Category: pro soccer

pro soccer, us soccer, women's soccer, youth soccer

U.S. Soccer presidential election: Last call for questions

Posted on by Beau Dure

In one week, U.S. Soccer members — from big-shot board members to little-known delegates from far-flung state associations — will descend upon a hotel just outside Disney World and Sea World. They’ll have two days of preliminary meetings and a welcome event at Hollywood Studios. (I have not yet inquired about Fastpasses for Toy Story Mania.)

questions-flipThen on Saturday, it’s the Big Vote. Eight candidates enter. One takes over the presidency from Sunil Gulati.

And we still have so many questions left unanswered. So many ideas that haven’t been fully vetted. So many vague statements.

So let’s come up with a list of questions — some for all candidates, some for specific candidates. Then I’ll see if I can get them answered.

You can leave them as comments here. You can email me. You can hit me up on Twitter.

Here are a few to get us started:

ALL CANDIDATES

Paralympics

  1. What will you do to work with the 7-a-side program (for athletes with cerebral palsy or brain injury) while it’s not part of the Paralympic Games program?
  2. Can anything be done to start a 5-a-side program for visually impaired athletes, a sport that is in the Paralympic Games? Have you already had conversations with athletes about doing this?

Futsal

  1. Most conversations about futsal in this campaign have focused on using it as a youth development tool. But we have a men’s national team and a couple of budding pro leagues. What’s the next step for building out the game at the elite level?

NWSL 

  1. Name three things that can be done to improve the women’s league.

Women’s national team

  1. Will you try to negotiate both the MNT and WNT collective bargaining agreements at the same time?
  2. Hypothetical: You’re negotiating with the WNT. They ask for 24 players to be put on full-time salary with restrictions on the number of “floaters” who can come into camp. The coaching staff has warned that they need flexibility to call in players who are impressing in the NWSL and Europe. What’s your next move?

Youth soccer

  1. Hypothetical: Let’s say the state associations, backed by a national movement of parents and coaches, ask USSF to standardize leagues throughout the country, folding the Development Academy and other elite leagues into a clearly defined pyramid with promotion/relegation and more local play (less travel). U.S. Club Soccer, predictably, gets very upset. What’s your next move?
  2. Will you tell Development Academy clubs to let their players play high school soccer? Do you see any sort of compromise (say, letting kids play their junior and senior years)?

Open Cup 

  1. Hypothetical: You’re trying to sell the Open Cup as a separate TV property. The best bid you have is from an online streaming service that just launched a year ago. They’re offering four times as much as any traditional broadcaster. What’s your next move?
  2. NEW! Should the Open Cup run a fall-to-spring schedule that isn’t tied to the summer leagues (NPSL, PDL). If so, would you favor a separate Summer Open Cup for those leagues?

Promotion/relegation 

  1. Would you be open to a modified promotion/relegation system in which clubs can’t be relegated below a specific floor (for “major” clubs, D2; for other fully professional clubs, D3)?
  2. Hypothetical: You get a conglomeration of leagues to agree to set up a pyramid. MLS says it will not participate. The top league in your pyramid applies for D1. The task force recommends approval. MLS lawyers up. What’s your next move?

ERIC WYNALDA

  1. Some lawyers and others with experience in the nonprofit world and with NGBs are skeptical of your idea to turn USSF into a lending bank. How would you respond?
  2. Will you please, please stop saying “international calendar” in reference to the fall-to-spring calendar that isn’t used in half the world? (Sorry, pet peeve of mine.)

HOPE SOLO

  1. Where did you hear the incorrect statement that U.S. Soccer coaching licenses are not age appropriate? (The purpose of this question is to find out where she’s getting misinformation like this and whether she has taken steps to find better sources of info.)
  2. If you win the presidency, you will be in the position of defending the federation against a grievance you filed. What’s your next move?

KYLE MARTINO 

  1. In your Progress Plan, why would any club created after 2024 be “non-league”? What happens if we have major demographic and climate shifts?
  2. Why move all of U.S. Soccer to New York and not just have a satellite office?

CARLOS CORDEIRO

  1. You’ve demonstrated a reluctance to do interviews. How will you adapt to the role of president, when you be required to do many press conferences?

KATHY CARTER

  1. Is it a conflict of interest to have the head of SUM, Don Garber, serving on the Board as long as it’s been in its current (15-member) configuration AND serving as the chairperson of the Nominating and Governance Committee? If not, why not?
  2. What happened to SUM’s site? It’s now redirected to a page on the quasi-independent MLSSoccer.com.
  3. Would MLS expansion fees be cheaper if new owners did not get a share of SUM? Is there any way to untangle that relationship?
  4. Would MLS be in good shape, financially (either profitable or running a loss only because it’s investing in future growth), if it were separated from SUM?
  5. Plenty of people who understand how SUM helped save professional soccer in 2002 question whether it’s still necessary in its current form (co-mingled with MLS) today. How would you respond?

Anything else?

 

1
pro soccer, women's soccer

Time for U.S. pro leagues to treat their cornerstones a bit better

Posted on by Beau Dure

With its callous attitude toward Columbus, MLS has already staked out a “thanks for getting us off the ground, now go away” attitude that Don Garber must fix before he either leaves office or renews his contract.

Are we seeing the same thing in pro women’s soccer? It’s complicated. We might not know a complete answer until we know the lineup of teams for 2019.

But it’s not looking good.

We might be able to absolve the NWSL of blame for the fact that 2018 will be the first season of pro women’s soccer in the USA without a team called the Boston Breakers. They weren’t the strongest club in WPS — see general manager Andy Crossley’s dissections of his handiwork for more details on that and yet another reason to add Curt Schilling to your list of the worst human beings in sports. And they never really found a good home ground in the NWSL — Dilboy Stadium was about as “track-and-field-specific” a venue as anyone could find, and Harvard’s Jordan Field was OK but tiny.

So when word spread that the owners were trying to sell, no one could really blame them. We may never know what happened with the new owners who, as of a few days ago, seemed set to buy the club and continue into the new season. Was the league completely blindsided? Or should they have done more to wrap up the deal or reject it in time to let others have a chance? Would the league have a more potent voice if it made up its mind as to whether Amanda Duffy is the interim or permanent commissioner, executive director, CEO or whatever they want to call their leader?

As we know now, others did indeed leap into the fray to try to save the team. I spoke with representatives of three different camps, some of whom are opposed to each other on other issues. They were confident that they had investors with enough money to keep the Breakers running. They were less confident that they had time for everyone to get through due diligence. After missteps of the past — Jeff Cooper’s mysterious money men bailing on St. Louis, Dan Borislow taking the Washington Freedom to Florida and butting heads with authority for a year until the league finally collapsed — “due diligence” is not something that can be skipped.

Whatever happened has happened. The question now: Is there any chance of reviving the Breakers in 2019?

What I’m hearing isn’t positive. Nor is the fact that the NWSL has not responded to my inquiries over the weekend about the Breakers situation, first to get comment on the last-ditch effort to save the team and then to get comment on what happens next.

The answer affects more than just Boston. Like the Crew in Columbus, the Breakers name means something to soccer fans. It’s an original.

And for all the bluster of MLS-affiliated women’s teams being better situated that everyone else, look who had the most extensive youth and reserves operations — the Boston Breakers, along with fellow independent Washington Spirit. (At least the Breakers Academy will continue. FC Kansas City also still has Academy games scheduled, resuming Feb. 10.)

Something dies every time a team folds or moves. MLS has lucked out so far that things have turned out well in the long run, but that streak could end very quickly if the Crew move. And if the NWSL can’t act on the obvious interest to restore the Breakers next year, the league’s credibility will suffer.

 

 

2
pro soccer, us soccer

An older plan: Soccer United Marketing from a few years ago

Posted on by Beau Dure

Found something interesting while cleaning out the basement. Pictures below.

Coincidentally, Grant Wahl has a crucial interview with MLS commissioner and SUM CEO Don Garber.

Garber says that from the time the first agreement was done (2002?) to 2022, SUM will have paid the Federation $300 million. That’s a cool $15 million per year.

But Garber cites those numbers in response to USSF VP and presidential candidate Carlos Cordeiro calling for a “commercial committee” headed by an independent director to oversee such deals. He also cites the USSF board minutes that show Garber and anyone else affiliated with SUM (say, an Athletes’ Council member currently employed with an MLS club somehow) recuses himself from any vote on SUM. (Even so, Sunil Gulati said the SUM deal has been approved and renewed by a unanimous vote of the non-recused members of the Board.)

That probably doesn’t completely absolve SUM and others of all conflict-of-interest questions. What additional steps need to be taken are in the eye of the beholder. Should Garber simply remove himself from the Board after roughly 18 years? Do we need an accounting of what SUM has done for the women’s national team? Do we simply need to give non-MLS clubs a shot at Division 1 somehow, whether they get a piece of SUM or not?

In any case, the book below is obviously taken from early in SUM’s life. Superliga will never die …

 

 

 

0
pro soccer, us soccer, youth soccer

Another man, another plan: Reviewing Eric Wynalda’s long-awaited manifesto

Posted on by Beau Dure

In less than 48 hours between my sprawling recap of the week in Philadelphia and my podcast on the week and the election (with Charles Boehm), one interesting thing has happened …

I’ve received a lot of pushback on the notion that Eric Wynalda is the front runner.

No, it’s not Sunil Gulati and Don Garber calling. These are people who are plugged into soccer politics, in some cases even moreso than I am, even after my obsessive coverage in the past few months.

I’m still not convinced Wynalda isn’t the front-runner. I understand that some people have an “anyone but Wynalda” attitude, just as some have “anyone but Carter” or “anyone but Carter and Cordeiro.” I still think that Carter has a very difficult road to 50%+1, and I think the opposition will eventually join forces behind one candidate, and the most likely candidate fitting that bill is Wynalda. But I could be wrong, and perhaps we’ll see a compromise between the “no Wynalda” and “no Carter” camps that gives us a President Martino or Gans or Winograd or I Have No Idea.

But one thing has become clear: Wynalda’s stock dropped in Philadelphia. The forum in which he promised solutions, truths and the gloves coming off, with none of them happening. Fairly or unfairly, some voters may resent the truck with the nasty protest, even though he disavowed it.  (He did not, of course, disavow the statement implying Kathy Carter and Carlos Cordeiro are not “soccer people,” a message that didn’t sit well with a lot of people and tends to undermine his anti-elitist stance.)

Then consider this from the New York Times piece:

ew-board

“Fine,” you might say. “He’s the insurgent attacking the status quo.”

But consider the voters. Adult Council. Youth Council. Pro Council. Athletes’ Council. All of whom combine for about 95% of the vote. All of whom also elect representatives to that board.

None of this means that Wynalda’s campaign is sunk. I still think he has a better chance of winning than any other candidate. But that chance is probably less than 50%. There are eight candidates, after all, and you can’t really rule many of them out.

So when we heard yesterday, when Wynalda called in to Jason Davis’ show to say he’d finally be releasing a plan of some sort, the stakes were raised. This could put him over the top or not. (And we have to wonder whether it’s too late — all the state reps with whom I spoke in Philly seemed to looking at the convention as the last bits of info they would take home to their boards before making decisions.)

He released the plan today. It’s 14 pages and seems to be a little more digestible than the massive Kyle Martino plan. Let’s take a look.

PAGE 1: Cover sheet.

PAGE 2: Inclusive. Consensus-building. Experience — player, coach, technical director, owner, TV. “Move toward future compliance with FIFA standards” — a point that really needs to be explained, especially when we keep hearing about this inaccurately named “international calendar.”

And this is not the comprehensive plan. Position papers are forthcoming. Clock is ticking. But let’s see what’s here …

PAGE 3: Table of contents

PAGE 4: A picture of a calculator. People still use those?

PAGE 5, PART 1: Registration Rewards Initiative. He wants to return the $1/youth and $2/adult fee back to the youth and adult organizations. He says there will be a $1 “bonus allocation” for meeting certain criteria. These fees, he says, can really help the youth/adult organizations, while USSF is no longer dependent on them. The numbers back him up on this.

PAGE 5/6: >$5 Million in Annual Support, Grants and Scholarships to Membership Groups. He’s really talking about 5% of “unrestricted investable assets,” saying this is in line with how nonprofits use their endowments. “Many candidates talk about funding new programs but have yet (sic) identify definitively how to develop funds for those purposes.” Someone who gets fund-raising and nonprofit finance better than me will have to explain how this works and how it will impress voters more than, say, Carlos Cordeiro saying the federation is already planning to spend its $150 million-ish reserves down to about $50 million. Wynalda’s plan might be more of a long-term cash stream, while Cordeiro may be talking about a set of one-time investments. I don’t know.

PAGE 6: Internal Loans. Wow, I really don’t understand this. Literally. He seems to be saying state organizations and other organizations could get loans from U.S. Soccer. Someone will need to do a study to see if that’s actually an improvement on just funding programs.

PAGE 7: Monetize the U.S. Open Cup. “Multiple media executives have asked why the US Open Cup has not yet been packaged and monetized in a meaningful way and have identified themselves that it is a grossly undervalued asset and represents an untapped source of funds for the USSF itself.”

Let’s get this straight — and this echoes something he said in Philly. Is he saying there are multiple media executives who, instead of contacting the people who actually run the U.S. Open Cup, decided to ask Eric Wynalda? Or are there people at U.S. Soccer who heard a pitch to monetize the U.S. Open Cup and said no? Did they ask the Open Cup Committee, which has actually done some pretty good work to build up the tournament? (Eric, I know you’re reading — please let me know what you mean here.)

PAGE 8: A picture of Soccer House

PAGE 9: Transparency starts here with Apply for a public credit rating with Moody’s or Standard and Poor’s, which would obligate USSF to another annual review on top of what’s required for the 990. Seems like an interesting idea, but again, I’ll need to hear from nonprofit econ experts.

Then …

The USSF should create a non-voting sub-committee of the Board that includes a diverse selection of membership that is expected to attend all USSF Board meetings and that would be encouraged and supported to share their opinions and voices on public matters. The USSF management team would be obligated to host a conference call with this subcommittee no less than two weeks ahead of each scheduled USSF Board meeting to update members, provide information on planned agenda for the Board meeting, and to share public materials that will be discussed at the Board meeting itself.

At the very least, the wording here is poor. A “sub-committee of the Board” would be composed of Board members. If he means some sort of group of non-Board members that would be like a shadow Board, I think he’d want to go back and see why the board (sorry to switch cases here) went from 40 to 15. That was following what the USOC and others were doing at the time.

I get what he’s saying, but I think there’s another way to do this. Why tell a subcommittee what’s on the board agenda and not the whole membership?

PAGE 10: Clearly Defined Competitive Bidding Policy. This will be popular, and probably with good reason.

PAGE 10: Develop Conflict of Interest and Risk Management Policies. The board has done and is doing this, but there’s certainly room to ask whether they’re doing enough.

PAGE 11: Office of Ethics, Integrity, and Inclusion. It’s the sort of idea that sounds good in a vacuum. The question is whether it’s really better than the mechanisms that are in place now. Do you need to replace the mechanisms or replace the people?

Included in this: Restart the Diversity Task Force, and I know no good argument against that.

PAGE 12: Picture of scarves.

PAGE 13: Establish Membership Services Team. Sounds kind of like what Steve Gans has been saying.

PAGE 13-14: Support Network for National Team Players. OK … I guess? The idea of having a group to guide players into a post-playing career sounds good, but why would we limit it to national team players? Why not help players who probably made a lot less money?

PAGE 14: Consulting. In conjunction with the internal bank.

And that’s it. Until the position papers come out.

So … I don’t know what to make of this. Some of the ideas are obvious (and good), some are less obvious and still good (the Registration Rewards Initiative is, at the very least, worthy of future discussion), others just seem arcane and off-the-wall. Do we really want the U.S. Soccer Federation to turn into a USAA for soccer? If someone more knowledgeable about nonprofits can tell me if this works, I’d be happy to hear it.

Then some of it seems surprisingly elitist. A subcommittee that shadows the board but just seems to be an unnecessary bulkhead between the board and the membership? Mysterious media executives who aren’t approaching the Open Cup Committee (Mike Edwards, Todd Durbin, USL’s Jake Edwards, USASA’s John Motta, NASL’s Rishi Sehgal and retired MNT player John O’Brien) with a plan to invest megamillions but are approaching Wynalda?

I don’t get it. Someone feel free to explain it to me.

 

0
podcast, pro soccer, us soccer, youth soccer

RSD25: Phillypalooza election preview, the disappointing USSF coaching education overhaul, and being nice

Posted on by Beau Dure

Point 1: Why this weekend will be huge for the U.S. Soccer presidential election. (2:02)

Included in that: Why I’m skeptical of current election projections (including a NewsRadio reference), what the Number 1 issue in this election should be (8:10), a few surprising things on Paralympic soccer (8:30), a question of what we’re really saying about futsal — the next beach volleyball? (9:30), SUM and pro/rel (11:30), and finally back to the Number 1 issue and how it overlaps with other major issues (18:00).

Point 2: The new U.S. Soccer coaching curriculum, grassroots level (22:15)

Included in that: Welcome to Disney (25:55), introducing tactics at 4v4? (26:20), the painful irony of the chosen video clip (27:15), U6 parent coaches developing their own coaching philosophy? (28:00), the nice tone (32:25).

Point 3: Soccer discourse, Twitter (33:40)

Include in that: What we all have to offer (34:15), why dealing with crap for 15 years makes these discussions difficult (35:45), different types of people (36:45), the ideal outcome of the Kathy Carter candidacy (39:30).

Next up for Ranting Soccer Dad (40:00). Basically, I’ll get back to interviews at some point and quit soloing like this. (And yes, I finally bring it full circle.)

2
pro soccer

No, the NASL is not going on the “international calendar” — and here’s why it’s harmful to say it is

Posted on by Beau Dure

“North American Soccer League announces move to international calendar,” says the headline on the press release on the league’s decision to make the best of its legal limbo. The NASL will start in the fall and continue through the spring.

One problem: No matter how many people retweeted and even reported this move as a switch to the “international calendar,” there’s simply no such thing.

At least not as it relates to leagues. There is a FIFA calendar that sets dates for national team play, both friendlies and qualifiers. There is not an international calendar that says a domestic league must follow the traditional academic year.

That’s good, because otherwise, all of these countries would be out of compliance:

Country Population League system
China 1,388,550,000 March-November
USA 326,423,000 March-December
Indonesia 261,890,900 April-November
Brazil 208,503,000 May-December (state leagues earlier in year)
Nigeria 193,392,500 January-September
Japan 126,700,000 February-December
Philippines 105,143,000 February-December (new league)
Vietnam 93,700,000 January-November
Thailand 66,061,000 February-November
Myanmar 53,370,609 January-September
South Korea 51,446,201 March-November
Kenya 49,699,862 February-October
Sudan 40,782,742 January-November
Canada 36,982,500 March-December
Malaysia 32,359,500 February-November
Uzbekistan 32,345,000 March-November
Peru 31,488,625 Split season, playoffs in December
Venezuela 31,431,164 Split season, playoffs in December
Ghana 28,956,587 February-October
Mozambique 28,861,863 March-November
Angola 28,359,634 February-November
Madagascar 25,571,000 August-November
Chinese Taipei 23,566,853 May-November
Cameroon 23,248,044 February-October
Mali 18,542,000 February-November
Kazakhstan 18,137,300 March-November
Malawi 17,373,185 May-December
Ecuador 16,906,600 January-December
Zambia 16,405,229 April-December
Zimbabwe 14,542,235 April-November
Sweden 10,103,843 March-November
Belarus 9,495,800 April-November
Tajikistan 8,829,300 March-November
Kyrgyzstan 6,140,200 April-October
Turkmenistan 5,758,000 March-December
Singapore 5,612,300 February-November
Finland 5,509,984 April-October
Norway 5,290,288 March-November
Congo 5,260,750 January-September
Ireland 4,792,500 February-October
Georgia 3,718,200 March-November
Uruguay 3,493,205 Split season, playoffs in December
Mongolia 3,189,175 April-September
Lithuania 2,810,865 March-November
Estonia 1,352,320 March-November
Iceland 346,750 April-September

Sources: Soccerway (and occasional extra Googling) for league systems; Wikipedia for population. You’re welcome to click through every source at Wikipedia or find your own to check my work on the population.

I’ve omitted the smallest nations and those that have incomplete data (say, a 10-game season) at Soccerway. I’ve also omitted some South American countries whose Apertura and Clausura seasons may or may not hint at a fall-to-spring calendar — Colombia and Paraguay, for example, have an Apertura ending in June and a Clausura ending in December.

So that’s close to 3.5 billion people living under the tyranny of a non-“international” calendar. And that doesn’t include Russia, which has switched to a fall-to-spring calendar with the asterisk of a winter break lasting nearly three months.

Am I being pedantic here? Perhaps, but there’s a legitimate point here …

We should probably stop taking every single cue from a handful of counties in Europe.

I’m not going to veer into the identity politics of the raging “Costa Rica in Red Bull Arena” or “Jonathan Gonzalez proves USSF diversity problem” arguments. Nor would I suggest that the long-term survival of a U.S. league depends on syncing its calendar with Turkmenistan. (I could not find any evidence of an MLS player ever calling Turkmenistan home.)

But we do need to think more broadly when we think of “the rest of the world.” Scandinavia is certainly the rest of the world. So is Brazil, whose league system may have some elements worth copying.

That doesn’t mean the switch to what we could call the “Major Euro” calendar is a bad idea. We have aspirations of doing most of our outgoing transfer business with the big leagues, so if we can align our offseasons with them, that’s a positive. And ending a season in May has advantages over ending it in December — better weather, fewer football conflicts, etc. (You’re still going up against the NBA and NHL playoffs, along with the part of the baseball season before they start building for next year.)

But then let’s be honest about those reasons. Let’s not say we’re “complying with FIFA,” as some suggested on Twitter over the weekend, by having a summer offseason.

And let’s figure out what works for us rather than blindly copying league systems from countries that are smaller and meteorologically diverse.

 

 

 

6
pro soccer, us soccer

A U.S. Open Cup proposal (with some NPSL/PDL ramifications)

Posted on by Beau Dure

Let’s address a couple of issues:

  1. The U.S. Open Cup could use a boost.
  2. Teams could use some meaningful games in February, but it’s too cold to play in many parts of the country.

So let’s do this:

The Cup is already playing a lot of qualifying games in the preceding fall. See the 2018 qualifiers that took place from September through November. Switching the tournament to a fall-to-spring schedule wouldn’t take much more.

As in England’s FA Cup (as I type, American Eric Lichaj’s two goals have Nottingham Forest — once affiliated with the Carolina Dynamo — ahead of Arsenal), let’s have the top two divisions (or whatever gives us between 30 and 40 teams) enter the competition in the round of 64.

Then let’s play the first three rounds at neutral-site warm-weather (or indoor) venues in February.

Here are the advantages:

  1. At least one meaningful game in February even if a home ground is covered in snow.
  2. A month in which the Open Cup is the only thing going on in U.S. outdoor soccer, giving it a promotional push.
  3. A good warmup for the Division 1 season (and the CONCACAF Champions League).

The disadvantages:

  1. You lose a bit of the romance of making a Division 1 club play at some tiny lower-division club’s home ground, such as yesterday’s Fleetwood-Leicester matchup. But this is mitigated by having your pick of suitable venues.
  2. Tough to get a “home” crowd. You’d need to put something together to get hard-core supporters to travel. Maybe some creative scheduling could help avoid having teams travel too far. Perhaps some East Coast teams go to Atlanta, Rocky Mountain teams go to Texas or Arizona, Great Lakes teams go to domes (Minneapolis, Indianapolis, Detroit, Syracuse, Milwaukee, Fargo and maybe the warehouse-esque Ultimate Soccer Arenas in Michigan).

Then play the quarterfinals and semifinals during the spring season, with the final itself being the last game before the summer break for the World Cup, Euros, Copa America, Gold Cup, etc.

A couple of questions this format would raise:

If we’re playing a fall-to-spring schedule, what about the MLS playoffs? 

These have always been too long, anyway. In last night’s forum in Illinois, Eric Wynalda pointed out the problem of players getting rusty when their teams don’t make deep runs in the playoffs. That’s a bit of a problem in the current schedule, when a player might sit out from late October to early March, and it would be a problem in a fall-to-spring system — you certainly don’t want players sitting out several weeks before a World Cup or a Copa.

Maybe you’d still have a single-game MLS Cup or a four-team tournament, but that’s it. Hopefully, the Open Cup will fill our need for knockout play. (And maybe some promotion/relegation playoffs, but that’s another rant.)

What about the NPSL and PDL teams that currently play in the Open Cup? 

They shouldn’t be in the Open Cup. At least, the teams that rely on college players (pretty much all PDL teams and most NPSL teams) shouldn’t be in it. If you have a club with enough non-college amateurs to play a fall-spring schedule, fine.

The current NPSL/PDL schedule is absurd. Players only have a couple of months to participate, and yet each league is run as a national competition with national playoffs at the end. Just as Wynalda lamented the fact that many pro players are left idle because their teams don’t make the playoffs, these college players who need more games don’t get to play a couple of weeks in the summer.

And then the players go back to their college teams, sometimes before the league final. Last year, Midland-Odessa had to scramble to find enough players to play the NPSL final. In the current format, there’s no way a college-dependent team could play the Open Cup semis or final if it advanced that far.

These leagues should focus on guaranteed games. Try to play 14 regular-season games over 10-11 weeks. If you want to play a Summer Open Cup of sorts on additional weekdays, fine, and there’s always the option to play in the fall-to-spring Open Cup if the players are available.

Let the summer leagues be summer leagues. Nothing wrong with that. For everyone else, have a Cup that has a larger spotlight.

(And yes — USSF needs to pay the travel costs for any team, particularly amateurs, going to the round of 64 and beyond.)

 

 

3
pro soccer

A few thoughts on Football Manager

Posted on by Beau Dure

After listening to Jason Davis’ interview with one of the developers of Football Manager, I figured it was time to give the full-fledged game a chance.

I did the demo version for a while, then used a gift card and a sale price to snag the full version for a low price.

“Addictive” isn’t the right word. Maybe “immersive.” It’s like a Vegas casino — it’s easy to lose track of time. I’m certainly playing it more now than I’ll be able to play it when I get back in my work routine Jan. 2.

A few things I’d like to see improved:

I hated losing my progress when I switched from the demo to the full version. Perhaps there was a way to preserve my progress, but I didn’t see it. And that was a pity. I was really looking forward to clearing some deadwood out of Tranmere Rovers and then buying the 1-2 players that could get us out of the Vanarama (Bananarama wasn’t available?) relegation zone.

Need more warnings of time passing. With the full version, I’ve started two careers — one with Real Salt Lake so I can try to figure out GAM and TAM, another with Cork City in Ireland. With the latter, I knew I had some work to do on deadline day — I have too many defenders for the 3-5-2 I want to run, and I was trying to shift some payroll with a couple of loans. Apparently, one club was willing to finalize terms, but I made the mistake of hitting “Continue” and watching the time skip 15 hours into the future. “Deadline passed” and “Deals canceled” popped into my inbox. Now I’m stuck paying full contracts for these guys.

Need more communication. I can’t seem to get across to my coaching staff that we’re running a 3-5-2 here. Quit telling me we should switch to a 4-1-4-1 or something else. There’s also no back-and-forth — they can recommend things, but we can’t discuss them the same way I can with a player or the board.

Let me search internationally. Yes, I know, scouting internationally costs money. But can’t I just find one specific person and make an offer? How do you know Clint Dempsey doesn’t want to play his final season in Cork?

Little hiccups in timing and communication. An assistant coach recommended that I name a promising forward as the U19 captain. So I did. Then I got another recommendation — that same player should be promoted to the senior squad. So I did. Now one of his teammates is mad at me for “stripping the captaincy” from that player. Also — multiple times, I’ve flipped back and forth between FM and my browser, returning to the game to find that, say, I missed the pregame talk. What?

You can *see* things that you can’t fix. I just saw Dundalk play a long ball up and over my central defender. The left back kept him onside. But I can’t specifically point that out to him.

You can’t *ask* things. The U19 coach took my prize defensive prospect and started him at striker, where he did well. I wish I could ask if he wanted to be re-trained there.

Can’t I sync to mobile? I have the mobile version of this, and it has maybe one-third of the functionality. That’s fine. But sometimes, I’d like to just check in and get through a couple of days. I don’t need to do a full-fledged squad analysis every day. It’d be great to load a game on my phone, make a bit of progress, and then return to fix up the squad on my laptop.

And a few awesome things:

Details, details. I love the fact that we can change almost anything. I got a note from the groundskeeper asking if I wanted to keep our home field at a reasonable 114×80 or switch it to something more amusing, like 95×90. Didn’t even think that was legal.

Customizable views. If I want to compare the fitness levels, form, age, potential level and something random like “key passes,” I can create a table to do that.

Tinker with my lineup all day. Seriously. You could lose hours just picking a lineup for one match. Note to self: Start saving them, or 2018 will not be productive.

tactics

 

 

 

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pro soccer, us soccer

On SUM, Twitter and the media

Posted on by Beau Dure

First off: I’m working on two pieces that raises questions about Soccer United Marketing and the continuing evolution of Major League Soccer. One analytical, one modestly investigative. The latter, basically, is just getting some answers from Kathy Carter about SUM as it currently operates.

SUM is, of course, mentioned in my book Long-Range Goals: The Subtitle I Didn’t Like in the First Place and Dislike Today Because “Success” Can and Should Be Redefined as Time Goes By. It was crucial to MLS’ survival when the whole thing nearly went under in 2002. Don Garber, still relatively new in the job of MLS commissioner, surmised from the history of U.S. pro soccer that it too often competes with itself, and that led to the suggestion to create a marketing company that bundled things together. It worked, and no matter how you slice it, MLS and SUM are valuable properties today that have helped usher in a landscape of pro clubs with academies.

But …

  1. As they say about the stock market, past performance does not guarantee future results.
  2. What was necessary in 2002 could be a hindrance in 2017.

So yes, there are questions to be asked. And if we get through this entire presidential campaign without asking them, we’ve failed.

That said … could people on Twitter be a little more patient, perhaps?

2017 has been a rough year in the media business. More layoffs at ESPN. Fox Sports cast off a great crew of writers so they could “pivot to video,” along with a few other organizations. FourFourTwo laid off most of its U.S. staff. Other organizations have trimmed their freelance budgets, sometimes in addition to layoffs. If you think that’s a function of all of these writers doing something “wrong,” you’re about as ignorant as the people who think newspapers’ print circulation is declining solely because of “liberal bias.” The way in which we get our news has changed and continues to change, and we still haven’t figured out a good way to pay professionals when so many places are cranking out content for free or for pennies.

So when the reporters who still have a travel budget gather for MLS Cup and spend most of the State of the League press conference haranguing Garber about the Columbus-to-Austin shenanigans, is it really necessary to spend the rest of the holiday month yelling at reporters to investigate everything from why Kathy Carter is running for president (a legitimate question that should be asked in more detail in January) to whether MLS strong-armed national team coaches to play more MLS players even though Jozy Altidore, Michael Bradley and Tim Howard have been fixtures on the national team since they were playing in Europe and, if anything, the fact that half the national team is from MLS today is more of a reflection that MLS has convinced these players to come home and how the hell do you expect reporters to get Garber or Sunil Gulati to admit they threatened to kneecap a coach unless they included a player from every MLS franchise and how would that work anyway when MLS has 22 teams and when the hell did Danny Williams become Busquets and Iniesta rolled into one, anyway?

Sorry. Where was I? Right …

I can’t speak for all of the “mainstream media” — especially now that I’ve been informed I’m no longer in it. (Whew! That takes the pressure off.) If you think particular reporters are reticent to challenge MLS and SUM leaders, fine. There are actually some plausible reasons for that — everything from simply getting along on a personal level to being unwilling to upset a source who leaks information. That’s why you should always check out a variety of sources (on anything). And when you notice someone always tends to get certain bits of information “first,” you might ask why that is. (Fortunately, the race to get the latest roster for a meaningless friendly 20 minutes before USSF announces it seems to have dissipated, as we’ve all found better things to do.)

The idea that MLS and SUM are strong-arming journalists, frankly, gets a bit silly. If you think MLS is going to yank credentials away from a Grant Wahl or a Steven Goff (who, incidentally, was way out in front in saying Gulati shouldn’t run for another term), you should really think before you tweet. Even in MMA, where the UFC exerts power on a global scale, Dana White had to backtrack when he kicked out Ariel Helwani. If you run a small blog and no longer have the credentials you once had, maybe someone unjustly kicked you out on a power trip — or, just maybe, you need to take a look at how you were operating.

Yes, a lot of journalists write or have written for MLSSoccer.com. Personally, I wrote a fantasy column for MLSNet back in the early 21st century, then gave it up when I started doing more soccer work as one of my myriad jobs at USA TODAY. You know who else wrote a column for MLSNet back in the day? Eric Wynalda. You think he’s afraid to speak up on MLS and SUM issues?

I mentioned at the outset that I’m working on two things that I hope will shed more light on SUM and MLS. They’re not going to be done before the holidays. That’s life. Some people have one. (Not just me — also the people I would need to interview and the editors who would need to look at and publish my work.)

So keep up the feedback. Let me know some questions you’d like to ask. In some cases, they’re unreasonable and pointless, and don’t be shocked if I let you know. In other cases, they’re interesting things that might not have occurred to me. That’s why I haven’t quit Twitter, and it’s why I block and mute only when people veer into outright harassment.

Have a happy Festivus or whatever you celebrate.

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pro soccer, us soccer, youth soccer

Soccer Parenting Summit: We need joy and collaboration … and maybe pro/rel

Posted on by Beau Dure

One of the earliest Ranting Soccer Dad podcast guests was Skye Eddy Bruce, who played overseas back before pro women’s soccer was widespread and has gone on to coach and, most importantly for all of us, formed the Soccer Parenting Association. (If I were branding it, I might have called it “Polite Soccer Mom,” but her name gets to the point pretty well.)

This weekend, she hosted the Soccer Parenting Summit, which included a staggering 21 guests from diverse backgrounds — current and former pro players, coaches, soccer executives and academics.

It’s a lot to take in. I’ve made it through more than half the sessions, and I plan to go back to listen to a couple more topics.

I say “made it through” not because it’s some sort of ordeal to listen to all of this. These are great discussions. It’s just that it’s a lot to digest, like an all-you-can-eat barbecue buffet. You might need to pace yourself.

At some point, I’ll revisit these sessions. But here are a few takeaways I discussed on Wednesday’s pod:

Where’s the JOY?! (16:30) 

Julie Foudy was the first guest at the Summit, and this was her question as a soccer parent. Bruce brought it up again with many of the guests, and one session was devoted to discussing “fun” with a sports scientist:

(Before you write off this Summit as something stuck in a “rec mentality,” bear in mind there’s a session with Gary Kleiban, the coaching guru who frequently laments such a mindset. We’ll get to it. His session was a good conversation-starter, along with many of the other sessions here. And another session that stressed “fun,” “laughter” and “not shutting out players there for social and recreational reasons” was the session with Johan Cruyff’s son-in-law. Read on.)

“Joy” shouldn’t be controversial, but in the echo chamber of Soccer Twitter, it sometimes is. Soccer is supposed to be a deadly serious pathway for kids to get out of poverty and make something of themselves. I find that more than a little condescending. If we want people to get out of poverty, we need to be investing in STEM programs, not soccer. We have hundreds or thousands of wanna-be soccer pros for every current soccer pro. The supply of U.S. tech talent is debated in the immigration context (in other words: Do we really need to be granting tons of visa to fill open programming jobs?), but the bottom line is that your odds of finding a job as a hard-working dedicated programmer or network specialist are just a bit better than finding a job as a soccer pro. A bit. Say, a few thousandfold.

And in any case — if having a booming economy means we have fewer poor kids who see sports as the only way out, that’s a trade I’m more than willing to make. Besides, the way things are going, the much-derided habit of sitting around playing video games will soon be a better pathway to pro “sports” fame and fortune than soccer is.

So economic incentives aren’t enough. You need to make 6-year-olds fall in love with the game.

John O’Sullivan, of the Changing the Game Project, sees no contradiction between loving the sport and chasing excellence in it. “Find me an elite athlete, and I’ll find you someone who loves what they’re doing,” he said.

Play multiple sports (19:20) 

Oh, you don’t want to take my word for it or O’Sullivan’s word for it or any stack of academic papers you can find? How about Jay DeMerit, who believes his rise from obscurity to the Premier League would not have been possible had he not played basketball. He hadn’t played much defense on a soccer field before college, but he found that the ball-hawking he did on the basketball court helped him adjust to the role that put him on the national team and at the highest levels of the game.

DeMerit has been doing some coaching at the elite youth level, and he’s borrowing techniques from improv. Yes, improv. Comedy. Drew Carey’s influence knows no bounds.

(You could also ask Costa Rican Paulo Wanchope, who scored 50 goals in the EPL. Yes, 50.)

On a more basic level, a lot of learned folks believe we’re so obsessed with sports specialization that we’re failing to teach basic athletic movement. “You’re building an athletic foundation in sand, and eventually, it’s going to crumble,” he said.

I know. This is heresy. The philosophy du jour says soccer is all about skill, like golf or music. We’ll repeat the 10,000-hour myth even after David Epstein’s research blew it up, at least as it applies to most sports. We Americans are the only ones who think it’s athletic. Just look at Xavi or Iniesta!

OK, I’ve looked at Xavi and Iniesta. They’re not Usain Bolt or Kevin Durant. But they’re athletes. On the podcast, I tell a story about Messi’s athleticism playing a vital role in a terrific goal. (Counterargument: Freddy Adu had plenty of skill but not a lot of speed and strength.)

Sure, the USA has typically had more athleticism than skill. “Shot putters,” they said of the 1930 World Cup semifinalists. Anson Dorrance built his North Carolina dynasty and the U.S. women’s program on athleticism and determination, though he has since brought in wonderfully skilled players like Crystal Dunn, Tobin Heath and Summit guest Yael Averbuch.

But are we overcorrecting on the skill/athleticism scale? Probably. I’ve seen plenty of signs of this, particularly a terrific NSCAA session on “Kindersoccer” that showed how counterproductive it was to coach a U6 team like they’re teenagers at Barcelona.

Winning vs. development (or Players First vs. Team First) (26:30) 

US Club Soccer’s Kevin Payne, another RSD podcast guest (I’ve piled up the audio players at the bottom of this post), joined the Summit and talked about his organization’s Players First initiative, which will soon be morphing into a program that certifies clubs. Meet the criteria (and work with US Club to do so), and your club can be a “Players First” club. That includes some criteria dealing with safety, something we don’t often talk about but was mentioned a few times at the Summit.

The basic idea is that the focus needs to be on player development, not winning as a team. I get it, but I have some misgivings. The vast majority of players who play youth soccer will not have a professional career. They’re in it for fun and life lessons — chief among them, playing as a team.

“Winning vs. development” is another area in which I wonder if we’re overcorrecting. Sure, we’ve all seen examples of coaches with misplaced priorities — my least favorite was the guy whose U9 team was still pressing the terrified defenders on goal kicks when his team was up by 15-20 goals, and managing playing time should be a bit different for a U12 team that it would be for a pro team. But the lesson we’re trying to teach, whether a player is going to play professionally or go on to something a little less interesting, is working as a team to overcome adversity.

But Payne and Bruce were careful not to say teams shouldn’t be trying to win. Payne says Barcelona’s academy teams are always trying to win. (I did have a chance to see a Barca academy game on TV while I was in the city last month — they certainly seemed happy to take the lead.) Bruce mentioned that her daughter played with far more intensity for her high school team than she saw in the ECNL.

We’re also sending mixed messages here. US Club can preach “Players First.” Then they set up their own leagues and their own State Cup competitions. Why?

Pay-to-play (31:00) 

One session indirectly talked about pay-to-play, and that’s the Anthony DiCicco session on artificial turf. He has worked in the industry and sees progress being made to get turf — a “necessary evil” for those of us in the youth game who would rather practice on something other than gravelly dirt — a lot better, more shock-absorbent, less prone to heating up like a rubbery frying pan. Maybe even with fewer black pellets in your clothes, car, house, etc. But it’ll cost you. We’re talking about fields that are more expensive to install and maintain, and someone has to pay for that.

For a more typical talk on soccer costs, check the session with Payne. Bruce asked: If we can’t eliminate pay to play, can we at least pay less? Payne sees the issue as the race to get in front of college coaches. There’s an unspoken contract, he says, in which a coach will try to get a player into Duke. (Yes, he said Duke. I’m not sure why he picked my alma mater, though the women’s team just had an awesome season and the men finally made it back to the tournament.) Maybe it’s not Duke, maybe it’s not Division 1, but maybe it’s admission to a good school in Division 3. So parents think that if they go to a lot of tournaments, they’ll get in front of a lot of college coaches.

I posted this thought elsewhere: Way back in 1980, everyone knew the best high school football player was a kid from a tiny Georgia school named Herschel Walker. There was no Internet. No sophisticated recruiting systems. But everyone knew how good this guy was. Then he had what is still widely regarded as the best college football career by any running back. Pretty decent pro, too, aside from Donald Trump’s influence and his unfortunate role in a trade that posited him as Superman.

So why can’t we do that in soccer? Why are we asking players to travel to be seen by scouts and coaches? (One of the more intriguing, if possibly unrealistic, ideas in the USSF presidential race comes from Paul Caligiuri, who posits college and high school coaches as part of a giant network of scouts.)

Regardless, no matter what the next U.S. Soccer president is able to achieve in cutting back youth soccer costs, there’s one thing he or she won’t be able to control:

Parents. Parents who want their kids to go to Duke or some other good school that happens to have a soccer team. Parents who will pay good money for their kid to get the “right” coach or the “right” club or the “right” set of tournaments.

Until Skye Eddy Bruce and I (and a bunch of other people) figure out how to educate parents to make better choices.

Topics I didn’t cover on the podcast …

The USSF election matters

Payne ran for vice president two years ago, when Carlos Cordeiro won it. His buzzword is inclusion. He doesn’t believe in a top-down approach — not even at D.C. United, where he said everyone had a voice and they did a lot of things by consensus. USSF hasn’t been doing that on things like the Player Development Initiatives. (Just ask me or any other parent pissed off about the age-group changes.)

Should USSF pay the president? Payne is torn. Yes, that might encourage more people to run (though, given the NINE candidates this year, perhaps that’s not an issue). But would people run just to get paid? (My thought: Maybe don’t pay them that much?) He has advised candidates not to talk about it during the election, but I think that’s unavoidable. You’re going to have people asking about it. People like me. Sorry. I have to.

DiCicco, who wrote the definitive guide to who votes, did a short Summit session on the election, and he offered a good response to Bruce’s fretting over the existence of independent directors who don’t have soccer backgrounds (something you’re seeing from a lot of other boards as well): The Board have a couple of valuable voices in Val Ackerman (a hyperexperienced sports executive) and Donna Shalala, pointing out especially Shalala’s background with health issues from her time in the Clinton cabinet. DiCicco also hits upon the fact that most of the women on the Board are independent directors — what he doesn’t go on to expound upon is that the Board has used independent director slots to bring aboard Hispanics and women.

And DiCicco sums up Sunil Gulati’s tenure, making a point that especially interesting in the wake of today’s Jeff Carlisle report that the Board is talking about hiring a general manager and thereby limiting the president’s influence: “We’ve benefited from Sunil taking it 24/7, but it doesn’t have to be done that way,” DiCicco said.

Payne also would go along with less of a top-down approach, saying the D.C. United teams that were so successful in his time did a lot of things by consensus, giving everyone a voice.

Along those lines …

Teach your parents well 

Several speakers fretted over a lack of communication between coaches and parents. While Bruce has been working to get parents to talk with coaches at appropriate times, no one’s advocating yelling from the sideline. Learn more, then talk more.

“Silent Saturday” (or Sunday) — a special day many clubs (including mine) use to tell parents to do nothing but the occasional polite cheer or clap — got mixed reviews. United Soccer Coaches staffer Ian Barker thinks it impacts the wrong people. 

Teach your coaches well

Coaching education is a big emphasis for Payne and US Club. They might do it a bit differently than other organizations, just as AYSO has its own curriculum. What Payne wants from U.S. Soccer is a set of guidelines, not something more specific than that.

And US Club, like USSF, is starting to put more information online. Good.

Also one novel idea from Barker: Sure, we should still pay coaches (a point Kleiban also made), but maybe coaches could do 4-8 hours of volunteer work every month to reach players outside the expensive clubs. (I’m sure some already do that, but it’d be interesting to see it become a movement.)

This is also where Bruce brought in some people whose resumes are impeccable. Frank Tschan spent 15 years working with the German federation. Todd Beane is an educator who went to work at Barcelona and married Johan Cruyff’s daughter, so it’s fair to say his family dinner-table soccer discussion was a bit more advanced than most of ours.

One bit of consensus here: A bit of national guidance is good, but you can’t be too overbearing about it. Tschan points out the difference between states — some rural areas can’t really get on the “club-centric” bandwagon because their clubs are too small, and they need other programs.

Finally: Promotion/relegation

I had some trepidation when I saw Gary Kleiban’s name on the list of guests for the Summit, but I decided to listen to his session in the hopes that a conversation with the affable Bruce would be more constructive than the typical Twitter interaction with him. And it was.

But while the conversation was friendlier, the points weren’t any sounder. A few stereotypes of people who refuse to see things his way — a claim that MLS owners came from other sports (some yes, some no, and some of today’s owners also own clubs elsewhere in the world), and a finger pointed at the mainstream media that stands in the way.

I don’t know if I qualify as “mainstream” these days, but I’ve been coming up with pro/rel ideas for years. The reason I’ve been the punching bag for the Twitter fringe is that I think it’s impractical, to put it mildly, to simply throw open the pyramid and let the chips fall where they may. Actually, Kleiban sounded conciliatory on that front as well, suggesting there could be a transitional time so MLS owners can adjust. (I’d add that it would really stink if the Los Angeles Galaxy were relegated after a wayward season in which they were trying to get their once-hyped young players into the mix.)

My thoughts, which I’m now giving the hashtag #ModProRelforUSA, have only been strengthened by speaking with Bobby Warshaw and Brian Dunseth. More importantly for purposes of this Summit, I’m far less worried about the effects relegation would have on MLS/NASL/USL owners and far more concerned about the effects it would have on their academies. 

In short — if the goal is to have a couple hundred pro academies scattered throughout the country, why would you relegate their clubs to a level at which the academy is no longer sustainable? If it happens in England, why wouldn’t it happen here, leaving kids with no academy for hundreds of miles around?

DeMerit also touted the argument that pro/rel ramps up the pressure on players, something I’ve discussed several times recently. But he went on to cite another motivating factor — bonuses. Start, get more money. Win, get more money. Fine. But that has nothing to do with pro/rel. (A salary cap, maybe — that’s an issue for the next CBA.)

In any case, I said more about pro/rel in a reply to Kleiban’s session. With that, I’ll give it a rest. It’s Christmas. And we have an election coming up in which the issues farther up this page are far more important than whether D.C. United gets relegated in 2021.

 

 

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