistent with that account’s behavior in the past and (B) whoever runs it hasn’t bothered to correct or clarify the record.
These are not the people the “change” contingent wants as allies. They are trying to “change” people with slander, which never works. If you think honesty and transparency are lacking in the current soccer climate, why would you add more dishonesty from the veil of anonymity?
And those folks would be happy to hijack this movement. Consider the truck, parked outside the United Soccer Coaches convention in Philadelphia, which was intended to undermine candidates Kathy Carter and Carlos Cordeiro but may have helped get the latter elected because it was so nasty, clumsy and lacking substance.
Even those with better intentions can get caught up in attributing to malice that which can be attributed to something else. Consider this, from Chris Kivlehan’s report at Midfield Press:
While there was a sentiment to be open minded and give new USSF president Carlos Cordeiro a fair shot individually, the overall feeling toward the USSF board still heavily influenced by Sunil Gulati and Don Garber is one of skepticism. For example, a recently effort to get the New York Cosmos, Jacksonville Armada and Miami FC US Open Cup berths via the USASA was shot down according to one source at the meeting. Due to the perceived bias of the USSF board toward MLS and USL, many see investing hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars into a professional soccer club under the PLS as risky.
The U.S. Open Cup rules, for better or worse, require a team to be in good standing in a league throughout the competition. That’s why amateur club El Farolito is out this year. The same rules also ban a lot of USL teams from the competition because they’re owned by MLS owners, a rule that was passed in Spain a couple of decades ago and Germany more recently. All of those rules can be debated on their merits, but it’s not some sort of ad hoc decision to ban the Cosmos and Miami this year.
So, as with so many other aspects of U.S. soccer, what some call conspiracy actually has a more prosaic rationale.
(UPDATE: That said, the Cosmos have asked why teams have moved from the NASL to USL have been allowed into the Cup this year. Will probably update again whenever we get a response.)
The “change” movement failed in the election because voters saw too many accusations, many unfounded, and not enough experience to back up the ideas. That’s a mistake this movement needs to avoid repeating.
Frankly, the NASL failed for similar reasons. Starting from the fateful moment in which they turned away from an MLS partnership in 2012 and accelerating through several changes in management and ownership, the NASL gained more bombast and less experience. The league lost a lot of good will. Then lost a lot of teams. Then lost its D2 sanction.
And now what’s left of the NASL has gummed up the works with a couple of lawsuits. There’s no way U.S. Soccer is going to revise the Pro League Standards (or implement my pet proposal to replace the Pro League Standards with Pro Club Standards, which would be in line with the “Club >> League” philosophy we’re getting from Chattanooga) while they’re being sued. (Maybe the Chattanooga organizers invited Sehgal so they could send the message that they care about the remaining NASL clubs but not about the albatross of the NASL brand name? Maybe?)
All of which raises another question — does this group really want the backing of Riccardo Silva (Miami) and Rocco Commisso (Cosmos), who seem quite cozy in their embrace of the “burn it all down” brigade?
One more person the Chattanooga change group should consider calling in: Steven Bank, the lawyer who writes terrific explanatory pieces on the soccer law landscape. Bank’s most recent piece (linked above) throws cold water on the assumption in Chattanooga that “adopting promotion and relegation is not only the proper course for US Soccer to pursue legally …”
We should also ask what’s stopping the Chattanooga group from chatting not only with Peter Wilt’s NISA (which could theoretically be part of a pyramid they’re envisioning) but also the USL. I for one don’t think the USL is expanding with the sole purpose of taking markets away from another pro league. I think they’re expanding for the same reason the NPSL adds a couple dozen teams at a time. They want to be bigger.
So that’s a look at who was and was not in Chattanooga and why it matters. Here’s a quick look at some specifics being tossed around, thanks to some info I’ve received and a report by Chris Kivlehan at Midfield Press (and now a report by Nipun Chopra at SocTakes):
Should we form a new federation?
Apparently not. Kivlehan says that idea “was quickly put aside as a quixotic initiative unlikely to succeed in swaying FIFA.”
USSF is a large organization. It’s not about a couple of people on the board. It also includes people who are trying to build up the Open Cup, people who are really trying to dig into youth soccer’s problems, and people who are trying to secure the money it’ll take to fix both of those things. (By the same token — FIFA has good people, too. Not just the people who gave one World Cup to a doped-up dictatorship and another to a desert country building stadiums with slave labor, then look the other way when such things are brought to light. If we’re not breaking away from FIFA over the deaths of abused workers in Qatar, why break away from USSF over the Pro League Standards?)
Should we play unsanctioned professional soccer?
Look, there’s always the MASL! So far, FIFA doesn’t seem to have banned those players from FIFA-sanctioned futsal and beach soccer events.
But Kivlehan points to the problem here: “Another potential route would be to play without sanctioning from USSF, which would introduce challenges around FIFA player contracts, hiring referees for matches and would result in exclusion from the US Open Cup.”
We have enough trouble finding and keeping good referees. No need to split them between a sanctioned organization and an unsanctioned organization.
Um … many of us are still using college players …
That’s a point so many people forget. There’s a slide showing the Kingston Stockade’s financials (all open source, thanks to Dennis Crowley’s vision of ultimate transparency) that shows a couple of areas of improvement from 2016 to 2017. One constant: “Player Roster: $0.”
Some people involved with lower-division soccer insist on referring to it as “pro” or “semi-pro” or “pro-am.” Occasionally, you’ll find a professional team registered in one of these leagues. If a single college player is on that team, it’s not “pro.”
… and we want to keep travel costs down …
This might be an area where reasonable people differ with Peter Wilt, who has been known to insist travel costs aren’t as much of a barrier as people think. The Kingston slide has an exclamation point next to a line item showing “travel and hotel” cost dropping from $10,615 to $0. That’s a pretty big deal for a team that lost $36,799 in 2016.
Here’s Chris Kivlehan again:
Previously there had been talk of a multi-tier setup within NPSL, with a national level (likely consisting of the NASL teams and the 7 NPSL clubs that had NASL Letters of Intent per court documents), a full season elite amateur level for those ready for a longer schedule but not necessarily ready to go fully pro and then the traditional short season NPSL league. The momentum in this discussion shifted to a flatter, more regionalized setup to start with, but this is likely open to discussion in future meetings.
Please don’t tell anyone Dan Loney, violent slayer of pro/rel propagandists, has been saying the same thing for years.
Also note from that quote from Chris …
Are we playing summer or full-season?
Here’s a bit of disconnect within the “change” movement. Eric Wynalda insists we should all be on the English calendar to align transfer windows. The NPSL, like the WPSL, UWS and PDL, plays in the summer.
Granted, that’s a side effect of using college talent.
We need stadiums
No kidding. Everyone needs stadiums. And this is where people who’ve been through stadium-building wars (again, Peter Wilt springs to mind) would be useful to have in the conversation. D.C. United didn’t spend 22 years in RFK Stadium because they were attached to the raccoons.
Can fans own the teams?
It’s a romantic notion that has the backing of Wilt and a lot of folks within the NPSL. It may be limiting in the long run — the Bundesliga may end up doing away with group ownership so German clubs can keep up with the Premier League’s owner-oligarchs — but as long as a club can put up a reasonable performance bond for the level at which it competes, does it matter?
But as Nipun reports: “Per Kelly, the idea of supporter ownership received pushback from some of the attendees.”
That surprises me a bit.
Can we make money streaming?
Ask the NWSL folks. This is where facilities matter — the Maryland SoccerPlex, home of the Washington Spirit, has immaculate fields but wiring that doesn’t lend itself to 21st century Internetting.
MOVING FORWARD
The idea of clubs being more important than leagues is long overdue. One slide put it well: “Leagues should be thought of as networks and platforms for the promotion of its clubs.”
And the message of ending divisiveness is long overdue. U.S. soccer has spent generations beating itself up. The old ASL was huge in the 1920s and then collapsed, thanks to the Depression but also the egos of those involved.
It needs to go farther. Best practices need to be shared more widely. How did Peter Wilt build fan loyalty with the Chicago Fire? What were the early Rochester Rhinos doing well? How did Atlanta United — to the surprise of native Georgians like me — get 70,000 people in the door with a tremendous atmosphere?
Ultimately, this group and the MLS wing of U.S. Soccer need to build bridges. But until that day, calling upon the lessons of history — and calling upon those who lived them — is not a bad idea.
Do you know Mike Davitt? Until a few weeks ago, I didn’t, either. He’s a longtime soccer coach who, like many longtime soccer coaches do, also became a soccer parent. He’s originally from Kearny, N.J., hallowed ground for U.S. soccer.
After listening to a few of my rants, he emailed me and said he didn’t think youth soccer was doomed. It might even be a good thing.
I’ve been hoping to find people like that for the podcast, and so we chatted. Our conversation (starting around the 15:00 mark) ends up with an interesting idea on educating coaches, which is an issue that popped up in the big election. We talk about the positives of having an alphabet soup of leagues and organizations, how to help parents make educated decisions (23:00, including a suggestion that we should stop using the word “academy” unless you’re in the DA), how to watch out for players’ self-esteem (32:40), and how to keep score.
But first, I ranted. A little. I talked a bit about the big Chattanooga summit (4:25 mark) that may be the first big step toward a new pro league.
I’m working on a guide to the frequently recurring arguments (FRA?) about promotion/relegation, and I got on a roll when I was answering the complaint that my modified promotion/relegation idea (see an example with teams plugged in) is too complicated for anyone to follow.
Here’s the response:
Let’s say you follow English soccer. The top two tiers of the league are simple, sure — three up, three down, like a sergeant’s insignia or the end of an inning in baseball. Well, the Championship throws in a twist, with the third- through sixth-place teams in playoffs for that last Premier League spot, but that’s not so bad.
And the Premier League has qualification for Europe — assuming England’s coefficient is still high enough, they’ll send three teams to straight to the Champions League group stage, then the fourth-place team to the Champions League playoff round, and the fifth-place team qualifies for the Europa League group stage. Then the FA Cup winner qualifies also qualifies for the Europa League group stage, and the EFL Cup winner qualifies for a Europa League playoff round.
Of course, the FA Cup winner may also be in the top five of the Premier League, in which case that Europa League spot goes to the next-best team in the EPL. And the EFL Cup winner may qualify for the Champions League or Europa League group stage, in which case the Europa League playoff spot goes the the next- (or next-next-) best team.
And the Europa League champions qualify for the Champions League the next year, so that adds a further reshuffling.
So what are those Cup competitions? Well, the FA Cup starts with 737 teams, with the lowest-tiered entries playing in the extra preliminary round, then the preliminary round, then four qualifying rounds before reaching the first round proper, which is when the fully professional Football League enters. But not the Premier League and Championship, whose teams enter in the third round in January and often play their reserves until it looks like they might have a chance of winning the thing.
But wait, there’s also the EFL Cup, now called the Carabao Cup.
No, not Caribous.
The EFL Cup is only for “League” teams — though the fifth and sixth tiers are no longer the “Conference” but rather the “National League.” The semifinals are two legs, just to add to the fixture congestion for EPL teams after the “festive fixtures” just when some might like to rest up for the resumption of European play. That differs from the FA Cup, in which a drawn game is replayed. (In Football Manager, if my team is struggling with injuries, I may try to lose a close game intentionally just to avoid a replay.)
Oh, did we mention all of these competitions go on at the same time? Maybe Chelsea could recall one of its 33 players on loan.
SCENE: A dimly lit room in Columbus Crew Stadium, January 2002
PARTICIPANTS:
Don Garber, Major League Soccer commissioner and former National Football League executive
Lamar Hunt, owner of the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs, founding owner in the American Football League and North American Soccer League, owner of two MLS teams: Columbus Crew and Kansas City Wizards, soon to be three (Dallas Burn)
Robert Kraft, owner of the NFL’s New England Patriots, owner of MLS’ New England Revolution, recent owner of the San Jose Earthquakes
(participating via hologram) Philip Anschutz, owner of the Los Angeles Galaxy, Chicago Fire, Colorado Rapids, MetroStars, D.C. United and part of the San Jose Earthquakes
GARBER: Gentlemen, thank you for meeting here. Let’s take a moment to acknowledge the supremacy of the greatest sport in the world, gridiron football.
ALL: Hike!
GARBER: Thank you. Now, as you know, we have the perfect opportunity to kill off soccer once and for all. The Sept. 11 attacks have really rattled the economy, and we project the Dow Jones will be in the 7,500 range by March 2003.
ANSCHUTZ HOLOGRAM: Gooood … gooood …
KRAFT: Wow! Remember when it was over 10,000?
GARBER: Yes, thank you for continuing the exposition. So now is the time we strike.
HUNT: Yeah, well, what are you going to do this time? You already absorbed my football league and killed off the USFL.
KRAFT (laughing): Yeah, the USFL. Ha! That Trump guy will never amount to anything.
HUNT: And the NASL … (tears up) … we had Pele! And Beckenbauer! And George Best!
KRAFT: Who?
HUNT: Really good player, though he didn’t play for the Cosmos. The NASL had a few of those.
GARBER: Yes, Lamar. I know. The NFL really came after you, and the NASL and NFL wound up in court. You don’t want to go down that road again, do you? Or do you no longer enjoy owning the Kansas City Chiefs?
HUNT: OK, OK. What do you have in mind?
GARBER: Well, we could just close MLS. We’ve made it look like a good effort, and no one would blame us if we simply gave up now. No one else is lining up to invest, and the A-League is just limping along.
KRAFT: I don’t know. I like the Montreal team. And Seattle, Portland and Vancouver look OK.
GARBER: Yeah, whatever. Anyway, if we folded MLS right now, it would probably be another decade or more before someone else tried again. I mean, the 2002 World Cup is in Japan and South Korea, and no one’s really trying to market it right now.
HUNT: The U.S. team stinks right now, anyway. Reyna and O’Brien are always hurt, and they’re actually trying out Tony Sanneh! Can you believe that? They may actually give some playing time to those kids Donovan and Beasley! (chortles)
GARBER: All true.
KRAFT: So, fold the league. Then sit back quietly and sabotage any effort down the road to start again, right?
GARBER: No. I have something far more complicated in mind …
(pause)
KRAFT: Why?
GARBER: Because this is far more … genius. (HA HA HA HA HA …)
ANSCHUTZ HOLOGRAM: Gooood … gooood …
GARBER: Let’s form a marketing company, Soccer United Marketing. We’ll bundle MLS rights with the World Cup rights nobody wants right now. And I hear IMG wants out of the U.S. Soccer deal, so we’ll take that over, too.
HUNT: By golly, we’ll own everything!
GARBER: Right.
HUNT: So THEN we shut everything down?
GARBER: No, no. That’ll be too suspicious. We’ll invest more. We need to grow U.S. Soccer until it has a nine-figure reserve.
KRAFT (spits out prototype of new energy drink): Sorry about that. This energy drink is supposed to have the capacity to make quarterbacks play forever. We’re trying it out on that Brady kid. Anyway … U.S. Soccer? Are you kidding me? They barely have enough money to field national teams! They had a hiring freeze last year just so they could break even.
GARBER: I know. So we need to get that guy who used to work for us and now works for you.
KRAFT: Sunil Gulati?
GARBER: Exactly. He’s finally vice president. In 2006, let’s have him replace Dr. Bob as president.
KRAFT: I follow you now. So U.S. Soccer will be making a ton of money and MLS will be making a ton of money, even though we all know no one cares about this sport in this country.
GARBER: Now you get it.
HUNT: So then we can sell all our stuff?
GARBER: Well, you can sell two of your teams, Lamar. Make sure you sell the Columbus team to some guy who really wants to play in Texas.
HUNT: Ha! Good luck to THAT guy!
GARBER: Right. But we’re going to take that money and invest … even more.
KRAFT: In what?
GARBER: More stadiums, for one thing.
KRAFT: Awwwwww.
GARBER: OK, you don’t have to build one. But I see soccer stadiums popping up in Los Angeles …
ANSCHUTZ HOLOGRAM: Gooood … gooood …
GARBER: And San Jose, and Dallas, and New Jersey, and Colorado, and Toronto …
KRAFT: Toronto?
GARBER: Yeah, we’ll get to that. And Chicago, and Kansas City, and Salt Lake City, and Philadelphia, and Houston, and Orlando …
HUNT: Whoa, whoa. How many teams are we talking about here?
GARBER: Oh, let’s say 20. Nah, 24. Maybe 28. Certainly no more than 32.
KRAFT: Well … I mean … I guess we can come up with all that. As long as you’re not asking us to make any more investments in anything else.
GARBER: Actually, I want every MLS club to have a youth academy program.
HUNT: Oh, so we could sell players for a profit?
GARBER: No, our lawyers and the people who will eventually form the MLS players union think solidarity pay and training compensation are illegal, so we’ll lose players to Germany without compensation.
(Suddenly, Miami Fusion owner Ken Horowitz bursts through the door …)
HOROWITZ: Guys! Guys! Are you serious? I heard what you’re saying. This is far too much money to spend! How are we supposed to do this?!
(GARBER scowls, then presses a button that summons his minions)
GARBER: Terminate the Miami franchise.
HOROWITZ: What? Noooooooooo!
ANSCHUTZ HOLOGRAM:
HUNT: Oh my. You fellas aren’t playin’ around. So we’re at least going to kill off the lower divisions, right?
GARBER: Not exactly. They’re going to fall apart in 2009.
HUNT: Oh good.
GARBER: And then we’ll bail them out and operate a second-division league for a season while they figure out how to proceed in two rival leagues.
HUNT: OK, I’m lost.
GARBER: No worries, Lamar. We’ll name the U.S. Open Cup trophy after you.
HUNT: Cool!
KRAFT: Now I’m hearing women are also playing soccer. How will we stop that?
GARBER: Glad you asked. We’re going to argue incessantly with this new WUSA league until it falls apart.
KRAFT: Sounds good.
GARBER: Five years will pass before they start another league. We’ll be friendly with that league but won’t do much to help, and it’ll eventually fall apart as well.
HUNT: I like it! So we don’t look like the bad guys, but we’ll really keep it from growing.
GARBER: And then Gulati will form a new league with U.S. Soccer funding.
(Silence)
GARBER: Oh,, and after big success in one location, we’ll urge more MLS clubs to operate women’s teams as well.
(Silence)
GARBER: Does anyone here want to end up like Horowitz?
HUNT: No, no … we’re in … right?
KRAFT: Yeah, I should make enough money from the Patriots winning several Super Bowls to …
(HUNT laughs.)
KRAFT: Just you wait, Lamar. We have an engineering program in place to make Tom Brady and Bill Belichick cyborgs. And when that fails, we’ll underinflate the footballs.
GARBER: Guys, let’s stay on track here.
KRAFT: OK, sorry. So how long does Gulati stay in charge of U.S. Soccer?
GARBER: Twelve years ought to do it. In that time, they’ll hire Jurgen Klinsmann to run the men’s team and offer up a bunch of incoherent thoughts on the youth game.
HUNT: I like it! That’ll confuse everyone.
GARBER: Exactly. And he’ll leave the program in such a shambles that not even Bruce Arena can salvage their 2018 qualifying campaign.
KRAFT: I wouldn’t think Bruce Arena would be able to …
GARBER: Whatever — that’s not important right now. So then, we’ll have a contested election in U.S. Soccer.
(Laughter all the way around)
GARBER: No, really.
HUNT: But we’ll basically just install the next president, right?
GARBER: Here’s how it’ll work. We’ll take this young executive working for Soccer United Marketing, Kathy Carter. She’ll jump into the election right when Sunil Gulati drops out.
KRAFT: Great! So she’ll win?
GARBER: No. Because the plan all along will be to get Carlos Cordeiro elected.
(Silence)
HUNT: Who?
KRAFT: Oh, I just found him by searching at Yahoo, the world’s dominant search engine. He works at Goldman Sachs or something.
HUNT: So let’s recap. By February 2018, MLS will have 20-something teams …
GARBER: … averaging more than 20,000 fans per game. Sure, some of that will be tickets sold, and you’ll have a lot of no-shows, just as we have in every other league, but we’ll have massive crowds in Seattle and Atlanta, along with second clubs in New York and Los Angeles …
HUNT: OK. And U.S. Soccer will finally be poised to make the reforms in youth soccer that we’ve needed for decades.
ANSCHUTZ HOLOGRAM: Goood … goo …
GARBER: Can we switch that thing off yet?
ANSCHUTZ HOLOGRAM: Who owns half the league?
GARBER: You’re right — I’m sorry, sir.
HUNT: And we’ll keep every other soccer league off the airwaves.
GARBER: Oh, no — forgot to mention that. Spanish-language channels will continue to broadcast Mexican league games that regularly get three to four times the ratings our broadcasts get. And NBC will take Premier League rights away from the Fox Sports World folks and put most games on the air for free, all with impeccable production values. Fox will have the Champions League and the Bundesliga.
HUNT: So it’ll be easier to watch the Premier League here than it is in England. But we get a cut of all that?
GARBER: Well, no. We’ll be competing with it.
HUNT: OK. So we’ll have a healthy domestic league spending a ton of money of facilities and youth soccer, we’ll have better leagues beating us in the ratings …
GARBER: Correct.
HUNT: … and people will still hate us because the Soccer United Marketing deal just smells funny.
GARBER: You’ve got it.
KRAFT: But people will appreciate our work in youth soccer, right?
GARBER: No, we’re actually going to make a mess of that. You see, most MLS clubs will have free academies. Then other youth clubs will try to maintain their stature even as the travel and facility requirements get more costly. By that time, the economy will have recovered …
HUNT: Under Republican leadership?
GARBER: No, actually, an African-American Democrat named Barack Hussein Obama.
ANSCHUTZ HOLOGRAM: But I’ll have built a conservative media empire around the Examiner brand!
GARBER: Yeah, let’s not go there. Anyway, the economy will be better, and tons of rich families will pay good money for their kids to get their butts kicked in our Development Academy.
HUNT: Yikes. But at least recreational soccer will be OK.
GARBER: Nope. After decades of indifference, we’re going to tell people to reorganize every soccer league in the country … or else …
HUNT: Seems like the rec organizations would just quit U.S. Soccer.
GARBER: Ummmmm … OK, we haven’t projected that yet. Let me get back to you on that.
KRAFT: So, in short, soccer itself will be in great shape. We’ll have people wearing jerseys, making Nike, adidas and whoever else happy, and people can watch soccer all weekend if they want. MLS and U.S. Soccer will be in great shape financially, but everyone will hate us.
GARBER: That’s right.
KRAFT: And then, finally, we’ll have investors who turn up around … let’s say, 2016 and 2017 … who think they know everything about soccer and want to tell us what to do, and they’ll actually have support from big-name soccer people, even though none of these folks have even read anything on U.S. soccer history, much less lived it as Lamar has.
GARBER: Yes.
KRAFT: And they’ll sue us when they don’t get their way?
GARBER: Yes.
HUNT: And all this will kill off soccer in the USA?
GARBER: Yes. What little remains will be controlled by us, the people with NFL ties.
KRAFT: Looks like you’ve thought of everything.
GARBER: Not yet. We’ll be threatened in the 2020s by Ultimate.
KRAFT: Yeah, let’s cross that bridge when we get to it.
GARBER: Thanks. Meeting adjourned.
ANSCHUTZ HOLOGRAM: Gooooood … goo- … hey, is this thing still on?
Disclaimer: This is obviously fiction. Aside from the formation of SUM and a couple of other things that actually happened. And Tom Brady’s probably a cyborg.
I get asked that question quite a bit. It’s not really my goal. It’s an unintended consequence.
I do ask provocative questions. But unlike cable “news” outlets that use fear to keep you tuning in (or keep you voting out of paranoia), my goal is to push the discussion forward. Sometimes I do a good job. Sometimes I aggravate people. Sometimes both.
(NSFW language alert here …)
The quality of my questions and my suggestions for pushing the conversation forward is for others to judge. But it’s safe to say I think about these things a lot. And now that I’m launching a new project designed to give parents the information they need to make better decisions, it’s time to re-examine everything. Again. Do I want to continue arguing with people on Twitter? Is now the best time to publish material that gives me reactions like this?
Commisso: Oh Beau Dure, you're the guy who writes all the stupid things on Twitter?
My skin is pretty thick. I paid my dues in local journalism, where people who hate your news organization will tell you to your face or over the phone while you’re trying to work. At my first newspaper, I dealt with callers who accused our sports staff of being alumni of one particular local high school (none of the five of us went to high school within 100 miles), callers who said it was just like the liberal media not to send a reporter to the middle-school lacrosse game, a caller who was pissed that I wouldn’t drive out to his farm and deliver a missing paper, and a cross-country coach who apparently just walked right into the newsroom past our alleged security and started yelling at me because I was the only person in the sports department at that hour. I can deal with a septuagenarian New Yorker who doesn’t like his thinly researched opinion questioned — at least until he’s elected president.
And I grew up believing in old-school journalism. Just the facts, maybe with some lively but impartial observations.
I got a wakeup call in 1994. Polls showed voters were getting their information from opinionated media, specifically talk radio in those pre-Internet-on-my-phone days, and they still believed — erroneously — that the country was still in recession. No matter how you feel about the Republican wave in that year’s midterms, you have to admit — that ain’t good. So I started to think telling the truth required a bit more force and persuasion than we were using.
(We miss you, Susan. The annual training sessions at the Duke student paper are named in her memory.)
A few years later, I was finishing up grad school at Duke, balancing academic work with my job. On my 29th birthday, I turned in an independent study on the history of objectivity in journalism. The quick summary: Objectivity is generally driven by business practices. In the 1800s, partisan scandal sheets dueled for attention — media historian Mitchell Stephens described them as summaries of info from the mail fleshed out with “musings, conjectures and diatribes.” That approach drew readers but maybe not advertisers — see today’s boycotts of Breitbart advertisers. Then telegraphs offered astounding opportunities to transmit news from place to place, but the start-up costs were immense, and “wire” services needed to sell their news to everyone, regardless of partisan politics. Hence the proud tradition of the reliable, if occasionally bland, Associated Press.
No matter how well-intended, a singular approach has flaws. African-American journalists rose up in the late 19th century (maybe before — the example I found in my research was that of Ida Wells, and by sheer coincidence, The New York Times posted an obituary of her yesterday) to challenge the reporting of white journalists who clearly didn’t understand the perspective of the African-American community. Then journalists challenged their own work when they realized Sen. Joseph McCarthy was taking advantage of their system of getting “both sides” of a story — and, in many cases, leading with whichever “side” spoke most recently. Edward R. Murrow — a proud son of Greensboro, where I was working when I started grad school — was the forerunner of a modern fact-checker, firmly dismantling McCarthy’s wild claims with the cold, hard truth. (Yes, he’s the subject of Good Night and Good Luck.)
But Murrow wasn’t just wildly slinging mud, and there are still a few aspects of “objectivity” that are important. From my paper:
The common thread in these definitions (of objectivity) is that facts, not opinions, are given prominence.
Part of the distinction, also a big part of my paper, is the difference between skepticism and cynicism. Let Thomas Friedman explain:
Nathaniel intuitively understood that there was a difference between skepticism and cynicism. This is a lesson a lot of us have forgotten. Skepticism is about asking questions, being dubious, being wary, not being gullible. Cynicism is about already having the answers — or thinking you do — about a person or an event. The skeptic says, “I don’t think that’s true; I’m going to check it out.” The cynic says: “I know that’s not true. It couldn’t be. I’m going to slam him.” There is a fine line between the two, but it’s a line Nathaniel always respected.
So by this point, I was firmly on the side of skepticism.
A year later, I finished that graduate degree with a thesis — still available online in a format showing off the height of JavaScript circa 2000 — about the way new media is changing journalists’ jobs. The conclusion: We’re all doomed. I was right.
But there is a certain amount of freedom in story-telling these days. The Daily Show, John Oliver and even The Onion are able to tell the truth in ways traditional journalists envy. In John Oliver’s case in particular, his show does as much research as any documentary-maker, then presents that info with a bit of humor for easy digestion.
You may argue that Oliver’s takes are one-sided. But while being fair is still important if you want your work to be taken seriously, being balanced leads to problems. It may be a coincidence that “both sides” is abbreviated “b.s.,” but it’s so apt. On everything from climate change to vaccination to evolution to gun laws’ effectiveness to whether promotion/relegation is the only factor that differentiates the USA from other countries, one side has thoroughly vetted facts on its side and the other does not. (They’re not always the same “side.” People are complicated.)
What does this have to do with me, my Twitter arguments and Ranting Soccer Dad? Glad you asked.
I left USA TODAY — which, like the Associated Press, was purposefully bland so it would appeal to the widest possible variety of business travelers who got it in their hotels and airports — in 2010. I liked a lot of the work I was doing, but I was spending too much time in the office or on the road doing too many jobs. I had kids. If I hadn’t left, I might still be Ranting, but I wouldn’t be much of a Soccer Dad. I certainly wouldn’t have been able to sign up to coach except as an occasional assistant who would miss a few games to sit at a desk or cover a UFC card.
So when I left, I gained a bit of freedom. I still don’t campaign for political candidates –the only time we’ve allowed ourselves a yard sign was for a nonpartisan school board race — and I didn’t push myself full-bore into “musings, conjectures and diatribes.” But I could at least be a bit more argumentative than typical USA TODAY content.
I became, in short, aggressively objective.
In many cases, I’ve challenged facts and analysis of my own affinity group or “side.” The best example is in women’s soccer, where I’d love to be able to tell you everything the women’s national team said in contract negotiations was correct and fair, but it wasn’t. I’ve had my run-ins with some women’s soccer players, all of whom I respect but none of whom get a free pass to mislead and demean anyone else just because they’re heroes to a lot of people.
So now that I’m doing a project that I want to appeal to parents (and players and coaches and everyone else) of all opinions and all backgrounds, am I going to imitate the Associated Press or USA TODAY of old and shy away from being adversarial?
Well … some. It’s not quite in my nature to close up entirely.
Besides, I’m writing/podcasting about youth soccer. Youth soccer has an awful lot of b.s. Therefore, if I turn off my b.s. detector, I’m not doing my job.
I’ll try to avoid repeating the more ridiculous arguments on Twitter. If you offer up some fact-addled point about promotion/relegation or anything else that demonstrates a lack of knowledge of U.S. soccer history, I’m going to refer you to my soccer bookshelf or possibly my previous writing on pro/rel. (I may one day summarize it in an FAQ.) If you have something new to add to any of these topics, great, but I might ask you to do so on my blog rather than exchange 280-character bites. (Or I might invite you to my podcast.)
I’m also through dealing with accusations and assumptions. Someone recently told me I should check out an NWSL game, so I sent her a link to Enduring Spirit, my NWSL book. (I didn’t hear back.) And we should certainly be well past the notion of assuming the “others” on Twitter must be paid by MLS or George Soros or anyone else. (Yes, I wrote some fantasy soccer columns for the previous management of MLSNet back in the Dark Ages. I wrote fewer columns than Eric Wynalda. Go call him a “shill.” I’d pay to see that — I mean, I’d be interested in seeing that.)
And if you must resort to petty insults, please remember: I’m not a wanna-be. I’m a has-been. And now I’m doing something else that I hope will be constructive and productive and something that makes us a better soccer nation. And better parents. And better people.
So if you want to know what “side” I’m on, the answer is simple. Yours. Speak up. Let me know what’s going on in your soccer community, and I’ll put it all together for us all to share.
After today’s explanation of the upcoming Guide to Youth Soccer (3:00) and a rant about promotion/relegation (4:15), my guest (12:30) is Doug Wood, executive director of SAY (Soccer Association for Youth). He starts by explaining what SAY does — mostly recreational soccer through several different entry points, including schools.
SAY isn’t the most top-down organization out there. Its leagues and clubs sometimes have diverse approaches. Sounds a little different than the U.S. Soccer mandates, doesn’t it?
Along with U.S. Youth Soccer, U.S. Club Soccer, AYSO and USSSA, SAY is part of the Youth Council Technical Working Group, which sprung up in response to those mandates. We talk about whether that’s making a difference (26:00). And yes, we talk about the ill-fated birth-year age mandate (28:50).
What happens when SAY discovers a potential elite player? See 39:30.
How do SAY players play with other organizations as well? See 44:45.
Then get an impassioned plea on behalf of recreational sports at 53:15.
Tucked away in some of my 
Duresport.com 