Category: us soccer

us soccer, world soccer

American exceptionalism and other things that aren’t great but are

Posted on by Beau Dure

Am I understanding “American exceptionalism” incorrectly?

Yesterday, I tweeted the following:

https://twitter.com/duresport/status/1011435039547121664

At the time, I think I was thinking more about politics than soccer. But it was a little of both.

A couple of responses:

https://twitter.com/NipunChopra7/status/1011436252300808193

https://twitter.com/dmwahl/status/1011460577582092288

So I said this (specifically responding to Dr. Chopra, a neuroscientist in addition to being a soccer journalist):

https://twitter.com/duresport/status/1011563238780219392

https://twitter.com/NipunChopra7/status/1011583420353470469

I can agree with that. But not everyone can …

https://twitter.com/TheDukeNGS/status/1011584261860753408

If you go to Wikipedia, you’ll find several attempts to define (or, in some cases, redefine) the term. Start with the greatest observer of 19th century America, Alexis de Tocqueville:

The position of the Americans is therefore quite exceptional, and it may be believed that no democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one. Their strictly Puritanical origin, their exclusively commercial habits, even the country they inhabit, which seems to divert their minds from the pursuit of science, literature, and the arts, the proximity of Europe, which allows them to neglect these pursuits without relapsing into barbarism, a thousand special causes, of which I have only been able to point out the most important, have singularly concurred to fix the mind of the American upon purely practical objects. His passions, his wants, his education, and everything about him seem to unite in drawing the native of the United States earthward; his religion alone bids him turn, from time to time, a transient and distracted glance to heaven. Let us cease, then, to view all democratic nations under the example of the American people.

(Yes, feel free to argue that we are indeed “lapsing into barbarism” now. De Tocqueville was perceptive and eloquent, not psychic.)

Another definition from an AP Government crib sheet: “the belief that the US is special and unique because we have an optimistic and humanistic view on society to change the future and learn from the past.”

Really? Hmmmm. Maybe AP courses really aren’t that useful.

Back to Wikipedia for what I’ve found is the best-written definition, from Scottish political scientist Richard Rose: “America marches to a different drummer. Its uniqueness is explained by any or all of a variety of reasons: history, size, geography, political institutions, and culture.”

Go through that quote, the rest of the Wikipedia summary of scholarly debate and other sources, and you come up with the following things that are different about the USA:

  • Our Protestant/Puritan history
  • The absence of a feudal history
  • The lack of a monarch that has ever reigned on U.S. soil (King George III was an absentee monarch. And an amusing lunatic. See Monty Python.)
  • Everyone here is from somewhere else. A handful of people can trace their ancestry back to pre-Revolutionary America, but even they only arrived 350 years ago, and most of us have been here for a much shorter time.
  • This country is huge. Really huge. Just staggeringly huge.

Now … do those things make us better? It’s an interesting argument in its own right.

  • Pros: We have a blank slate on which the Founders built a new democracy, we benefit from waves of immigrants coming in and bringing their perspectives, and we have a “can-do” attitude dating back to our frontier days.
  • Cons: We overran Native Americans, then turned around and heaped scorn on any immigrant with the temerity to come along after us. Also, we have a lot of fundamentalists who refuse to believe science, and we have a general sense of arrogance. Basically, we do what we want, and we don’t listen to others.

So what does all this have to do with soccer? Why am I writing this on a soccer blog in response to other Soccer Twitter folks?

Well, I did get this accusatory tweet …

It goes back to the essential book Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism (yes, that’s an affiliate link, so if you’re adamantly opposed to Amazon giving me 10 cents, buy it somewhere else).

From Amazon: “The authors argue that when sports culture developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, nativism and nationalism were shaping a distinctly American self-image that clashed with the non-American sport of soccer. Baseball and football crowded out the game. Then poor leadership, among other factors, prevented soccer from competing with basketball and hockey as they grew. By the 1920s, the United States was contentedly isolated from what was fast becoming an international obsession.”

The authors, Andrei Markovits and Steven Hellerman, are hardly out on a limb here. In my book, Long-Range Goals: The Success Story (yes, I’d change the subtitle now if I could) of Major League Soccer, I referenced Offside along with other works — Simon Kuper’s Soccer Against the Enemy and Franklin Foer’s How Soccer Explains the World — to demonstrate the history and sociology that work against soccer in the USA. (Read that passage on Google Books if you like. Or buy the damn book.)

So to answer Kyle’s question … um … yes? Maybe?

“Central to my worldview” is a bit of a loaded statement. It implies that I’m happy about American exceptionalism. I am not. I wish we would borrow European ideas on health care, social services, mass transit, and yes, sports.

I do think some of those ideas need to be modified to account for what’s different about the United States. As much as I’d love to be able to go around the country by rail as I did in Germany, that’s not really feasible in the USA, at least when you start going out West. And when we talk about how we’re going to organize sports, we need to account for our unusual sports history.

American exceptionalism exists in the academic definitions listed above. Some aspects of it (the size of this nation, barring secession) will never change. Other aspects are driven by our attitude. We think we’re different; therefore, we are. (To quote Crash Davis alongside Descartes: “If you believe you’re playing well because you’re getting laid, or because you’re not getting laid, or because you wear women’s underwear, then you *are*!”)

We can try to change that attitude. We can at least try to chip away at it so we can have single-payer health care, reasonable gun laws and a more open soccer system. But we can’t deny it exists.

 

 

 

0
pro soccer, us soccer, youth soccer

When will the soccer “change” movement get serious?

Posted on by Beau Dure

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

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

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

This person apologized.

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

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

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

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

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

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

newsletter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For Kathy Carter.

Who didn’t win.

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

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

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

Dear Mr. Commisso,

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

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

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

Which brings us to an important point …

federation

The Federation needs change. 

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

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

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

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

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

And then … it all stopped. Mostly.

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

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

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

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

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

myspace-stewie

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

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

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

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

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

1
pro soccer, us soccer

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

Posted on by Beau Dure

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

0
pro soccer, us soccer, youth soccer

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

Posted on by Beau Dure

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

At all. Ever.

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

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

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

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

russell

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

2
us soccer

Some good soccer journalism

Posted on by Beau Dure

Every once in a while, Soccer Twitter goes into media-bashing mode. It falls into a few strains:

  1. Frustration at an inability to find work that questions authority. (I’m going to argue here that such work exists but isn’t always amplified.)
  2. Knee-jerk snark.
  3. People who are trying to amplify themselves by discrediting the work of others. One of the oldest propaganda tricks in the book. Sometimes done subconsciously.
  4. People who are utterly convinced that MLS and U.S. Soccer have buried bodies or trunks of money somewhere.

Now let’s be clear here. There’s an institutional reason to be frustrated with the media in general. The media are weaker today than they have been, for the following reasons:

  1. Print advertising has dried up. (Local newspapers in particular used to rely on classified advertising, which is now free on Craigslist, Facebook, etc.)
  2. Online advertising doesn’t pay enough to support large newsrooms.
  3. Even the ESPN model (money from cable subscriptions) is collapsing. ESPN has had waves of layoffs. Fox laid off its entire writing staff and just has videos of its talking heads who do little to no research.

It isn’t stopping.

https://twitter.com/sltrib/status/996079773741875200

And yet, there are plenty of soccer reporters who do not take what authorities say “at face value.” First of all, a lot of us aren’t taking Silva’s $4 billion “offer” or Commisso’s posturing at face value. But a lot of people also scrutinize things in the USSF/MLS/SUM power structure as well.

To be sure, most soccer writing is about the game. If you’re a beat writer covering a team, you’re going to spend the bulk of your time writing about games, injuries, transfers, etc. Maybe the occasional feature on an interesting player. Investigating MLS isn’t going to be the bulk of your output. (That’s also the bulk of MLSSoccer.com’s output, just as Barca TV and Liverpool’s Twitter feed are going to tell you more about the U23 team’s latest win and not as much about whether Barca should’ve done better in Europe or Liverpool should’ve done better in England. That’s OK. There’s a value to slickly produced game highlights.)

But what I’m highlighting here is journalism that goes beyond taking things “at face value.” It’s out there. It deserves more amplification than it gets.

These pieces aren’t 60-minute documentaries on the ills of U.S. Soccer. But they flesh out the discussion beyond what we see in games and press releases. Some simply point to a world beyond MLS and NWSL. Some raise questions, sometimes pointed, about what the league and federation are doing. And some are indeed the elusive “deep dive.”

Add it all up, and you can certainly get more than game stories and press releases.

Enjoy.

Stuff MLS and USSF aren’t putting in press releases

A Soccer America classic from January: Brad Rothenberg rips federation for losing Jonathan Gonzalez and missing talent in general. (In a similar vein, here’s an interview with Hugo Salcedo)

At SI, Brian Straus raises good points in the wake of the Gonzalez fiasco

Goff on the Crew: “Unfortunately, the referee — in this case, league headquarters — is complicit.”

Straus shares info contradicting MLS claims on the Crew saga

Goff: D.C. United in danger of not filling 5,000-capacity venue.

Soccer America speaks with Steve Gans (in May, not pre-election) about what still needs fixing (a lot)

Soccer America speaks with a club director who’s leaving the Development Academy

MLS salary info after union’s periodic release: ESPN, Philly.com, plenty of others out there

The peripatetic Graham Parker on pissed-off MLS fans

Soccer America: Where are the U.S. players in MLS?

Wayne Rooney? Seriously? USA TODAY (Martin Rogers), Yahoo (Leander Schaerlaeckens)

I remember Doug Roberson’s interview with Eric Wynalda being interesting, but I can’t see it now because I’ve hit my paywall limit. Come on, Doug — put your stuff out there for free! (I’m teasing. Doug and I worked together back in the Stone Age, where soccer content was maybe 0.1% of our work.)

SB Nation’s Outsports taking USSF to task for holding games in North Carolina.

Also SB Nation, and close to a “deep dive” here: How U.S. Soccer ignores players from underserved communities

Goff examines USSF financial disclosures, leads with all the employees making more than Jill Ellis

More SB Nation: Why NWSL can’t keep all its top players.

Not that MLS is keeping everyone happy. (Washington Post, but not Goff)

And one more SB Nation: A pretty deep dive on SUM.

Compelling interviews

KC Star’s Sam McDowell with good questions for Garber: The irony is that this piece started some of the conversation. Yes, it’s merely a Q-and-A. But the questions are good. They keep pro/rel, winter/spring schedule and “what the heck is TAM?” in the conversation. And then we can discuss Garber’s answers (which aren’t fully satisfactory to me, either).

Yahoo’s Doug McIntyre with Klinsmann AND Arena (and Bedoya): You may not like the answers, but there’s value in having them on the record.

Reporting on players outside MLS, and not just when they’re with the MNT or WNT 

ESPN’s Stephan Uersfeld goes beyond the immediate news on Julian Green.

Goff’s weekly roundup on more than 100 U.S. players overseas.

Global issues 

This is a starter. I spent a couple of hours doing this, not because the stories aren’t there but because you have to scroll past a lot of game highlights and other coverage (which is fine) on unnavigable sites (which is not — ATTENTION SPORTS ILLUSTRATED!!!! TURN DOWN YOUR AUTOPLAY ADS!!). Please leave more nominations in the comments.

0
pro soccer, us soccer

A really radical North American pro soccer idea …

Posted on by Beau Dure

I get it.

Everyone loves to talk about promotion/relegation.

No one likes to talk about actual ideas (like this one) that would make it palatable to all parties in this country, including the people who’ve been building stadiums and youth academies, among other long-term investments.

Fine. Let’s go really radical …

Presenting the Total Madness Cup, which will determine the professional champion of the United States and Canada. 

Basically, it’s an NCAA tournament (think basketball if you like, but you could also think soccer or most other team sports) involving all the Division I* leagues in the USA and Canada.

* Yes, we’re going to redefine “Division I” here. Think of it as the college basketball Division I, which has more than 350 teams. We won’t go that crazy, and we will have some standards, but they won’t be nearly as onerous as the current Division I criteria in the Pro League Standards. Within 10 years, maybe we could have 100 clubs?

If you don’t like borrowing ideas from U.S. college sports, fine. Consider it a Champions League of sorts.

Here’s how it works:

  1. MLS divides into three regional conferences of 10 clubs each. They can keep all their marketing deals (though selling Soccer United Marketing to a third party might be a good idea at this point — go ahead and cash in on the investment, but then cut the intertwined links with the federation). They’ll be the equivalent of the “Power Five” conferences in football — the SEC, the ACC, the numerically incorrect “Big” conferences and the geographically incorrect Pac-12.
  2. The NPSL absorbs the remnants of the NASL and forms a couple of regional fully professional conferences of its own. If they want to have pro/rel to determine their top teams, go for it.
  3. The USL forms a couple of regional conferences as well. They can also have pro/rel — in fact, they need to have multiple tiers so the MLS reserve teams are not D1.
  4. Canadian Premier League? Yep, you’re in the mix, too.
  5. Maybe we’ll even have 1-2 more. NISA, if it gets enough teams? Sure, why not?

The requirements for these conferences (revised Pro League Standards):

  1. Performance bond.
  2. Ownership group wealth. Not one primary decamillionaire. Rational decamillionaires are in short supply.
  3. Stadium requirements of some sort. Not going to get into details here because if I do, that’s all you’ll talk about.
  4. A youth academy. Because isn’t one of the major points of all this to make sure we have opportunities for youth?
  5. A women’s team. Yeah, we’re going to end up with a pretty substantial women’s league system out of this, too.
  6. Single-table, double round-robin to determine the champion.
  7. No more than 12 teams (22 games).
  8. At least 10 inter-conference games, with at least five of those outside your league. In other words, an MLS East team can play a few games against MLS West and MLS Central teams, but it also must play at least five games against teams from the NPSL, USL, CPL and any other league that pops up. These aren’t really “friendlies” — they’re the equivalent of nonconference games in football and basketball, like Notre Dame playing Southern Cal. Lose too many of them, and you’re not making the tournament.

Here’s how it could look:

And then … the tournament.

All conference champions are automatically in. Fill the rest of the bracket (yes, bracket) with at-large teams, just like an NCAA tournament. If you like, you can have some mathematical coefficient like they use to determine how many teams from each country reach the Champions League.

I’m not going to specify whether this tournament is 16 teams or 24 or 32, or whether it should be two-leg aggregate or single-elimination or whatever.

Nor am I going to specify whether this tournament takes place in December (would have unique place in calendar and could be a neutral warm or domed sites, but we’d still have our transfer window issue until the Gulf Stream forces England to go March-November) or May-June (good weather and transfer window, but there’s just a bit of competition in the sports landsCAPe).

I’m simply going to toss out this idea and let people have at it.

Initially, I was thinking this would be kind of a joke. But the more I think about it, the more I like it. It provides the following advantages that people are seeking from pro/rel:

  1. Opportunity for clubs and investors. Want to buy your local club, invest in it and chase national glory? Fine. Nothing’s stopping you from being the Gonzaga or Butler of this system. Over time, just as some college conferences have risen and fallen, some pro conferences might get stronger. Maybe in 10-15 years, the NPSL is stronger than MLS. Again, nothing’s stopping you. (And, again, that’s another reason why we’d have to break up the SUM/MLS/USSF relationship in some fashion to make this fair. MLS owners’ divesting/cashing in seems like the simplest solution to me.)
  2. Jump-starting investment in academies. We want to develop domestic players, right? Something about not missing the World Cup again?
  3. You want “sporting merit” to meet a muddled FIFA statute? This is sporting merit.

Now if you have a better idea, fine. I’ll tell you up front that having four full national divisions in an English-style ladder is not a better idea. No one wants to see the Wilmington Hammerheads fly to face the Spokane Shadow for a fourth-division league game. Your idea needs to have two things:

  1. A pyramid rather than a ladder.
  2. Some way of mitigating all the things the Deloitte report told us we need to mitigate. (Yeah, sorry, pro/rel zealots — some of us read past the “I Can Haz Pro/Rel?” headline.)

But I honestly think if we start talking about ideas rather than suing and slandering each other, we might make progress.

Or not. As Ron Swanson said, “Add ketchup if you want. I couldn’t care less.”

If you want a revolution, fine. We’d all love to see the plan.

Until then, I’ll cringe over Liverpool’s collapse, watch a few MLS games, watch a few NWSL games and slowly die on youth soccer fields.

4
pro soccer, us soccer

Dispatches from the NASL offensive …

Posted on by Beau Dure

On the heels of Monday’s Commisso-palooza, NASL interim commissioner for life Rishi Sehgal presented a more palatable take on the issues, speaking with Nipun Chopra at SocTakes

Sehgal is not Commisso. He doesn’t have the Trump-style tendency to laud himself in easily refuted terms (e.g., “I’m the only investor in this country who played soccer”). He actually listens when people point out evidence that contradicts his claims. Where Commisso apparently buys whole-hog into the Twitter-troll conspiracy theories that MLS is conspiring with the NFL to limit soccer’s growth in this country, Sehgal gives credit where credit is due. (He says, “Nobody is trying to take away the great things MLS has done,” which isn’t literally true but shows some willingness to work with existing parties.) In short: You can have a reasonable conversation with Sehgal.

And his interview doesn’t have anything I’ve flagged as outright wrong. That’s good. I hate to think that’s the bar we’ve set in sports and sociopolitical discourse in general these days, but that’s a start.

But for the benefit of soccer newbies, including those who are looking to invest (attention, Chattanooga summit participants), let’s put a few things in proper context. Just as Ranting Soccer Dad intends to give soccer parents the information they need to make good decisions about their kids, this space can be used to give soccer investors the information they need to make good decisions with their money — especially when all soccer fans have a stake in seeing things done wisely.

Going through the Sehgal interview …

(T)he end game is to help the NASL and to bring the NASL back to the pitch in 2019. So the investment of $250 million of his own money, and then lead a fundraising effort to raise another $250 million which will be used to support the NASL.

You can make a compelling argument that we as the U.S. soccer community need to preserve and enhance multiple divisions in U.S. pro soccer. (Or we could have 300 pro clubs, all in one division, and decide the champion with an NCAA-style tournament, but that’s another rant.) It’s much more difficult to make a compelling argument that we need to preserve the NASL, a brand name that has never made sense for what 21st century NASL owners have tried to accomplish — even as that group of owners cycled in and out rather quickly.

First, go back and re-read the timeline of the neo-NASL. You can also get another take from former NASL employee Kartik Krishnaiyer. It’ll take time, but I promise it’s worth it. And it’s necessary, if you really want to understand the issues here.

Then ask yourself — why preserve this brand? Why not merge with the NPSL to form a new league structure within which it’ll be easy to do promotion/relegation? Why not work with Peter Wilt’s NISA?

Honestly, the NASL’s intention of building a pro/rel pyramid has often come across as an insincere play to the Twitterati. Just see the hostility that broke out when the NPSL suggested joining forces with the NASL in 2015. And today’s NASL apologists are telling me Commisso’s literally unbelievable suggestion to have pro/rel “no later than the 2020 season” was just a suggestion.

Indeed, that suggestion comes after a list of five bullet points in the letter that sound pretty much like the reform ideas of 6-7 presidential candidates in this year’s USSF election. Aside from an anti-poaching clause that surely wouldn’t survive the slightest legal challenge, they’re somewhat reasonable. It’s just that (A) other people have made the same points and (B) they’re not at all relevant to what Commisso is seeking (10 years to build the NASL without pesky standards in the way).

(Actually, hold up a second. He’s not seeking 10 years to build the NASL. He’s seeking 10 more years on top of the work that’s been done since the Big Split in 2009. Commisso’s account of the USSF-NASL dispute tends to start when Commisso bought the Cosmos less than 16 months ago, but the league has been striving for stability for a long time.)

So on that note, let’s look at another of Sehgal’s statements …

I understand that sometimes people have problems with the way certain people speak. I get that. But pay attention to the message.

Part of the message, again, is general “change” ideology that isn’t unique. Other parts of the message are NFL conspiracy talk, which also isn’t unique (or worth hearing). Or pro/rel, a banner that others (say, Wilt) have made a better case for carrying.

That really leaves the message that the NASL — the brand name — is worth saving. See above.

Sehgal himself actually has more of a message. I’m curious to hear more about modular stadiums. I’m skeptical — if cheap stadiums were such a great thing, the Crew wouldn’t be in danger of moving, and you still have to find suitable land to hold a full-sized field and 20,000 seats (or more, given the conspiracy talk I recently saw suggesting MLS was limiting soccer in this country by building small stadiums). I suppose the cost of converting the Maryland SoccerPlex’s main field to a 20,000-seater would be in the low eight figures at worst, but the neighborhood folks would never let you do it, and you’d be stuck in traffic for eons. All that said, I’d like to hear the advantages of this.

Back to Sehgal …

I read the Twitter (laughs), and I see the nonsense out there and much of it is a waste. A lot of people calling this or MP Silva’s previous offer a publicity stunt — that’s nonsense.

Hi, Rishi, thanks for reading. Good to see you in Orlando. Please hit me up to give me more detail on modular stadiums.

But the definitive word on the Silva offer was written not by me or anyone else on Twitter but by Graham Parker, who also wrote about the Commisso offer Monday. (Coincidentally, Parker was writing for the same two publications that are my current freelance clients these days.)

Here’s Parker on the Silva offer:

That assumes this is a good-faith offer in the first place. The timing, outlandish scale and key contingencies of the offer seem more a shot across the bow than genuine desire to work together. …

The dissonance between the proposed scale and the current reality is key here. Glancing from the number $4 billion to the current realities of the NASL puts me in mind of looking at the Photoshop renderings of the New York Cosmos proposed stadium at Belmont while sitting in the cramped press box at Hofstra Stadium. It’s neither an insult to the Cosmos nor a failure of imagination to find it impossible to visualize a path between the suburban, college-astroturfed reality and the gleaming pixelated spaceship being proposed.

(Also noteworthy on the Silva offer — it’s funny that so many people who have a problem with Soccer United Marketing would see nothing wrong with the marketing rights to Major League Soccer being in the hands of one club owner who would want his club to be in the mix. That’s not a conflict of interest? Also — note that Silva’s company handles NFL rights in Europe, which will make the conspiracy theorists’ heads spin. And in that same paragraph, the second-to-last of Parker’s piece, you’ll notice MLS made some international breakthroughs after Silva’s tenure as its international-rights broker ended, something you can also read in Sports Business Daily.)

Here’s Parker on Commisso’s offer:

Like fellow NASL owner Riccardo Silva’s offer of $4bn to MLS provided they adopt a model of promotion and relegation, this tactic could feel like an offer made to be refused. This latest sum targeting NASL is more modest, but just as pointed a symbolic challenge to the existing ecology of soccer in the US. In his latest letter, Commisso cites Anschutz, Hunt and Kraft and claims that “All I am asking is that USSF afford me the same opportunity to help my league grow.”

But his price for investing would come at the cost of Cordeiro acknowledging and addressing what Commisso sees as the wrongful nature of the current structural and financial relationship between US Soccer and MLS – something Commisso must know there is little political will to do from the current regime. So he’s left with his law suits and to paint a public picture of what he thinks could be, in the hope that one or both forces a concession.

So I think the notion that these offers are more about PR than practicality is more than the mere ranting of people on Twitter who haven’t done the heavy lifting on the reporting end.

In this case, I haven’t done the heavy lifting of Parker or Brian Straus, the hardest-working man in soccer media. But this reminds me of a story in which I did the heavy lifting for months. It was another story of a man with a big ego, passion and a lot of money.

Dan Borislow.

Borislow didn’t kill Women’s Professional Soccer, which was teetering on the brink before he got involved. But it’s difficult to imagine, even with benefit of hindsight, how it could’ve survived with him. As with Commisso, it wasn’t just the tone of what he said. It was what he said itself. It was a refusal to work with those in authority, much less abide by their decision.

I’d like to think Commisso is as complex a man as Borislow was. As you can tell from my remembrance, I was ultimately glad that I got to know Borislow, even though part of my job (and I was actually getting paid for this — thanks, ESPN) was to fact-check his accusations. I’ve gotten to know his brother over the years as well, and I always appreciate his take from the grassroots of youth soccer.

Let’s give Commisso the benefit of the doubt here. Let’s say, with the help of Sehgal and some of the others who are keeping the NASL and the Cosmos afloat, we can find a role for him and his money.

Here’s an idea …

Put it in the NPSL. (He can’t buy the NPSL because team owners have equal shares, but perhaps he could put it into seed money for a fully professional top division.)

Again, an NASL-NPSL merger might not be as simple as it sounds, even though Cosmos VP Joe Barone is also the chairman of the NPSL board and VP of the NPSL’s Brooklyn Italians. (And even though all MLS franchise-owned USL teams are ineligible for the Open Cup, no one complains when Cosmos B faces Brooklyn. Go figure.)

But imagine what could be gained here. The NPSL, which already has dozens of teams, could build up into the pro ranks. We could get a clear sign that something new is being built rather than propping up the remains of the twice-failed NASL.

My sense so far, unfortunately, is that Commisso may be quite interested in talking but not so interested in listening. And those conversations never amount to much.

1
pro soccer, us soccer

Will Commisso’s money and bluster lure the grownups to the table?

Posted on by Beau Dure

I’m not going to devote a lot of my own time to reporting on and analyzing today’s revelation that New York Cosmos owner Rocco Commisso is pledging $250 million to, in essence, prop up the NASL as Phil Anschutz, Lamar Hunt and Robert Kraft propped up MLS in the early oughts. The ratio of “important stuff going on” to “number of people reporting on it” is higher in youth soccer than it is in pro soccer, so I’m sticking with youth stuff in the near future.

But you should check out the two big pieces on this today …

  1. In The Guardian, Graham Parker spoke with Commisso to follow up.
  2. At SI, Brian Straus has some additional reporting as well.

And Jason Davis will be chatting with Commisso at 1 p.m. ET on SiriusXM FC.

I received the letters at the heart of the matter this morning, just as they were tweeted out.

https://twitter.com/nathenmcvittie/status/990938195289366529

So you can read all that and get up to speed yourself. And you can draw your own conclusions.

And your conclusion will probably veer toward one or the other extreme, because I can’t help thinking this is political grandstanding that assumes the two calcified opposing stances on the NASL will remain intact. Most reactions will either be “See, there’s money to be made if USSF will just do what the NASL and pro/rel people want!” or “Great, yet another vaporware offer by a bunch of people who don’t even really want change but just want to inflate their own egos.”

One reason for that — as I peek through my email and sort through these attachments, I see Commisso included the danged “Fricker Plan,” which Steve Holroyd put in proper context nearly three years ago but is still trotted out every few months like some long-lost piece of Scripture uncovered in the dust of Bethlehem. (“And verily did Bethlehem Steel trot forth upon the pitch …”) Commisso is either unaware that we’ve all already discussed all this or just doesn’t care.

But while a certain amount of jaded pessimism is justified here, we shouldn’t be completely cynical and dismissive. Can anything good come of this communication?

Maybe.

Several managements ago, the NASL’s goal was to forge its own path. Former commissioner Bill Peterson often used a golf analogy, saying the NASL was focusing not on enmity with MLS but was intent on “playing its own ball.” And that path was to build a new way forward, eventually creeping toward a pro/rel pyramid, attracting investment regardless of divisional sanctioning.

Commisso is more or less offering to restart that process here. He says he’ll invest $250 million of his own money and is confident he’ll have a group putting forth $500 million. Forbes pegs Commisso’s “real-time net worth” at just shy of $4 billion, and other estimates have it higher than that, so he can indeed deliver on that.

Forming a pyramid in the “lower” divisions and seeing if that catches fire isn’t the worst idea in the world. It could eventually make MLS take notice and make a deal to join forces.

Now, in addition, Commisso pledges to buy USSF media rights for a higher sum than Soccer United Marketing is paying. I’m a bit more skeptical of that.

As The Guardian notes, this might be a PR stunt. “Like fellow NASL owner Riccardo Silva’s offer of $4bn to MLS provided they adopt a model of promotion and relegation, this tactic could feel like an offer made to be refused. This latest sum targeting NASL is more modest, but just as pointed a symbolic challenge to the existing ecology of soccer in the US.” (My original headline here, before I went in a more productive direction — “Rocco Commisso offers to give the NASL the most expensive Viking funeral in history.”)

And Commisso insists upon promotion/relegation “no later than the 2020 season.” Even a lot of the more obstinate, factually impaired Twitterati call for a 10-year plan. Silva commissioned a much-ballyhooed report from Deloitte that pro/rel zealots have held up as the definitive study despite a couple of flaws, and even that report says the following:

The opening of the US club soccer pyramid could present a number of significant risks. However, through careful consideration these could be effectively mitigated. …

(S)occer is now full of examples of effective regulation controlling costs (as is
common in US sports), such as UEFA’s Financial Fair Play regulations. The
implementation of cost control measures would be critical considerations for any
league. …

Clearly those who have invested in a league over time and/or through the payment of a franchise fee may feel that relegation represents a major new risk which would
undermine and unnecessarily jeopardise this investment. A managed transition with properly structured promotion and relegation could have upsides that could offset this loss and more importantly be of benefit to all stakeholders in the longer term. Equally the implementation of new equity structures and revenue distribution models for leagues may further offset and protect against any perceived or real losses.

Does Commisso’s plan address such concerns? (Jason, could you ask him?)

Carlos Cordeiro’s response is, as you’d expect, quite formal but also accommodating. Cordeiro himself is tied up with a World Cup bid that is anything but a slam dunk at this point, but he does want to open discussion. He’d like to know more about Commisso’s consortium, of course.

Commisso responds that he’s disappointed that Cordeiro can’t find time to meet, suggesting this proposal is really important and all that World Cup stuff can wait. (Is that too harsh a summary? It’s all linked above — read as you like and make up your own mind.)

So let’s consider a few things:

1. Commisso basically wants the same opportunity as MLS had to build itself up. One problem with that: Any soccer federation has a compelling interest in making sure its country has one substantive men’s professional league. What soccer federation has a compelling interest in bringing about two substantive men’s professional leagues?

2. Commisso, like many a politician, continues to make pronouncements that simply are not based in reality. One such comment to The Guardian: “I think of the rich investors in this country, I’m pretty unique in the sense that, besides the mind that I have, I’m the only one that played soccer.” Wrong. Meet Clark Hunt. The LAFC ownership group includes one of the best players of all time. (She surely doesn’t have as much money as Commisso, but wouldn’t it be nice if accomplished soccer players made as much as media moguls?) The Vancouver Whitecaps group includes Steve Nash, who’s better known for basketball but I’d bet was a better player than Commisso in his day. I haven’t done the research to know whether the owners in KC, Houston or New York ever played, but do you think Commisso has done it?

3. Would Jacksonville’s Robert Palmer be one of the investors in a Commisso consortium? I wonder how that would fit with Palmer’s current plans on the lower end of the pyramid.

4. We want to move forward, right? Why are we propping up the twice-tarnished NASL brand name?

So we have some interesting conversations. But I’m not sure Commisso, having shown a tendency to sue everyone short of MLS mascots when he doesn’t get his way, is someone USSF really wants to deal with at this point.

Here’s what I’m going to suggest. Start with this tweet:

So step forward, Mr. TV Exec. Maybe MLS would rather deal with you than Commisso. Maybe you can get MLS and Robert Palmer together to build a pyramid that’s based in reality, with a logical transition plan that addresses the concerns of the Deloitte report.

As cynical as this post may sound, I’m an optimist. I think we’re getting closer to having an open-ish system that would include all the benefits of a pro/rel pyramid — primarily opportunity for all. But you’re not going to get it by storming into Soccer House waving around your wallet and a half-baked plan while insisting upon firing everyone who ever worked with the NFL. You’re going to get it by getting everyone on the same page and talking.

And listening.

2
pro soccer, us soccer, youth soccer

Why are soccer clubs obsessed with going nationwide?

Posted on by Beau Dure

Well I was rolling down the road in a minivan
I had a keeper in the back and a guest player at the wheel
We going cross-country and we’re skipping school
We tired and I’m lost – I wonder why this is cool

Oh I’m bad … I’m nationwide

We know we’re not supposed to do this, right?

At the youth level, we have six national championship-ish events despite legitimate concerns that all we’re doing is rewarding families that can spend a lot of money on travel. And despite the legendary Horst Bertl (Dallas Comets, now FC Dallas) quote: “National youth championships in the USA are the most ludicrous thing I’ve ever heard in my life. Whoever thinks these up should be stoned.”

At the adult level, we fret over the costs a team like Christos FC incurs when it advances in the Open Cup. Then we see teams fall all over themselves to enter national leagues on top of national tournaments.

And the trend is only accelerating. Consider the news from the past week …

    1. U.S. Youth Soccer is revamping the regional pyramid that forms the base of its national league system, which is really a series of national showcases because no one really expects Tennessee Soccer Club to schedule a U15 league game against Greater Seattle Surf.
    2. The UPSL, the first league to institute promotion/relegation besides all the other adult (and youth) leagues that have had it for generations, is rapidly expanding — Columbia, S.C.; Silver Spring, Md.; Alton, N.H.; Hollywood, Fla.; Perris, Calif.; Aurora, Colo.; Dallas; Wake Forest, N.C.; etc. I count just north of 170 teams in the league now.

 

borgLike the Borg, the UPSL has grown in part through assimilation. The Premier League of America (which, despite the name, covers a relatively compact area around Lake Michigan) simply merged into the UPSL and became the Midwest Conference. A few other teams have moved over from existing amateur leagues such as the Colorado Premier League (a U.S. Specialty Sports Association affiliate), Texas Premier Soccer League (U.S. Club Soccer), the nominally professional American Soccer League, the apparently defunct American Champions League, the apparently defunct Champions Soccer League USA, the People’s Front of Judea (OK, that one’s fictional), and elsewhere. They also have a partnership with the traditionally strong Maryland Major Soccer League (home of the aforementioned Christos FC), one of the USASA’s Elite Amateur Leagues.

To some extent, the UPSL is a loose network of regional leagues. It’s much bigger in California than it is elsewhere. But it does have a national playoff and advertises a separate Cup competition called the Admiral Cup, though that doesn’t appear to have been contested recently.

A national playoff of this sort is a little curious. If you’re one of the many people annoyed with the USA for doing things that other countries don’t do, well, this is something other countries don’t do. I don’t see a national Regionalliga championship in Germany — just playoff games to determine the promoted sides, with no overall winner. Nor do I know of any English divisional championships after the fifth tier, which is the last nationwide league. (England does have the FA Trophy, a cup competition for those in tiers 5-8, and the FA Vase for anyone lower than that. But the U.S. counterpart to that would be the U.S. Amateur Cup, which many UPSL teams enter, and that winner can play in the supercup-ish Hank Steinbrecher Cup.) European clubs in regional leagues try to win that league and progress as far as they can in their cups.

But that playoff is, in the words of Douglas Adams, mostly harmless. It’s the summer leagues, PDL and NPSL, that have counterproductive national playoffs. These clubs serve a valuable purpose — giving college players a few more competitive games in the summers. Then they cut their regular seasons short to race through a set of playoffs that no one really cares about. (Seriously — lower-division fans can all remember U.S. Open Cup upsets such as Reading United over the New York Cosmos, Michigan Bucks over everyone, Des Moines Menace over a couple of pro teams, Chattanooga FC over Wilmington, etc. Name the last PDL champion. Or try to remember anything from the NPSL playoffs other than Midland-Odessa scraping together a team to play the final after the bulk of its roster went back to school for the fall.)

That’s the state of adult soccer. What about youth soccer?

Maybe the new U.S. Youth Soccer leagues will be an oasis of sanity. Unlike the Development Academy and the ECNL, they should have enough entries to split into sensible regional divisions. (The DA has a few good clusters at U12 but hits peak absurdity by U15, while ECNL travel budgets are rather excessive even in the long-established girls’ divisions.)

And somewhere in the ashes of the 2018 U.S. Soccer presidential race lies an interesting idea — a national Youth Cup. This exists in England, where the FA Youth Cup draws hundreds of U18 entries (and note that the age range is not by birth year) and Broxbourne Borough of the Spartan South Midlands League Division One (unfortunately, the senior team is facing relegation down to England’s 11th tier) was one game away from the quarterfinals last year.

One national championship. (OK, maybe two — England has a national U18 league with north and south divisions that face off in a national playoff, but that’s about it for national travel, even in a country that requires no airplanes for away fixtures.) That seems sensible. And the top academies might have to face off with a Broxbourne Borough in a meaningful game instead of sitting in a silo.

Basically, if you’re going to have a national championship, maybe it should include everyone in the nation — at least those meeting a certain criteria like “amateur” or “Division 3 or below” or “Division I college teams.” Otherwise, why spend time flying when you could be playing?

2