Category: pro soccer

pro soccer

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

Posted on 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:

  1. Supporters, clubs, sponsors and TV networks preferring more Barcelona-Juventus games to more Barcelona-Levante.
  2. At the same time, European soccer needs multiple tiers for these supporters, clubs, sponsors, TV networks, etc.
  3. Included in that: The domestic leagues have proud traditions.
  4. 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:

  1. 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 …”
  2. 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.*
  3. 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.
  4. 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:

  1. 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.)
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.)
  5. 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:

  1. The top 20 in the 5-year coefficient.
  2. Any of the top 20 in the 10-year coefficient who have not yet qualified.
  3. Any of the top 20 in the FiveThirtyEight rankings who have not yet qualified.
  4. 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.)
  5. 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.)
  6. 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:

  1. Any domestic champion that isn’t in the Super League.
  2. Any runner-up of a league whose champion is in the Super League.
  3. 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.

 

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pro soccer

Comparing the Crew proposals (spoiler alert: Columbus wins)

Posted on by Beau Dure

Just in time for Austin to vote today to move closer to a stadium agreement for the Crew, we have another stadium proposal out of Columbus.

So let’s compare.

  • They’re roughly even on aesthetics. Each stadium looks cool and has a roof over the stands. See Austin and Columbus.
  • Each plan offers something for the community. The Austin City Council has won a lot of concessions, including one for 130 affordable-housing units. The Columbus proposal includes futsal courts for the community.
  • Each one appears to be truly soccer-specific, with no pointyball tenants.
  • Each one appears to be grass.
  • Capacity is somewhere between 20,000 and 25,000, which seems reasonable.

All good. Here are the differences.

DISTANCE FROM DOWNTOWN

One complaint about Columbus Crew Stadium is that it’s too far from downtown. It’s really not. (It’s also close to a university that’s pretty substantial, offering up a lot of people from the demographic MLS covets.)

mapfre

Oh, 3.7 miles isn’t close enough? OK then. The new proposal is 1.4 miles from the same spot. Actually not a much shorter drive, but now we’re talking about potential walking distance.

new-crew.png

And here’s Austin …

austin-map

And that’s generous. The site I picked is on the north side of downtown. I was tempted to pick the statue of this guy …

The distance is, conservatively, 10 miles.

If this were an expansion bid and not something involving an existing owner, Don Garber surely would’ve shrugged and checked in on Sacramento’s ownership group.

That said, here’s the last difference …

REQUIRING AN ORIGINAL MLS CLUB TO MOVE FROM A STADIUM BUILT FOR THAT CLUB, THEREBY ALIENATING FANS ALL ACROSS THE LEAGUE AND UNDERMINING THE LEAGUE’S CREDIBILITY IN ALL FUTURE DISCUSSIONS WITH MUNICIPALITIES AND PROSPECTIVE OWNERS 

  • Austin: Yes
  • Columbus: No

We do have to admit a couple of unpleasant things here. This effort to Save the Crew — the stadium proposal, the 10,000-season-tickets-and-counting pledge, the engagement of a business community that frankly hasn’t done enough to this point — wouldn’t exist if Anthony Precourt wasn’t looking to move the team.

So MLS has to find another way to press its clubs to do better. If you want to add that to your promotion/relegation talking points, fine, but bear in mind that a lot of English owners don’t build or renovate stadiums precisely because they don’t have the guaranteed income of top-division soccer. (See Reading.)

But that’s a long-term concern. In the short term, if MLS doesn’t immediately make the Columbus stadium vision its top priority, then it’s going to be dead to a lot of its longest-serving supporters.

See more Columbus stadium renderings at Massive Report.

crew-rendering

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pro soccer, youth soccer

A pro academy and a rec program

Posted on by Beau Dure

“We all start as recreational players.”

I’ve been saying that for a while, and I’m not alone. Whether it’s a suburban U5 program with parents and size 3 balls or a kid joining a neighborhood kickabout, everyone’s first experience with soccer is low-stakes recreational soccer. Unless you think Messi was birthed as a fully formed U16 Barcelona academy player, you realize the basic truth here.

American youth clubs are usually all-inclusive. Even if they have a Development Academy program or other elite teams, they tend to have rec programs running from U5 to U19, including TOPSoccer. (Yes, I found it amusing and kind of tone-deaf that a new soccer semipro league boasted about having “the TOP soccer players in the region.” I’m surely not the only person who thinks of TOPSoccer upon seeing that, and it makes me wonder if the people running this league are aware of the complete range of the U.S. soccer community.)

Apparently, we’re not alone. If you get the United Soccer Coaches magazine Soccer Journal, please check out the interview with Espanyol’s Eloy Perez. Among other interesting things (re-typed here, so typos are mine):

Q: You have a large recreation program at the club. Can you tell me how that works?

A: Yes, we have 56 teams in the recreation program. The players can decide if they want to train one or two times per week, and to play a game on Saturday mornings.

Q: And it takes place at the training ground?

A. Yes, yes, it takes place here at the training ground. The same place that the academy and first team practices.

Q: Have you had much success bringing players from the recreation program and then into the academy, and eventually the first team?

A: Yes, we had out first player from the recreation program play for our first team last year, Oscar Melendo. He started in the recreation program when he was six years old. Hopefully he is the first of many.

Q: What other goals do you have for the recreation program?

A: For us, it’s an opportunity to work with the community, to make sure children from 5-14 get good training and get to know we are a family club that looks after its people. They get to learn the game well, to be introduced to sport, to work with others. Things that will help them.

I’m curious to know how many other pro clubs in Europe do this.

And why can’t we?

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pro soccer, us soccer

USL spending and a new D2 idea

Posted on by Beau Dure

At SocTakes, Nipun Chopra has done a deep dive into USL spending, which has really ramped up over the last decade.

You could say that’s a strong rebuttal to the notion that people are unwilling to spend money on lower-division clubs that have no pathway to the upper divisions unless they have a spare couple hundred million to spend. But it’s not that simple, and Nipun suggests we could be looking at another USL bubble as we had in the late 90s. (He actually uses the analogy of a Shepard tone, which is brilliant.)

The figure that stands out: Player salaries per team are somewhere in the $250,000-$500,000 range. That’s maybe $10,000-$20,000 per player. More likely — a few players are making a living range while a lot of others are filler.

In the grand scheme of things, I’ll always argue that I’m more concerned about women’s national team pool players barely making $10,000 in the NWSL, and I’d love to know why all these owners are more willing to spend this kind of money on the 21st through 40th best men’s teams in the United States instead of the top 10 women’s teams. Doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

But let’s see if we can make things a bit better for the men. If the NASL had one legitimate point, it was the idea that the Cosmos and a couple of other teams (look, if you’re going to say MLS operations with sprawling youth programs aren’t “clubs,” then I’m not going to call Miami FC a “club,” either) were able to pay a bit more. I’m not going to say “what they deserve” because, for the umpteenth time, I’m not going to weep for Danny Szetela wrapping up his professional career after 15 years and 100 chances while Tori Huster and other potential *World Cup players* have to play the offseason in Australia and risk overuse injuries just to keep playing into their mid-20s.

Sorry … sorry … you can tell this sort of nonsense is difficult to swallow. But anyway …

Paradoxically, I think we can create more high-paying jobs for non-MLS players if we have fewer Division 2 teams. Here’s how:

  • Let D2 teams be freed from whatever central management the USL is imposing. You may need a salary cap (I actually prefer the luxury-tax model) to keep at least a little bit of parity, but put it really high — say, $1.5 million for a luxury tax or $2 million for a cap. That might actually convince NASL holdouts to come over and play. (If Commisso and Silva don’t like it, fine. Sell the teams.)
  • Everyone else drops to D3, which would retain a stronger central league management.

What we’re headed toward now doesn’t make a lot of sense. Thirty-some D2 teams and barely eight D3 teams? Let’s leave the inverted pyramid to journalists, shall we?

So we might have, say, 16 teams playing D2. Top of my head, drawing heavily from an attendance chart and some belief in markets that deserve better (St. Louis, for instance) — Cosmos, Miami FC, Jacksonville, North Carolina, Sacramento, Indy, Louisville, Las Vegas, San Antonio, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Tampa Bay, St. Louis, Oklahoma City.

That’s 14. I’m not sure USL stalwarts Richmond, Charleston and Pittsburgh would want to spend that much.

Yes, you in the back? You have a question? Let me guess — what about promotion/relegation?

I think it’s feasible here. Start D2 with the 14 clubs (and yes, some of them are clubs — look at the Richmond Kickers and tell me otherwise) and two others.

You’d need some caveats. If the Kickers, who have opted on multiple occasions not to go big-time, don’t want to go up, don’t force them. But if the top two teams in D3 think they’re ready to try D2, go for it. Perhaps those teams would include an MLS reserve side — the USA certainly wouldn’t be the only country with reserve sides on these tiers of a functional pyramid.

And you might need some bolsters for relegated teams. If they have academies, perhaps they should have a specially designated parachute payment to keep those academies running. (I still can’t believe someone related to the Cosmos once mocked such a suggestion with a Helen Lovejoy-esque “Think of the children!” motif. If we’re not trying to develop young players, what the hell are we doing? Let’s just shut it all down and watch the EPL on TV.)

Perhaps then we could see the following steps:

  • NPSL-Pro and NISA join up with this model to give us even more D3 fun.
  • A top-tier amateur division, which could officially D4, has promotion opportunities to D3. (I don’t think relegation from D3 to D4 is necessary or advisable unless we have hundreds of clubs at D3 — at this stage in the USA’s development, it makes no sense whatsoever to bump a pro club with an academy of any sort down to an amateur league.)
  • Then, yes, perhaps pro/rel between D1 and D2.

The latter would have some criteria involved. Not just the usual “pile of money to ensure club doesn’t fold midseason” but also stringent academy criteria such as the ones Germany imposed.

And a women’s pro team. So many we can finally start paying Tori Huster what she deserves as a nice side benefit to giving a few hundred more guys a chance to earn a living in this game.

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pro soccer

Fun with international club rankings

Posted on by Beau Dure

How would Atlanta or the New York teams fare in other leagues? How about the Colorado Rapids?

We have no idea. But FiveThirtyEight runs its statistical magic on such things, so why not play around with the data and do some projecting?

First, let’s take a look at all the leagues whose clubs are in the rankings and compare them three ways:

  • Mean (average)
  • Median
  • Sum of top five (the “cross-country meet” scoring system)

This is what we get, sorted by mean …

LEAGUE COUNTRY MEAN MEDIAN TOP 5
La Liga Spain 45.3 36.0 59
Bundesliga Germany 52.7 46.5 87
Premier League England 80.0 87.0 42
Serie A Italy 93.1 99.0 58
Ligue 1 France 108.0 108.5 159
Russia PL Russia 148.4 121.0 248
Brasileirão Brazil 207.3 207.0 503
Superliga Argentina 223.3 206.0 546
Süper Lig Turkey 223.7 243.5 339
Primeira Liga Portugal 229.4 261.5 381
Super League Switzerland 237.4 251.0 668
Liga MX Mexico 257.8 264.5 848
La Liga 2 Spain 261.5 243.5 818
Bund (Austria) Austria 268.3 276.0 797
Eredivisie Netherlands 285.6 323.5 430
2. Bundesliga Germany 294.7 312.0 1075
Championship England 303.8 335.5 842
Allsvenskan Sweden 331.2 379.0 820
Ligue 2 France 340.3 383.5 951
Serie B Italy 349.0 386.0 1089
MLS USA 363.3 376.0 1277
Eliteserien Norway 366.9 400.0 1168
Premiership Scotland 368.7 423.0 1286

The top MLS team in the rankings is Atlanta United (213), then NYCFC (231, pending a likely loss to Seattle in a few minutes) and the New York Red Bulls (234). Here’s how Atlanta would stack up in each league.

  • 2nd: Scottish Premiership
  • 3rd: 2. Bundesliga (Germany)
  • 3rd: Eliteserien (Norway)
  • 3rd: Ligue 2 (France)
  • 3rd: Serie B
  • 4th: Austrian Bundesliga
  • 5th: Premeira Liga (Portugal)
  • 6th: Allsvenskan (Sweden)
  • 6th: Eredivisie
  • 6th: Championship (England — in the playoffs!)
  • 6th: Super League (Switzerland)
  • 7th: Liga MX (also in the playoffs, maybe)
  • 9th: Süper Lig (Turkey)
  • 10th: La Liga 2
  • 13th: Brasileirão
  • 14th: Russian Premier League
  • 16th: Superliga (Argentina)
  • 20th: Ligue 1 (ahead of Metz)
  • 20th: Serie A (ahead of Verona)
  • Last: Bundesliga, La Liga, Premier League

The 10th-ranked team in MLS is LAFC at 356th. How would they rank elsewhere?

  • 5th: Scottish Premiership
  • 6th: Eliteserien (Norway)
  • 8th: Austrian Bundesliga
  • 8th: Allsvenskan (Sweden)
  • 9th: Super League (Switzerland)
  • 9th: Ligue 2 (France)
  • 10th: Serie B
  • 11th: Eredivisie
  • 15th: Russian Premier League (ahead of two)
  • 16th: 2. Bundesliga (Germany)
  • 17th: Championship (England)
  • 17th: Süper Lig (Turkey)
  • 18th: Liga MX (ahead of Veracruz)
  • 20th: La Liga 2 (has 22 teams, so ahead of three)
  • 27th: Superliga (Argentina)
  • Last: Bundesliga, La Liga, Premier League, Brasileirão, Ligue 1, Premeira Liga (Portugal, barely), Serie A

Colorado is ranked 449th. They would finish last in each league except Ligue 2, Allsvenskan (Sweden), Eredivisie (??!!), Scottish Premiership, Eliteserien (Norway) and the Super Lig (Turkey). They wouldn’t be relegated in Sweden or Scotland. Everywhere else, they’re second- or third-tier.

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pro soccer, us soccer, youth soccer

SafeSport, SUM and other U.S. Soccer issues

Posted on by Beau Dure

Funny thing about engaging with Soccer Twitter: You can find yourself assigned a lot of volunteer work. A bunch of people who will never donate to your Patreon page or buy a book from your Amazon affiliate links (in some cases, they even think it’s an imposition to go to your blog, where you’ll make 0.01 cents on their visit) will demand that you do X, Y or Z, just because you’re a soccer journalist.

But every once in a while, there’s a legitimate question that I can answer. That happened this morning …

https://twitter.com/RogerPielkeJr/status/1012297332124258304

Good question, and I did some recent reporting on it that was trimmed from a story — not for any nefarious reason but because it was a long story, and this didn’t fit that well.

So here’s the part that was trimmed:

(START)

The U.S. governing bodies for several other sports — gymnastics, volleyball, taekwondo and swimming — are dealing with horrific sexual-abuse scandals. Congress has responded with the Protecting Young Victims from Sexual Abuse and Safe Sport Authorization Act of 2017 was signed — despite the name, it was signed in 2018 (Feb. 14).

A month later, U.S. Soccer member programs manager Caitlin Carducci discussed the law with state associations and affiliates. A couple of weeks later, U.S. Soccer issued a statement on the basics, specifically the need to report abuse allegations to law enforcement within 24 hours.

U.S. Club Soccer has gone a few steps farther, requiring online SafeSport training of its members.

U.S. Club’s Kevin Payne stresses the urgency. A well-meaning coach, he says, could end up violating federal law by taking internal steps without meeting the 24-hour window to report to law enforcement.

“People who’ve devoted their lives to youth sports will have their lives destroyed because they didn’t report something quickly enough,” Payne says.

So the U.S. Club effort here is essential. It costs a bit more money, but it’s one soccer expense that is absolutely worthwhile. Better to pay a little more now than defend a lawsuit or deal with the horror of abuse.

(END)

So there you have it. Some info compiled from public statements, then a bit more from an interview, along with some context and even a recommendation. Do with it what you will. It’s a good question, it’s an issue I’ll keep pursuing down the road, and everyone else should feel free to keep asking as well.

Then there’s SUM, on which I get stuff like this:

https://twitter.com/duresport/status/1012287440571297795

https://twitter.com/duresport/status/1012288098519146497

https://twitter.com/RogerPielkeJr/status/1012289261532581888

https://twitter.com/RogerPielkeJr/status/1012296841592000519

Good grief. We know immigrant children are being separated from their parents. We don’t know SUM, USSF and MLS are doing anything objectionable beyond the things we know about (to which some people have objected — some reasonably, some a little tinfoil-y).

I think that’s reasonable. And perhaps people can come up with good ways to apply pressure for more transparency. Carlos Cordeiro said he’d be more transparent, and he actually has worked as VP to change the governance. That may not be enough, and there’s nothing wrong with pressing USSF to open up a bit more, especially when the next deal comes up.

I might be able to answer other questions:

From my reporting before and after the election, the full board (including people who aren’t part of the supposed cabal) has always approved everything with SUM —  unanimously. I even specifically asked if the “unanimous votes” were all shenanigans, like the local hospital board I once covered that had a split vote (roughly 6-3 or something like that) but immediately moved to let the record show that the vote was unanimous. I was told — again, by people in and out of the supposed cabal — that the votes were legitimately unanimous.

Now — you could argue that the board shouldn’t be holding so many executive sessions, or that the minutes should reflect what was discussed in executive session. (Not “we all ganged up to silence a Youth Council rep and then gave a national-team coach a negative performance review,” but perhaps “the board then went into executive session, where it discussed the renewal of Soccer United Marketing’s contract and the latest complaint from the North American Suing League.”) I’d frankly like to see a delegate raise that point from the floor at the next Annual General Meeting, if not sooner.

But yelling at one freelance journalist (which, to be clear, Nick isn’t doing) isn’t going to get us very far. I’m actually in less of a position to get to anything than, say, this guy …

Good on you for asking, Chris.

And yeah, perhaps it would help if people with full-time journalism gigs would ask. So go harass the people swimming in venture capital at The Athletic.

Because from my perch on the thinnest branch of the U.S. soccer tree, I see things this way:

  1. It’s a lot easier to get answers when you’re (A) inside the organization or (B) working for a major news organization.
  2. In terms of major issues facing U.S. Soccer right now, I consider the January formalizing of the SUM deal very far down the list. For these reasons:
    1. USSF and SUM were demonstrably acting with a deal already in place well before 2018.
    2. At some point, we have to ask why we’re so angry about a deal that provides USSF a considerable amount of money. Same with Copa Centenario. You’re welcome to argue that the SUM deal and other USSF governance oddities give MLS too much power, but you don’t need me to spend a month investigating things for free to make your case there.
    3. Youth soccer is a freaking mess, and that’s where every U.S. player starts (aside from those we import from Germany).

Besides, there’s a lot of nastiness in the world today. I often think about ditching soccer journalism entirely to do something that might help turn back the fascist tide in this country. That might happen one day.

In the meantime, if it’s OK with everyone on Twitter, I’m going to get back to youth soccer.

After the morning World Cup games, of course.

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pro soccer, us soccer, youth soccer

When will the soccer “change” movement get serious?

Posted on by Beau Dure

This will start out on a personal level, but bear with me — it’ll get to big-picture stuff. And we’ll talk about the desperate need to change a few things in U.S. soccer and at U.S. Soccer.

I think the state of the soccer “change” movement can be summed up (pardon the SUM pun) in three conversations I had this weekend and another one in which I did not participate.

One: Someone on Twitter was surprised to learn I am not paid by MLS or SUM.

This person apologized.

I asked why he made the assumption in the first place.

“Likely because I’ve seen folks attribute that to you on Twitter.”

Not the first time I’ve had a conversation that follows this path:

  • Person attacks me, thinking I’m a paid MLS/SUM shill who hates open systems or any criticism of MLS.
  • Person learns I am none of those things and that I’ve actually put forth several plans to work toward promotion/relegation (or, failing that, a wide-open “Division 1”), few of which have gained any traction because everyone’s so firmly entrenched these days. (Some on Twitter insist pro/rel is all or nothing, which will come as a great surprise to people in the Netherlands, where they can’t seem to open a full gateway between the second and third tiers. Maybe that’s why they didn’t make the World Cup, either.)
  • Decent conversation ensues.

For those of you who are new, here’s my restatement of facts (skip to the next bold type if you know all this):

  • The only time I was ever paid by an MLS/SUM affiliate was when I wrote fantasy soccer columns for MLSNet, the forerunner of MLSSoccer.com that was run by a different company. They also hired Eric Wynalda, who suffers no accusations of being an MLS shill today though he wrote far more than I did. (And used to play for the league. Him, not me. Obviously. I played U14 and beer league.)
  • Yes, I wrote a book called Long-Range Goals: The Success Story of Major League Soccer. I was iffy on that subtitle at first but agreed to it because the standard at that time was survival. I would agree that it’s fair to set a higher standard for “success” today. MLS gave me access but paid me nothing. The book is old now and barely sells, so whatever MLS does next isn’t likely to affect my bottom line. (Maybe I’d write a sequel if something substantial changes, which means my self-interest would be in change, not the status quo.)
  • I am not personally against promotion/relegation. As a fan, I’ve enjoyed pro/rel drama since I was an elementary schooler watching Soccer Made In Germany. As a journalist, I’ve simply found occasion to explain why it hasn’t happened so far. I believe it’ll happen when the marketplace is ready for it, and I believe calamity will ensue if any entity tries to force it to happen in a way that harms MLS while its teams are investing in facilities and academies.
  • Summing up (again, sorry for the pun): I have absolutely no interest, financial or otherwise, in the status quo.
  • The fact that people claim otherwise about me should make you very suspicious of those people’s motives.

newsletter

Two: Respected people in soccer continue to associate with and even amplify anonymous Twitter accounts that regularly slander people. 

I’ve actually learned who runs one such account. Not a well-known name, but it’s hilarious that it’s someone who has played and coached for “Christian” schools. I guess they’re soft on that whole “bearing false witness” thing, though the school’s site does say good people of the Bible should not engage in “profanity” and “lying.” They list those two right before “homosexual behavior.”

When I spoke with a particular supporter of such accounts, someone I certainly respect, I got a deflection to a conspiracy theory involving Kyle Martino.

Which was far from the strangest thing I heard along those line this weekend …

Three: Someone in a position of responsibility in U.S. soccer (not the Federation) lumped together most of the presidential candidates and a few other folks into a conspiracy theory.

This theory — again, offered by someone in a position of power whose actions certainly affect others — included the following people:

  • Sunil Gulati (no surprise)
  • Don Garber (also)
  • Kathy Carter (yeah, OK)
  • Kyle Martino (again, not the first to say that)
  • Merritt Paulson (MLS/NWSL owner, OK)
  • Grant Wahl (SI writer — stretching here)
  • Steve Gans (wait … what?)
  • Hope Solo (whoa … seriously?)
  • Eric Wynalda (OK, hold on here …)

I asked for proof. I was told this person had been advised not to offer proof at this time.

But this person, apparently in an effort to demonstrate insider knowledge, pointed out to me that he/she said back in December how everything was a setup.

For Kathy Carter.

Who didn’t win.

Four: The conversation in which I didn’t participate involved the consternation that Rocco Commisso was unable to get an audience with U.S. Soccer for his “proposal.”

Hey, it’s tough to get an audience with U.S. Soccer. Much tougher than it should be. Believe me, I feel your pain. I won’t go into details here, but I’m starting to think it’d be easier to get an interview with Prince that it would be to get some specific information I’m seeking now. And yes, I’m aware that Prince has passed away. (Dammit.)

But when NY Cosmos owner Rocco Commisso told U.S. Soccer he wanted a meeting to discuss a possible $250 million investment (expandable to $500 million when others join in) if they let him have 10 years to build up the NASL, the response should’ve been the following …

Dear Mr. Commisso,

Thank you for your letter. Unfortunately, we are not able to discuss anything involving the NASL or the Pro League Standards while we are engaged in legal action, some of which you initiated, on each of those entities.

If you would like to make a significant investment in an existing league (NPSL, USL, UPSL) or a newly proposed league (NISA), you are welcome to discuss the matter with those leagues.

Unfortunately, U.S. Soccer dragged this along, letting Commisso and his apologists dictate the narrative.

Which brings us to an important point …

federation

The Federation needs change. 

When the U.S. Soccer delegates who had just elected Carlos Cordeiro left the room in Orlando a few months ago, the path forward for changing the federation seemed clear.

Voters had rejected the anointed MLS/SUM candidate, Kathy Carter, in favor of someone who masterfully claimed the “outsider, but with experience and willingness to delegate to experts” ground. A few delegates spoke from the floor, urging the “change” candidates to stay involved. The soccer community was plugged into all the issues on all levels — youth, adult, pro, even a few words about the oft-neglected Paralympic, futsal and beach soccer sectors.

Stodgy old U.S. Soccer had gotten a wakeup call. Fans demanded change after missing the men’s World Cup. Parental ire over misguided youth soccer mandates had finally reached the Board of Directors. Every issue was in play:

  • Accessibility for all to play youth soccer at a level determined not by their money but by their ability level.
  • Clearer pathways to identify and develop all talent.
  • Getting the NWSL to fill its long-vacant commissioner position and build up the league’s standards and wages.
  • Making coaching education affordable and available (and good)
  • Easing the tension in pro soccer and helping lower divisions grow.
  • Hey, don’t we have national teams that need general managers and/or coaches?

I’d add one issue that has popped up since the election: Figuring out the role of state associations when youth and adult leagues are crossing state lines and ODP is being devalued.

And then … it all stopped. Mostly.

We have a few exceptions. The Chattanooga summit failed to unite NPSL, NISA and UPSL, let alone all the other factions in U.S. soccer, but at least it brought a few good issues to the fore with some rational discussions. “Change” candidate Kyle Martino jumped to the board of Street Soccer USA to do some of the grassroots work he had hoped to do as president. Surely hundreds of youth coaches and administrators have been energized to do more work at the local level.

But the national discourse is firmly in the hands of a different group of people. I’m not just talking about the usual toxic stew on Twitter. That’s been around longer than Twitter itself, and it hasn’t done a bit of good. (If anything, it’s hardened attitudes against promotion/relegation from people who otherwise would’ve been ambivalent or receptive.) I’m talking about the people who actually have influence.

And what we’ve seen from a lot of camps are purely symbolic gestures. Yes, that includes Commisso’s proposal, which I’ve often called, in Seinfeld-speak, an “unvitation.” He had to know there was no way USSF would or could meet those demands, and now he gets to claim (as Silva did before him) that the Federation has turned down easy money out of sheer stubbornness. A similarly PR-related proposal came up at the Annual General Meeting — more precisely, at the USSF Board meeting the day before the National Council meeting in Orlando. John Motta proposed cutting registration fees, currently $2 per adult and $1 per youth player, in half. That wasn’t going to fly, given that many presidential candidates had their own plans in mind (evening out the fees between adults and youth players may come up again). Sure, Sunil Gulati was unnecessarily condescending in his response, but the result was never going to change.

Is there a chance that soccer’s would-be reformers are self-sabotaging? In some cases, maybe. Much of the public discourse is designed more for status (as superior thinker or as victim) than for solutions.

Perhaps that’s not a surprise. For generations, being a soccer fan in the United States has meant rebelling against the norm. We are the “other” — by choice. A lot of soccer fans are like those tedious people we 40-somethings knew in college who used to be into R.E.M. but thought they sold out with Automatic for the People.

myspace-stewie

So as soccer has grown more popular, that hipster “outsider” status is harder to achieve. And we all love victim status as well, which means we need an oppressor. Generations of soccer neglect are harder to personalize than That Guy Who Said Something You Don’t Like on Twitter. Or That Guy Who Had More Impact in the USSF Presidential Election Than You’d Like.

I can’t tell other people how to move forward. I’ve tried, perhaps too hard and too harshly. All I can tell you is how I plan to proceed:

  1. Muting more conversations on Twitter. I still plan to block only the incorrigible few.
  2. Getting back to work on youth soccer issues in particular.

If I had any pull at SiriusXM, I’d lobby to get Eric Wynalda back on the air. If I had any pull at other media outlets, I’d suggest more investigations on where the “change” agenda stands now. And if I had any pull at U.S. Soccer … where do I begin?

If you want change, pick a spot and get to work.

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pro soccer, us soccer

The Hall of Fame, women’s soccer, curious case of Cherundolo and bad timing for Garber

Posted on by Beau Dure

The Soccer Hall of Fame finally has a physical location again. It’ll be in Frisco, Texas, folded into FC Dallas’ home stadium.

Coincidentally, voters decided to support more than one athlete this year. We have a two-player class from the general pool, both quite worthy — Brad Friedel and Tiffeny Milbrett. And plenty of voters wanted to see an even bigger class. Consider this breakdown of the top five vote-getters for the past few years, compiled at Kenn.com and updated with the latest from Soccer Insider:

Place 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
1st <66.6% 95.00% 95.83% NA 68.97% 88.1%
2nd <66.6% 91.67% 65.63% <66.6% 60.92% 75.2%
3rd <66.6% 64.17% 57.29% <66.6% 50.57% 64.5%
4th <66.6% 52.50% 50.00% <66.6% 48.28% 60.2%
5th <66.6% 45.00% 41.67% <66.6% 44.83% 47.3%

We actually came quite close to the first three-player class since 2011 (Cobi Jones, Eddie Pope, finally Earnie Stewart) and had the highest total we’ve seen for fourth place in the modern era of voting.

So will you be spared my annual rant about stingy voters? Not quite, but it might be a little less intense than in past years.

You could call it progress that fourth-place Kate Markgraf, who was down near the 30-percent mark a few years ago, moved up a resounding 15.37 points to 60.2 percent. She just needs a little push to get in, and I think Anthony DiCicco may have provided it:

https://twitter.com/DiCiccoMethod/status/1002301760101285889

It’s not as if Markgraf was some one-year wonder. She has 201 caps. She won Olympic gold in 2004 and 2008. This ain’t hard, folks.

Two of her teammates, as DiCicco’s picture shows, are going on this year. Milbrett is mentioned above. Cindy (Parlow) Cone got the nod from the veterans’ committee ahead of teammate Tiffany Roberts and the luckless Marco Etcheverry, whose lack of induction here should (but won’t) put a damper on the conspiracy talk that MLS is controlling this whole thing. (And no, the Athletes Council members didn’t get on the ballot as part of some Carlos Cordeiro voting conspiracy — see Kenn’s appropriate head-shaking on that one and educate yourself on how players are nominated.) Let’s just say plenty of NASL 1.0 players with inferior resumes are in the Hall.

So that’s the good news. After years of baffling decisions (Briana Scurry barely made it after a few years of coming up close), voters are giving female players their due.

Things get a little weird on the men’s side, where ballot newcomer Carlos Bocanegra nearly made it while Steve Cherundolo’s support dropped by nearly 1 percentage point. I voted for both (more on that later), but I’m not that attached to Bocanegra, a solid center back who worked his way to Fulham, over Cherundolo, who means even more to Hannover than Brian McBride means to Fulham.

If I had been forced to vote for five players, I would’ve voted for Friedel (no doubt about that one), Markgraf, Milbrett, Jaime Moreno (another unjustly overlooked star of MLS’ early days) and Cherundolo. I added Bocanegra, Thierry Henry, Clint Mathis and Steve Ralston because I felt like I needed to remind people they can vote for as many as 10, and given our current backlog, we should be.

Did other voters feel the same way? Not really. After that pretty strong top five, no one really came close.

A few players gained a couple of percentage points: Moreno, Aly Wagner and Josh Wolff. We saw small drops for Eddie Lewis, Pablo Mastroeni, Steve Ralston, Heather Mitts, Mathis and Tony Sanneh. Support for Gregg Berhalter, Ben Olsen, Frankie Hejduk, Taylor Twellman and David Beckham plummeted.

Cone, again, earned her spot through the veterans’ vote. The builders’ committee picked longtime USSF president Dr. Bob Contiguglia, who just finished his lengthy tenure on the Board as past president, by a narrow margin ahead of USISL (now USL, PDL, etc.) founder Francisco Marcos.

So that’s four people. Wait, make that five. And the timing here is horrible.

Make no mistake — whatever you think of what he’s doing now, few people have done more to build the sport in the USA than Don Garber, who took over Major League Soccer in 1999 and steadied it through near-collapse. Without his leadership, pro soccer in the USA would’ve died in 2002, and no matter what the conspiracy theorists says, we would not have been better off if it had.

But Garber, like Arsene Wenger, is nowhere near his peak, and plenty of people would like to sincerely thank him for his service and say goodbye. Yes, the MLS metrics are better than Arsenal’s, but the TV ratings and declining original markets point to a worrying stagnation. As I wrote in January, he has a couple of pressing items to address in the last year of his contract, one of which is the fate of the Columbus Crew. Allowing the Crew to march southward to Texas would accomplish the rare feat of uniting old-school MLS fans and the league’s detractors, both against MLS.

Garber was actually elected to the Hall a couple of years ago but did something it’s hard to imagine anyone else getting the leeway to do. Like an NFL team winning the coin toss, he deferred.

Yes, the commenters have noted that another good way to honor the Hunt family would be to leave the Crew in that other facility the family built, the no-frills but lovable stadium in Columbus.

Maybe Garber could’ve waited another year? Or maybe he could’ve deferred until the Crew find local ownership?

So it’s a flawed class entering the Hall. But don’t let that detract from the justified congratulations.

And next year, let me repeat: Markgraf. Markgraf. Markgraf.

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pro soccer, us soccer, youth soccer

“Shoeless Soccer” and why the U.S. men will never win the World Cup

Posted on by Beau Dure

Today at The Guardian, I have a provocative piece suggesting the U.S. men simply aren’t going to win the World Cup.

At all. Ever.

Coincidentally, I recently read a book (and will be talking with one of the authors) that unintentionally demonstrates why.

The basic idea of Shoeless Soccer: Fixing the System and Winning the World Cup is intriguing — we need less formal travel soccer and training, and we need to build up informal play on harder surfaces, preferably without shoes and shin guards. The authors are a couple of Bowling Green faculty members — one of whom (Nathan Richardson) has spent a lot of time coaching and running soccer clubs, one of whom (Carlo Celli) has spent a lot of time in Italy. It’s not just a facile comparison between Italy and the USA — the authors correctly diagnose many problems in U.S. soccer and offer interesting solutions to some of them.

Given the academic background, the number of careless, sloppy errors in the book is startling. First, there’s a logical/philosophical issue — the authors condemn a method of training by associating it with one Friedrich Frobel, saying he was “a disciple of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, who in turn was a follower of Jean Jacques Rousseau,” and Bertrand Russell later claimed Rousseau influenced totalitarianism. I believe my logic professor would call that “guilt by association” — and a faint association at that.

Perhaps the Rousseau-bashing is to be expected, though, because the book is as much of an entry in the long-running “mommy wars” as it is a soccer polemic. It was featured prominently on a blog called Let Grow, which is firmly in the “free-range” parenting camp as opposed to the “helicopter” method. That’s a legitimate point of view — we parents certainly should fight our instincts to stifle our kids’ development by shielding them from failure — but it sometimes leads to messy politics and just a bit of tedious dogmatism.

russell

And some of this book reads like your neighborhood populist’s screed against pointy-headed intellectualism, eschewing research and even history. They say the USA hasn’t won a war since Eisenhower was president, which I’m sure will surprise veterans of the first Gulf War in 1991. (I did mention “messy politics.”) The aforementioned Bertrand Russell was a utilitarian at first and then evolved to the next level of trying to attain as much knowledge as possible, so it’s hard to imagine he’d scoff at the latest centrally planned training methods from Germany.

(Thus ends my longest philosophical digression since college, though I did cite Plato and the film Real Genius in my take on Jesus Christ Superstar. Yes, I majored in philosophy (and music), but we mostly read Plato, Descartes and Hume. Ask me about the cave sometime.)

Then we have the basic errors. The “Herman” Trophy. “Demarcus” Beasley — who, incidentally, is going along with the book’s underlying ideals by building futsal courts in his hometown. Author Lewis Carroll is spelled two different incorrect ways — “Carrol” and “Carol.”

And some of the soccer takes are simply incorrect. The authors say MLS tried to introduce the shootout, forgetting the old NASL. (We’ve all seen Once in a Lifetime — some of the Cosmos’ foreign stars actually liked lining up from 35 yards out for a one-on-one tiebreaker!)

(Hello, Mr. Eskandarian! And the upside-down clock is a nice touch.)

They say the 2002 World Cup team had a “nucleus” of players from Bruce Arena’s Virginia and D.C. United teams, which is a bit of a stretch — Carlos Llamosa and Tony Meola were barely involved, and Claudio Reyna was nearly a decade removed from his college days. U.S. Club Soccer becomes “the US Soccer Club Association,” which has “courageously imported coaching expertise from La Liga.” (Wasn’t every NSCAA session a couple of years ago some variant of learning to play like Barcelona?) They say the USA has produced only “second-tier stars in second-tier leagues,” which will come as a surprise to Reyna, Beasley, Brian McBride, Brad Friedel, Steve Cherundolo, John Harkes, Alexi Lalas, Clint Dempsey, Geoff Cameron, Stuart Holden, Tim Howard, Eric Wynalda, Christian Pulisic and Kasey Keller, let alone Mia Hamm, Abby Wambach, Alex Morgan, Becky Sauerbrunn …

Then the interesting ideas are often taken to the point of absurdity and beyond. They start with the notion that playing without shoes can teach players proper technique because it hurts a bit to kick the ball the wrong way. Then they proceed to suggest players lose their shin guards because they’ll steer clear of shin-to-shin contact. Unfortunately, that does little good when it comes to foot-to-shin contact — I’m still wincing from the moment I stepped in to demonstrate something in practice a few weeks ago and got whacked.

They end up almost like the footballing Amish, shunning anything that can’t be hand-crafted on a farm. The words “shiny” and “new” are tossed out as frequent insults (isn’t everything shiny and new at some point in its life cycle?), and one of the notes I scribbled on my Kindle is, “What do these guys have against water bottles?” (Or “smart boards” in school classrooms, another of the unwelcome sociopolitical digressions here. Smart boards rock.)

But the book rewards the patient reader. They aren’t the first writers to use the derogatory term “soccer-industrial complex” — I used it last year, and a search for the term turned up many references in the past decade — but they do well to expound upon its ills. We’re spending a lot of time and money on travel and gizmos (check out the obscene prices on soccer goals sometime) that could be going to actual soccer.

They clearly see a lot of the problems, some of which aren’t obvious to all youth coaches. Our participation rates are down. Coaching education is expensive and incoherent (as I write this, I’m still trying to figure out why U.S. Soccer changed its license courses again this spring). High schools and colleges have the infrastructure, and instead of trying to work with schools to reform their soccer programming, we’re turning away from it. A lot of kids turn up for rec soccer because their parents just want an hour of baby-sitting with exercise, a challenge for all of us who’ve coached U6 soccer. Then kids get to travel soccer, where their parents complain if the kids who torched the Pugg goals at U7 have to play a few minutes on defense. And the more “elite” you get, the more likely you are to be traveling to another state for a game of dubious quality when you could just as easily have a good game across town.

They even give credit where it’s due — sometimes. They see clubs starting pickup soccer sessions. They see U.S. Soccer coaching gurus encouraging individual ball skills at early ages, and the fed is admirably moving to a good mix of online and in-person coaching education.

Their own ideas aren’t bad. Having an older kid join a younger group’s practice to teach by doing sounds great — that mix of age and experience is actually one of the things I love about School of Rock as a children’s activity that we don’t get in youth soccer.

And if the “shoeless soccer” motif seems a little too off-kilter or unrealistic, consider the “street soccer” ideas they present. They’re not the only people pushing street soccer, of course — look back at Kyle Martino’s emphasis on hybrid basketball/futsal courts during the presidential campaign and Martino’s subsequent role with Street Soccer USA — but they build a strong case for some of the lessons that can be learned from playing on a small, hard surface. If you’ve coached young kids who are determined to play magnetball and clump around the ball no matter what, you might be a little skeptical that a fast surface will work wonders as opposed to your local grass (dirt) field, but it’s worth a try.

Nor are they the only advocates of free play. Apparently, in their local schools, kids aren’t playing soccer at recess, which is unfortunate. When I volunteered for the day at my local elementary school, I found myself in an entertaining 10v10 game in an enclosed space. It wasn’t perfect, but they were playing.

Playing shoeless or on pavement probably isn’t for everyone. I can’t imagine many of my old U6 rec players taking to the idea or learning anything from it. The highly motivated player, though, might love it and develop more quickly than he or she would in weekly rec soccer activities alone.

But for all these good ideas, which could indeed push U.S. soccer forward, the book demonstrates so many American traits that will hold us back:

  1. The obsession with the “quick fix” instead of an honest assessment of the generations of American exceptionalism (which doesn’t make us “exceptional” — it just makes us the “exception” to the rule) that have led us to fall behind in soccer.
  2. Sloppiness in developing those quick fixes (see the errors above).
  3. Offhand dismissal of relevant objections. The authors smirk at the injuries that can be sustained if we let our kids play rough on any surface they can find, an odd assertion given the injury (read: ACL) concerns we’re seeing these days, particularly in women’s soccer. They note an Italian club that has no mechanism for informing players of cancellations because they never cancel, which perhaps struck me at the wrong time because, just this week, I was in a basement riding out a tornado warning after informing my team that we would not spend the evening on an open turf field volunteering for a reenactment of The Wizard of Oz.
  4. Straw men that give the appearance that the speaker alone is wiser than the mob. They seem to think no one else in the USA has noticed the emergence of Iceland or its coaching education. “We fret about the wrong things in US soccer,” they say at one stage. “And our players suffer.” No, we fret about everything in U.S. soccer. Not all of it is wrong. Mathematically speaking, that would be impossible.
  5. Everything is someone else’s fault. When one of the good professors fails to reserve space on an indoor turf field, and the international soccer club must yield to the local Quidditch team, he blames Quidditch rather than his own organizational skills.

Near the end of Shoeless Soccer, we find a passage that says it all. The authors say “the grassroots proposals in this book require nothing more than a bit of humility.”

We’re Americans. We don’t do humility. We do things our own way, and if that doesn’t work out, we take our ball and go home.

But we can always use ideas, and this book has several worth discussing. Look for a podcast down the road.

 

2
podcast, pro soccer

RSD35: Dennis Crowley on putting together a soccer pyramid

Posted on by Beau Dure

Dennis Crowley didn’t just start a soccer team. He created a laboratory for “open-source soccer.”

He shares business and financial info on his NPSL club, the Kingston Stockade, on Medium. And though Kingston might not be the likeliest market to have a club that would climb an open pyramid to Division I, he has become one of the most thoughtful (or reasonable, if you like) advocates of promotion/relegation.

In this conversation, we talk about the challenges of putting together a pyramid in the lower divisions. Yes, there’s more than “U.S. Soccer stinks,” though he argues the federation could be doing more to facilitate change and stability. And at the end, he shares his experience of seeing the Stockade make their Open Cup debut.

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