Category: soccer

soccer

U.S. Open Cup: Meet the first-round winners

Posted on by Beau Dure

The big story from last night’s U.S. Open Cup first round is Harpo’s FC of the Colorado Amateur Soccer League, billed as Colorado’s Most Competitive League. It must be pretty good — Harpo’s is only in third place in Division 1 East.

They’re bringing a lot of attention to the U.S. Specialty Sports Association, which was only added to the U.S. Open Cup field in 2013. And I’d imagine a lot of people now have an interest in checking out Harpo’s Bar and Grill in Boulder. At the very least, I know where I’m going if I’m ever in Boulder while a UFC event is on.

And hirsute goalkeeper Zac Gibbens will surely be a cult hero for stopping several shots, including one in the PK shootout.

The starting points for reading about the first round are:

1. TheCup.us first-round preview, with each club’s Cup history.

2. USSoccer.com recap

3. TheCup.us recap

Other first-round results (home teams listed first):

PDL over NPSL

West Virginia Chaos 1, Fort Pitt Regiment 0: Two first-timers in the Cup. West Virginia will get a few more players for the next round; they were busy with finals this week.

Long Island Rough Riders 3, Brooklyn Italians 1: The Italians won the Cup a couple of times in the pre-MLS days but couldn’t hang in here despite the heroics of keeper Mike Bernardi. The Rough Riders, who got two goals and an assist from Hofstra/England midfielder Joe Holland, are two decades old and were a big-time player in the USL A-League days. Footnote for women’s soccer fans: Former co-owner Louis Ederer represented Dan Borislow in his legal action against WPS.

Michigan Bucks 3, Detroit City FC 0: The perennial PDL and Cup contenders are still kings of the warehouse. And we have a Peri Marosevic sighting — goal-scorer for the Bucks. DCFC’s noisy fans were the talk of Twitter last night and impressed Detroit Free Press columnist Jeff Seidel.

Midland/Odessa Sockers 3, Tulsa Athletics 1: Yet another first-timer advances, in this case over a second-timer. TheCup.us counted eight countries represented on the Midland/Odessa roster. The Sockers’ coach flew in three hours before the game.

FC Tacoma 253 2, Kitsap Pumas 5: Please don’t name yourself after an area code. The other interesting tidbit from TheCup.us: Tacoma features a player on loan from an Italian Serie D side. Didn’t help here — Kitsap took a 5-0 lead and cruised.

NPSL over PDL

Western Mass Pioneers 1, Greater Binghamton Thunder 1 (GB 4-3 on PKs): First Cup win for the Thunder, knocking off a Cup perennial. Pretty impressive for a team with one player on the roster. The Pioneers were down to 10 men by the end.

AC Connecticut 2, Virginia Beach City FC 3: Each club was appearing in the Cup for the first time. ACC was formerly known as Connecticut FC Azul. I’m guessing this is the first time a Virginia Beach/Hampton Roads team has advanced since the Virginia Beach Mariners did it in 2006. I’d love to know how #7 Player Name and #13 Player Name fared.

Miami United 2, SW Florida Adrenaline 1: 93rd-minute winner. These two teams are also first-timers. The Adrenaline lost a player in the second half and then squandered an equalizer from 17-year-old Ray Gerke. Miami United also beat the Miami Fusion a few days ago. Yes, Fusion.

Chattanooga FC 1, Ocala Stampede 1 (CFC 5-3 on PKs): Late equalizer for the home team, which upset the Wilmington Hammerheads last year and will advance to face … the Wilmington Hammerheads. Chattanooga keeper Greg Hartley pulled a Matt Reis, stopping two PKs and making the winner.

Sonoma County Sol 2, Burlingame Dragons 1 (AET): Goals in stoppage time and extra time for the Cup veterans over the first-timers. The Sol roster includes a lot of players from “local high schools, Santa Rosa Junior College or Sonoma State.”

NPSL over USASA

Lansing United 0, RWB Adria o (Lansing 4-2 on PKs): Only one shot on goal for Cup debutant Lansing. Nice scarves. And nice camera angles on the PKs:

Upward Stars 3, Triangle Brigade 3 (Upward 3-1 on PKs): Back and forth in Spartanburg. What, you didn’t guess their location from the name “Upward Stars”? TheCup.us says the Brigade was formed in 2014 by a bunch of UNC club players.

PDL over USASA

Jersey Express 3, New York Greek American Atlas 0: Four-time champion Atlas, part of the New York area’s strong Cosmopolitan Soccer League, just couldn’t hold off the Express. Juan Correa had two assists.

Reading United AC 1, Maryland Bays 0: If only the debutant Bays could’ve found a home field. No, the Kris Ward who played in goal for the Bays is not the former Spirit assistant coach.

Global Premier Soccer 1, Seacoast United Phantoms 2: Down 1-0, down 10 men on the road in Massachusetts, the New Hampshire club scored in the 70th and 88th minutes. GPS falls to 0-3 in the Cup. Former Phantom captain Ben Brewster now plays for the Tulsa Roughnecks, their next opponent.

Des Moines Menace 2, Madison Fire 1: The perennial PDL powerhouse had little trouble with the Cup first-timers from the Wisconsin Soccer Leagues Major Division. Fifth-year Menace player Charlie Bales had two assists.

Laredo Heat 0, NTX Rayados 0 (Laredo 4-2 on PKs): Both teams have advanced in the Cup before. The last PK was converted on a retake — keeper moved early.

Ventura County Fusion 3, Cal FC 3 (Fusion 6-5 on PKs): The 2012 underdogs that knocked off the Hammerheads and Timbers couldn’t do it this time — this is the first time they’ve been ousted by another amateur team.

USASA over PDL

FC Tucson 1, Chula Vista FC 2 (AET): The visitors scored the equalizer in the 82nd minute. Tucson missed a chance to equalize on a PK in extra time.

PSA Elite 7, Golden State Misioneros FC 1: They went to PKs last year. Not this time, apparently.

Have anything to add? Comment away.

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Major League Soccer oral history and other new research

Posted on by Beau Dure

In Long-Range Goals (available in print, on Kindle, on Nook, and possibly elsewhere), I said I hoped the book wouldn’t be the only book on MLS history in a few years. The league has plenty of stories to tell.

Complex tells a few of those stories today in “An Oral History of Major League Soccer’s Frenzied First Season,” gathering then-commissioner Doug Logan, founding father Alan Rothenberg, U.S. Soccer’s Hank Steinbrecher, MLS exec-turned-USSF president Sunil Gulati, a few other executives and some of the more notable and outspoken players. (Yes, Eric Wynalda speaks.)

Some of the stories will be familiar to those who’ve read Long-Range Goals or other pieces on the league. We know how FIFA nudged Rothenberg into the picture and how Rothenberg tasked Mark Abbott with devising the single-entity structure. Logan once again tells the great story of Lamar Hunt falling asleep while he was interviewing for the commissioner post.

But some things are new, in part because Complex did what I neglected to do — talk with Kevin Payne. He once asked me why I didn’t talk to him, and I honestly didn’t have an answer. It was an oversight on my part, and I’m glad he got a chance to tell his story from his vantage point as the man behind D.C. United.

I will quibble with one thing, and that’s the characterization that “real soccer people” were not involved in the conversations on changing the rules to suit the American audience. See Long-Range Goals, page 22: Abbott says “serious soccer people” were pushing for quarters rather than halves. And if you go back farther, FIFA was always happy to use the USA as its laboratory, and the foreign administrators and players in the old NASL were happy to oblige. (One of many reasons I find it ironic that the “we must do things exactly as they’re done in Europe” crowd has latched onto the neo-NASL banner. And before you ask, no, the Complex story doesn’t address promotion/relegation.)

Some other fun things revealed here:

– Logan says MLS had logos and branding ready for expansion teams such as the Chicago Rhythm, but that name was rejected because Catholicism. Seriously. Doug Logan should write his own MLS history one day — it’d be a wild read.

– Alexi Lalas and company speak up on behalf of the quality of play in the early days. They have a point, at least on the better teams. Talent was concentrated on 10 teams, and you could have a team like D.C. United that had nary a weak spot in its top 15. Preki says every team at the time had 4-6 players who could’ve played at any level.

– Wynalda says the colorful soccer ball actually blended into the crowd when it was airborne.

That’s a highly recommended read, and so is this: The Society for American Soccer History has launched a website. It links out to online resources (I would expect that list to grow over time) and produces original content. Early offerings include Roger Allaway on the Soccer War (1928-29), Len Oliver on Philadelphia soccer in the 1940s and 1950s, and Ed Farnsworth on the first U.S. international tour.

It’s a great time in U.S. soccer history. And there’s no better time to look back and see how we got here.

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Hipsters, posers, bros and women’s soccer

Posted on by Beau Dure

The Washington Spirit’s Tiffany Weimer wrote a guest post at the Post with a frightening thought on the women’s soccer audience:

It’s not just an older generation that doesn’t give us the time of day. There are young, hip people who dislike women’s sports and soccer. There are also people who absolutely love the Premier League, Champions League and Major League Soccer. Those same people don’t like women’s soccer.

In other words, “bro” culture? Or just hipsters and posers who like the EPL, Euro and MLS accoutrements but don’t give a crap about the game?

When I first started talking soccer online about 20 years ago, I found people were willing to support any sort of soccer for the good of the game. I don’t get that sense any more. It’s my form of soccer or crowd noise or whatever.

And that’s a pity. Spirit games are fun.

Source: Guest column: NWSL and women’s soccer are in the game – The Washington Post

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Bloggers: Help MLS win the CONCACAF Champions League

Posted on by Beau Dure

For all that people fret about the Premier League and Champions League (European edition) eating into Major League Soccer’s share of the TV market, that’s really a problem you can’t fix. You could turn MLS into a European-style league on the European calendar (minus Scandinavia) with European players tomorrow, and many people are still going to prioritize Manchester United-Arsenal over Chicago-Toronto. You could spend all of Phil Anschutz’s accumulated wealth on MLS salaries, and while you’d probably sell out most MLS venues and possibly double the ratings, any soccer fan who’s awake and not on a soccer field on a Saturday morning in March is going to flip on the TV and listen to Rebecca Lowe talk about today’s matchups.

A more reasonable goal is to make MLS the best league in CONCACAF. It won’t start a sea change in MLS media presence — MLS already draws decent numbers on Spanish-language TV — but it’ll help.

In the wake of Montreal’s strong but ultimately doomed challenge for the CONCACAF title, Taylor Twellman tossed out some charts:

In short: MLS is getting elite talent with the Designated Player rule. It’s the rest of the roster in which Liga MX outspends MLS.

To which Dan Loney replied with an old saying: “Doubling Kelly Gray’s salary would not have made Kelly Gray twice as good.”

Flip, perhaps — that’s Dan’s style. But because he’s writing a typically epic blog post and not a Tweet, he develops the point: “Look, here’s the current list of Yanks Abroad. The most significant names MLS is missing out on would require outbidding not just LigaMX, but in many cases teams in the Bundesliga and the Premiership. Frankly, there aren’t that many guys who would be worth getting into a bidding war over, and equally frankly, the more guys that play abroad, the more spots there will be for unproven, overlooked players in MLS. We’re better off with those guys staying abroad, and if the occasional ass-kicking at the hands of Club America is the price of a stronger national team pool, I for one am prepared to get over it.”

I’ll add another wrinkle: Some youth coaches are going to push their most heralded prospects overseas so they can be stuck in limbo because MLS clubs are a bunch of poopy pants, nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah. (Not saying the “nyahs” apply specifically to anyone who coached Ben Lederman. Just saying some coaches really have it in for MLS, and I don’t think they’ll be persuaded by a change in the salary rules.)

Let’s leave that aside for now and just consider the proposition Twellman’s making here. Let’s say MLS clubs could match the best of Liga MX by bringing up those rank-and-file salaries.

In a Liga MX team with a $6.5 million salary budget, everyone in the starting lineup makes at least $215,000. The bench players (who made the 18 for a given day) make $155-$215K. Three more players (Nos. 18-21 on the roster) make $100K, three more make scraps.

Now take the MLS salary data — unfortunately, due to the last-minute CBA scrambling, the latest data we have is from September, but that’ll do.

Now let’s take FC Dallas as a random example:

Table 38 – Sheet1

You could also take a bigger spender like Los Angeles and try to compare it to the biggest-spending Liga MX club in Twellman’s charts.

So, bloggers, here’s your assignment. Find all the players who would fit these spots. You can use the Yanks Abroad list above, or you can shop globally.

Which leads to another question: Do you ditch or raise international player limits? And how does that affect MLS as a place to develop U.S. talent?

I’m not buying the “Oh, more good athletes will pursue soccer with better salaries, so we’d have Chad Johnson playing center back for $515,000” argument. That’s not reality.

Within the parameters of the real world, can we make MLS teams CONCACAF winners here?

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NWSL: A worthwhile investment, not a charity

Posted on by Beau Dure

Women’s soccer players are giving up a lot to play professionally. That was the point of my recent post at SoccerWire and Jeff Kassouf’s piece on players retiring in their 20s.

Deciding to play or retire isn’t easy, as Colleen Williams eloquently describes in her piece about stepping away after a couple of knee injuries. Some people are still chasing a spot on the national team. Some just want to keep playing as long as they can.

The thin silver lining here is that players’ opportunities are improving. Imagine how these pieces would’ve been written in 2007, when players who weren’t in the national team pool were either out of the sport entirely or playing for free in the W-League or WPSL.

What you’ll often hear in response to these laments is that professional soccer is neither a charity nor a cause. And that’s true.

But let’s phrase the argument for backing the NWSL a little differently, borrowing from youth soccer …

The goal of youth soccer is twofold — grow the sport’s talent pool and its fanbase. The latter is often overlooked, though far more youth soccer players will grow up to be fans rather than elite players.

That’s also the goal of women’s pro soccer. And that’s why it’s worthy of investment — by U.S. Soccer, by sponsors, by anyone who cares about the game.

We’re all lamenting the fossilized talent pool for the U.S. national team. Tom Sermanni’s efforts to expand that pool were in vain, but if the NWSL continues to grow, players will have opportunities to play their way in at some point.

And NWSL games give more fans a chance to see players in action — both national team stars and local heroes.

So it’s not a charity. It’s something with value worth supporting as fans and backers of the game.

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European academies and stunted growth

Posted on by Beau Dure

Is this the model we want?

Chelsea’s had 68 players play in an FA Youth Cup final in the last 10 years. They’ve played in a total of 84 senior team matches, an average of 1.2 matches per player. Nobody’s played more in that group than Josh McEachran, who’s featured 22 times on the senior level. … Chelsea will continue putting off their first team minutes until, by the time they’re 23, they’ve been shipped off on a bevy of different loan spells in myriad different systems. Lacking a consistent, solid ground on which to plant themselves, they’ll then be sold off to a middle-tier club in Europe with a fraction of the nourishing first team experience they could’ve had.

via Chelsea won the UEFA Youth League title, flaunting talent it’ll never use | The 91st Minute | Soccer Blog | Videos | Pop-Culture.

Related: German clubs don’t like UEFA competition because it takes kids away from school.

And that fits with the German emphasis on education:

“When I went to Aston Villa eight years ago I told them our players, under-17, 18 and 19, go to school for 34 hours a week,” he says. “They said: ‘No, you’re a liar, it’s not possible, our players go for nine hours.’ I said: ‘No, I’m not lying.’ They said: ‘It’s not possible, you can’t train and do 34 hours of education.’ I said: ‘Sure. And what do you do with the players who have for three years, from the age of 16 to 19, only had nine hours a week of school?

“They said: ‘They have to try to be a professional or not. They have to decide.’ I said: ‘No, we can’t do that in Freiburg. It’s wrong. Most players in our academy can’t be professionals, they will have to look for a job. The school is the most important thing, then comes football.’ We give players the best chance to be a footballer but we give them two educations here. If 80% can’t go on to play in the professional team, we have to look out for them. The players that play here, the majority of them go on to higher education. And we need intelligent players on the pitch anyway.”

(From the classic Guardian piece on German development)

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Takeaways from Washington Spirit v North Carolina

Posted on by Beau Dure

North Carolina is always an interesting test for NWSL teams in preseason. They’re often missing a couple of players from various national teams (Katie Bowen started for New Zealand against the USA earlier in the day), and the remaining players are athletic and aggressive.

That skillset is especially challenging for midfielders who need to rev up to regular-season playing speed. A little mistake or hesitation, and you’re going to be dispossessed and/or on the ground.

“In the past, they’ve been one of the teams we’ve played first in preseason,” said Tori Huster, one of the few Spirit players with any institutional memory. “I think Mark (Parsons) wanted us to get a game (before the regular-season opener) that was going to be similar to the NWSL with the pressure. They pressed all over when I was in college (ACC rival Florida State), and they did it again today.”

The Washington Spirit passed that test, more or less, against the Tar Heels on Saturday. They’ll regret their lack of scoring against a short-handed college backline, but the Spirit controlled most of the action and got in a good workout. If not for goalkeeper Lindsey Harris and some finishing that might be called “preseason-quality,” the score would’ve been closer to 3-0 than the eventual 1-0.

“We were outbattled last week by (Virginia),” coach Mark Parsons said. “There’s not many tougher teams or faster teams than UNC. We were really strong — very intense, very physical — and that was good to see.”

A few takeaways:

– Estafania Banini has some skill and speed. She seems to be faster with the ball than without. She might frustrate her teammates if she doesn’t get them the ball. A questionable decision to take the ball on her own rather than passing paid off when her 24-yard shot hit the left post and went in, but at other times, she waited far too long to look for a teammate.

– As a whole, the final ball was lacking — a couple of bad touches in open space, a couple of bad decisions to pass or not to pass. “We just need to continue to play together,” Christine Nairn said. “After we look at the video, we can only improve.”

– The passing game is promising. In the first half, the Spirit struggled passing the ball in their own half but did pretty well combining in the attack. Yet the goal came from a 60-yard blast from goalkeeper Kelsey Wys up to Banini, and the second half started with a more direct approach. Perhaps that was a bit of impatience, but it loosened up the UNC defense. The Tar Heels, not playing college substitution rules this time, faded toward the end. Then Huster started to carve them up with clinical through balls, several of which should’ve been finished.

– The center midfielders are interchangeable, with Huster, Nairn, Joanna Lohman and sub Angela Salem switching between attacking and defensive midfield throughout. “With Joanna Lohman and Angela Salem, they’re able to shift down into that No. 6 position and spray balls out,” Huster said. “A couple of times, I got bumped into what you’d call a No. 10 position. We were able to get some combinations together. …

“Mark’s going to be asking (us) to play all these positions because he’s going to ask us to rotate. And that’s just the flow of the game as well.”

Other notes:

– Parsons said he would’ve made some attacking subs if this were a regular-season game, but he wanted to build fitness among his starters. He attributed some of the mistakes to fatigue.

– No surprises on roster cutdown day, Parsons said. The players under contract all made the team. They’re listed on the site, and they include players who haven’t reported yet (looking your way, Mexico) but are expected this summer or after the World Cup. Cuts will be necessary if everyone’s healthy when the latecomers arrive.

– UNC goalkeeper Lindsey Harris was outstanding.

– Parsons is a little worried about his team as they head into the heat next week in Houston. This game wasn’t as frigid as last week’s game against Virginia, but it was still chilly and breezy. Nairn, for one, fought back sniffles as she said she was looking forward to getting into hotter weather.

– The game was well-reffed with one notable exception — Huster was fouled multiple times, and as usual, nothing was called. It’s uncanny.

Update: I had a rough formation and some game highlights written in my notes, and I figured I’d add them here for posterity and future reference:

FW: Del Rio

Wings: Banini left, Da Costa right

Center mids: The fluid Nairn-Lohman-Huster triad

Backs, left to right: Reynolds – Johnson – Oyster – Singer

Keeper: Wys

7′ Reynolds get up from left back, cross to Nairn cut out.

8′ GOAL Wys long ball to Banini in left channel. Cuts inside recovering defender. Has two passes open but rips from 24 yards off the left post and in.

12′ Good work on left Nairn to Del Rio.

13′ Fristenberg strips from Johnson, who’s dawdling with the ball at midfield. Long-range shot with Wys off line goes wide.

22′ Wys a little unsteady on long, looping shot from Fristenberg

23′ Wys lets things bounce, UNC 15-yard shot goes wide

27′ Free kick floats nicely. Huster doesn’t go for it. Lohman doesn’t connect cleanly.

43’ Boyles hits bar. Wys not in comfortable position.

HALFTIME: Dydasco for Da Costa; Brown for Wys

61’ Huster needed more on pass to Dydasco, who made good run

63’ Salem for Nairn; Church for Singer

70’ Del Rio great layback to Banini, who mishandled it and it goes to the keeper

73’ Good sequence – shot, keeper tries to punch it away, Salem nearly puts away rebound

75’ Great sequence from Salem and Lohman at top of D. Del Rio shot, terrific save Harris (maybe not struck as well as it should’ve been)

77’ Banini gets the ball in tons of open space, dithers, lays it back/gets tackled back to Del Rio, another shot straight to keeper.

81’ Through ball finds Dydasco, who rounds keeper but keeper recovers. Dydasco gets a second chance but is too late, and it’s blocked.

86’ Del Rio surges through, caught and fouled but stays on feet and shoots. Another stop for Harris.

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Jill Ellis stubbornly goes forth into the World Cup

Posted on by Beau Dure

U.S. women’s soccer coach Jill Ellis talked with Grant Wahl, at last giving someone a chance to ask questions that have been kicking around in the Twittersphere for a while.

wnt-tacticsOn Twitter, they were often phrased something like “What the &*%$! is that midfield supposed to be?!” Here, it’s “Why don’t you consider using a pure defensive midfielder?”

A few takeaways:

1. Ellis still talks about a core of 13-14 players. That would be an unusual approach. In 1999, Tony DiCicco rested several players in the final group game against North Korea — Michelle Akers and Kate Markgraf sat the whole way, and Mia Hamm and Julie Foudy played one half. Supersub Shannon MacMillan started and scored the team’s first goal; reserve Tisha Venturini started and scored the next two. Sara Whalen played half the group stage, sat out the quarterfinals and semifinals, then was entrusted with a spot on the field throughout the final’s dramatic extra time. This year, we’re talking about more games, aging players in key roles, and artificial turf.

Write it down — at some point in this World Cup, the 15th or 16th player on a given squad will have a major impact.

2. That said, Ellis hints at a center mid rotation. Oh, the whole Carli Lloyd-as-nominal winger thing? That was just because Megan Rapinoe was hurt, Ellis tells Wahl. Lloyd will be playing a good bit of center mid, where she excels, in the World Cup.

But so will the duo occupying those spots the last couple of months, awkwardly converted playmakers Lauren Holiday and Morgan Brian. All at the same time? Probably not. Lloyd and Holiday, with Brian as backup? Some sense in that, sure.

And yet it leads to the question everyone has been dying to ask …

3. Ellis cares not for your defensive midfielder wishes. Here’s the money quote:

A center mid has to be able to playmake and also be able to defend … Lloyd and Holiday spray a ball around better than any midfield I’ve seen. So I value that. If I went for a potentially a pure defender, now am I getting that from them? Probably not.

In a way, it’s reassuring that U.S. soccer has evolved from the days of defensive midfielders being one-dimensional. But let’s emphasize something: “be able to defend.”

DiCicco’s 1999 squad was able to move a powerhouse scorer like Michelle Akers deep into the midfield because if she needed to win the ball, she was going to win the damn ball. That’s not true of Holiday or Brian.

4. Abby Wambach’s role is clear as the Beijing sky. Everyone’s OK with that, right?

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Fuzzy memories of soccer’s good (ironically) old days

Posted on by Beau Dure

You may not have noticed this, but I’m old. I’m not yet in the AARP, but by the standards of modern journalism, I’m a fossil. (How ironic in an age of long life expectancy that our media keep getting younger.)

Today, I wound up in a fun Twitter conversation about soccer journalism, and we wound up winding back to the days in which the U.S. soccer media barely existed. We also had scant access to the U.K. soccer media, so we weren’t able to keep up with the tabloids’ totally fictional transfer rumors or the pundits’ Cro-Magnon dismissals of women’s soccer. (Gee, what a shame.)

But we had a few lifelines. If you grew up in the 70s, you watched Soccer Made In Germany and learned terms like “equalizer” and “relegation” from Toby Charles:

I was vaguely aware that the USA had its own league, the NASL, but I never watched it. I don’t think I was a Eurosnob. I think it was a function of my father controlling the TV and watching a lot of PBS. He also was a biochemist who had traveled quite a bit and had a casual appreciation for the Bundesliga. Or maybe he just liked to say “Bundesliga” in his Virginia/Georgia drawl.

In any case, the bulk of my exposure to the NASL was Soccer Made In Germany‘s report on Franz Beckenbauer signing with the Cosmos. A couple of years later, the Atlanta Chiefs were reborn, and I read game reports in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Never made it to a game, though.

I also learned about the World Cup. When I realized I would be away at summer camp (where we did occasionally play soccer with oddly shaped cube-shaped goals), I asked my mom to cut the World Cup scores out of the paper and mail them to me every day. I dutifully kept group standings in a notepad at my bunk.

Five years later, I was in college, where I had the opportunity to heckle Tony Meola (belated apologies, Tony, but we did these things at Duke), marvel at Mia Hamm, and recoil in horror at the dirty play of Tab Ramos’ N.C. State teammates. I had also discovered Soccer America, which carried standings and scores from leagues all over the world.

Then I was back in the wilderness, rarely getting a chance to catch a glimpse of soccer beyond some assignments to cover high school games. The 1994 World Cup was a welcome relief. After that, a lot of us asked the same question: “Now what?”

Home Team Sports, now a Comcast Sports Net affiliate, provided another lifeline, picking up an hourlong Premier League highlight show. Tony Yeboah quickly became my favorite player, with the last two goals on this reel etched in my memory:

I also occasionally listened to shortwave radio. But at the time, it was kind of random. I knew if I tuned into the BBC on Saturdays, I might hear something soccer-related.

By 1995, I’d discovered the Internet and the North American Soccer mailing list, to which I paid tribute last fall. We argued about the direction Major League Soccer was going as it prepared to launch, and we shared information about any soccer we were able to see — APSL games, USISL games, colleges, broadcast info and so forth. Then I found the wonderful rec.sport.soccer archive site, which looks exactly the same today, and Soccernet, which doesn’t. Thanks to them, I knew what I was watching on ESPN’s weekly games, and I knew when to search for the BBC on my shortwave to hear Coventry City escape relegation once again. (This was 1997, when the Young Player of the Year was a Manchester United lad with swept-up hair named David Beckham.)

Of course, I also set my VCR while I was at work so I could come home and watch this:

(Note the MLS logo that the Clash had to paint over.)

Meanwhile, back in the world of non-broadcast media, a few of us were fighting to get coverage for this long-derided sport. In 1999, at a wire service, I pitched coverage of the Women’s World Cup. A contemporary of mine said, “What?” I explained. He laughed, “We don’t even care about MEN’S soccer in this country!”

(Same guy called Duke a school for Ivy League rejects. No idea how I made it through a year of working there without resorting to violence.)

I moved on to USA TODAY, which had a history of legitimate soccer coverage. But as space in the paper shrank, soccer coverage was the first thing to go. Online, I was sneaking bits of coverage onto the site however I could.

In my day (no, you can’t get through this without reading that phrase), there was no such thing as a “soccer journalist.” Steven Goff had other duties at The Washington Post. Online, the Post’s site featured editor Alex Johnson’s World of Soccer column. Grant Wahl mixed soccer and college basketball at Sports Illustrated. Jeff Bradley was more or less the voice of soccer at ESPN’s site, though he was busy with other beats.

Nothing in this story should be surprising. But I find it’s often forgotten. We wake up Saturday mornings and flip on the TV to hear Rebecca Lowe introducing the first of three EPL games, and we forget how far we’ve come.

It’s too easy for today’s Twitterati to think soccer journalism in the USA started with MLS. (Some in the Twitter world actually think all soccer journalists in the USA are employees of MLS, which will surely make local newspapers, SI and a bunch of newly flourishing websites wonder why they’re paying all these people.)

Some of us grew up on the world’s game and followed it any way we could. We watched the Bundesliga and the Premier League, then went out to see USISL games with 30-minute stop-action countdown clocks and a “shootout” on the seventh team foul.

That’s the way it was and … well, I wouldn’t say we liked it better than today’s 24/7 soccer landscape. But it’s an experience we’ll never forget, and it helps us appreciate what we’re seeing today.

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soccer

Brazilian style (leagues) in the USA?

Posted on by Beau Dure

The United States is, in addition to all the things mentioned in my soccer culture post, a nation of tinkerers. We want to fix things or improve them.

That’s not to say Europe is bereft of innovation — they’ve certainly done a better job of, say, integrating alternative power sources.  But when it comes to sports, we’re far more likely to take things that already work and rethink them. The NFL changes rules more often than I shop for shoes. Wake up an NHL fan who was cryogenically frozen in 2002, and he or she might not make sense of the standings.

In soccer, we’ve often been a laboratory — sometimes with FIFA’s assistance or insistence, sometimes not. Shootouts. Bonus points. For old-time USL/USISL fans, the blue card.

These days, all our ideas veer toward the more traditional. Shootouts are gone. Overtime is gone. As much as I would love to see what League One America rules look like in action, it’s not going to happen. We debate single table and single entity, and we even the occasional promotion/relegation idea that’s nearly workable. (It just needs some way to even things out between clubs that made megamillion investments and those who would play their way in. I’m not a big fan of giant expansion fees, either, but you do have to consider that we’re trying to build the same infrastructure in 20 years that has been built in other countries — where soccer is the dominant sport — over a century or more.)

So here’s an idea borrowed from Brazil with a bit of a twist to solve a couple of uniquely North American problems …

Regional leagues running part of the year.

In Brazil, clubs play in state leagues for the first few months of the year before shifting to national competition. The state pyramids and the national pyramid are mostly separate — a team could theoretically be in the first division nationally and a lower division in its state league. (I can’t find a current example, though.)

The climate in the USA and Canada won’t let us play year-round as they do in Brazil. A regional league in the spring and national leagues (MLS, NASL, USL) in the summer and fall won’t leave enough time.

But we have an interesting window for regional leagues — the international break that we currently aren’t taking in MLS.

This year, CONCACAF’s Gold Cup runs through most of July. National teams will assemble a couple of weeks before that, so figure on about a five-week window. MLS will muddle through without its CONCACAF internationals. In other years, we have the World Cup or the upcoming pan-American Copa America. (Yes, I know the winter Qatar World Cup will mess everything up, but let’s ignore that for the moment.)

During that stretch, suppose we suspended the national leagues and played regional leagues?

And yes, I’m talking about leagues with promotion/relegation. Why not? These leagues wouldn’t affect the structure of MLS. A club with a 5,000-seat stadium that couldn’t play in MLS could still compete with MLS clubs in a short regional league system.

So we solve several problems:

1. MLS finally gets a full international break.

2. Players who aren’t on international duty get to keep playing.

3. Stadiums still get meaningful games, and not just the one-offs of the Open Cup. (Incidentally, this is the year an NASL club wins the Open Cup. MLS teams will be weakened for the fifth round and quarterfinals, and it’s clear the NASL really wants that trophy.)

4. Lower-division teams get to test themselves against the big pro clubs, albeit weakened versions of those clubs. They should be able to sell a few tickets for those games, too.

5. “Summer league” teams in the PDL and NPSL get more interesting competition.

6. Pro/rel fans get to see pro/rel leagues. Maybe it’ll open the door for national pro/rel down the road, maybe not.

Five weeks doesn’t give us a lot of time, so we’re probably talking about four teams playing a double round-robin or maybe seven teams playing a single round-robin.

A couple of sample leagues with the initial divisional setup (based mostly on last year’s standings, so I haven’t verified to see if all these clubs … you know … still exist):

TEXAS/OKLAHOMA LEAGUE

Division 1: Dallas (MLS), Houston (MLS), San Antonio (NASL), Oklahoma City (USL)

Division 2: Austin (PDL), Laredo (PDL), Tulsa (NPSL), Oklahoma City (NPSL)

Division 3: Corinthians San Antonio (NPSL), Dallas City (NPSL), Midland/Odessa (PDL), Houston Dutch Lions (PDL)

Division 4: NTX Rayados (USASA), Liverpool Warriors (NPSL), Fort Worth (NPSL), Houston Regals SCA (NPSL)

CASCADIA LEAGUE

Division 1: Portland (MLS), Seattle (MLS), Vancouver (MLS), Edmonton (NASL)

Division 2: Kitsap (PDL), Victoria (PDL), Washington (PDL), Tacoma (NPSL)

Division 3: North Sound (PDL), Spartans (NPSL), Khalsa (PCSL), USASA team

MID-ATLANTIC LEAGUE

Division 1: D.C. United (MLS), Philadelphia (MLS), Carolina (NASL), Richmond (USL)

Division 2: Harrisburg (USL), Baltimore (PDL), Reading (PDL), Carolina (PDL)

Division 3: King’s Warriors (PDL), Gate City (NPSL), Virginia Beach (NPSL), Maryland Bays (USASA)

I’m not sure about including reserve teams here, given the already-weakened senior squads. If they play, I’d limit them to Division 3 or lower.

Within a couple of years, maybe we’d see some amateur teams establish themselves in D2. Maybe an MLS coach will be grousing about relegation to D2, and we’ll all yell at that guy to win a few games and get back up.

Maybe it’s a crazy idea. But if there’s a negative other than giving up a couple of MLS games when the teams are missing their internationals, I don’t see it.

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