Tag: mls

soccer

Shots on goal in U.S. games, April 13-17

Posted on by Beau Dure

Home teams first, ranked in order within each league. Make of it what you will.

MLS (median=6; mean for season thru Saturday’s games was 8.39)
New York 9-3 San Jose
Portland 5-5 Dallas
Houston 7-1 New England
Toronto 1-6 D.C. United
Chicago 3-3 Los Angeles
Vancouver 2-4 Chivas USA
Portland 4-2 Chicago (not including one own goal each way)
Columbus 4-2 Kansas City
Salt Lake 2-3 Colorado
Toronto 3-1 Los Angeles
Philadelphia 3-1 Seattle

(Incidentally, in 1998, the average shots per game was 12.98)

WPS (median=13.5)
Atlanta 4-11 Sky Blue FC
Boston 4-8 Western NY

NASL
No idea. So far, they’ve had eight games, 16 goals and 52 saves. So that’s 68 shots on goal (8.5 per game).

USL PRO (median=7.5; adding saves plus goals)
Dayton 3-5 Charleston
Wilmington 4-4 Rochester
Richmond 4-3 Rochester
Charlotte 1-5 Orlando

RANDOM GLOBAL GAMES (median=8.5)
Bolton 5-10 Stoke
Catania 5-9 Lazio
Arsenal 5-5 Liverpool
Pumas 6-4 Queretaro
Deportivo La Coruna 4-5 Racing Santander
Montpellier 3-5 Marseille
Bayern Munich 4-3 Bayer Leverkusen (in 4-1 Bayern win?)
Borussia Dortmund 5-2 Freiburg
PSG 5-2 Lyon
Fiorentina 4-2 Juventus

So … guys? The thing with the net at the end of the field? Yeah. Soccer balls go in there.

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soccer

A realistic 2011 MLS season preview

Posted on by Beau Dure

The predicted order of finish in MLS this season is …

I have no idea. And neither do you, no matter how many thousands of words you’ve written or podcasted to the contrary.

We really should get over the concept of being able to predict this league. This isn’t the NBA, where well-established veterans are joined by players we’ve seen for at least a year in college. Or the NFL, where Mel Kiper and his clones thoroughly vet every draftee and no one comes in from Europe. Or the NHL and MLB, where only the top junior phenoms skip the minor leagues. (Sure, it’s much more common in hockey, but even then, we know the players who are ready to make the jump.)

I’m not going to pretend I know how any of these scores of newcomers are going to fare in MLS. The only thing more ridiculous than pretending I can project a draftee’s MLS potential from a dark FSC college soccer broadcast is pretending I can tell you whether the Whitecaps have bought wisely from the Swiss Super League.

I didn’t scout the Uruguayan league to find out if Diego Chaves and Gaston Puerari are the answers up front for Chicago. I know far more about Ole Einar Bjorndalen than I do about Jan Gunnar Solli.

Some of these guys will be the next Christian Gomez or Joel Lindpere. Some of them will be the next Franco Niell or Isaac Romo.

Of the expansion teams, Portland has more proven MLS players than Vancouver has. That means Vancouver’s first year could be a Chivas USA redux, or maybe the Swiss league is to the Northwest what Eastern Europe was to the 1998 Chicago Fire.

This much we know: A couple of teams (Salt Lake, Seattle) have solid cores and didn’t make too many changes. New York has a solid core but made a few more changes than the others. Los Angeles and Dallas made a few high-profile tweaks.

Predicting the newcomers’ success is really a question of judging the recent track record of the people who brought them in. With Steve Nicol in charge, New England can maintain some cautious optimism. Houston also has management with a solid track record.

Other than that, let the crapshoot begin. And when Team X wins it all, I’ll be the first to say I didn’t tell you so.

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soccer

Style points: Why everything you think about the present or future U.S. soccer mentality is wrong

Posted on by Beau Dure

Soccer America’s Best of American Soccer 2010 has a terrific profile of FC Dallas coach Schellas Hyndman, whose breakout year in 2010 is just a small part of his compelling story.

His background is one reason why I’ve found the stereotypes of U.S. soccer in this otherwise interesting BigSoccer thread, which popped up in response to my ESPN piece on Claudio Reyna’s quest to overhaul U.S. youth development, so frustrating. The stereotypes say U.S. coaches are all about finding athletic players and aren’t interested in having decent touch on the ball or other soccer skills. If players have creative flair, it’s coached out of them.

Sure, you could find plenty of examples in which that’s true. But you can also find plenty of counterexamples.

In the 1990s, before and just after MLS launched, the most influential coaches in the USA were college coaches. And if you look at that group, you see so many exceptions that you start to wonder about the rule.

Start with Hyndman (SMU 1984-2008), who came to this country from China via Macau. He is a martial arts master who applies that discipline and focus (but not its kicks and punches) to the possession style he learned on a long sojourn to Brazil.

Then you have Argentina-bred George Tarantini (N.C. State 1985-2010), who recruited playmakers such as Tab Ramos but surrounded him with bruisers who were masters at off-the-ball, away-from-ref’s-eyes physicality. (Tarantini also coached a Cuban refugee named Albertin Montoya, who is also featured in the Soccer America year in review after coaching FC Gold Pride to fleeting glory.)

U.S. coach Bob Bradley (Princeton 1984-95) works far harder at building ties within his team than he does at winning over fans with bravado on the field or in press conferences. That gives him a reputation of being a prototypical overcontrolling U.S. coach. Yet he’s sensitive to overcoaching — check this funny anecdote from Time magazine (HT: Stan Collins) in which Bradley suggests to his daughter’s coach that he tone down the yelling, and the coach smacks him down because he’s just a “parent.”

We haven’t even mentioned yet that two of the most successful MLS coaches are Bruce Arena (Virginia 1978-95) and Sigi Schmid (UCLA 1980-99), neither of whom fits the mold. And their thoughts on soccer aren’t similar to those of Steve Sampson (Santa Clara 1986-93), who unleashed the 3-6-1 on the World Cup in 1998 for better or for worse.

Not all of these coaches are popular among the hard-core fans who want to see the USA play like Spain. Some of them have used negative tactics from time to time. But they’re hardly a group that can be painted with one brush.

Neither are the players they’ve developed. For all the talk of U.S. coaches focusing on big galoots, the prototype for ball-winning defensive midfielders was Richie Williams, who is roughly 10 inches tall.

Perry Kitchen was a highly sought-after prospect from Akron, where Caleb Porter is the latest “it” guy in the college ranks whose team plays the “right” way, and yet he walked straight from the MLS draft podium to a grilling from Paul Gardner over how often he fouls. Which mold does he fit?

The U.S. player who drew the most attention over the past 10 years has been Freddy Adu. He’s not big. He’s not even fast, though Cobi Jones memorably suggested that he try to use his speed rather than tricks.

Some people claim Adu was never that good, though everyone from Ray Hudson to European clubs to the U-17 defenses he shredded may differ. Some say Peter Nowak, not exactly a “U.S. coach” at that point in his career, coached his improvisational flair out of him and undermined his confidence.

Not I’m surprised to see BigSoccer conventional wisdom contradict itself. Despite evidence to the contrary, BigSoccer posters are convinced U.S. coaches prefer the big brutes. Another BigSoccer meme suggests the U.S. would be much better if it could convince its athletes to choose soccer over football and basketball. Most of those “athletes” are considerably bigger than the typical soccer team.

The overriding point is this: The USA is a large, diverse country. Its coaches and players come from different backgrounds and offer different talents.

That explains Arena’s skepticism in the most pointed quote in my ESPN story. He says this country is simply too big and too diverse to develop one particular style that fits all.

And so it surely must be folly to suggest that the USA already has one particular mindset without even trying to impose one. Right?

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soccer

Beckham and the remnants of condescending England

Posted on by Beau Dure

Most Americans love England in some respect. They might be Monty Python or Doctor Who fans. They might think London is lovely. They might admire the country’s love affair with a sport that spreads to four professional leagues and scores of semipro and amateur leagues all wrapped up in a neatly organized pyramid. They might think the English are generally better educated and more reasonable, though that could be a stereotype that fails to account for, say, booing an opponent’s national anthem.

What we don’t like the English insistence that, as great-great-grandchildren of the people who wrote soccer’s rules and successfully exported them to the world, they must know better than we do. About everything.

That insistence has faded. The Premier League is built on foreign talent and, in many cases, foreign coaches. American players in particular are much better respected today than they were 15 years ago.

Yet we see vestiges of it on the Web, along with vestiges of all other prejudices. Just check the comments on Paul Gardner’s Soccer America piece quite rightly questioning why David Beckham wants to drag his long-battered body over for a couple of months of being knocked around in the Premier League.

The commenters — clearly unaware that Gardner is himself English and was writing eloquent pieces about FA Cup finals before they were born — don’t address Gardner’s points. They simply refuse to believe that “someone in America” would dare to criticize anyone as brilliant as Beckham.

One doesn’t have to have been raised on Match of the Day and disgusting meat pies to understand the following:

1. A minor point: Beckham would actually be a good candidate for an Olympic overage spot, just as Brian McBride (a player the English might recall) lent his experience to the 2008 USA squad.

2. For those who clearly didn’t read the piece before commenting: The issue is not that Beckham has been limited by playing in a low-quality side. The issue is that Beckham takes off on these loans and comes back injured from playing too many games. He’s not young. He needs to give his body a break. And regardless of what you folks think about MLS, Beckham thought enough of it to sign a contract and pledge himself to playing here, and it’s high time he lived up to his words.

3. For Patrick Cormac — this may seem petty, but if you’re going to complain about education, you should consider spelling “nouveau” correctly. And you should realize that whatever complaints people have about Gardner, he’s not exactly “nouveau.” One of his most brilliant pieces is an account of the 1953 “Matthews final.” A first-hand account.

4. For Jeff Jefferson — Americans did not invent the word “soccer.” The English invented that word to distinguish the game from other codes of football. Americans aren’t alone in calling it “soccer.” Say “footy” in Australia, and you’ll be greeted by a gaggle of men chasing after an oblong ball and trying to maneuver it through three giant posts at either end of a massive oval.

Frankly, it appears that these folks could use an education not just about the realities of the game in the USA but the history of the sport as a whole. Perhaps they should start with Gardner’s book The Simplest Game.

Gardner, in his decades in this hemisphere, has come to the position that the USA should take more inspiration from the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries in the Americas than from Europe, particularly as the USA becomes more Hispanic through immigration. His critics would say he belabors the point. But if you’re going to base your entire response on an appeal to authority, you’re going to lose.

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soccer

Settling all MLS dilemmas in one easy fix (maybe)

Posted on by Beau Dure

The big issues coming out of MLS Cup weekend, among the media and the hard-core supporters (most of whom are “media” in some sense, even if it’s just a prolific Twitter habit) were:

1. This game is ending far too late. Fans are leaving, and no one’s going to make deadline. And maybe they should revisit the whole neutral-site idea, anyway.

2. 10 teams in the playoffs next year? Really?

3. Hmm, the league is considering the formation of a committee that would study the idea of forming a task force to do an in-depth look into asking its competition committee to weigh the prospects of “changing to the international calendar.” (The “international” calendar, of course, means “Western Europe’s calendar.”)

4. Hey, cool, I didn’t know your book was out! Can I get it on Kindle?

Simple issues first: I’m inquiring into issue #4, and the game simply needs to be played earlier. No MLS Cup final should kick off at 8:55 p.m. on a Sunday night. It’s too late. Possibly too cold. The ideal time, particularly if the game is on an NFL Sunday, is probably 6:30 or 7. People can flip over to MLS after the afternoon NFL games, then flip to the Sunday night game when the soccer’s done. Families can attend the game and still have a chance of getting home to get some sleep before work or school the next day.

But should MLS Cup stay in November? Here’s one suggestion surely doomed to fail:

– To meet FIFA’s insistence on playing within the “international calendar,” split the season into a fall Apertura and spring Clausura like so many Latin American leagues. (The wise man they call The Perfesser agrees.) But these won’t quite be your traditional Apertura and Clausura (in part because the calendar and the number of teams simply won’t allow it).

– The Apertura winner earns the right to host MLS Cup the following summer. MLS will still have months to plan a big event with all the attendant conventions (supporters, retailers, sponsors, club execs, etc.), which wouldn’t be possible if the playoffs went to the highest-seeded finalist as determined one week earlier. But the right to host the final will be earned on the field. The host team might even be playing in the game.

– Here’s one trick: To let everyone play a balanced schedule in the Apertura, we have to split the league into two 10-team conferences. The Apertura will be 18 weeks, from early August to late November — typically the best MLS months for attendance. (Yes, TV windows are minimal, but we’ll have to make do with Thursday night games through the Apertura and then stress the Clausura for TV.)

– So how will we know who wins the Apertura and hosts MLS Cup? That will be the first game of the Clausura, which runs 10 weeks from early March to mid-May, and features only interconference games. We’ll start with a bang by pairing the Apertura conference winners to determine the Cup host. The host city still has a couple of months to prepare.

– Records are cumulative. They don’t reset for the Clausura. After 28 games, everyone will have played each team in its conference twice and each team in the other conference once.

– The playoffs will usually run four weeks using the modified Aussie rules system I’ve already put forth. The top four seeds are the Apertura winner, the top team in each conference and the team with the next-best record. Then we have four wild cards.

(Option B has six teams: The Apertura champ and team with top overall record in a four-team modified Aussie rules playoff, with four wild cards playing off to reach that round. Option C: Go straight to four teams.)

Oh, that 10-team playoff format? Forget it. If you’re taking a winter break and summer break, you don’t have time to play all those games.

In fact, in World Cup years, you don’t have time for playoffs at all. Go straight to MLS Cup.

So in simple terms, without all the argumentation: It’s a 28-game season with an 18-game Apertura played all within the conferences. The conference winners face off in the first game of the Clausura for the right to host MLS Cup, and then you have playoffs as described above.

Nothing’s perfect. The Clausura start and Apertura championship game take place during college hoops conference championship week, and it won’t help to move it 1-2 weeks in either direction. CONCACAF Champions League teams play 24 games in the 18 weeks of the Apertura. (The good news: If they get to the knockout rounds, the schedule is a little easier during the skimpier Clausura.)

But this maximizes many things the league would like to accomplish:

  1. Balanced schedule, more or less.
  2. Many teams involved in playoff chase.
  3. Time to plan MLS Cup and attendant conventions.
  4. Incentive to win right to host MLS Cup.
  5. Playoff system that spreads out a lot of home games.
  6. Winter break to avoid freezing.
  7. Ballyhooed “international calendar.”

Have at it.

For further reading: Brian Straus’ group-stage playoff suggestion and Paul Kennedy’s argument in favor of a fall-to-spring season, complete with the suggestion to phase it in during the 2014 World Cup year.

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Is MLS too physical?

Posted on by Beau Dure

This is a story I worked on through much of the MLS season, but the timing to run it was never quite right. I just updated a couple of figures and posted it here instead.

Early in the MLS season, a couple of league coaches were tired of hearing that their teams were playing a bit rough.

“If you want to avoid contact, I would suggest badminton or curling or chess maybe,” Philadelphia coach Peter Nowak told the Delaware County Daily Times.

“If you want me to bring a lot of ballerinas I will,” then-Toronto coach Preki told TSN.

But players and coaches can’t agree on whether MLS is a “physical” league. One reason for the lack of consensus: They’re not really sure what “physical” means or how “physical” play affects the game.

Continue reading →

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The big MLS playoff and schedule announcement

Posted on by Beau Dure

As you may have already heard, MLS announced two things Sunday night to coincide with MLS Cup:

1. They’re looking into a change in scheduling to align with the international calendar, which in many parts of the world means an August-May league calendar — with or without a split season, with or without a winter break (well, with — Garber concedes the league won’t be playing in January or most of February). What has actually been decided along these lines: Absolutely nothing. Could be split season, could be Bundesliga-style, could be nothing.

2. They want to go to 11 teams in the playoff. I’m sorry — 10. Thinking ahead to Nigel Tufnel Day (11/11/11). Bracket system to be determined. Brian Straus and I can still hold out hope for our competing playoff proposals (he wants group stage; I want Aussie Rules style).

MLS has often held an informal talk with a mob surrounding the commissioner at halftime. This time, they decided to let us focus on the game, so they told us and held a press conference ahead of the game, with the request that we hold off on reporting it. Sounds reasonable, right? They could’ve just handed us a press release, and we wouldn’t have had a chance to ask questions.

Not that we the media ask the most brilliant questions, and not that Don Garber was really in a position to say anything more than that.

As Charles Boehm said on Twitter (I’ll go back and add links later), aligning with dates for international games would make sense. Playing any farther into the winter is a non-starter.

A Latin American-style split season could be intriguing, and a summer MLS Cup wouldn’t have to worry about NFL and NCAA football taking every available weekend time slot.

The playoff announcement will meet with sure derision from the fans. But good luck changing their minds.

And really, as I said multiple times in my book, MLS can’t please everyone. Not in such a diverse country.

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A modest MLS playoff proposal

Posted on by Beau Dure

Complaints about the MLS playoff format are as much a part of the American soccer landscape as chants about pies are a part of the English scene. Beneath the hysteria over New York or Salt Lake winning a geographically imprecise conference title, some of the complaints are legit:

– Hosting the second leg of a two-leg series is a middling advantage after a long season.

– Colorado finished seventh in the league and yet will host a conference final.

The league likes to give everyone a home game and put an emphasis on elimination games rather than extended series. Great, but another method works just as well. That method is borrowed from football.

Not that football. The Aussie kind.

Australian Rules Football uses an eight-team version of the Page playoff system that is popular in a few offbeat sports such as softball, curling and yachting.

The principles are these:

– The top four teams must be beaten twice to be eliminated. The bottom four only get one loss.

– The No. 1 and No. 2 seeds are guaranteed two home games. No. 3 through No. 6 get at least one.

So if MLS had put this system in place this year, the schedule would’ve been as follows (home teams listed first):

First round

– No. 1 Los Angeles vs. No. 4 Dallas
– No. 2 Salt Lake vs. No. 3 New York
– No. 5 Columbus vs. No. 8 San Jose (loser out)
– No. 6 Seattle vs. No. 7 Columbus (loser out)

Second round (both losers out)

– LA-Dallas loser vs. Columbus-SJ winner
– RSL-NY loser vs. Seattle-Clb winner

Semifinals (both losers out)

– RSL-NY winner vs. first 2nd round winner
– LA-Dallas winner vs. second 2nd round winner

MLS Cup: Semifinal winners at highest remaining seed

The system is relatively simple, and it rewards regular-season play. The top teams get an advantage without being idle so long that they might get cold. What else could you want?

(MLS fans will surely think of something, of course!)

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Colorado 1-0 Columbus: Squander, squander, squander

Posted on by Beau Dure

From the 10th minute to the 75th, the Colorado Rapids dominated the Columbus Crew, racking up double digits in shots. Funny thing, though — they only put a couple of those shots on frame, never seriously testing backup Columbus keeper Andy Gruenebaum aside from the well-taken goal, which left Gruenebaum with no chance.

Random thoughts:

– Crew sub Kevin Burns nearly earned himself quite a bit of play on SportsCenter tomorrow with a looping header from outside the box that clanged off the right post.

– Burns’ shot was one of three great chances for the Crew, all in the second half. Andy Iro pounded a shot off a corner kick right at Matt Pickens, and Guillermo Barros Schelotto put one well over the net.

– Colorado had three forwards on the bench, a testament to their offensive depth, but Mac Kandji was clearly the wrong call. He didn’t have the defensive poise he needed.

– The Crew defense had all sorts of problems. Frankie Hejduk misplayed several balls. Iro struggled with Omar Cummings, who undid the defense with a diagonal run into space where rookie Shaun Francis probably should’ve been.

– Colorado’s dominance came from the midfield, where Mastroeni and Jeff Larentowicz ran over Brian Carroll and a rotation of Eddie Gaven and Emmanuel Ekpo in the center. Carroll committed what you might call a frustration foul, sliding very hard into Cummings.

Second-leg projection: It’s 50-50. After the final 20 minutes, Columbus has the momentum. The game is in Columbus. Colorado counters with a one-goal advantage and the best defense of all — a strong offense.

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soccer

Does the USA need a “No. 10”?

Posted on by Beau Dure

David Hirshey critiques the U.S. MNT with a lament for the bygone days, which never really existed in the USA’s case, of a “No. 10” playmaker directing the team.

From Ives Galarcep, we get a very different reading — the USA fared well in the 4-2-3-1 set-up that seems so common worldwide these days.

The 4-2-3-1 doesn’t rule out a “No. 10” — the midfielder at the center of the “3” line could be that guy. But all three of those midfielders are likely to see a fair amount of the ball, and the best playmaker need not be in the center. Landon Donovan, the MLS assist leader, is listed as a forward on Galaxy previews and is, as Hirshey notes, more commonly found on the flanks.

Bob Bradley was long criticized for playing an “empty bucket” midfield, with two central midfielders who leaned more toward the defensive end. Yet that system simply demanded that everyone share the load. It’s not inherently inferior to a diamond midfield with an attacking No. 10 and a defensive midfielder behind him. Some of the better midfields in MLS — Ronnie Ekelund and Richard Mulrooney spring to mind — were more fluid than the traditional attacking/defending split.

We’d all like to see skillful players, of course, and the buzzword in youth development these days is to encourage players to experiment and play a game more freely than the regimented days of the past. Freddy Adu in particular may have suffered from an insistence that he play more defense than a typical No. 10 or withdrawn forward would play.

But it’s tough to blame senior-level coaches for not having a Messi on hand. Hirshey curiously lumps Bruce Arena in the “hustle first, skill second” mindset of college coaches, even though Arena built fluid teams at Virginia and based D.C. United’s attack on a traditional No. 10 in Marco Etcheverry.

To show off a No. 10 in that mold, you need a player who’s head and shoulders above the rest. (Well, in the literal sense, he’s usually a head shorter — El Pibe excepted, most No. 10s are on the diminutive side.) Then you need to have a team so dominant and confident that someone else can carry the load if the defense focuses too heavily on one predictable mode of attack. Switch Messi to North Korea’s team, and he might not look like the swaggering No. 10 that Hirshey pictures him to be with Barcelona and Argentina.

So to see a true No. 10, the USA would need more than a change of tactics or one excellent player. We’d need to see a Golden Generation come up through the ranks. A No. 10 may be a symptom of a great team, but not the root of one.

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