Tag: u.s. soccer

soccer

Do U.S. Soccer’s divisional standards make any sense?

Posted on by Beau Dure

Or, to rephrase, are they necessary?

Northern Pitch, an essential soccer blog you should all add to Feedly or Twitter notifications or whatever you use to keep track of things, has a good take on The Broken Logic of USSF’s League Rules. The Northern Pitch folks are in Minnesota with one foot in the NASL and one in MLS, so they have a good perspective on such things.

So, of course, I feel compelled to be nit-picky …

First, the history.

In 2009-2010, the USL–at that time the 2nd division–experienced a schism: owners who wanted to spend more and up the level of the league broke off and formed what would become the NASL. USSF tried to make the two leagues play nice for 2010, but that didn’t last long.

I’d argue that USSF wasn’t trying to make them “play nice” as much as they were “trying to keep these clubs in existence.” Neither the NASL group or the USL group had a critical mass that could sustain a league. USSF, in what you might call a rare bit of common-sense intervention, banded them together for a special edition, one-time only D2 league.

Again, that’s nit-picky and not even all that relevant. The more important part of the history: USSF then unleashed a comprehensive set of standards designed to keep the riff-raff out of pro soccer so we wouldn’t have a revolving door of uncapitalized clubs coming and folding. (If you’re of a certain ilk, you might find such standards an important part of this complete conspiracy theory against promotion and relegation, but in reality, these standards have stabilized things. So well, in fact, that now people really think we can have promotion and relegation sometime soon. See, Alanis? Irony is everywhere.)

But the USSF has decided to upgrade these standards. And they’re run into some pushback, both illegitimate and legitimate.

The NASL has pushed back by unleashing sports lawyer Jeffrey Kessler, last seen in soccer circles drawing the ire of the court by trying to muddy everyone’s understanding of the English league structure, to fire off a nasty note. That’s a bit like bringing in Miley Cyrus to lend credibility to your jazz/prog fusion band — it ain’t gonna work, and it’s surely costing a lot of money.

The Northern Pitch argument is much stronger. Raising the population threshold for 75% of your league to metropolitan areas of 2 million would make a soccer league think twice about going to Salt Lake City, Indianapolis, Oklahoma City or other places that easily support major sports teams already. (Charlotte, though, is over 2 million, according to Census estimates.)

And that’s where the USSF looks like it’s just being officious.

It’s not that USSF should ignore population size in its criteria — as one astute commenter points out, market shares are important for TV, and TV may be just as important to long-term league survival as the deep pockets upon which these criteria insist.

But 2 million? Really?

Here’s another argument from former NASL PR man Kartik Krishnaiyer: He asks why we need such divisional designations at all.

And perhaps we don’t. The trick, though, is that we need to apply some sort of criteria, and it’s only sensible to apply different standards to an MLS club than to the Wilmington Hammerheads. (I always use them as an example because I’m still in wonder over the continued existence of professional soccer in the town where I spent my first three years out of college.)

I frankly don’t care what divisional designation the NASL has, and like another astute commenter at Northern Pitch (wow, these guys are lucky), I don’t think the NASL suddenly takes off if the USSF calls it D1. MLS has a pretty big head start.

And I hate to argue with Peter Wilt, who’s a big fan of the folklore of competing sports leagues in other U.S. sports, but I’m not sure I see the NASL being able to offer anything to distinguish itself from MLS. The ABA, AFL and so forth offered up different rules. Can’t do that in the NASL — not without alienating the “everything must be just like Europe!” fan base it apparently covets.

To me, the NASL’s best bet is either (A) start its own pro/rel pyramid and force the issue, as I’ve said a million times before, or (B) just focus on bringing quality soccer to markets MLS isn’t in. (Yes, I still miss my days as the one-man supporters section at Carolina Dynamo A-League games.)

Nor do I find it particularly unfair that the USSF is raising the standards. That’s because I simply don’t know of another federation that is under the obligation to smooth the path for a second D1 league. If I go to England and say I want to form another league system — and I’ll even open it to promotion/relegation through as many tiers as we can, based on how many clubs sign up with me — could I sue the FA if they put up any hurdles to me calling my leagues “Division 1, Division 2, Division 3”?

Now that would confuse the jury from the old MLS lawsuit, wouldn’t it?

 

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Tripping back through soccer-chatting archives

Posted on by Beau Dure

Seems fitting that a new-ish soccer site would launch by paying tribute to the early days of online soccer-gabbing.

That’s exactly what Jason Davis, Trevor Hayward and a new site called Backheel did. And they were nice enough to include my thoughts, along with those of several others who were part of the wild roller-coaster of sharing soccer information and discussion on this newfangled thing called the Internet.

Bruce McGuire, the man behind the DuNord blog and its terrific daily news wrap, has long called soccer “the sport of the Internet.” And there’s no doubt the Internet gave soccer a huge boost. (I’ve covered two sports that thrived in new media — soccer and MMA. Coincidentally, Bruce is also a fan of both.)

The old North American Soccer mailing list was full of lively and occasionally pointed discussions. But it was also a clearinghouse for information you weren’t likely to get elsewhere. If you wanted a report on an A-League game, you weren’t likely to find one unless the local paper had (A) an interest in covering its local team and (B) a fully functional website. Thanks to NAS, you’d have one waiting in your inbox with a subject line like “NAS Carolina-Rochester (R) – another brawl breaks out.”

From there, people branched out. They formed independent news sites, trying to fill the void in coverage on events like the U.S. Open Cup. They flocked to BigSoccer, where a lot of us spent our Saturday mornings giving each other updates on European games with U.S. players. (Hey, Joe-Max is getting in the game for Everton!) Some of us working at smaller papers got jobs at bigger papers and started sneaking more and more soccer coverage onto the websites.

And this was itself a branch of rec.sport.soccer, which had compiled a simple and comprehensive archive of global results that’s still up on the web in its 1995-HTML glory.

We also had a wonderful sense of serendipity. Look at the topics covered on a typical day in 1995: A-League results and tables (including one in 3-1-0 format, which the league wasn’t using), analysis of the U.S. U-23 midfield, a rant on the USISL Boston Storm (with Preston Burpo!), a request to find a bar showing Copa America in Philly, Mexican coaching rumors, etc. Another day has discussion of the as-yet-unnamed New York/New Jersey and Washington MLS teams, the news that Preki had won the CISL’s MVP award, a look ahead to CONCACAF World Cup qualifying, a CISL recap (Dallas Sidekicks drew a league-record 16,427 fans), and this age-old complaint: “If MLS thinks they can sell soccer on artificial turf they are dreaming in technicolor!”

I might be overromanticizing the sense of community we had in those days. We were surely a fractious bunch. We argued about the direction MLS would take and what would happen to the A-League and other then-USL divisions.  But there was a sense that we were all in this together and that a rising tide would lift all boats.

And what I’m not overromanticizing is what a lifeline this was. I could go to Soccernet, which was literally a father-and-son operation at the outset, and check the latest standings in Europe. That, plus the still-indispensable Soccer America, gave me some sense of the context for the broadcast I would hear when I aimed my shortwave radio’s antenna out the window to listen to the BBC.

It’s easy to take everything for granted now. We wake up on the weekends, flip on the TV and listen to Rebecca Lowe hosting NBC’s uber-professional coverage of the Premier League. We have our pick of sites for live scores and lineups. We can dissect games in real time on Twitter. Feedly can scour all of our favorite news sources for the latest stories.

So that community has fractured a bit. Now the East Coasters all hate the smug Cascadians who think they invented soccer supporter culture. MLS isn’t progressing quickly enough for some tastes, and the arguments lead to accusations of self-interest rarely seen this side of the Koch brothers. Everyone thinks he’s the only person in the world who pays attention to the Open Cup and everyone else is out to silence it.

Such things come with progress. And that’s good. MLS would look quite ridiculous playing by the same allocation rules it had in 1996, not to mention the shootout. Lower-division soccer collapsed but is finding its roots again. And the world’s best players are on U.S. TVs almost as often as Spongebob.

The past was fun. The present and future are even better.

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The never-ending quest for youth soccer talent

Posted on by Beau Dure

Paul Tenorio of the Orlando Sentinel has a must-read piece for anyone interested in U.S. soccer development: Alianza soccer program exposes overlooked Latino youth to elite training opportunities.

The details are worth reading, but for purposes of continuing without plagiarism, here’s the gist of it: A program called Alianza de Futbol is finding young Hispanic players in the USA who may not have had an opportunity to play elite youth ball.

In reading it, I thought of two people who nearly fell through the cracks:

– Andy Najar. Coincidentally, Tenorio wrote about his high school team adjusting to losing him to D.C. United. After moving from Honduras to Alexandria, Va., he was “discovered” playing pickup soccer at school.

– Clint Dempsey. He played a lot of pickup soccer and only made it big in club soccer when his family started making the lengthy drives to get him to Dallas.

No, Dempsey isn’t Hispanic, as far as I know. So this isn’t simply a question of ethnicity.

And Dempsey’s story may be more emblematic of the basic problem with U.S. youth development: This is a really, really big country. You’re not likely to have elite clubs everywhere. The next great soccer player could be in North Dakota, his or her parents drawn northward by the energy boom. He or she could be busing tables in New Mexico. Or in the inner city, geographically close to large clubs but financially and socially miles away. They could even be in a comfortable suburb but unable to make the time commitment to a major travel club because both parents are working and can’t drive them all over creation to practice and play 3-5 days/nights a week.

It’s not as if U.S. Soccer isn’t making an effort to find them. From Tenorio’s story:

The Alianza showcases are similar to the larger scale efforts of U.S. soccer to reach some of the same communities. U.S. soccer stages several hundred free “training centers” per year in cities across the country to identify players outside of its academy structure.

That’s good. It’ll never be enough.

And that’s one reason why I think soccer people need to pay a bit more attention to high school soccer. Not everyone can make the time and money commitment to play club soccer. High school soccer just extends the time a student spends on school grounds, which is actually a good thing for parents who are often scrambling to get kids home in mid-afternoon.

Another factor in scouting youth: As much as we don’t like to admit it, good athletes can sometimes pick up soccer skills in a hurry. I see kids in my U11 rec league who are new to soccer but have quickly progressed past players who have been in “travel” since they were 9. Some of those kids will play travel; some won’t. But we may see them at tryouts for the high school team.

And you see it among older players. When I took my E license class, one of the other students was a young Hispanic guy who drew attention with a 40-yard blast off a crossbar and his ability to leap for a header and snap his body like a salmon twisting in midair. Did he play in college? Sort of. He played basketball.

Stereotyping, as a lot of well-intentioned but arrogant coaches and pundits so often do, doesn’t help the search for talent. (No, coach — your inner-city program, as nice as it may be, is not the sole force pushing a revolution in the U.S. talent pool.) The next great player could be kicking around on a dirt field in the exurbs. Or playing basketball. So the pool has to be vast, broad and diverse — and not just along ethnic lines.

Where does this leave the Development Academy, which comes off as a bureaucratic ogre in Tenorio’s piece on Alianza? As much as Jurgen Klinsmann and company may try, it will never, ever be the only path to elite soccer.

As long as we remember that, the Academy will be fine. Just remember to keep those players humble so they don’t freak out when some kid from the streets of Nacogdoches, Alexandria or Rogers (Arkansas, home of the player in Tenorio’s lead) turns out to be their equal in the talent pool.

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Dispatches from the U.S. soccer culture wars

Posted on by Beau Dure

From Tarkus to Fury, the artistically inclined people among us have sketched out portraits of conflict that just keeps going and going, eventually devouring the war-weary veteran and the new enlistee alike.

(At least, I think that’s what Tarkus is about. I get lost somewhere in the middle of Keith Emerson’s fourth keyboard solo.)

And so it goes with what Charles Boehm has succinctly labeled the Soccer Culture War.

Some people are willing, even enthusiastic participants. Some aren’t, but they feel some twisted sense of duty.

Like a lot on conflicts, the root is more rhetorical than real. Deep down, most of the warriors all want the same thing — good soccer in the United States. But fragile identities and defensiveness make us easy to call out.

(Yes, The Simpsons riffed on that scene last season, one of the more esoteric pop-culture references in show history.)

Let’s look at the issues and the opinions:

Promotion/relegation is something U.S. professional soccer …

  1. … really needs to do as soon as possible, and we shouldn’t take MLS seriously in the meantime.
  2. … should work toward in 10 years or so, and it would make us all feel a lot better about MLS if we knew it was in the future.
  3. … may be in position to consider in 10 years or so, but it really doesn’t affect how we feel about MLS at the moment.
  4. … can never consider. Ever.

Most people fall in the “2” or “3” category. But I think most of the online battles take place between the “1” and “3” groups, with the occasional rant from a “4” and some interjections from the “2” group.

The single-entity structure in MLS …

  1. … is proof that this is just a bunch of NFL owners trying to squeeze money out of a sport they don’t care about it, and it inhibits clubs from competing about anything.
  2. … is something the league may have needed in the first decade or so but needs to hurry up and dismantle.
  3. … is something from which the league has gradually moved away and should continue to do so by eliminating its vestigial restrictions on player movement.
  4. … (OK, honestly, I have no idea what the “4” group would be here.)

Again, the loudest group is “1.” You can have productive discussions between “2” and “3.”

Soccer fans in this country are as likely or more likely to watch European or Mexican soccer than MLS because …

  1. … MLS has single-entity and no pro/rel, which obviously makes all its players stink like an overflowing hog waste lagoon.
  2. … MLS isn’t quite doing enough to improve the quality of play. It can’t catch the EPL in the foreseeable future, but it needs to make a few strides.
  3. … these overseas leagues have generations of history and giant fan bases that allow them to spend freely on players and/or bring them up through well-established academy programs, and soccer is better entrenched in those countries as the top sport by far. (Which is not the case in, say, India, China, Australia, etc.)
  4. … they’re snobs who feel the need to differentiate themselves to feel superior to others. They used to be able to do that by being soccer fans in a country of baseball and gridiron fans, but now that the soccer fan base has grown, they have to be part of a more elite subset.

Again, I’m probably a “3,” but I see the “4” group’s point. And “2.”

People who watch MLS …

  1. … are ignorant tools who are content with mediocrity and don’t want anything better.
  2. … support the domestic league despite its faults, and it’d be great if they could also demand more change.
  3. … feel that the only way the league will improve will be if it’s stable and bringing in more money to invest in players and academies.
  4. … are patriotic Americans.

See the pattern? The “2” and “3” groups differ only in the details.

The NASL …

  1. … is the home of true American soccer because the commissioner says he wouldn’t mind seeing pro/rel at some point, and it’s only a matter of time before they start outbidding MLS on players (even though no one has shown much interest in doing that beyond the occasional fringe player).
  2. … is an interesting league that may provide just a bit of competition to keep MLS on its toes.
  3. … is a second division, no different from the old A-League (which actually did experiment with pro/rel but didn’t get very far), that is valuable because it put professional soccer in more cities and allows some owners to test the waters before moving to MLS.
  4. … has delusional fans.

“4” is certainly an extreme generalization. “1” is pretty ridiculous and doesn’t mesh with the way NASL teams are actually acting.

The U.S. soccer media …

  1. … is totally in the pocket of MLS and the USSF. Or scared to lose their credentials. Or just idiots. Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah.
  2. … needs to take a harder look at what’s holding back MLS and U.S. Soccer.
  3. … are diverse and rapidly growing, from independent bloggers to mainstream media reporters who now have soccer as their primary beat (or only beat) rather than a secondary or tertiary thing … or even something they used to hide from editors.
  4. … are just great.

I don’t think “4” actually exists. “2” has valid points. “3” is absolutely correct. Just consider Sports Illustrated — a few years ago, Grant Wahl covered soccer and college basketball. Now he’s one of a handful of soccer specialists.

And finally, the most recent flare-up …

Jurgen Klinsmann’s fretting over U.S. players returning to MLS …

  1. … is right on! Go, Jurgen! And how dare Don Garber oppress him by disagreeing!
  2. … is a legitimate concern, perhaps inelegantly expressed but still valid.
  3. … misses the mark because the players in question found better situations in MLS than they had in Europe, and players should always seek out the best situation rather than simply assuming the top European leagues are better.
  4. … proves that he’s clueless. Fire Klinsmann!

To sum up … if you find yourself most often associated with one of these groups, you are …

  1. … a tinfoil-hat conspiracy theorist who is probably on my “block” list on Twitter.
  2. … reasonable. Perhaps easily offended from the occasional interaction with a “4,” but you can be talked back into a productive discussion on the issues.
  3. … too reasonable. Get over yourself and argue with the rest of us.
  4. … too cynical, having been through too many of these arguments.

The people who’ve been around the longest tend to be “4.” We’ve discussed a lot of these issues since the old days of the North American Soccer mailing list and the launch of MLS. And the “1” list dominated conversation for too long.

I think the “2” group is growing. They skew younger, asking legitimate questions about why MLS and U.S. Soccer are the way they are. Show them the answers, and they’ll understand but continue to seek ways to push everything toward Eurotopia.

The “3” group needs a nap.

One day, we may have pro/rel in this country, and we may see little difference between the way MLS operates and the way the Bundesliga operates. (My guess is that the Bundesliga will lead the way in pushing “Financial Fair Play” so that its teams don’t explode in spectacular fashion.) But if that happens, it won’t be because of someone unreasonably screamed for it on Twitter.

Milhouse: We gotta spread this stuff around. Let’s put it on the internet!

Bart: No! We have to reach people whose opinions actually matter!

That said, I think some good could come of talking through all these issues. MLS has a history of talking with and listening to its supporters. So if you’re for that, go ahead.

If you’re screaming at me, of all people, now four years removed from USA TODAY and with no major pro men’s soccer platform, I’m just going to block you. Life’s too short for all these wars.

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MLS, USA and Canada 2022: One vision

Posted on by Beau Dure

One vision of how professional soccer could look in eight years:

The 2022 MLS season kicked off with all 24 teams for the third straight season. The teams are divided into two conferences. Each team plays its conference rivals twice and then each team from the other conference once, for a total of 34 games.

The league is also in its third year under a new collective bargaining agreement. The 2020 edition replaced the salary “budget” (which most people called a “cap”) with a “luxury tax,” akin to what has been seen in Major League Baseball for years and was adopted by Germany’s Bundesliga in 2016. “Designated Players” still exist and are partially exempt from the salary accounting. If the team’s adjusted salary expenditures exceed $10 million, they pay into a revenue-sharing pool.

With MLS already ditching limits on free agency in the 2015 CBA, the league now operates under the same rules as the Bundesliga and several other European leagues. Mexico’s league, conversely, fell on hard times in 2017 when the broadcasting consortium carrying 12 of the 18 teams’ games broke apart.

The newer teams include SCSC Wanderers, the Southern California team that replaced Chivas USA in 2016. The New York Cosmos joined in 2017, having returned to the team’s traditional home of New Jersey by purchasing the former Red Bull Arena, now called PeleArena.

Without a doubt, the league’s biggest turnaround story was in Miami. The stadium was built near sea level and was quickly and permanently flooded by the rising Atlantic Ocean. An infusion of cash led to a clever reclamation of the land, and a desalinization plant hums quietly next to the stadium. Fans access the stadium via a colorful pontoon bridge that revitalized the rundown oceanfront. Real Salt Lake fans still tease Miami fans about borrowing the tune of their traditional song, but they respect the perseverance of fans who march to games singing, “If you believe, then you walk across the bridge …”

Miami and the NWSL benefited from the same generous sponsor — a former Stanford women’s soccer player who developed a combination vaccine for Ebola and all strains of the flu. She has set up global health nonprofits with much of her money but also bought a 50% share of Miami Mariners FC and set up a unique sponsorship endowment for the NWSL, which has 16 teams and high-rated weekly games on ESPN2. Portland Timbers/Thorns owner Merritt Paulson was so moved by her generosity that he paid to have all NWSL stadiums’ turf replaced with grass.

Back to the competitive aspects of MLS — MLS Cup is now contested solely by the winners of the East and West conferences. The other rounds of the playoffs were eliminated in 2018 as other Cup competitions took pre-eminence.

The early rounds of the U.S. Open Cup are now contested largely in the six-week break of the MLS and NASL seasons for the World Cup, Copa America or Gold Cup. Amateur and low-level professional teams play knockout games for the first three weeks, with many games broadcast as shoulder programming for the major international competitions. The NASL teams join in Week 4, then MLS teams in Week 5.

The top eight amateur teams in the Open Cup play a one-week tournament in mid-August for the revamped U.S. Amateur Cup. This is the only national amateur competition, as the PDL and NPSL — before they merged with the USASA in 2019 — realized they were cheating a lot of players out of playing time by cutting short the regular season to have national playoffs. College players are able to stay with their teams longer because the revamped fall/spring NCAA schedule starts in early September rather than late August.

Elite year-round amateur teams have joined low-level professional teams in USL regional leagues with promotion and relegation. The amateur teams are still eligible for the Amateur Cup, while the pro teams have a late-October national championship — the Peter Wilt Cup, named after the new FIFA president.

Canada, which oversaw the formation of three successful regional pro/am leagues in the late 2010s, has a similar system. U.S. women’s amateur competition is also similar.

The other important U.S. cup competition is the Disney Cup in February, drawing together the MLS Cup champion, the MLS Cup runner-up, the next-best MLS team, the NASL Soccer Bowl champion, the Peter Wilt Cup winner and the Open Cup winner. They play in three-team round-robin groups, with the winners advancing to the final and runners-up advancing to a third-place game. The top team that isn’t already qualified for the CONCACAF Champions League earns a berth in that competition.

Youth development took a major leap forward in 2018, when U.S. Soccer president Robb Heineman successfully lobbied FIFA to clarify its rules on transfer payments so that any U.S. youth club is due a transfer fee for the signing of any player. Wilt’s leadership helped pave the way for that much-needed change along with the re-awarding of the 2022 World Cup to Australia.

The Development Academy now includes women’s competition, and World Club Champion Lyon made headlines early in 2022 by paying an international-record $7 million transfer fee for Sky Blue Academy prospect Rylie Rampone. That fee helped to stabilize the finances at partner club NYCFC, which had been reeling when Manchester City’s ownership pulled back after the world’s oil ran out in 2020.

Within MLS, there is some movement toward promotion/relegation, with the biggest stumbling block being adequate compensation for those who have paid either the initial start-up costs of the league or paid expansion fees. The league is talking with its broadcast partners to pay enough to make such a system feasible and broadcast some lower-division games. But pro/rel talk also has split the NASL, which had to institute a formal salary cap after a group of oil magnates started a team in St. Louis and immediately spent twice as much on players as the rest of the league combined. That team folded when … well, again, the world ran out of oil.

So that’s one vision of soccer in the USA and Canada in 2022. If you disagree with any part of it, of course, you’re a corrupt individual with no imagination. (Inside joke.)

In any case, the comments should be fun. Have at it.

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American Outlaws and old-school U.S. soccer collegiality

Posted on by Beau Dure

The controversy about the American Outlaws and the upcoming USA-Mexico game in USA-Mexicoville (also known as Columbus) has gone through three stages:

1. Multiple reports said Outlaws from Seattle had basically taken over planning crowd activities for the USA-Mexico game. Columbus fans, who take special pride in their quadrennial duties of welcoming Mexico to a stadium with a history of inglorious moments for the visitors, were miffed. Many other U.S. fans were miffed on their behalf.

2. The Outlaws, backed by U.S. Soccer, said it was all much ado about nothing. All incorrect. Internet rumor and hearsay.

But before you could say “This reporter promises to be more trusting and less vigilant in the future” (a Simpsons quote I swear I almost tweeted as soon as I saw the denials), people were calling b.s. That leads us to …

3. “Hey, if you’re going to deny something, you’d better be sure you took care of the witnesses.”

Dan Loney has summed up the situation quite well, and Bill Archer chimed in with some informative comments from his own digging around.

So as you’ve probably guessed, I’m a bit skeptical about the conclusion that this was all misinformation. Perhaps it was a misunderstanding, inasmuch as Columbus fans could reasonably be expected to interpret the conference call and other communications of the past month as anything other than, “Yeah, we’re going to tell you guys how to do things.”

And I’m with Dan in the sense that the whole notion of having “capos”  feels artificial to me. Maybe I was harsh when I suggested that it was one step away from having cheerleaders. Maybe I wasn’t.

I can draw one parallel to college basketball. The crowd at Duke’s Cameron Indoor Stadium went significantly downhill when it started to rely on “cheer sheets.” Sure, a few things were pre-planned — the Twinkies tossed on the floor upon Dennis Scott’s introduction didn’t magically appear in the ancient arena. But the best cheers sprang organically from the crowd, and Duke fans of my (long-ago) era took pride in that. Funneling a crowd’s creative power through a handful of know-it-alls in the crowd just dulls the creativity.

But something else is getting lost — something more specific to soccer.

In the mid-90s, soccer fans in this country were all in the same boat. The sport was derided, and supposedly intelligent media folks would all tell you this country would never support legitimate pro soccer.

The Internet was helping fans come together. My first experience meeting serious soccer fans was on the North American Soccer mailing list, where people shared A-League and USISL match reports along with some debate over the issues of the day.

And yes, we had plenty of issues. U.S. leagues were experimenting with every manner of rule change under the sun. Teams that fouled too much in the USISL would concede an in-game shootout attempt. Kick-ins, bigger goals and incomprehensible bonus points in the standings were all on the table.

We also had a couple of agitators, most notably the guy who ran a site with the novel concept of rounding up satellite TV listings so people could actually find soccer games to watch — maybe an A-League game on a regional network or Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan on some obscure channel. Valuable public service, but it’s safe to say he made his share of enemies on the list.

The reason he stands out is that the rest of the conversation was collegial. People argued rule changes — and, yes, promotion/relegation came up. But we knew we were all trying to maintain a foothold for the sport in a hostile environment. That was a group effort. List members would argue for traditional European systems, then drive to an Atlanta Ruckus game.

Perhaps I’m overromanticizing, or perhaps I’m channeling Grumpy Old Man. But I think we’ve lost a bit of our belief in common goals. And our sense of history. Or perhaps our sense that supporter culture should debated and discussed among the grass roots, not enforced from the top down.

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Women’s soccer league: Now for something completely different

Posted on by Beau Dure

“Third time’s a charm?” doesn’t really fit the new women’s soccer league announced today. The League with No Name is too drastically different from the overly ambitious WUSA and its scaled-down successor, WPS.

This league revs up the cost containment of WPS, particularly the latter years. But it’s also a unique venture of three national federations, eight ownership groups and, apparently, Unnamed Sponsor Who Is Making The MLS-Affiliated Teams Use Non-MLS Names. (See Stumptown Footy’s deduction and D.C. United Women’s colorful statement.)

So don’t accuse this new league of trying the same thing and expecting different results. Whether it works or not, it’s a unique approach.

A few statements and news bits from around the new league:

– Portland: This MLSSoccer.com piece hails the Timbers involvement and other MLS ties with the new league, though it curiously omits D.C. United. (Granted, D.C. United’s involvement seems significantly smaller than the Timbers’ commitment, but they’re not totally out of the game.)

Timbers owner Merritt Paulson has a statement with a link for season-ticket sales.

– Seattle: The Sounders Women sound gracious after being passed up for the new league in favor of the other Seattle group, whose leader Bill Predmore spoke with The Seattle Times‘ Joshua Mayers.

And Tina Ellertson (who has obtained her coaching “A” license) is excited.

– Kansas City: Welcome to FC Kansas City, which has made its appearance known through the Missouri Comets (MISL) site. If you thought the Sporting KC ownership group skewed young, meet Brian Budzinski.

– Western New York: No statement yet on the Flash site, though they mentioned the announcement on Twitter.

– Chicago: A little more activity on Twitter; no full statement on the Red Stars site.

– Boston: Breakers managing partner Mike Stoller was on the conference call, and the site has a statement with stadium and ticket info.

– D.C.: See above. The team will remain at the Maryland SoccerPlex.

– New Jersey: Hello? Sky Blue?

Outside the league, there’s a bit of bitterness in Los Angeles.

There’s a more conciliatory tone from the USL. W-League senior director Amanda Duffy passed along the following statement:

USL and the W-League are supportive of U.S. Soccer and the new women’s professional league announced earlier today, consistent with how we’ve supported the previous women’s professional leagues of WUSA and WPS.

We’re pleased with the foundation we’ve established through the W-League in the United States and Canada as leaders in women’s soccer and continue to be focused on the quality growth of the league and its teams. Collectively we made substantial strides in 2012 and with several exciting discussions we’ve been having over the past 6-12 months we are pleased with our overall positive direction as we enter our 19th season of operation. We look forward to sharing more over the next 15-30 days.

Not enough? Read U.S. Soccer’s quote sheet.

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Next U.S. women’s coach? Safe status quo vs. shakeup

Posted on by Beau Dure

U.S. Soccer faces a major question as it seeks a new women’s coach: Does the team need a tune-up or an overhaul?

Pia Sundhage did a terrific job making incremental changes and managing the big names and big personalities in the core of the U.S. team. The result: Two Olympic gold medals, second place in a classic Women’s World Cup, and all the usual wins in the usual tournaments the USA keeps dominating even as the rest of the world gets more serious about this sport.

The coaching search and speculation are heating up, and we have a couple of terrific analyses this week from Lauren Barker and Richard Farley, focusing on two and a half candidates: Notre Dame/U.S. U-23 coach Randy Waldrum and WPS/WPSL vet Paul Riley as the top two, with former U.S. coach Tony DiCicco also in the mix.

We could be way off in anointing these three as the top candidates, of course, and I’m skeptical of DiCicco’s candidacy. Barker reminds us that he left the Boston Breakers to return home to Connecticut with his family, his camp business and a large international sports network that frequently uses him as a TV analyst. (His current job, Barker says: “”ESPN Soccer Analyst/Person Who Looks Almost Orange Enough on TV To Be The Much Older Lost Jersey Shore Cast Member/Max Bretos and Bob Ley Interrupter.”) He had a fine run as U.S. coach — Olympic gold in 1996, World Cup title in 1999. But he would be in his upper 60s for the next World Cup and Olympics. Why would he want to give it another run?

Foreign coaches also could be in the mix again. Australia’s Tom Sermanni had a bit of buzz when his young team gave the USA a couple of good games. If I were hiring, I’d at least want to chat with German youth coach Maren Meinert, one of the best players in the WUSA a decade ago.

But a Waldrum-Riley race would give us a convenient contrast between insider and outsider. Waldrum, in his U23 role, has been working with many of the young players who will need to replace some of the older players over the next few years. Riley has been on the outside yelling that Pia Sundhage was ruining Amy Rodriguez.

Many fans will have preferences based on how much they love or hate Riley, who has been in the news more than Waldrum thanks to his WPS playoff runs and lively quotes. But from a hiring perspective, it’s as much about the status quo as it is about anything else.

No one thinks Sundhage’s team has been perfect. The defense has been erratic, especially without Ali Krieger. Fans scream on Twitter with every misstep in the midfield. The next coach will have to address those issues, carefully bring in new players to push those who are aging or out of form, and deal with some of the oversized personalities in the locker room.

Even an insider would have to make a few changes here and there. But an outsider could bring a different perspective to everything from the player pool to the team’s image. Would a new coach bring back Leslie Osborne and finally get to the bottom of why Lori Chalupny has been cleared to play for club but not country? If it’s Riley, would we see the return of Tasha Kai?

And what about tactics and style? The younger generations have shown more aptitude for playing the possession game Sundhage preached but never really implemented. Would a new coach press the team’s veterans to adapt?

It’s a stark choice. Which way would you go?

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Women’s soccer league officially getting more official

Posted on by Beau Dure
Hi, I’m Alex Morgan. I played professional soccer for the Western New York Flash. (Photo: Andy Mead/YCJ)

U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati talked with a few reporters yesterday (I had a conflict that involved cat-herding, I mean, youth soccer coaching) about the progress toward a new women’s soccer league.

The important takeaway wasn’t what was said. It was who said it.

If you read my last post on the matter, you know that there was some chatter suggesting that this new women’s soccer league was some sort of pipe dream of people who weren’t involved with U.S. Soccer. Gulati’s conference call made it clear: U.S. Soccer is at the table with the interested parties, with the most recent meeting taking place a few hours before the conference call. (That meeting did not include Dan Borislow or the WPSL, Jeff Kassouf reports. More about the WPSL shortly, but I’m not turning this post into another Borislow discussion thread.)

So what happened at the meeting, or what can we say so far? Let’s check Gulati’s comments: “quite positive,” “preliminary discussion with the National Team players,” “still being worked on” … in other words, nothing concrete.

But from U.S. Soccer’s perspective, things are changing. Support for a domestic women’s league has always seemed tepid. Now, Charles Boehm writes:

According to sources with knowledge of the situation, U.S. Soccer officials have concluded that the medium and long-term interests of the women’s program are best served by carefully fostering a pro or semipro league rather than maintaining a costly, and perhaps counterproductive, residency program for the core of the national team. Soccer Wire understands this to involve U.S. Soccer underwriting some or all of the cost of substantial salaries for established national teamers.

That’s not to say the new league suddenly has everyone following the same agenda. The WPSL, which tossed together an Elite League last year to include four pro teams (three formerly in WPS) and some of its top amateur sides, is still moving forward. The WPSL’s comment:

The WPSL Elite is still expanding for the upcoming 2012/13 season and expect a great season.

But the WPSL isn’t showing any outright hostility. Meanwhile, the USL is happy to move forward on multiple fronts.

USL continues to actively support the Federation’s leadership in the establishment of a viable women’s professional soccer league.  Simultaneously, we remain focused on strengthening the W-League for the 2013 season which was the home to many of the continent’s top players in 2012.

Maybe it’s impossible to make everyone happy in the women’s soccer turf wars. A better word might be “content.”

The skeptics are out on Twitter, with former Sky Blue GM Gerry Marrone asking this:

Then from the other end of the spectrum:

To which the Boston Breakers’ Lisa Cole replied:

The “better than nothing” argument (or, technically, the “better than the leagues that use college players and have to wrap up in July” argument) is hard to refute. Other leagues around the world have built on years of relative stability. Now they have enough cash to throw at U.S. players to lure them overseas. Lesson to be learned?

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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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