Tag: mls

soccer

MLS academy vs. school: So far, school still winning

Posted on by Beau Dure
Do you know me? I’m an exception!

Soccer America raises a few questions about the MLS homegrown program, noting that a lot of players aren’t playing or have already washed out of the league.

One irony — a nice exception to the rule this year has been Jose Villarreal, who plays for the Los Angeles Galaxy. His coach, Bruce Arena, is the one who likened the current system to a “black hole” in a Washington Post interview.

One solution seems relatively simple — MLS should probably enter its reserve teams in the USL or NASL to get those players more meaningful games. Not that anything is simple in the turf wars of U.S. soccer.

The other solution: Let players try pro soccer, and if it’s not working out by age 20, let them go back to college. That just requires the NCAA to be reasonable.

(I almost said that with a straight face.)

Related in Soccer America: An interview with NSCAA CEO Joe Cummings, who seems as irritated as anyone else about the Development Academy banning its players from high school games.

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soccer

You want U.S. Soccer involvement in elite women’s game? Here you go …

Posted on by Beau Dure

I don’t see the press release at USSoccer.com yet, but there was a second announcement today in addition to Pia Sundhage’s roster for the Olympics. Here’s the key excerpt:

Following the FIFA Women’s World Cups for the Under-17 and Under-20 age levels this coming fall, the head coaching positions for those teams will become full-time for the first time. In addition, U.S. Soccer will hire another full-time coach whose main focus will be on enhancing the player development environment for young players from coast to coast.

So before today’s game against China, U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati held a press conference with women’s technical director April Heinrichs and women’s development director Jill Ellis.

Does this sound boring so far? In some respects, it’s not a huge announcement. But these little announcements — like the hiring of Heinrichs and Ellis a while ago — are adding up to something, and the press conference led to a wide-ranging talk on women’s soccer.

So in the 20 minutes before this game starts, I’ll try to sum up:

– Heinrichs and Ellis say they’re trying to shift the focus of U.S. development from physical and psychological to tactical and technical.

– Will we see the women duplicate the U.S. U17 men’s Bradenton residency? Heinrichs and Ellis weren’t enthusiastic about that. Heinrichs says it’s a good way to win a U17 World Cup, but she and Ellis want to cast a wider net for players at that age for future national team development.

– Heinrichs says an 18-year-old American recently had to choose between college and a lucrative deal with Lyon in France.

– Might we see a national B team to keep more players in active international play? Gulati thinks it’s possible and said Heinrichs once drew up some similar plans.

– The big news you’ve already seen us tweet: In 30-45 days, U.S. Soccer will convene a meeting of various stakeholders in the women’s game: USL, former WPS teams … and yes, MLS, either teams or league staff or both. (I forgot to ask if Dan Borislow was invited.)

– An interesting WPS post-mortem piece: Gulati says U.S. Soccer offered 12 months ago to help WPS with league administration. They were turned down.

I’m thinking regular readers here might have some thoughts. Have at it.

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soccer

Again with the promotion/relegation: Investors STILL needed

Posted on by Beau Dure

I was kidding when I mused aloud about suing a certain promotion/relegation zealot for defamation. I think.

As I’ve said before, the people (particularly the ringleader) of the promotion/relegation movement tend to personalize things. We’re not just idiots if we don’t see how American soccer would obviously be better if everyone saw the “open system” light. We’re on the take from Major League Soccer as part of a grand conspiracy to rid the world of the league system that began when England had too many soccer teams applying for its league.

We soccer journalists can say we like pro/rel but don’t find it feasible in this country at the moment, we can say it might happen someday when we reach critical mass, we can say our income wouldn’t change if MLS were to disappear tomorrow. We could probably even post our tax returns online, and they’d insist that someone from MLS is slipping us cash in a secluded room somewhere.

That’s all a good way of deflecting attention from the fact that we soccer journalists have plenty of evidence — some of it brilliantly compiled this week by Kenn Tomasch — and they have little but a voice in their heads saying, “If you build it, they will come.”

The current argument tack appears to be that they don’t need investors to build a league. They can just change things at the federation level, and then everyone will have to get on board with promotion/relegation.

Just a couple of problems with that thought:

1. Current investors could easily run screaming from such a change.

2. Again, there’s no evidence that we have people who would invest in soccer clubs that want to get promoted. In fact, the current leagues of choice are cheap amateur leagues — PDL, W-League, NPSL, WPSL.

If, over time, these teams find that they’re ready to make the leap up the pyramid, they can. But the vast majority of these clubs are in no position to be forced up the pyramid, and they dang well know it!

Let’s reiterate this:

– You can move up the ladder in American soccer if you have the capital and facilities to do so.

– Most clubs choose not to do so.

So how could anyone think there are tons of investors who would invest in soccer if they had a chance to climb the ladder through on-field performance? They can already do so, and they’re not.

3. U.S. Soccer knows this. So they’re not going to ruin the most stable league they’ve ever had by forcing teams to move up and down.

And no amount of personal attacks, no jabs at MLS’s TV ratings, no scoffing at WPS’s troubles will change those basic facts.

 

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soccer

The annual MLS playoff fretting

Posted on by Beau Dure

Every year, MLS has exciting playoff action, and every year, people complain. Then people complain about the complainers.

But the argument changes a little each year. Especially this year, with the first 10-team playoff in league history. The tournament has produced its share of excitement as always, and it allowed the big-money, big-market, big-name New York Red Bulls to overcome that pesky stretch of winning two out of 20 games. (Hey, they only lost five.)

I’m not completely joking here. One advantage of a playoff format is that it allows a team to sort things out over the course of a season and build toward something big at the end. The Red Bulls might not be the best example, but consider Real Salt Lake, an obviously excellent team that was battered by injuries and a busy schedule. Jason Kreis’s club will face the Galaxy on Sunday in one of those truly outstanding matchups that the playoffs can produce.

Here’s the problem — we have less than 72 hours to build up to that game.

You might not be thinking, “Hey, how does this affect USA TODAY?” But it does. I was able to get a story in Wednesday’s paper on the Galaxy-Red Bulls series and other games — just my third MLS story of the year, which indicates a few more problems. A story on the Salt Lake-Galaxy semifinal would be great, but it can’t be done for any print version of USA TODAY. The Galaxy-Red Bulls game ended at 1 a.m. ET, beyond all reasonable deadlines for the Friday paper. USA TODAY doesn’t publish again until Monday. (Some sports merit online-only coverage on weekends, but MLS isn’t there. Yet.)

Other media outlets have similar problems. Everyone has to scramble to get things ready for a huge game in just three days.

Then there are those other people who have just a couple of days to prepare. What are they called? Oh, right — players.

So to sum up — the biggest games of the season so far will feature two tired teams in a media dead zone.

Tweaking the schedule could help a little bit. But the basic problem is that a 10-team playoff forces another round of games to be squeezed into what is already a narrow window of decent weather in North America.

Everyone has a favorite fix-all for the playoffs. I posted mine at this time last year, and it was ignored as always. The basic idea: Play an Apertura and Clausura season, with a Cup tournament at the end of the Clausura (before the summer break). You could even give the Supporters Shield to an Apertura winner, MLS Cup to the Clausura/playoff winner and an MLS SuperCup to the winner of a big neutral-site game in August, when there’s less competition for attention.

Barring a major shakeup like that, though, the simplest thing to ask would be to scale it back to eight teams. Just not enough time to get those wild cards in the mix.

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soccer

The ups and downs of promotion and relegation

Posted on by Beau Dure

Long the province of cranky conversations in the virtual soccer community, promotion and relegation leaped into the news in recent days with a couple of pieces of bad reporting:

1. An English executive of some kind, Richard Bevan, claimed that some overseas owners of Premier League clubs want to scrap promotion and relegation. American-owned Aston Villa responded: “Put up or shut up.” Neither happened. Liverpool’s John Henry has now weighed in with his own denial.

Let me back up with a disclaimer: My love/hate relationship with Britain (probably 80% love) can be summed up like this – Britain invented many things I love in the arts, sports, sciences and intellectual thought. That includes Monty Python, the Beatles, the Comedy Store Players, soccer, antibiotics, economic theory and (eventually) the notion that a capitalist country should find a way to take care of its least fortunate.

But don’t let anyone tell you it’s not provincial, especially in sports. They’re miffed that the rest of the world doesn’t play the same sports they do. Some people even prefer the “awkwardness” of the UK version of The Office to the full-fledged character development and creative situations of the American version. They’ve spent decades thinking there’s something wrong with the way South Americans play soccer. They STILL think the 1930 U.S. World Cup semifinalists were all Brits, no matter how many times Roger Allaway and company smash that myth into pieces.

So we shouldn’t be surprised when the bad old Americans are seen as overlords who want to turn the Premier League into the NFL. They really should be more worried about people who want to form a pan-European NFL of their own.

2. Meanwhile, in Korea, the soccer powers that be want to start promoting and relegating. Here’s the problem: They tried that just a few years ago, and the lower-division teams didn’t want to move up.

That’s not unusual. In the USA, teams have often preferred to move down or stay down. The USL’s sprawling three-tier system of 15 years ago is now a scaled-back third-division pro league with scores of teams opting instead for fourth-division amateur status. Some clubs, like the well-rooted D3 Richmond Kickers, have no desire to bounce back up to a division that would require cross-country travel every other week. (Yes, I’ve asked.)

Teams also aren’t that likely to see a giant leap in revenue with each step up the pyramid. Consider other U.S. sports. I saw Greensboro’s minor-league hockey team move from the brutish ECHL to the flashy AHL, a big step up the ladder that brought much more talented players to the Coliseum. Attendance dropped.

***

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soccer, sports culture

MLS All-Stars, overreaction and reaction

Posted on by Beau Dure

Hysterical overreaction is as much a part of the Internet as inappropriate photos and conspiracy theories.

Given that, I’m a little surprised I haven’t heard today from the dude who kept Tweeting at me last week about MLS “fixing” games by playing reserves in the second half … of friendlies. Oh no, it couldn’t be a prudent decision to rest starters and give reserves some experience in a game that won’t count in the standings. It’s a crime.

The Internet is noisy. After any event that draws hype, many people will sound off. And just as the UFC survives to fight another day when a main event is disappointing, so too will MLS survive a round of friendlies in which European elites have basically wiped the field with indifferent, inexperienced or inferior teams.

All that said, MLS fans and the blogopundits are well within their rights to look at last night’s game and ask whether the league has any players capable of hitting the broad side of a barn from the penalty spot.

The league has already set a record for scoreless ties, and it’s not even August, as Steve Davis laments in a sound analysis. Then last night, the MLS All-Stars laid a goose egg.

Yes, Manchester United is one of the world’s best teams, and yes, they’re clearly taking this U.S. tour more seriously than many teams have taken it in the past. Their attacking flair was brilliant last night, and it’s hard to begrudge an All-Star team that never practices together the four goals it conceded to Rooney, Berbatov et al.

Yet United gave the All-Stars plenty of space, appropriately enough for a friendly. No one’s getting “stuck in” on a challenge in a game like this. (Jamison Olave left with an injury, but it wasn’t caused by contact.) The All-Stars, though unfamiliar with each other, completed 86% of their passes and managed 13 shots, two more than a well-oiled Man U machine. Goals? Zero. And it’s not as if Man U’s two keepers had to dig deep to keep the All-Stars at bay.

Can we prove anything from one game? No. Is it one more sad piece of evidence to the well-supported theory that MLS players can knock the ball around all day, just as they do in those ubiquitous possession drills, but can’t put the ball in the net? Certainly looks that way.

And fans have every right to say, while supporting the league in near-record numbers, that GMs should be looking for goal-scorers and coaches should be devoting a bit more time to finishing drills rather than possession exercises.

That’s not an overreaction to one game. The All-Star Game isn’t even the last straw. It’s just a well-publicized example of a legitimate problem. The result — Manchester United winning — doesn’t matter. Overreacting to the game is silly. Reacting is not.

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soccer

How and how not to change the U.S. soccer landscape

Posted on by Beau Dure

(Yes, I’ll get to WPS, magicJack and even promotion/relegation in this post. But it needs some background.)

The United States has been a graveyard of soccer leagues. The reasons are many: The scattered population and ensuing high travel costs, the cultural antipathy toward a game that wasn’t invented here, and the dominance of the Big Three and a Half team sports.

Another reason is that it’s nearly impossible to get everyone on the same page. Plenty of people have their own ideas on how to run a soccer league, and inevitably, the leagues, teams, players and fans get caught in the crossfire of egos. Let’s spend wildly on players! Let’s go indoors! Let’s go indoors but change the scoring system! Let’s blast music during the game! Let’s confine players to a particular region of the field and give them ankle bracelets so they don’t veer outside that zone!

(If you don’t find my summary here or in Long-Range Goals sufficient to make this point, read David Wangerin’s Soccer in a Football World. And note that he has another book out on the USA’s missed opportunities.)

Though the state of U.S. soccer in 2011 is a bit better than it was in 1988 or 1960 — or just about any year you could find prior to World Cup 1994 — we still have plenty of people who are convinced they know better. “X, Y and Z failed,” the argument goes, “so I must know better.”

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soccer

MLSSoccer.com “Ramos Project” looks promising

Posted on by Beau Dure

Quick impressions on an impressive beta version of MLSSoccer.com:

– Outstanding: Bottom navigation featuring the latest two offerings of regular features such as Talking Tactics, Armchair Analyst, The Throw-In, etc. Finding regular features on the site has been difficult until now.

– Opta stats! Opta stats! And more Opta stats! Very nice. Now if those could be integrated with player profiles, we’d really be onto something.

– Player profiles have game logs that include tell you whether a player started, subbed or was left on the bench. Nice detail, though it’d be nice to know whether a player was omitted from the 18 altogether. And it’d be really nice to know if he was suspended, injured or just out of favor. Some of those details exist in the game notes that MLS has usually made available in massive PDF files, and it’d be great if that data could be available on the site in a more useful format.

– The video highlights didn’t crash Google Chrome! We’ll have to see if Matchday Live also works on Chrome.

As with any beta, we’ll have to see how well it stands up, and you may spot the occasional bug. But it’s hard to label this anything but encouraging progress.

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