Author: Beau Dure

The guy who wrote a bunch of soccer books and now runs a Gen X-themed podcast while substitute teaching and continuing to write freelance stuff.
soccer

Hope Solo is unique because …

Posted on by Beau Dure

… there simply isn’t anyone like her.

Obvious statement, isn’t it? It’s the very definition of the word “unique.” She’s an individual.

But in her case, when she’s in the news, we always have a confluence of issues that make it difficult to compare her to any other athlete. And they’re coming up again now that she has been suspended in the wake of her husband’s DUI arrest and the complex situation around it. Read the ESPN story with Julie Foudy’s insider take on what led to the suspension. Elsewhere, I’ve heard the suspension compared to a “persistent infringement” yellow card — an accumulation of questionable decisions.

But even if you agree with the suspension, which seems to be the majority view, you can find yourself in a fiery dispute.

The issues that make a perfect storm around Solo news include:

She’s an occasionally famous athlete: If you’re not a women’s soccer diehard, you may know who Hope Solo is, but you don’t follow her from week to week. She’s in the spotlight at the Olympics and the World Cup. Or sometimes in a magazine shoot. Or in a controversy.

Olympic athletes are the same way. We pay more attention to Tiger Woods getting a tooth knocked out than we do to the reason he was there, Lindsey Vonn setting the record for World Cup wins. If Tiger hadn’t shown up, a lot of people wouldn’t know what Vonn did, even though it’s one of the most impressive feats an Olympic athlete can achieve.

So in this sense, Solo is like some athletes but not like those in sports that are covered in “mainstream” media throughout their competitive seasons and in the offseason.

Her background is different from that of most teammates: That’s a major theme of her memoir. Women’s soccer players typically have comfortable childhoods. She didn’t. In this sense, she’s more like a typical NFL or NBA athlete, whose triumphs over adversity are commonly told.

So that’s two items we’ve considered. One makes her similar to a sporadically covered Olympic athlete. One makes her similar to NFL and NBA athletes. Already, we’re talking about an unusual person.

The women’s soccer community has a chip on its shoulder: Or several. And rightly so. A lot of things have gone wrong in women’s soccer over the years. Two leagues have collapsed, and not even for the same reasons. The last season of WPS was a quagmire of legal action and bizarre incidents that killed any momentum from the 2011 World Cup. Women’s soccer fans can be defensive, sometimes mistrusting perceived outsiders. I’m not judging here — it’s understandable. I feel that way myself at times. I point it out just because it adds to the emotion when a Solo story makes the news.

She has been controversial for a long time: Here, one of the closest analogues would be Allen Iverson, a talented basketball player remembered mostly for his “practice?” press conference and his legal and financial woes (ironically chronicled here by Kate Fagan, one of the participants in last night’s Twitter disagreements). Start with the 2007 incident in which she ripped her coach’s decision in a way that also insulted (intentionally or not) Briana Scurry, then add various Twitter rants (pity her old tweets all disappeared), then add the incident just before a wedding few people expected (to a man with a serious criminal record), then add her recent family fight. Charges in the latter were dropped, and we’ll never really know what happened.

She wrote a controversial book to which most people involved didn’t respond: Consider Tim Howard’s recent memoir and his claim that Brad Friedel tried to block him from going to Manchester United. Friedel responded. Howard listened to Friedel and has edited his book. In Solo’s case, most of the people who come across badly in her book (with the exception of Greg Ryan disputing one specific incident) have remained silent. They’ve decided it’s not worth the effort to get into a back-and-forth dispute with Solo and her legions of fans.

(By the way, the “From the Back Cover” text at Amazon is still inaccurate. It says Solo had four shutouts in the World Cup before she was benched. She gave up two goals to North Korea, then had three shutouts. I was told by the publisher this would be fixed for later editions. But it lives on at Amazon.)

I’ve been down this road before in a post I enjoyed writing mostly for the Saturday Night Live spoof — Hope Solo: Too unique for a double standard. (Yes, it covers the 2007 incident.)

The basic point: It’s not Solo’s gender that makes her unique — at least, that’s not the only or even the primary factor. It’s the totality of the situation. She’s unlike other female athletes, yes. But she’s also unlike other athletes, period.

Given that, I think analyzing and assessing Solo’s suspension and her media coverage require a variety of perspectives. It’s not fair to chase off veteran sports writers who have covered women’s soccer just because they aren’t tweeting about day-to-day NWSL events. (That’s a thinly caricatured reference to some of last night’s Twitter conversation.) They’re basing their analysis on a solid base of knowledge, and it’s a valuable perspective — just as several other perspectives are valuable.

“But weren’t you questioning the late-arriving media in September when they realized Solo was still playing despite a pending legal case?” Here’s the difference: The media in that case came in very late to an existing situation, implicitly insisting that the case was important now that they were paying attention. In case you’re wondering, a lot of people had similar takes, while others quietly unfollowed me. You simply can’t please everyone when it comes to a Hope Solo case, particularly because everyone’s emotions are so inflamed because of the confluence of issues above.

Once again, in the wake of her suspension, I’m not sure we can come up with a comparison to make to another athlete. What if Tim Howard had recently had a criminal case dropped, only to be out late at night at training camp with his spouse, who got arrested on suspicion of DUI? (And was allegedly hostile to the police and nearly arrested himself — the “allegedly” is important here because, frankly, we shouldn’t put our full faith in TMZ’s account of anything, including the Solo incident.) Would Howard get a 30-day suspension and a lot of media coverage?

I’m inclined to say yes. I base that on 20-plus years of covering sports, men’s and women’s. If you come from a different perspective and would guess otherwise, I can respect that. Just understand that my perspective is also valid.

“What about Charlie Davies?” some said last night. Davies was in a U.S. men’s training camp when he got in the car with a drunk driver who crashed, seriously injuring Davies and killing another passenger. Fans rallied to Davies’ support. They also questioned his decision to get in the car.

Davies made a tragic mistake. The soccer community loved the sinner and hoped he would recover. They hated the sin. And there wasn’t much point in any additional punishment — Davies’ injuries cost him a couple of years of his pro career and (barring a remarkable next step in his comeback) any future shot at the national team, for which he had been playing well before the accident.

In Solo’s case, it’s OK to feel the same way we felt about Davies. It takes a rather snarky person to want Solo to continue making headlines for getting in trouble.

And she seems to recognize that she can’t continue down this path. In her statement, she says she thinks it’s best to take a break.

This statement didn’t satisfy everyone — as if any statement could. Some people are quibbling with the need to “decompress.” But we don’t know everything that’s going on with her and her family. Some might say this statement is PR’d-up, but I’m willing to take her at her word when she says something so specific about taking time away. I don’t think it’s the least bit controversial to say she needs to address some issues before she returns to the national team.

My guess is that she’s successful. I’m basing that on years of following her career, including several conversations with her of all types — group, private, friendly, less friendly, sports-related, music-related, philosophical. And yet, after all those years, I can’t say anything about Solo would surprise me. I might not understand her any better than you do if you’ve only read about her.

After all, she’s unique.

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olympic sports

Boston 2024: Do Olympics need to be “walkable”?

Posted on by Beau Dure

Boston 2024 co-chair David Manfredi is proud of the bid committee’s plans to have walkable, compact Olympics, with 28 of 33 venues within 6.2 miles of the athletes’ village, AP reports.

But is that really important?

For someone like me, who goes gallivanting around the Olympics as quickly as Beijing buses will allow, sure. And perhaps for other reporters, not to mention all the muckety-mucks who need special lanes so they can zip across the venues to see Usain Bolt and Kerri Walsh in the same hour.

Do the Games need to be designed for people like … us?

Maybe we don’t want athletes in buses an hour a day. But the notion of cramming tens of thousands of people in a small space creates a few issues, doesn’t it?

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soccer

Women’s soccer at the NSCAA Convention (parts of it)

Posted on by Beau Dure

My current focus on youth soccer forced me to miss a lot of the women’s soccer events at the NSCAA Convention. During the NWSL Draft, I was in a pair of interesting presentations. I was in a TOPSoccer presentation during the women’s soccer breakfast. (That said, the sausage, egg and cheese-filled pretzel I picked up at Reading Terminal Market that morning was a delicious, filling dose of protein.)

I did catch a couple of things here and there — the NWSL coaches’ panel (surprisingly lightly attended), a couple of sessions that touched on men’s and women’s soccer, and the “Live Your Goals” press conference.

The latter was notable mostly for the predictable (and justifiable) media reaction: “Yes, it’s nice that you’re visiting every country that qualified for the WWC, but what about the turf?”

FIFA’s head of women’s competitions, Tatjana Haenni, smiled pleasantly and joked that she would’ve disappointed if no one had brought up the question. Grass in 2015 isn’t going to happen, but the good news is that they’re open to changing out worn-out turf, and the bidders for 2019 (France, South Korea) are proposing grass fields.

Aside from that, the best exchange from the press conferences was when an SBNation reporter (didn’t catch the name) asked if the World Cup would be diluted as it grew from 16 to 24 teams. Haenni’s answer was impressive. Sure, we might see a difference in quality between the teams, but “the positives are so much stronger.” The teams that qualify get more resources to grow. And in the men’s World Cup in Brazil, there were one or two results that were pretty shocking. (The press corps duly laughed a little.)

During the NWSL draft, I was over at a session on German player development. Sounds dry, but consider how successful Germany has been, both in taking women’s soccer seriously for a couple of decades and reconstructing its men’s development in the 2000s.

German U17 girls coach Anouschka Bernhard recalled that women were banned from German playing fields in the 1970s. They’ve taken off since then, and she says girls have benefited from the retooling on the boys side as well.

A lot of German girls, in fact, continue to play with “boys” teams (more accurately, they’d be coed teams) into their early teens. The mixed approach surely has some pros and cons, but at least we can’t say German girls are getting inferior coaching if they’re right alongside the boys.

The big takeaway from 2011, Bernhard says, is learning to deal with pressure. The German team lost on the “mental side,” she said. She didn’t specify what they’re doing to improve, but would anyone bet against those improvements paying off?

From elsewhere at the convention: What I’m hearing is a backlash against the serious ramping-up of “serious” play, all the way down to the tweens and even below. See my post from Thursday, and yes, it applies to men and women. Coaches are beginning to regret making young people give up their childhoods in pursuit of dubious goals.

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olympic sports, winter sports

Beijing’s bid for the Winter Games

Posted on by Beau Dure

Curling at the Water Cube? Please make this happen!

The rest of this USA TODAY story is more skeptical, perhaps with good reason. China isn’t known for skiing, to put it mildly. But one of their local ski resorts is getting good reviews at TripAdvisor.

And it’s probably too late to consider splitting the Games to put ice events in Beijing and snow events in Norway, so it’s either this or Almaty.

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soccer

Single-Digit Soccer: Capitalism and Klinsmann

Posted on by Beau Dure

“YES! WE ARE ALL INDIVIDUALS!”

We’re a multicultural nation. English, Irish, German, Scottish, Mexican, Chinese, Korean … we can hardly list all of our influences.

We’re also a rabidly capitalist nation. Sure, most of Europe is capitalist as well. But we take it to another level. Everything competes in the marketplace — sometimes fairly, sometimes not.

And we don’t kindly to taking orders from one entity. If we did, the Boston Tea Party would just be a polite weekly gathering, perhaps to watch Foxboro United take on Arsenal in an English Premier League game.

So in youth soccer, we have myriad entities calling the shots. Want something that U.S. Youth Soccer isn’t providing? Try U.S. Club Soccer. Or just form your own league. These organizations and others can also offer their own approaches to coaching education, curricula, club standards, etc. They all co-exist under the big tent of the terrific convention held by the NSCAA, which has its own thoughts on some of these matters.

In one popular NSCAA Convention session, “Building Champions: German Player Development,” German coaching guru Bernd Stoeber compared this chaos to the German way. Number of entities in charge of such things in Germany: One.

And the German system has a lot of advantages, as the classic Guardian examination shows. It’s certainly an improvement over the English system, which seems to boil down to “‘ello, your lad ‘asn’t played well for a fortnight, so he seems daft to me, and we’re releasing ‘im. Don’t worry — he’s only 17, and he ‘as a fourth-grade education, he does.” (Seriously — one of the factoids from the great Guardian examination of Germany’s system shows that their kids are going to school as much as any American child would, while English teens are going a mere nine hours a week.)

Could U.S. Soccer borrow a page from Germany’s book and take charge of everything here? Should they? Probably not, on both counts.

Not that the USSF has to be passive. Surely some of the extremes can be reined in. Maybe youth clubs should be required to have a director of coaching who has been through some basic licensing work, so I’ll be less likely to see a U8 team doing heading drills. Maybe they can ban State Cups and other hypercompetitive tournaments for U10 and below, when we really need to focus on development. A handful of mandates wouldn’t be a bad idea.

But the chaos of American youth soccer is simply a fact of life. We’re diverse — ethnically, economically, geographically, etc. The realities and opportunities of Southern California will always differ from those of Vermont.

In my Single-Digit Soccer session, I had coaches from Nebraska, Michigan, Alaska, Georgia and surely several other states. Some were in urban areas. Some had to travel substantial distances to get decent games. I feel a little more sympathy for the Omaha club needing to drive a few hours than I do the suburban Maryland club that bypasses the entire D.C. metropolitan area to play a league game elsewhere. Every club’s field situation is different — some are on school fields, some on county fields, some privately held.

So when it comes to reforming youth soccer in this country, you have to adapt the old prayer’s line about having the serenity to accept what you cannot change.

I’m not sure Jurgen Klinsmann has ever gained that serenity. He says the right things about accepting players for how they are, not forcing them to be something they’re not, and he has accepted the notion that players are going to take different paths at age 18 — college, MLS, Europe, NASL, etc.

But he’s also one of the people pushing kids to play a 10-month Development Academy season with one club. One environment. The Academy is running down toward U12 now, a notion that perplexed several speakers I saw. Non-Academy clubs are running similar schedules. Why is that the best path forward in such a diverse country?

Klinsmann’s native land, Germany, actually mixes things up, at least for younger kids. Back to the Guardian piece: A lot of kids stay with local junior clubs and get supplemental training from the federation’s traveling coaches.

That seems like a program even more appropriate to a vast country like this one. So does the idea of being exposed to different styles of play, different coaches, etc. Some serious games, some recreational, some just flat-out fun.

U.S. youth soccer today might be too chaotic. A light touch of regulation — perhaps mandating basic education for coaches — would help. But does anyone think an overbearing set of commandments from Chicago will work in this country?

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soccer

Single-Digit Soccer: What hath we wrought?

Posted on by Beau Dure

One common theme in the NSCAA Convention sessions I attended today:

Regret.

Regret over yelling at kids.

Regret over being too cautious and nervous to fully appreciate the opportunities of youth soccer.

Regret over creating a monstrous machine that pushes kids to grow up too soon.

I had thought that my session on the Single-Digit Soccer project (if you have an NSCAA pass, come to room 106A at 12:45 Saturday) would be too radical for some people. As it turns out, I may be the good cop when it comes to questioning the U.S. youth soccer establishment. (Lowercase letters — not talking about the U.S. Youth Soccer organization, which has graciously given me a platform to speak and solicit input Saturday).

The bad cop might be Mike Barr, a hard-driving coach and regional technical director who is being inducted into the Pennsylvania Coaches Association Hall of Fame this month. He’s already on record as a critic of the U.S. Soccer Developmental Academy and its singular focus on ignoring high school experiences for the sake of soccer. In an animated lecture and discussion today, he questioned the Academy’s push toward the U12 ranks. And he hit hard elsewhere, pointing out the USA’s decreasing returns in international youth tournaments as we get more “serious” and taking on the GotSoccer rankings that reward teams for attending as many tournaments as possible. (I stopped by the GotSoccer booth to chat about general criticisms of the rankings — the short, unofficial answer is that they’re constantly tweaking the rankings and receptive to concerns. I’ll delve more into GotSoccer at some point, though it’s technically not a “Single-Digit” issue.)

And Barr didn’t spare himself. He says he has worked to quit using profanity while coaching. He regrets some of the things he has told his kids over the years. And he admits he got caught up in the machine, pushing kids through a system he now questions.

He also had a few suggestions:

– Consider “Long-Term Athletic Development” plans that take late bloomers into account. Don’t make decisions on kids at age 7 or age 10.

– A great one for parents: “Watch a game as you would watch a play.” No one yells during a play, “Come on! Enunciate!”

– Re-examine sport-specific clubs. What if you could have kids playing two sports under the same umbrella so you’re coordinating rather than competing?

– Rather than trying to cram PE into a school day, have extended-day programs with coaches coming in to teach. (This is literally one of the ideas I’m presenting on Saturday.)

– No travel soccer until at least U10.

Before Barr, I saw Tom Farrey, an ESPN journalist who is working with the Aspen Institute on Project Play, a re-examination of youth sports that will release a major report Jan. 26. Farrey lamented our tendency to “separate the weak from the strong” before kids have even grown into their bodies. And he sees players dropping out of soccer when they don’t make the “travel” cut because they “get the message that they’re second class.”

Other Project Play concerns were the barriers that make us a curious nation that cranks out elite athletes but is also riddled with obesity. The resources are all going to the elites. We’re losing casual play, intramurals and PE. Lower-income families have fewer options: Not much viable park space, fewer opportunities to play because club sports are expensive and scholastic sports so exclusive.

Farrey would like to see the USA revitalize recreational play — both “free” play and in-town leagues. He would like to see parent coaches get more training (again, a point I’m presenting Saturday — I hope my presentation isn’t anti-climatic). And here’s a novel concept: Ask the kids what they want, not just the parents.

The other youth-oriented session I attended today was essentially a summary of research by Ceri Bowley, who is finishing up a Ph.D. in Cardiff and has some numbers that might surprise you. Would you have guessed that 62% of kids in his survey were mostly interested in soccer for social skills, with only 23% responding “football skills”? Probably not.

The focus of Bowley’s session was life skills. They must be taught in soccer, and they must be transferable to other aspects of life. That’s because only 0.0017% of players in his geographical area will make the Premier League.

I need to get a copy of one of Bowley’s slides listing six life skills and the soccer activities that feed into them. It was terrific. Take my word for it for now.

Elsewhere at NSCAA today:

– Jim Gabarra, Aaran Lines, Mark Parsons, Rory Dames and Laura Harvey conducted a lively, though ill-attended, session on the NWSL. The coaches teased each other about trades and current rosters — Parsons said Lines had eight players on his roster, Lines responded that he had 13. They talked about the challenges of signing foreign players when the calendar will make it more difficult to loan those players back to Euro clubs. And if you want to go hang out for a few months training with a pro team in the hopes of getting an amateur callup when the national teamers are gone for the World Cup, this is your year.

– I finally met longtime Soccer America CEO and current AYSO executive Lynn Berling-Manuel and had a good talk about coaching education, specifically the need to put it online. Which is ANOTHER point in my presentation. Please come see it anyway — I have other things to mention, really.

– I saw Pele. From a distance, between the cellphones of scores of other people. But I know it was him.

– Reading Terminal Market. Best food selection under one roof.

Such a fantastic event. Thanks to everyone who’s making it happen. And thank you, Amtrak — I got here with no problem at all, and I was able to chat on Twitter through the magic of wifi. (Maybe that’s a bad thing? Nah.)

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soccer

Michelle Akers: What experience is necessary?

Posted on by Beau Dure

One of the greatest women’s soccer players ever, Michelle Akers, is upset that the U.S. Soccer powers that be haven’t taken her up on her offer to help out with the national team:

Per a phone conversation with Sunil (Gulati, USSF president), he told me I did not have enough experience to coach at that level,” Akers said. “I disagreed.”

Which raises a general question: Can a former player with no known coaching experience* contribute to a major coaching staff in a meaningful way?

(*Update – She is listed as a volunteer assistant at Central Florida. In a lengthy Twitter conversation, she revealed that she does indeed have a B license.)

Several MLS clubs have had success with players going straight from the field to the sideline. Jason Kreis, winning MLS Cup with Real Salt Lake less than three years after abruptly retiring from the field to take the reins. Ben Olsen did a brief apprenticeship as assistant coach before taking over with D.C. United, which stuck with him through some difficult times before getting to the top of the East. Others haven’t quite caught up to the realities of leading a team.

If you want to coach a pro team in the USA, you need an “A” license. You get a two-year grace period. So sayeth the professional league standards.

Former athletes get fast-tracked through the process, to an extent. Those of us who didn’t play at a high level need more than two years to get to the “A” license. Those with five years of Division 1 pro experience can skip straight to the “B.” College players, like my House league colleague who played at Stanford with Julie Foudy, can often skip some lower level licenses.

A licensing course won’t turn a bad coach into a good coach. But it’ll give a prospective coach, even one with the playing experience of an Akers or an Olsen, a few new ways of looking at things. (Update: And again, she does indeed have the “B.”)

The worst coaches you’ll see, at any level, are those who learned one way of doing things and think that the only way things are supposed to be done. They’re the youth coaches who yell and scream and run unproductive drills because that’s the way they were taught. They’re the pro coaches who can’t relate to players with a skillset that doesn’t easily match something they’ve seen before.

So it’s a little disheartening to read a statement from Akers that’s all about the past. Does the USA always need to play the Anson Dorrance style? Would Akers be able to relate to a new-school player like … oh … right … they never bring in new players.

But there’s another issue of basic compatibility. Whether you agree with the latest trends of Euro-inspired possession ball or the Jill Ellis number system, would you really want a coaching staff with such contrasting visions?

The only former U.S. men’s player on the U.S. national team staff is Tab Ramos, who was always an atypical U.S. player and doesn’t seem to be trying to push the Steve Sampson style on Jurgen Klinsmann.

Sure, the U.S. women have been a tad more successful than the U.S. men through history. But both games are evolving. Bringing in someone from the past is hardly an automatic positive.

Update: Akers has taken issue with this post on Twitter, and her general point is that more people from era should be involved with the program today. And indeed, it’s a larger issue than one person’s experience. A common complaint in U.S. soccer circles is that few women are going into coaching — MLS sidelines are full of MLS veterans, NWSL sidelines are not full of former players. And then there’s the question of whether the U.S. women’s program is just too insular in general, even to the point of shutting out thoughts from previous generations.

So some interesting discussions can flow from these questions. Not that we’re likely to see anything change before the World Cup later this year. 

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mma

Bare-knuckle fighting, 21st century edition

Posted on by Beau Dure

Think “bare-knuckle fighting,” and you’re likely to think one of two things:

1. Sheer brutality.

2. Men with handsome mustaches standing upright or leaning backwards for 864 rounds as they occasionally try to hit each other.

John_L_Sullivan

(Yes, that’s the legendary John L. Sullivan,the first (or maybe the third) true heavyweight champion and certainly the last to win the title in a bare-knuckle bout.)

Bare-knuckle fighting briefly came back into existence in the wild and lawless days of early mixed martial arts. In Japan’s Pancrase promotion, fighters went without gloves but couldn’t punch each other in the face with closed fists. The UFC had no gloves aside from the one glove worn by boxer Art Jimmerson.

Why would Jimmerson wear one glove? He had a boxing career to consider, and gloves protect hands. (Why he omitted the other glove is a matter of some debate — maybe so the ref could see him tap out, maybe so he’d have one hand free to have some chance of fending off grappler Royce Gracie. It didn’t work.)

But remember that phrase: “Gloves protect hands.” Sure, they also limit cuts that form quite easily when raw knuckle meets face — watch Kimbo Slice’s backyard and boatyard scraps, and you’ll see a lot of unfortunate people with faces badly torn by Kimbo’s massive fists. But the main purpose of gloves is to keep hands from shattering on skulls.

So is bare-knuckle boxing set to make a comeback? Apparently, to some extent. And they’re going down the same route as the UFC in its early days — recruiting Ken Shamrock.

MMA fans are cringing at the idea of the long-declining, much-battered Shamrock taking another fight. He also was never really known as a puncher, winning most of his fights by submission.

What’s most interesting about this fight is that is brings more people into a mostly underground world. Shamrock’s opponent is James Quinn McDonagh, subject of the gritty documentary Knuckle. The critically acclaimed film followed Irish “traveler” families with disputes that have gone back generations, with bare-knuckle fights barely providing a moderately safe outlet for the hostilities.

Across the Irish Sea, bare-knuckle boxing is making a legitimate comeback. VICE looked into the subject and did a compelling mini-documentary.

That said, the credentials of “Machine Gun” seem a little murky. And while MMA attracts elite athletes, 50-year-old Shamrock will have to suffice for this old-school fight sport.

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soccer

Are UK taxpayers subsidizing poor spending habits in the Football League?

Posted on by Beau Dure

Yes.

on-level-termsWell, I think so. That’s the conclusion I reached after reading Chapter 7 of Ted Philipakos’ excellent forthcoming book, On Level Terms.

That might not be Philipakos’ conclusion. He’s an agent and an academic who clearly has a solid grasp of the 10 cases he discusses in the book, but he plays the role of dispassionate reporter here, passing no judgment but simply summarizing these complex cases in plain English — a difficult task he does well.

He starts with U.S. cases, leading off with the big one, Fraser v MLS — the players’ 1997 lawsuit against the then-new Major League Soccer. That suit is a full chapter in my book Long-Range Goals, and I was flattered that he cited me. But he adds valuable insight, especially in following the case through the Court of Appeals and diving headlong into the murky world of single-entity law.

Next up: two cases from the old NASL that might change some impressions of the good old days, one more antitrust-ish case and a concussion case still in progress.

The European cases are another interesting grab bag, ending with a TV-rights case I’d never heard of. As you’d expect, Philipakos has a good solid chapter on the Bosman case, which established greater player movement and wiped out a lot of restrictions on foreign players. That case made the Premier League the melting pot it is today, and the federation arguments made at the time sound positively quaint even though they weren’t made that long ago.

So what’s the deal with Chapter 7 and my clickbait headline?

The issue here is the Football Creditors Rule, which ensures clubs seeking protection from creditors must pay off their “football creditors” — players, clubs to which they owe transfer fees, etc. — in full. Other creditors — say, the UK tax agency known by the cumbersome name Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs — might only get a few pennies.

Seems fair — until you see how many clubs abuse it. “Sure, we’ll sign you to a multimillion-pound contract even though we don’t get EPL TV money and we only draw 8,000 fans per game. If we go broke, we’ll just go into administration and tell the rest of our creditors to shove it.”

So as I’m reading it, Football League clubs can still keep paying 90 percent of their revenues in player payroll, and if they can’t pay their taxes, that’s just too bad for the rest of the country’s taxpayers.

Am I wrong? And does anyone find that disturbing?

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