The End to a Great Soccer Story

Even in the world of post-World Cup soccer euphoria, there's not much reason people noticed the announced retirement of Jay Demerit last week.  Demerit, a defender, played 25 times for the United States national team, including several games in South Africa for the 2010 World Cup, and had to call time on his career for the most mundane of reasons - accumulated injuries prevented him from continuing to play at a top level.  He wound up his career with the Vancouver Whitecaps in MLS, moving there when the team joined the league in 2011.

What's really neat about Demerit, aside from the fact that he seems like a great guy off the field, is how he even got that far.

Like many American players, Demerit went to Europe to find playing time.  But he didn't move straight from a youth team to a competitive club near the top of a European league or even a second-tier club.  Instead, he went to England after college (taking advantage of some helpful European quasi-citizenry) and wound up at mighty Southall FC, who currently reside in the "Spartan South Midlands League."  For the uninitiated, that's at the 10th level of the English soccer pyramid.  If you want a baseball analogy, where the Premier League is the Major Leagues and the Championship is AAA, then Southall is, essentially, on the level of Little League.*

In fact, Demerit only played two games for Southall before moving on to Northwood (7th level - about high school), but never played a competitive match for them.  That's because he so impressed one of their preseason opponents, Watford (then in the Championship), that he earned a two-week tryout.  After that, he got a one-year deal.

Then came 183 games for Watford, over five seasons, during which Demerit became a regular starter and helped Watford move up to the Premier League.  In fact, he scored the game winning goal in the Championship playoff final against Leeds (*sniff*) that sent Watford up.  It was Demerit's performances at Watford that led to him being called up for the national team, which included play in the 2009 Confederations Cup (When we dumped Spain), as well as the aforementioned South African edition of the World Cup.  And from there, on to Vancouver.

Why Vancouver?  As Demerit explains:

After the World Cup in 2010 I was a free agent, and Whitecaps FC were the team that fought hardest for me and the team that wanted me to play the role that I hoped my experience in this game could handle.

It's nice to be wanted, isn't it?

All in all, it's the kind of story they make movies about right?  Right:



Thanks, Jay.  Enjoy your retirement!

* Actually, that's not fair.  Far down the rung as Southall is, its players are adults and even get paid, albeit a very very little amount.  It really is amazing the amount of soccer that gets played at a serious level in England.

World Cup Thoughts

Nearly 24 hours later, I'm still gutted by the United States's exit from the World Cup.  Don't get me wrong - if someone beforehand had said we'd vanquish the history with Ghana, emerge from the Group of Death, and take Belgium (a very trendy darkhorse pick going into the tournament) to added time before bowing out, I'd have been happy with that.  But there was so much that we left on the table.  But for a last-second brain fart, we come from behind to beat Portugal, winning back-to-back group games for the first time (and maybe, just possibly, winning the group).  But for Chris Wondlowski choking like an autoerrotic asphixiant last night, we steal a win against Belgium and are planning on how to stop Messi and company on Saturday.  All in all, I'm both pleased and frustrated.

A few player specific thoughts . . .

• Tim Howard is God.  And I'm an atheist, so that should count double, or something.  Brad Guzan has some big gloves to fill for the next cycle (and the next Gold Cup - only a year away!)

• Michael Bradley had a bad WOrld Cup.  I realize that he put in an awful lot of work (after the group stage, at any rate, he was one of the leaders in amount of ground covered), but he was too often unable to hold on to the ball or do anything interesting with it (brilliant assist last night aside).  Whether that's because he was playing in a role that's not really his own or something else, he's got to get back on track when he returns to Toronto.  And Klinsmann needs to figure out how to get the best out of him.

• Jermaine Jones was great, probably our best player overall through four games.  He showed all the poise, restraint, and good timing going forward that he's hinted at for years.  I mean, seriously, who expected him to get through four games with only one yellow card?  And that goal was really a screamer.  I hope he can claw his way back to a bigger European club after this showing.

• As for Julian Green, I said a month ago that I thought Klinsmann's decision to include him on the roster was a mistake, but hoped "they both prove me wrong in the next few weeks.".  Proof given, I am ready to eat crow.  Green's flick to score against Belgium last night was not the act of a kid who is out of his depth.  And he did contribute the cause at this World Cup.  Well done.

• Clint Dempsey had a weird cup.  On the one hand, he scored two goals, becoming the first (?) American player to score in three consecutive World Cups.  On the other hand, in the wake of Jozy Altidore going down injured, Clint was left to fill a role that's not really his (sort of like Bradley) and, as a result, disappeared for long streches of time.  Not his fault, obviously, but kind of disappointing nonetheless.

• As for Jurgen Klinsmann himself, it's hard to say at this point.  His deftness with substitutions continues (see sub goals for Green and John Brooks), but the way things shook out it's hard not to fault some of his roster choices.  There was no cover for Altidore in terms of a big, strong, back-to-goal kind of player when one was available in Terrence Boyd.  Likewise, there were no reinforcements in the holding midfield role once he went to having Jones and Kyle Beckerman (who had a good three games) in with Bradley.  That's to say nothing of the wastes of roster space that were Brad Davis (played one horrible half) and Mixx Diskerud (didn't play at all).

One final thing.  This World Cup has captured American attention like none I remember before (since 1994, at least) and I hope some of that "sticks."  I don't expect everybody who tuned in yesterday to pick up Major League Soccer for the rest of the season or even the Gold Cup when it comes around this time next year.  But if just a few people are converts to the charms of the beautiful game, I think we'll have to call this World Cup a success.

Play to Win, Be Happy With a Draw

In many ways, a dull 0-0 draw with Germany on Thursday is just what the United States needs.  In one, other, quite significant way, it's precisely what the game in the United States doesn't need.

If you're new to the World Cup, you may wonder why, after days of games played at distinct times, with no overlap, we finish up the group stage with both final games in each group being played at the same time.  The answer is simple - to keep teams in game A from knowing the result in game B and strategizing accordingly.  In other words, FIFA wants to keep everybody playing full out down the last minute.

Alas, this is not merely a hypothetical concern.

In Spain in 1982, West Germany found itself in a group with Austria, Chile, and Algeria.  Algeria stunned the Germans 2-1 in their opening match, before losing to Austria.  Germany rebounded to pound Chile, 4-0.  In its final group game, Algeria then knocked off Chile, 3-2.  As a result, when Germany played Austria the next day, both teams knew that a particular result - a 1-0 Germany victory - would see them both through.  So, this happened:

After only 10 minutes, Horst Hrubesch put West Germany in front, and then...nothing.

Neither side, understanding a 1-0 decision was mutually beneficial, mounted anything resembling an attack throughout the remainder of the match. The passes were lateral or backward and, tellingly, the tackles were soft between adversaries that would typically have gone at one another with venom.

'Fuera, Fuera!' ('Out, Out!') chanted the displeased spectators in Gijon, and the few Algerian supporters at El Molinon burned money in protest, according to ESPN FC.

At the final whistle the score remained 1-0 in what has since become known as the 'Anschluss of Gijon' . . .

Thus, in 1986, the shift to both final games in a group being played at the same time.

Of course, the situation in our group this year is that the Ghana-Portugal match being played at the same time we take on Germany is irrelevant if our game ends in a draw.  That result, regardless of how badly the other teams maul each other, and Germany wins the group and we move on as the second-place team.

Almost since that scenario popped up Sunday evening, there's been talk of potential collusion.  Mostly in jest, but still, there's a lot of grist for the mill.  We have a German coach, for whom the current Germany coach served as an assistant.  There are five German-American players on the US roster, some of whom suited up for Germany at youth levels.  And, most importantly, if either team loses they open themselves up to elimination based on what happens between Portugal and Ghana.

Jurgen Klinsmann, of course, has poo-pooed the entire idea that some kind of arrangement might take place, as he must.  Nor do I think there is one.  In the modern world of media saturation I think such a thing would be impossible to pull off.

However, I worry about what the perception will be if, sometime in the second half of a listless 0-0 draw, everybody just starts to pack it in and be happy with what they already have.  That soccer has draws is one of the regular complaints of the complainers in this country.  It's hard to argue against a result like the one against Portugal on Sunday, where both teams played hard and things just happened to work out that way.  On the other hand, not every draw is a thriller.

I kind of hope we don't get a thriller on Thursday.  But I kind of hope we do.  So long as, at the end of the day, we make it out of the Group of Death.

Yes and No - Thoughts on Julian Green

There's been a lot of virtual ink spilled analysing and complaining about Jurgen Klinsmann's choices for the United States roster for the upcoming World Cup.  If there's an axis around which most of it rotates, it's the absence of Landon Donovan and inclusion of Julian Green, as if the two are intimately linked.  I don't think that's correct.

Writing over at Slate (which has ramped up its soccer coverage in advance of the World Cup), Jeremy Stahl breaks down the Donovan omission and rightly concludes that Klinsmann's decision on that front had nothing to do with the inclusion of Green:

Even if the 18-year-old Green had decided to take his talents to the Danube, Klinsmann still probably would have found a reason to cut Donovan from his World Cup squad. That decision seems to have been made largely on the basis of either personal animus, or some amorphous idea about 'moving on' or 'making the team his own.'

Julian Green is on the World Cup roster and Landon Donovan isn’t. But the former didn’t cause the latter. If Klinsmann didn’t have it out for Donovan, he would almost certainly have chosen to bring both men to Brazil.

Everything I've read and heard indicates that Klinsmann sees Donovan as a forward, not a midfielder like Green.  It's thus no more reasonable to talk about Green "taking" Donovan's spot than it is to say Tim Chandler did.  On top of that, I think if one of our forwards went down injured in the next week that Donovan wouldn't even be the first choice replacement, given Terrence Boyd's form at the end of his season in Austria.  Regardless, Stahl is perfectly correct that Green didn't bounce Donovan from the team.

Where I think Stahl goes wrong, however, is in arguing that Green should have made the 23-man roster at all.

Everything Stahl says about Green is right - he's a terrific prospect, has the endorsement of many top players and one of the hottest coaches.  I'm certainly glad he chose the United States over Germany when it comes to international play.  He may, indeed, be a special player.  But, the fact is, he isn't there yet.  Green's played a grand total of three minutes in a meaningful match for Bayern Munich.  Whatever potential he has, he's still very much a work in progress.

To be fair to Stahl, his piece was apparently written before the US defeated Turkey on Sunday, a game in which Green made an appearance as a second half sub.  The general impression following that game was that Green just doesn't have what it takes right now to contribute at the World Cup in 2014.  If that's the case, it's a waste of a roster space that could have been used on somebody else (Sacha Kljestan? Joe Corona?) who might have something to give this year.

The "bring him in for future experience" argument doesn't hold water.  Stahl mentions Theo Walcott who, as a 17-year old, was named to the England squad for the 2006 World Cup:

Walcott, an Arsenal player whose highest level of competition at the time was during a loan to Southampton in the English second division, didn’t play a minute in Germany. The decision to select Walcott in 2006 is viewed as one of former England manager Sven-Göran Eriksson’s greatest blunders.

What's missing from Stahl's recitation is that England had injury issue with strikers during that Cup and Walcott's along for the ride status meant Eriksson had limited options in dealing with those injuries.  The lesson learned from that situation is that every spot on the roster is important for the here and now, not as an investment in the future.

I don't think Klinsmann is pulling an Eriksson here.  He's said he thinks Green can contribute.  And if he was just investing in the future, the third goalkeeper spot would have gone to a young gun like Sean Johnson or Bill Hamid, rather than Nick Rimando.  It would take a near Biblical catastrophe for Rimando to be called upon in Brazil, but if the worst actually occurs, don't you want someone who can step in and step up?

All this virtual gum flapping, of course, assumes that there was no deal made between Klinsmann and Green - choose the US and you go to the World Cup this year.  There's been scuttlebutt to that effect and, hey, if true, we may not be Lannisters but we ought to pay our debts.  But both Green and Klinsmann deny any kind of deal and I've got no reason to doubt their honesty.

It's more a question of judgement.  On Green, I think Klinsmann has gotten it wrong, at least for 2014.  Hopefully, they both prove me wrong in the next few weeks.

Time to Make An Example

Given the presence of two news stories over the weekend highlighting corruption in international soccer, the time has come for FIFA to act and the place to do it is Qatar.

More to the point, it's time to rip the 2022 World Cup from Qatar and place it somewhere else.  And fast.

Neither story comes as shocking news to those who follow such things, but they bolster the perception (and reality) that international soccer is rife with corruption and FIFA is unwilling, or unable, to do anything about it.

First, from Sunday's New York Times, comes an article (first in a series - never a good sign) about match fixing by gamblers, particularly in international friendlies leading up to the last World Cup in South Africa:

A soccer referee named Ibrahim Chaibou walked into a bank in a small South African city carrying a bag filled with as much as $100,000 in $100 bills, according to another referee traveling with him. The deposit was so large that a bank employee gave Mr. Chaibou a gift of commemorative coins bearing the likeness of Nelson Mandela.

Later that night in May 2010, Mr. Chaibou refereed an exhibition match between South Africa and Guatemala in preparation for the World Cup, the world’s most popular sporting event. Even to the casual fan, his calls were suspicious — he called two penalties for hand balls even though the ball went nowhere near the players’ hands.

In some ways, the headline - that "Fixed Soccer Matches Cast Shadow Over World Cup" - oversells things a bit.  Friendlies are ripe for that kind of shenanigans because few people really care all that much about the outcome.  To use a recent example, ultimately whether the US beat Turkey 2-1 or 10-1 on Sunday isn't as important as being able to evaluate how certain players played, worked together, etc.  Bizarrely, I'm more likely to watch a friendly on the TiVo if I already know the result for that very reason.

Which is to say, I doubt it would be nearly as easy to buy someone off for a World Cup match, or any match that actually meant anything.  Not saying it can't happen, but I don't think we can extrapolate from one situation to the other directly.

Nonetheless, the match fixing is pretty brazen, as witnessed by Chaibou and his bag of cash (probably affixed with an over sized dollar sign, just to make the image complete).  It feeds a perception that FIFA is fundamentally corrupt.

A perception that was reinforced by a story broken by the Sunday Times over the weekend (reported via Deadspin) that a former FIFA executive paid out bribes to secure the 2022 World Cup for his home country, Qatar:

Bin Hammam was able to secure votes with 'lavish junkets' and straight-up cash. According to the Times at least one of these junkets with money goodie-bags was actually paid for by the Qatar bid. In 2009 bin Hammam hosted three key voters, and 35 other soccer officials in Doha, all on Qatar's dime.

In addition to these junkets, Hammam also made payments totalling up to $200,000 to accounts 'controlled by the presidents of 30 African football associations' who were key to securing a pro-Qatar vote. Payments were made from 10 slush funds and bin Hammam's daughter's account.

All in all, more than $5 million was involved.  And, as with the match fixing, it was fairly brazen, with (for example) the head of the Namibian Football Association demanding $50,000 (US, naturally) "to build football pitches."

The awarding of the World Cup to Qatar was greeted with scoffs and talk of bribery when it was first announced.  The country has no real history on the international soccer scene and staging the tournament in its traditional mid-summer time frame in the Middle East borders on suicidal.  Even FIFA head honcho recently told Swiss television that awarding the Cup to Qatar was a "mistake."

Given all that, FIFA is in a good position to take quick, decisive action to show that it won't put up with that kind of shenanigans - take the 2022 World Cup away from Qatar.  Reopen the bid process or hand it directly to a country that can host it in spite of the shortened time frame.  Would I like to see it be the United States?  Of course.  That would also help deflect some of the criticism of the soon to begin tournament in Brazil, namely that there's a lot of money being spent on big stadiums that won't see much (if any) use once the tournament is over.  The US has lots of large stadia that can host soccer, with even more coming on line in the next few years.  And don't forget, the 1994 World Cup held here is still the best attended in history.

But that would be a secondary benefit to FIFA finally making a move to get its house in order.  I hope it will happen, but I'm skeptical.

Away Goals Are Not the Solution

When I first started really following soccer, back in college, that meant European soccer and, at the time, that mostly meant the UEFA Champions League.  The Champions League is sort of a European super league, involving top teams from all over Europe (although it is no longer, as the name implies, comprised soley of champions).  After a certain phase, the teams are drawn into the typical 16-team knockout bracket until we have a champion of Europe.

Unlike, say, the NFL playoffs, those knockout rounds are each two-legged: the teams play twice, once each at their home stadium, with the winner being determined by total goals scored.  It is, in essence, one 180-minute game with a week-long (or more) halftime.  So what if, after all that, things are tied up?  In order to avoid going to the dreaded PK shootout, UEFA will award the win to the team that scored the most goals away from home.

That is the "away goals rule," as used in Europe and elsewhere.  I'm not a big fan - I think it overestimates the difficulty of scoring on the road and, therefore, makes teams more cautious.  That being said, I recognize that for a competition where the teams aren't seeded according to some regular season results it at least makes some sense.  But where there is some ranking of teams heading into the knockout rounds, it really doesn't.

Since its inception, Major League Soccer has struggled to figure out a playoff structure that worked well, that captured the excitement of championships in other US sports while rewarding success in the regular season.  It initially went with the baseball/basketball/hockey setup of a best-of-X (3, in this case) series, but that necessitates winners and losers in each game, which can lead to some issues in soccer.

More recently, the league switched to a two-legged series similar to what the Champions League does, with the higher seed hosting the second game and, if necessary, the extra time and PKs in case of a tie.  Although it's produced some fantastic contests (such as the epic 2003 Earthquakes-Galaxy series or the 2012 DC United-New York Red Bulls series), it doesn't work all that well.  It doesn't provide the higher seed with much of an advantage, making the regular season nigh-on meaningless.  And, in the end, you can still have ties and PKs.

So now, with the new season just underway, MLS has announced that it will now tweak the system further by bringing in the away goals rule for the playoff series.  While this will no doubt cut down on the dreaded PKs, it doesn't really solve the problem of the league's long regular season being next to meaningless.  If anything, the away goals rule also means potentially fewer periods of extra time in the second leg, which is the only advantage a higher seed gets in the first place.

If MLS is serious about solving the playoff dilemma, it needs to look not to European football, but to good ole' fashioned American gridiron football.  The NFL has the best postseason of any American professional sport.  The playoffs last about a month, are super easy to follow (win or go home), and - as is particularly important here - rewards regular season achievement by allowing the higher seeds to host games.  Scrape into the NFL playoffs and you're on the road the whole way.  Cruise through the regular season and you get to stay home.  Not that upsets can't happen and do, but they feel more earned if the lower seed goes on the road and gets it done.

It would be easy for MLS to import that system.  Currently, 10 teams make it into the playoffs.  That gives you four rounds - it even kicks off with a wild-card kind of round, giving the top seeds a week's rest at the end of the season.  That round, by the way, is a one game winner takes all contest hosted by the higher seed.  Why not just carry that format forward for the rest of the playoffs?  No more midweek games that can't get on TV, no more cramped travel schedules.  Easy!  As a bonus, casual fans who might come across a game can get invested knowing that a result will occur that night - no need to wait for the second leg to see how things turn out.

I understand that part of the reason the league wanted multi-game series was to give each club an extra game to play, to fill the stadium and make some money.  But lots of those games, with short turnaround and poor scheduling, aren't played in front of full stadiums anyway.  Playoff games in front of empty seats don't look good for anybody.  And, at any rate, if the league's going to grow up and away from such concerns eventually, it might as well go ahead and do it.

A one-game playoff structure isn't perfect, either.  It increases the chances of games going to PKs, unless MLS did something truly original and forced the teams to play until there's actually a winner.  My personal theory is that if teams knew there was no way a game could end in a draw they would be more interested in trying to win it, rather than simply trying not to lose it and slide through to PKs, but I admit I have no data to back that up.  Still, even a PK-strewn playoff system would be better than the multi-legged confusion the league has now.

It's one thing for MLS to want to play like the rest of the world on the pitch.  But when it comes to how to structure the league, it needs to do what works best for its market.  The NFL has shown the value of a one-and-done playoff format.  Why reinvent the wheel?

On Coming Home

As late as the early 1990s, if you were an American and wanted to play soccer professionally, your only real option (leaving to one side minor leagues and indoor) was to head to Europe.  The generation of players who put US Soccer back on the map largely played overseas.  Paul Caligiuri, who hit the "Shot Heard Round the World" that sent the US to the 1990 World Cup played for SV Meppen in Germany.  When the US hosted the World Cup in 1994, major starers played in Germany (Thomas Dooley at Leverkusen and Eric Wynalda at Saabrucken), England (John Harkes at Derby County and Cobi Jones at Coventry City), and even Italy (Alexi Lalas at Padova).

That changed in 1996 when Major League Soccer kicked off.  Nobody then (particularly) or now would argue with a straight face that MLS is one of the world's best leagues, but it was something to build on and provided a place for new American talent to grow.  Not for nothing, but a lot of those Yanks Abroad - including Harkes, Lalas, and Wynalda (who scored the league's first goal) - came home to help the league get going.

Regardless, since then there's been a perception among lots of American soccer fans that for American players to really maximize their potential, and push the US Men's National Team to higher things, the best of them needed to play in Europe.  MLS was fine for starting out, but testing yourself against the best players in the world by playing in the English Premier League or Serie A should be the ultimate target.

For the longest time the whipping boy for American fans on this score has been Landon Donovan who, for all his success in MLS and with the USMNT, never really found a spot at a top European club.  When he returned from Leverkusen in 2005, critics called him soft and questioned his commitment to being the best player he can be.  In spite of that criticism (or maybe because of it), Donovan kept his top form, for the most part, and will step away from the USMNT sometime soon as one of its all time greats.

As it happens, as MLS nears its 20th anniversary, there appears to be a wave of American stars coming back home.  It started with Clint Dempsey, moving from Tottenham in England to the Seattle Sounders last year (though he's back in England on load during the MLS off season), but appears be be gaining steam.  Most notably, midfielder Michael Bradley has decided to trade in the Serie A club Roma for the altogether more frigid environs of Toronto.

Bradley, after a stint in MLS with New York, moved to Europe in 2006.  In fairly quick succession he moved successfully from club to club, from Holland to Germany and finally to Italy.  All the while he became one of the USMNT's best players, finally emerging from the shadow of nepotism when his father, Bob, moved on to coach the Egyptian national team in 2011.  As a result, there's been some backlash about Bradley's return to MLS.

Unlike Dempsey, who's arguably reached the peak of his career and will only trend downward (slowly, we hope!) from here, Bradley is only 26 years old.  He should have another three of four years of development.  And, unlike another returning player, defender Michael Parkhurst (from Germany to the Columbus Crew), Bradley was not simply riding the pine at Roma.  He had played less than he would like, obviously, and perhaps the situation was going to get worse.  But that is precisely the kind of cutthroat competition that most American soccer fans think will make players better in the long run.

In other words, there are some fans who are peeved because, regardless of how beneficial the move will be for Bradley financially or MLS in terms of stature, it could hurt the USMNT.  It's particularly bad timing, given the World Cup coming up this summer in Brazil, where Bradley figures to be a key figure.  The fear, then, is that Bradley will backslide during his time in the Great White North.  And, besides, what will the rest of the soccering world think if our best player runs back home at a time like this?

I admit, I'm conflicted.  As an MLS watcher I think that if this is part of a plan by the league to build the level of play and do so with recognizable American players, that's a good thing.  I'd rather Bradley come to DC United, but what can you do?  On the other hand, there is something disappointing about leaving Roma so early.  Will it impact the World Cup?  Hard to say - is it better to play regularly at Toronto in the run up or sporadically at Roma?  I don't think anybody really knows the answer to this question.

Here's the thing, though, when it comes down to it.  Neither Bradley nor any other player owes me anything, really.  He's got to make decisions based on what he thinks is best for him as a player and his family.  If he'd rather come back to MLS and play, who am I to tell him he's wrong?  Same for the inevitable discussions on dual-nationality players who decide to play for another country - there's no point getting pissed about it, right?

As for the national team - it is what it is.  The United State will likely never be the kind of consistent world power that Spain, Brazil, or Germany is.  We're much better than we once were and, when the circumstances are right, can beat anybody.  A good, deep run in a World Cup isn't beyond us, but it isn't likely, either.  As fans, Americans need to accept that.  Hope for the best, root hard, and scream loud for the team to win it all, but know, at the end of days, it's not likely to happen.  Regardless of where Michael Bradley or anybody else decides to make his living.

We Won! But We Still Suck!

Sorry, this post isn’t about my alma mater’s football team, who managed a complete turnaround to dump Oklahoma State last weekend. Although, hey, woo-hoo for that, right?

No, this is about the stunning cap to the horrible year another of my sports crushes has had, that being DC United. Take a look at the current standings in MLS’s Eastern Conference and you’ll see why:

Not only are they at the bottom of the standings, they’d have to stretch quite a bit to even be the next-to-worst team in the table. For comparison’s sake, the walking disaster that is Chivas USA, the floor in the West, is on 26 points. What’s even worse is that DC had a great surge at the end of last season, returning to the playoffs and making it to the Eastern Conference final (vanquishing NYRB along the way – joy!). Things should have been better this year, or at least not this much worse.

Which is what makes last night all the more confounding and impressive.

This season marks the 100th year of the US Open Cup. This is the American equivalent to the English FA Cup and similar competitions across the world – knock-out competitions (as opposed to league play), generally open to a wide swath of teams from various levels within the country. Essentially, it’s a national championship. It’s fabled, particularly in England, for matches when the lower-division underdogs upset the top-division fat cats.

Well, last night, DC knocked off Real Salt Lake – first place in the West, 1 point behind NYRB for tops in MLS – in Salt Lake to win this year’s Open Cup, 1-0. The lowest of underdogs knocked down Goliath. Thank you, Lewis Neal, for the goal!

As a DC fan I am, of course, quite pleased. It doesn’t erase the turd of a season the team’s had in MLS, but hardware is hardware and hopefully it will be a springboard leading to turning things around next year. But it does make me wonder if such an upset is part of what keeps the broader American sporting public from caring about the Open Cup. After all, the final was consigned to broadcast on GolTV, which isn’t even available on DirecTV or Dish Network anymore. That’s disappointing in an era when soccer is widening its reach on “real” TV – why, even this past Sunday, NBC took a moment during their primetime NFL pregame show to run through the Premier League scores from the weekend.

Honestly, I think the whole process confuses casual fans. In American sports there is one competition, one goal. Every NFL team has one preferred endpoint for the season – winning the Super Bowl. There is no ancillary glory to be won along the way. An English Premier League team, on the other hand, begins the season looking at several ways to win glory – the league itself, the FA Cup, the League Cup, not to mention European competitions. At the end of the NFL season, there is one champ to rule them all. By next spring in England there will be several.

So I’m not sure that the Open Cup fits well into the consciousness of the typical American sports fan. Which is a shame, because it’s a competition with a rich history that rivals the World Series or Stanley Cup and is more ancient than anything professional football or basketball has to offer. It deserves more attention.

And, hey - my team won it this year!

In Which Sepp Blatter Is *Gasp* Wrong

Readers who follow the global politics of soccer know that when FIFA president Sepp Blatter opens his mouth, stupidity often follows. So it’s perhaps not a surprise that when Blatter turns his attention to Major League Soccer and its place in the American sports universe, he got it wrong.

In an interview with Al Jazeera, Blatter said, in response to a question about the development of the game in China and the United States:

The problem in the United States is a little bit different. But don’t forget that soccer — as they call football there — is the most popular game in the youth. It’s not American football or baseball; it is soccer. But there is no very strong professional league. There have just the M.L.S. But they have not these professional leagues that are recognized by the American society.

It is a question of time. I thought, when we had the World Cup in 1994. … But we are now in 2012 — it’s been 18 years — it should have been done now. But they are still struggling.

Look, nobody’s going to mistake MLS from the English Premier League or Spain’s La Liga. Nor even for the NBA, NFL, or Major League Baseball. But it’s snuck up on pro hockey in the United States and, really, given that the league’s not old enough to drink yet, things are going pretty well. As the New York Times Goal blog puts it:

Perhaps Blatter forgets that Roma, like Rome, was not built in a day. Or that it’s been a while since anyone speculated whether M.L.S. would return the following spring. Or that more than half of the league’s 19 teams now play in new soccer-specific stadiums, and that a half-dozen cities are bidding to host the league’s 20th franchise.

In addition, the league’s gone from buying time from ESPN to get games on television to being paid for the honor. Hell, there was even a bit of a bidding war the last time around, with NBC swooping in to take the rights held by Fox Soccer Channel. Certainly, there’s more to do – my team DC United is basically in stadium limbo right now – but things are headed in the right direction.

Keep in mind, the NFL was founded in 1920, the NBA in 1946, and Major League Baseball dates back to at least 1876. MLS isn’t just a newcomer, it’s an infant by comparison.

So, Blatter’s completely wrong in this instance. In other news, water is wet.

Phun, Phun, Phun

A couple of weeks back, K (the girlfriend) and I headed off to Philadelphia for a few days (sans critters this time). The motivation for Philly was Marillion returning to the United States on tour for the first time since 2004. It was the third time I’ve seen them, each time a little further from home. At this rate, I’ll wind up in Bangor, Maine, just to go to a concert.

I should mention that K is not a particular fan of prog in general or Marillion specifically. But she is a very patient, loving girlfriend and didn’t blink at the thought of going to the concert with me. The long weekend and short vacation didn’t hurt, of course. She also took a lot of the pictures.* Thanks, honey!

As is typical when we breeze into town for a few days, we stayed downtown (for the most part), on Penn Square.

The night view right outside the hotel, looking up at the Ben Franklin statute on top of city hall, was really cool, but I couldn’t get a good picture.

First day we spent on foot, basically wandering around the neighborhood. The Reading Terminal Market, a huge collection of ethnic food places, was just down the block. It took more than an hour just to work through it, much less decide where to have lunch. We settled on a Cajun place serving gator sausage gumbo. Good stuff!

We also wandered through Chinatown, in which K bought strange, odd, spiky fruit. Yes, we are that kind of tourist.

That night, we dined high style at Morimoto, restaurant of perennial Iron Chef champ Masaharu.

It lives up to the hype. I had the world’s best ramen soup and a kobe beef rice bowl, while K worked through an 8-course tasting menu. Aside from one of the “pallet cleanser” courses (some kind of strawberry and vinegar soda), it was all excellent. So I was told. The restaurant itself has a cool vibe, with subdued neon lights of shifting colors underneath every table. Very conducive to conversation.

We went to Philly a few years ago and managed to avoid one of its more famous attractions – the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It’s a fabulous old building with lots of neat stuff, most of which is arranged in period appropriate rooms. In fact, some of the Asian artifacts are housed in rooms transported from Japan and China. And, of course, that’s where Rocky is.

I wanted to try and check out the relocated Barnes Foundation collection, but it apparently takes an act of Congress to get in. It was outside of the Museum of Art, waiting on a cab, that I spied this abomination.

I hope all the money they’ve made on SUV’s keep Porsche warm at night, since they sold their soul to get there.

That night, it was concert time! The venue, the Theater of the Living Arts, is on South Street, just down the street from Jim’s, one of Philly’s premier cheesesteak venues. So we planned to hit Jims for a bite, then head to the show.

When we arrived, the line at Jim’s was out the door and around the corner. And so we stood. This would be a recurring theme for the evening. To be fair, Jim’s has a system and it works pretty quickly, all things considered. As for the sandwich? To be honest, I wasn’t overly impressed. It was good, don’t get me wrong, but not the revelation I expected.

The TLA is on the next block down from Jim’s, but there wasn’t anybody hanging around outside before the doors opened. Seemed odd, but then we found out why – they line formed down the block and around the corner (in front of another cheese steak place – they’re everywhere!). And so, with an hour before the doors opened, we were faced with this:

K was not particularly enthused about doing more line standing.

Neither was I, to be honest. The venue itself was mostly standing room only (the few seats in the balcony were reserved for VIPs), which meant we were going to spend the rest of the night on our feet. After about an hour, we were let out of the alley and into the venue. We quickly staked our ground at a post near the back of the main room, next to the sound guy’s station.

The TLA is an old movie theater, so the floor slopes down toward the stage, providing some vantage point from the back of the room. It was a good view, for me at least. K did her best to snap a few pictures (sans flash, due to TLA policy), though the conditions made it difficult. Some ended up interestingly abstract, tho'.

This one came out a bit better, H with his MIDI cricket bat. What? It's a cricket bat with MIDI technology for triggering samples and such. Doesn't everybody have one?

Technical problems were the theme of the night. One of H’s mics stopped working, Mark’s keyboards dropped out at the end of one track, and the aforementioned MIDI bat tanked. So no sax samples for “This Strange Engine.” But those roadblocks were easily overcome. The crowd was into it, the band was excellent, and the vibe was just what I’ve come to expect from a Marillion concert – the closest I ever get to a religious experience. I guess I’ll be due for another one in a decade or so.

There’s another Philly tourist attraction in the neighborhood up near the Museum of Art that K and I managed to miss last time we were there. This time, since we were uprooting from downtown a day early and had a car, I was compelled to check it out.

When most folks think of prisons today, the word “penitentiary” is synonymous. It was not always the case. The idea that a prison could be more than just a temporary warehouse for serious criminals (who were most likely to be executed, exiled, or heavily fined) started circulating in the late 18th-century. The first place it was tried was in Philly, at the Eastern State Penitentiary, opened in 1829. It is, truly, what one thinks of when “prison” pops into your head.

It was called a penitentiary because the core of its approach was to force prisoners to be penitent, or humble and regretful, about their sins . . . er, crimes, rather. To accomplish that task, prisoners were kept in isolation from one another at were required to remain silent at all times.

In the ceiling of each cell was a skylight. It was more than a simple way to get light into the cell. It was supposed to be a reminder of the omnipresent eye of God looking down upon them.

The system employed at Eastern State didn’t catch on in the United States very much (a similar system that emphasized work over penitence won out in Gilded Age America), but it was popular overseas. That being said, the general look and vibe of the place is similar to a lot of American prisons built not too long after, including the old West Virginia Penitentiary at Moundsville.

Eastern State was really a marvel of its age, architecturally speaking. It had a system of steam heat and running water (sort of – guards flushed the toilets twice a week, IIRC) long before most of the young United States did. The design itself, with its central control hub and cellblocks spiraling out from there. It allowed for maximum visibility with the fewest number of watchers. Thus, you get views like this.

At the time, it was a noble experiment. Looking back with hindsight and an increasing understanding of how solitary confinement turns people bugfuck crazy, to call it cruel would be an understatement. Thankfully, or maybe not, politics overwhelmed the experiment, as more and more people were sent to Eastern State (the cell block above is an example of one of the later two-tiered ones, built to house more people). It was closed in 1971.

After its closure, Eastern State sat a good long while as folks tried to figure out what do with it. Various plans came and went (including one for redevelopment as high-end condos, built behind the massive outer walls), but nothing materialized. As a result, by the time it became the tourist attraction it is today in 1994, a good bit of it had fallen into ruin. Most of it is maintained that way, and thus you have things like this:

That’s a tree growing down into one of the cells. As a result of the ruin, the place is plenty creepy. No surprise, then, that it’s often used as a set for films (including Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys), TV, and photo shoots.

As I said, we hit Eastern State on our way out of downtown Philly. We relocated because, in a completely happy coincidence, not only was there a Philadelphia Union game the night after the concert, but it was against DC United. I may never turn K into a prog fan, but she’s become quite a fan of the beautiful game.

My prior soccer experiences have all been at DC’s home stadium, RFK, which was built for the Redskins and (olde school) Nationals decades ago. To say it has “charm” is to oversell it a bit. It’s way too big for the average MLS game, but it does lend something to the atmosphere when Barra Brava and the Screaming Eagles can make the stands shake with their drumming.

By contrast, the Union play in a fairly new soccer specific stadium in the Philly burb of Chester, right near New Jersey and Delaware (our hotel was actually in Delaware that night), PPL Park. It sits right on the river, next to a big ass bridge that (thanks to Mapquest) would have spirited us away into Jersey. It’s a much smaller, more comfortable, and enjoyable place to experience a game than RFK.

It also made for some interesting moments during the match. I decided not to buy tickets in the designated “away supporters section,” because I rightly thought it would be full with drum pounding, chanting DC fans and figured we wouldn’t want to spend another night on our feet. As a result, we were in the middle of a section full of Philly fans, many flying the Union colors (I strategically wore my US national team jersey, not a DC one). We blended pretty well, except the grin on my face as the Union impotently tried to score again and again played out over 90 minutes.

As it happened, DC snatched a late goal to win the match. I celebrated quietly to myself.

With that, our jaunt to Philly was over. We ate well, heard some great music, and watch DC United snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Can’t ask much more than that.

* For more pix and bigger versions, see here.

Where I've Been

Sorry for the lack of posting the last week or so. I was off on the road . . .












Details shortly.

Saving Us From the Shootout

For the past few years, the UEFA Champions League final – the Super Bowl of European club soccer and, some would argue, the highest level competition in the world – has been played on Saturday, rather than the traditional midweek date for European fixtures. That’s mean good mid afternoon time slot and Fox has therefore run the match on the main Fox network (over the air, as it were) rather than one of its cable outlets. So more Americans get to feast their eyes on the final.

And what a final this year, huh? English club Chelsea’s improbable run ran into Germany power Bayern Munich, who had the benefit of playing the final in their home stadium (as with the Super Bowl, the site of the final is determined years in advance). The two teams slugged it out for more than an hour, before Bayern grabbed a late goal that surely looked like the winner. However, given the script, Chelsea struck back with an even later goal of their own, leaving the two sides tied 1-1 after regulation.

Which meant it all went pear shaped after that. Thirty minutes of overtime produced nothing but insomnia, before the inevitable – penalty kicks. Yes, it was dramatic. Certainly, if you were a Chelsea fan, it must have been sweet (Chelsea prevailed 4-3, with the kicks taken in front of the end of the stadium where Bayern’s fans were seated). But for a neutral or, gods forbid, someone who wasn’t a soccer fan looking in with curiosity, it was an anticlimax.

If you’re a fan of the game, you know that shootouts as means to determine a winner aren’t all that popular. If you’re not a fan, you might rightly wonder what is the point of crowning a champion based on a small part of the game, equivalent to a home run derby in baseball. Maybe that’s why Sepp Blatter, the enigmatic chief of FIFA, the game’s global governing body, is searching for an alternative. Maybe.

It was not always so that penalty kicks were a part of the game:

I was in River Plate stadium (before it was known as Estadio Monumental Antonio Vespuci), Buenos Aires, Argentina, June 25, 1978, when three goals were scored in extra time and the hosts defeated the Netherlands to win the World Cup.

No golden goal. No penalty kick shootout lurking in the minds of players and fans. In fact, I believe that was the last World Cup final that would have actually been replayed, two days later, before the major domos at FIFA realized that each and every final must come to a resolution. Travel plans. The demands of television. Not to mention the strain on the players.

Replays these days in such major tournaments aren’t really feasible, for those reasons (although the F.A. Cup manages to deal with them in most rounds, IIRC). So what’s the solution? In my opinion, the problem isn’t so much PKs themselves as a tie breaker (although I think the old MLS version was more interesting), it’s that the teams involved know that, if they hold out long enough, the game will change into whatever the tie breaker is.

So here’s my solution – let them play. In games where there must be a winner and loser (so the vast majority of matches aren’t impacted), tell the teams going in that they’re going to play until there’s a winner. I’m open to suggestions about allowing extra subs or what the overtime periods should look like (I’ve got no real problem with sudden death, or “Golden Goal” as FIFA dubbed it), but at the end of the day, the winner should score more goals that the other team.

Having watched lots of games that ended in PKs, the sense I get is that once teams get into extra time the goal becomes not winning the game, but avoiding losing it, because the PK scenario greatly equalizes the two teams’ chances. In other words, for large chunks of that half hour, it’s a slow speed kick around section, not a competitive match worthy of a major final. My theory is that, without the safety net of PKs hanging out there, teams would be forced to play to win and would, therefore, score goals.

Granted, there could be games that go on for hours and hours, as some Stanley Cup playoff games are famous for, but I think that would be really rare. After all, since a draw is meaningless neither side has a reason to play for one, right? It would be truly exceptional for two teams to be so well matched (or so astoundingly unable to score) that games would drag on and on as a regular exercise. And when they did stretch on to epic lengths, they would be truly epic. What’s the problem with that?

That being said, I don’t expect anything to change real soon. For one thing, PK shootouts only pop up in knockout matches which, even in tournaments like the World Cup or Champions League, are really rare. Easier just to hope the problem doesn’t pop up this year than worry about dealing with it. And, for all its flaws, the shootout does make things easy on the TV programmers, which more and more runs the sports world.

In other words, we’re presented with a long-term deadlock that nobody can seem to break. Hmm, which end do I want to take the penalties in?

Give Him Credit, He’s Really Selling It

For the past several years, soccer fans and officials alike have been on a crusade against diving, or, as the upper crust call it, “simulation.” And with good reason. It doesn’t do the sport any good to be seen as a place where cheats and good actors make a big impact on games. There is such a thing as taking it too far, however.

Although I was never a particularly gifted player, I have played more than my fair share of soccer games. I know what happens on the field and the weird ways that two players can come together around the ball. Are there divers? Absolutely and I have no problem showing them a card.. Is it a dive every time somebody goes down and instant replay shows he wasn’t fouled? No. Contact happens, even if it doesn’t rise to the level of a foul. More to the point, sometimes a player with the ball is off balance or what have you and naturally will go to ground more easily that you might suspect. Again, no foul, but that doesn’t mean it’s a dive. There is some middle ground.

I suppose what I’m saying is that the pendulum has swung so far towards punishing diving that refs sometimes get carried away. Take this example (via):

That’s right, a player gets knocked unconscious in the box and is taken away on a stretcher, during which the ref shows him a red card (does the card still count of the player was unconscious and unable to appreciate the punishment?). I can completely understand how the ref may have, from the angle he had on the incident, initially thought it was a dive. But, really, once the guy’s being wheeled away by paramedics, is there any doubt about whether he’s faking?

I don’t want to see divers rewarded in soccer. But neither do I want to see every contact that results in somebody on the ground get sorted into the “foul” or “dive” boxes. It’s a contact sport. Sometimes shit happens.

Talk About Bad Timing

As the Major League Soccer regular season comes to a conclusion, things in DC United land just took another unexpected turn. The team’s been in a skid for the past few weeks, in spite of the lure of the playoffs dangling right in front of them. Nothing exemplifies that more than Saturday’s home game against Chicago, where DC appeared to salvage a late win on a Dwayne de Rosario penalty kick, only to concede two goals to the Fire in stoppage time.

So the club’s playoff hopes hang by the slenderest of threads (win the last two games and appeal to the fates for help), when this happens.

Two years ago, Charlie Davies was a rising star with the US National Team. A skilled forward with blazing speed scoring goals in a top European league (France’s Ligue 1, with Souchoux), he appeared to be the answer to the perpetual American quest for a true finisher up front. Then, before a World Cup Qualifier against Costa Rica in DC, Davies broke curfew, went to a party, and wound up involved in a horrific car wreck. Davies was severely injured, another passenger was killed, and the driver, who was drunk, was later convicted of manslaughter.

One of the feel good stories at the beginning of the season was Davies’s return, playing for DC United on loan from Souchoux, after recovering from his injuries.. Although he’s not back to his prior form (and has developed a reputation as a bit of a diver), Davies’s 11 goals have helped keep DC in the hunt all season. It’s still a pretty good story.

Save for this latest complication. Davies has sued, for $20 million, both the club at which the party was held and, ironically, Red Bull (which, of course, owns the hated rivals from New York) which organized it. DC, apparently, has a version of a statute commonly called a Dram Shop Act, which allows people injured by someone to sue the providers of the alcohol they consumed, if it was obvious the person was drunk and should have been cut off. The theory, then, would be that the club (and vicariously Red Bull) should not have continued to serve alcohol to the driver because she was visibly intoxicated.

It sounds to me (with the caveat that I have no experience with this kind of litigation – to quote Herman Cain, “I don’t have any facts to back this up, but . . .”) that this will be a tough sell. For one thing, it seems to me that Dram Shop Acts were designed to protect wholly innocent third parties, not others associated with the drunk driver. In other words, to compensate the driver of the other car, not the passengers who rode with the drunk driver. I imagine a jury will want to know how, if the driver was so obviously intoxicated, Davies didn’t see that as well. His lawyer’s already out in front on that question:

We believe the facts will show, among other things, that Mr. Davies had no interaction with the driver at the Shadow Room and was in a separate room. Without getting into detail, as he was leaving, the driver asked if she and her friend could give him a ride to his hotel. In the hustle and bustle of the lobby as he was walking out -- a split-second decision — he said yes. There was no meaningful time in which Mr. Davies had an opportunity to ‘observe’ the driver; he had no knowledge what she had been drinking or whether she had been drinking.

We’ll see how that goes (see Update below). More problematic, at least to the extent that Davies’s suit is looking for compensation due to his missing out on the World Cup last year and his career generally coming to a halt, he’s really go nobody to blame for that but himself. Had he heeded the instructions of his coach, he never would have been out in that situation at all. I don’t know if Dram Shop Act cases deal with contributory/compensatory negligence, but I’ll bet a good defense attorney makes sure that information gets in front of a jury, regardless.

But, above all, what shitty timing. Davies has been a spotlight player for DCU and the league this year. He was in the mix for the Gold Cup squad this summer before he picked up a knock. I understand that the timing is down to the statute of limitations (most states have a 2-year statute of limitation on tort suits), but still. To anyone predisposed to see any lawsuit as a bad thing, Davies looks like a guy who made a bad decision trying to fob it off on someone else, at a time when his team is in desperate need of cohesion. It’s going to leave a bad taste in the mouth of not just DC fans, but many USMNT fans as well.

Davies may very well win his suit, one way or the other. But I wouldn’t count on being welcomed back into the good graces of the American soccer faithful anytime soon.

UPDATE:  Of course, he told Sports Illustrated soccer writer Grant Wahl something different earlier this year:

Davies says he didn't drink any alcohol that night, and Roberta and Espinoza, in his words, 'seemed completely normal. There wasn't even a second where I thought they might have had too much to drink.'

Oops.

Note: David James Is English

I mention that right at the outset, because if an American had proposed some of the things James does in this column in The Guardian he would be set upon by defenders of the footy faith, persecuted as another heretic from across the pond, just like the ones who brought us multiple-point goals and artificial turf. Besides, that fact gives some cover to this American, who thinks James might be onto something, at least with most of the five things he identifies as things soccer could learn from its “egg-shaped cousin,” rugby.

The five things James identifies are (1) increased substitution flexibility; (2) making yellow cards more meaningful; (3) using technology to deal with disputed goal calls; (4) doing away with the transfer window; and (5) someone other than the ref keeping time. I’ve got no position one way or the other on transfer windows. And while goal line tech would no doubt help out in some cases, technology does not ensure correct calls (ask Toledo’s football team), so I’ll leave that to the side for now. As for the others, James has a point, if not a particularly good idea for addressing it.

Take substitutions. The sub rules in soccer look barbaric compares to most other modern sports – you get 3 per game, that’s it. If you use all three subs and then somebody else gets hurt or abducted by aliens during a corner kick, tough shit – you’re down to 10 versus 11. It was not always thus. In the good ole’ days no substitutions were allowed at all. As I understand it, substitutions were initially allowed only for injuries, but that rule was quickly abused, so it morphed into its current form.

Is “three” the correct answer for “how many substitutes should be allowed in soccer?” I dunno. I’ve seen plenty of matches where the last 10 or 15 minutes get pretty dire as 16 tired guys or gals just huff the ball around because nobody can actually run anymore. The three subs on each end run around like children gone off their Ritalin, but often with less interesting results. Maybe more subs would be better. Where James completely goes off the rails is his idea of “specialist” subs, with which we are all too familiar with in our own version of football, thank you very much. But there’s a happy medium somewhere, one that allows for a more up-tempo and offensive match during the whole 90 minutes, without turning it into the NFL.

I also agree that making yellow cards more meaningful would be a good thing, although not for the reasons James lays out. He’s concerned that the effects of accumulated yellows only pile up after several matches and the penalty ultimately served does little to benefit the “wronged” parties along the way. My concern is that a yellow card is really no deterrent for the kind of attack killing tackles that squelch interesting soccer. I’m thinking of the “professional foul” committed in the middle of the park during a counter attack simply to bring proceedings to a halt. It happens so often that defenders clearly aren’t troubled by the yellow (unless they’ve already got one). I’m not sure that the “sin bin” (that’s “penalty box” to you frozen pond types) would really work, as teams playing a man up for long stretches of time already rarely make the most of it. Five minute bursts of 11-on-10 action may not really add much to the game.

Where I think James is most correct is the issue of timekeeping. Soccer games are ruled with an iron fist by a single official who is responsible for all discipline, major decisions about things like goals, and the rather mundane job of signaling the end of the half or game. The clock runs continuously through each half, with a discretionary amount of “added time” at the end to make up for stoppages (allegedly). Thus, unlike most sports where the players, coaches, and fans all know precisely how much time is left in a game, soccer keeps everyone but the ref in the dark.

What I’ve seen of rugby timekeeping makes much more sense. Rugby halves run continuously, just like soccer halves (though they are five minutes shorter). The clock doesn’t stop for routine dead ball situations – line outs, scrums, what have you. But it does stop for longer stoppages, such as injuries or after a score. The ref signals the stoppage, the clock stops. It’s that simple. There is no added time at the end of the half or game because there’s no need for it. The half or game ends once the clock hits zero and the next dead ball occurs. Everybody knows what’s going on and what’s at stake.

Truth be told, Major League Soccer was on the right track with its timekeeping when it started, which involve the time being kept on the stadium clock and not by the ref. The mistake in the MLS plan was now allowing for any stoppages, so time wasting was pathetically easy. That being said, I can remember at least one last minute finish that simply wouldn’t have been as dramatic had we been playing the game the way the rest of the world did.

I don’t think anybody who is a soccer fan wants to fundamentally change the sport into something it’s not. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t evolve as technology and the experiences of other sports show ways that little tweaks might enhance the game. Even an Englishman can recognize that.

When Sports Really Matter

This is a big weekend for sports that I follow. The US takes on Costa Rica in a Friday friendly that will continue to mark the transition into the Klinsman era. On Sunday, WVU kicks off its football season against cross-state semi-rivals Marshall in a game that means a lot to those of us inside the state, if not to many others. And throughout the weekend the American Le Mans Series and the Indycars break in a new street circuit in Baltimore. I’ll miss a good bit of those, as I’ll be off spending time with friends and loved ones away from sporting concerns. But that’s not a problem, because sports are a pleasant diversion in my life, nothing more.

That’s not true for everyone. I’m not talking about idiots who wrap their self worth up in whether some team or another wins a game. I’m talking about people for whom the diversion of sports is a true lifeline. I’m talking about the well and truly oppressed.

Take this article in today’s New York Times about the popularity of the fledging pro soccer league in Burma (aka Myanmar), which was started in 2008:

'I don’t come here to support any particular team,' said Kyaw Lin, 15, a high school student standing in an especially rowdy section of bleachers during a recent match. 'I come for the freedom to yell anything I want.' Sports is an escape nearly everywhere from the tedium of life. But in Myanmar, with its layers of secret police and prison sentences of as much as 100 years for those who speak out against the government, a soccer match seems something more: an island of raucous merriment in a sea of grinding poverty and fear.

That freedom can get ugly, at times. A World Cup qualifier against Oman was halted in the first half because of objects being thrown onto the field by fans. Speaking of ugly:

The outdoor grandstand reeked of cheap liquor and the occasional pool of vomit. Shirtless fans exhibited a variety of creative, roughly sketched tattoos.

Ewww.

Yes, it appears that the junta that runs Burma is supporting all this as a sort of “rice and circuses” policy. Nonetheless, the breathing room allowed inside the stadium counts for something. And it seems to exist outside to a certain extent, as well:

[U Ko Htut, one of the country’s prominent writers on soccer] was imprisoned for 13 years and tortured for perceived crimes related to his student activism during a major uprising in 1988. Writing about sports, he says, is the closest thing to freedom of expression in Myanmar. The censors rarely bother him, he said, unlike political journalists who spend their careers having their work excised and redacted. (The name of this article’s author is being withheld because foreign journalists, with rare exceptions, are not officially allowed to report in the country.)

I read a book recently in which a character in China communicated with the outside world about dissident crackdowns under the veil of a blog devoted to Chinese professional basketball. Maybe something similar will leak out in reports of Burmese soccer?

So remember, friends, when you’re tempted to burn a couch or yell nasty things about the parentage of the guy who just punted you favorite driver out of the lead, we’ve got it lucky. We can get wrapped up in these silly things (or not) just for the fun of it. It’s not an act of rebellion just watching a damned game.

Justice! Sweet Juicy Justice!

Two hours into the US quarterfinal against Brazil this morning, staring down the barrel of a 2-1 loss, I was contemplating a post about how we were beaten by an Australian, even though we were playing Brazil.

And then, this happened:

The irony being that we only got that much added time at the end due to Brazil's appalling play acting and time wasting.  We sought it out through PKs.  We go on, Brazil goes home.

Bring on the cheese-eating surrender monkeys!

Change We Must

After a tournament filled with oddities - five Mexican players sent home for failing a doping test, the United States losing its first ever group stage match to Panama, of all people - the Gold Cup final on Saturday came down to the match up everyone wanted to see and everyone figured we'd get. The United States took on Mexico at the Rose Bowl, but it might as well have been the Azteca (minus the pollution and altitude, of course).

As entertainment, it didn't disappoint. The US jumped out to a quick 2-0 lead, but the Mexicans had leveled things by the end of the half. The second half saw the Mexicans surge ahead on a pair of wonderfully skillful goals (it pains me to write that, believe me!). Check out the last one for yourself:



In the end, El Tri retained the Gold Cup with a 4-2 win. As a reward, they'll represent the region in the next version of the Confederations Cup in Brazil before the 2014 World Cup. If the continue to play like they did for most of the Gold Cup, they'll be a formidable foe.

It was a frustrating experience for a US fan, seeing so much promise go to shit so quickly. Seemed a little like deja vu, too. Which, of course, it was. In the last version of the Confederations Cup, in 2009, the US made the final against Brazil. In that match, too, we jumped to an early 2-0 lead, only to blow it (Brazil won 3-2). Of course, we only made it that far because of a once-in-a-blue-moon alignment of tie breakers.

In light of all that, it seems clear to me that it is time for US coach Bob Bradley to move on. I've really thought so since the end of last year's World Cup. It's rare for any coach to stay with the same team through multiple World Cup cycles and Bradley isn't special enough to warrant being one of them. I'm aware of what the team has accomplished during his term. I just don't think he has the ability to take us any further.

This Gold Cup has been a perfect example of how frustrating Bradley can be. After a solid opener against Canada, we inexplicably lose to Panama - as mentioned, the first time we've ever lost in the group stage of that tournament. And on home soil, no less. But, no worries, all that stood between us and advancing to the quarterfinals was lowly Guadeloupe, which isn't even a FIFA member (it's still part of France). We cruised past them . . . 1-0. True, the game wasn't as close as the score indicates, but the result should have never been in doubt.

Bradley's roster moves can be head scratching in their variety, as well. The big risk of the tournament was bringing Freddy Adu back into the team, much less starting him against Mexico in the final. That paid off handsomely. However, leaving Landon Donovan out of the starting lineup in the semifinal didn't really pan out.

And Bradley's reaction to the injury of right back Steve Cherundolo was a complete and utter failure. Yes, Eric Lichaj played on the right most of the time during his stint with Leeds last season, but he's been on the left for all of his Gold Cup time and playing brilliantly. Shifting him to the right forces him to play out of position, essentially, in the final, while his replacement on the left, Jonathan Bornstein, was his usual disastrous self. Why not Jonathan Spector on the right?

At any rate, the most common defense I've seen of Bradley in the days since the final is that the United States is simply not that talented and he's doing the best he can with what he's got. That might be so. But if that's the case, shouldn't we bring in a new coach to see if he can do more with the same material? We know what Bradley can and can't do - why not find out what somebody else might figure out?

Now is the time to change, before World Cup qualifying cranks up, not to mention the next version of the Gold Cup in 2013. Make no mistake, the supremacy the United States has enjoyed over Mexico and the rest of CONCACAF is over. We may never win the World Cup, but we can rule our little corner of the planet. It's time to get back there.

The Essence of Sport

You know the easiest way to get the ball in the middle of the fairway? Walk down there and place it with your hand. Who are you kidding?
- Dick Rugge, Senior Technical Director, U.S.G.A.

That quote is from an article in today’s New York Times about a golf ball, called the Polara. The Polara cures one of the most common afflictions of bad golfers (read “most of us”), the slice. For those not familiar with its charms, a slice occurs when the ball you hit curves gracefully away from the place you wanted to hit it. Right handers slice right, left hander slice left. It is, in a word, frustrating.

So, the Polara is a wonderball, right? Well, yeah, except for one problem – it’s not legal under the rules of the game. Whether that should matter to rank amateurs, and whether it might even draw more people to the game. Since I don’t play it any more, I don’t really care.

But the quip from Rugge reminded me of one of the most supremely stupid things I’ve ever read about sports, something that completely missed the whole point of sports.

It came from Frank Deford, one of the country’s notorious soccer haters. He’s the type of guy who ignores the sport most of the time, but when something like the World Cup comes around, he pops up to wonder why Americans just don’t like soccer. His comments are largely ignorant and petty, but they’ve rarely been this dense. In an appearance on PBS (via) during the 2006 World Cup (yeah I know, but still), he said:

And it doesn't have the proficiency that sports do that use your hands. It's totally bizarre when you think about it that a game would be played with feet and head rather than hands. I mean, this makes no sense whatsoever.

Now, how does a rule in soccer that says “don’t use your hands” make any less sense than a rule in football that says “give the ball to the other team if you can’t get 10 yards in four downs” or a rule in Formula 1 that says “your engine can only be 2.4 liters big?” After all, football would be a whole lot easier if you didn’t have to let the other team have the ball. Being able to show up with twice the horsepower of your rivals in an F1 race? Even Red Bull couldn’t keep up. So, too, with the “no hands” rule in soccer.

The entire point of sports is to have everybody agree to restrictive rules that make the object of the game difficult. Otherwise, what’s the point? That soccer emphasizes a particular set of skills makes it the same as every other sport. You’d think somebody like Deford, who’s written about sports for decades, would grasp that. And maybe he does, when he’s not blinded by his hatred of the beautiful game.

Which brings us back to the Polara – does it make the game easier for amateurs who would otherwise drop the sport? Or does it change it in a fundamental way? The technology v. sport dynamic has been playing out in motorsports at the top levels for years. Road cars are easier and easier to drive, largely because of technologies developed in racing. But they make the race cars easier to drive, too. Where’s the fun in that?

In his May column for MotorSport, Nigel Roebuck writes of this dilemma. In it, he relates a telling anecdote:

Remember when Ayrton Senna tested Emerson Fittipaldi’s CART Penske at the end of 1992? At the time F1 was festooned with ‘gizmos’, from active ride to traction control to launch control to ABS, and Senna loathed the lot of them – quite reasonably, too, for they served to flatter a driver, to reduce the gap between the good and the great. Now Ayrton got into the Penske, with more power – and much less grip – than an F1 car, with a manual gearbox, without gizmos. ‘I love it,’ he said. ‘It’s a human’s car . . ..’

In the end, sport comes down to the challenge. If it’s not hard to do, it’s not worth doing. Whether it’s trapping a 50-yard pass on your instep or hitting a drive straight and true, it’s not that hard to figure out.

What’s Spanish for “Oops”?

The Copa del Rey is the Spanish equivalent to the FA Cup or US Open Cup, the national knock-out soccer tournament. As with most things futbol in Spain, it often comes down to a showdown between the country’s two most celebrated clubs, Real Madrid and FC Barcelona. This season, Barca has the better of Real in the league (they’re both in the semifinals of the Champions League), but when the two met in the Copa final yesterday, Real came out with a 1-0 victory.  It was their first victory in the competition since 1993 and firs trophy of any kind for three years.

And, of course, a spiffy trophy  A heavy, spiffy trophy. Of the kind that features prominently in the victory parade through the city. This is probably not what they had in mind:



I wonder if The Special One had a talk with the team afterwards that ended with, “this is why we can’t have nice things!”