Catching up on some things

I’ve got a little time today so I thought I’d quickly mention some things which has caught my eye lately.

Where the heck is Collinsville? Continuing the trend of putting stadiums well outside the cities the teams are named after, St Louis looks like they are well on the road to getting a stadium for a possible MLS team.

Speaking of stadiums, will RSL ever get theirs?

…And then there’s KC who have had to bring in reinforcements to find somewhere (anywhere) to play. I’m hoping something good happens soon for them.

There’s always Cleveland.

Not one of those stadiums is in the cities they are named after. One of the great things about going to Ipswich games was being able to meet up with friends in a pub near the town center and be able to walk to the stadium from there in 10 minutes. Heck, I used to get stuck in traffic for more than 10 minutes trying to get to the HDC from Pasadena. That leaves less time for pre-game beers.

I meant to post this some time ago…but never got around to it. Soccer Dad did a good job of analyzing what happened with the Klinsmann fiasco. We’ve all had a lot of time to digest what happened and after the match last week I’m sure more of us are now comfortable with Bradley at the helm. But I will still maintain that the news wasn’t the story, the news was how much the media covered the story—and this was before the Beckham media blitz.

You’ve got to love the idea of a soccer made earthquake.

Even six months after the World Cup finished, Dave O’Brian is still catching flack.

It looks like some net geeks are trying to cash in on Beckham’s move to LA.

Speaking of big signings (well, not quite that big)…Reyna has now joined Red Bull. Anyone not think that was going to happen?

Wow, Chicago went after Zidane. Guaranteed every sports hack would be discussing the head butt 24/7 if it did go through.

Getting back to Beckham a bit. As a kid I used to stand on a milk crate in the Churchman’s Stand at Portman Road. Back then Town were managed by Bobby Robson. Now, Sir Bobby’s first management job was with the old NASL Vancouver Royals back in 1967. I’m guessing he hasn’t watched much soccer from over here since then based on these comments.

Now, back then Robson’s top striker was Paul Mariner. MLS fans may know him as the guy with glasses who’s always next to Steve Nichol on the bench. Back the 70’s/80’s, Mariner was one of the top strikers in England and was capped several times. He’s been in the US for a while now and I have to agree his response to Robson’s comments.

It’s an interesting observation. To be perfectly honest, far be it from me to disagree with such a great man, but I think I’ve seen more games and been involved in more games than my ex-boss has seen. I think it just goes to show that the general perception of leagues the world over, we take a look at the A-League in Australia, what level do we think that is, the J-League in Japan, what level do we think that is, I mean, for that matter, what do we think of the Portuguese League? I mean it’s all a debate, that’s why football is such a fantastic sport; everybody can debate until they are blue in the face what (the different) levels are like. For the boss (Robson) to say that we are sort of League One is completely wrong. I think it will be interesting to get David’s quotes at maybe six weeks or three months into the league and find out if he thinks this is League One. I would be absolutely shocked if he would say that it was… Having seen some English games over the Christmas period, from the lower leagues to the Premiership, I think that we are doing very, very well for a relatively young league. I think we are doing great and I think the stuff that most (MLS) teams are delivering and the product that MLS is trying to put together is fantastic for a league that is so young.

Problem is, if Beckham comes over here and does well then it proves their point that MLS isn’t any good. If Beckham comes over here and doesn’t take the league by storm, it proves that Beckham is well past his prime. Ya can’t win either way.

Oh and now all the “interesting” people looking for their 15 minutes of fame are taking advantage of the Beckham move. Can’t say I blame him for trying.

Finally, I’m still trying to decide if change is a good thing here. True, Johansson was a clueless muppet…but Platini…well, he is French.

Ok, that’s enough for now.

Klinsmann Post-Mortem

Yeah, it’s still probably too early to do a full post-mortem but it’s been a few hours and it’s good to sometimes look at things from different angles.

I posted my initial reaction to the news about Klinsmann sometime last night (never check email while waiting for a bottle to warm up for your 18-month old) and was half asleep when I did. After posting, I thought it would be interesting to see what other bloggers made of the news (as it’s got to be the biggest story we’ll see this off season)

Obviously the always perfect Jamie Trecker had to explain where he went wrong with his premature announcement the other day.

Brian at DCSunDevil did a good job expressing the feelings of most US fans today and how we got to where we are.

On his excellent HexagonalBlog, Howard let’s us know he called it back before Arena was departing the post.

I remember telling a friend of mine, after it became clear that Bruce Arena would step down as US national team coach, that the Federation would try to make a deal with a well-known foreign coach but in the end settle on an MLS-based coach.

du Nord follows how ESPN covered the breaking news. Which is actually better than I’d expect.

Golazo (once you get through all his/her Google Ads) compares last night’s news to the English FA when they announced Scolari as their new manager.

I just recently discovered The Red Card blog. Louis does a great job and I just love his “Let’s be friends” take on the news.

I couldn’t find many more blogs to have posted reaction yet but if you are looking for more reaction, just check out the usual ranting on BigSoccer. Some of it is even worth the price of admission. If I missed any blog posts on this, please add them in the comments section.

Bottom line I think is that after 6 months of anticipation, we really didn’t get the big shiny Christmas gift we expected. This may be another storm in a teacup and register as only a blip in the mainstream sports media…but it’s big news just the same. Maybe later I’ll check what the papers are saying. I wonder if Gulati will give us fans a gift receipt in this afternoon’s call?

UPDATE: On The Pitch has a nice collection of relevant mainstream media quotes he put together. Worth checking out.

UPDATED UPDATE: Actually, Soccer Dad over at On The Pitch is all over this. First, there’s the USSF bylaws which tells us Gulati doesn’t have all the say in what happened. Then there’s rumored specualtion that Klinsmann walked because USSF could guarantee him all the players he wanted. (MLS playing matches on FIFA International dates has been an issue for me for a long time). Check out his blog. He’s posting some great stuff today.

Technorati Tags: Klinsmann, US Soccer, World Cup

I’m betting they came really close to a deal

It looks like Trecker didn’t get the scoop after all. Juergen Klinsmann pulled out of contention for the US coaching position this evening. To be honest, I had a feeling there were negoation problems. There should have been an announcement weeks ago. According to the LA Times, Bob Bradley will be named as the interim coach for the team. Obviously, he’s the next best candate.

So, after months of expectation, US fans are basicly left with a retread of Area. Not a bad thing but it would have been exciting to try this new direction.

Let’s see what Gulati has to say tomorrow.

Technorati Tags: Klinsmann, US Soccer, World Cup

Did we get our Man(n)???

It seems Jamie Trecker managed to scoop everyone with news that everyone should have already guessed. Honestly, it’s the news most (if not all) US fans wanted to hear. Jürgen Klinsmann will be in charge of the US team sometime in the near future.

From Trecker’s article, it sounds as if a lot of negotiating had to take place in order to make it happen. The thing is, I wonder how much the American soccer fan’s opinion played in Klinsmann’s favor? It looks to me as if Klinsmann gave up Adidas in order for USSF to give him more control than he wanted. I’m sure there’s a pretty sweet pay check involved as well.

Everything points to this being the right (and most popular)choicee. Fingers crossed it works out. How many days until the Denmark match?

Klinsmann

It’s December 1st (my son opened the first Advent calendar door this morning) and we still have no word from USSF on who Arena’s replacement will be. However, Gulati is now confirming he’s talked with Klinsmann. This many now mean anything though.

Pele says we should have Klinsmann. However, I’m not sure how much experience he’s had hiring coaches.

So, now the question is, will we have a coach before we hit 2007?

Big Changes

I’m not over it, probably never will be, but I’m now getting used to the idea that I’ll never see this seasons MLS Cup Final. However, the Final itself was almost secondary to all the announcements the league made this weekend. Some are pretty darn big.

The owners have finally decided to open their checkbooks. Yeah! I’ve read/heard numerous opinions on this. Here’s my take…this is nothing more than a marketing move. Seriously, Becks is a decent player for someone with only one foot. His left peg is only good for standing on. In my opinion, he won’t be improving the level of play in the league. Heck, no one person can do that. However, he’ll sell a ton of shirts and that alone should make signing him worth the money. We’ll see if it happens sooner rather than later.

I was watch American Soccer on GolTV last night. Towards the end of the show they read this email from a viewer on a rant about how the Supporters Shield winner is the true champion. While I agree that a true champion proves it over the course of an entire season, I don’t buy the argument that the Supporters Shield winner is the best team over the course of the season. The unbalanced schedule makes it possible for a team in a weaker conference to do better than they would with a balanced schedule because playing weaker teams more often inflates your record. Next season it gets even worse as teams in the same conference won’t even play each other the same number of times…or something like that. I still don’t completely understand how they are going to get 30 matches out of 13 teams.

On top of that, they reduce the season by two matches because of the Copa Oro/America. However, they then add midweek Champions Cupish matches against Mexican clubs. Mmm, seems like there will actually be more matches next season…and the leagues best will be gone for two months. I’m still not convinced of the value for money proposition when matches that count are played while the best are with their national team.

It’s only taken 11 years for those in power to realize that developing local youngsters is the only way to improve the quality of the league…and that forcing those players to then be entered in the draft only gives teams a disincentive to actually find the best youngsters and give them the guidance they need to reach their potential. (I could probably use more punctuation in that sentence…but I can’t be bothered)

Probably the announcement I’m most excited about is FSC’s announcement on their MLS broadcast plans for next summer. Every match will be scheduled for a 3 hour time block. This will give a half hour before and as much as 45 minutes post-game for analysis and interviews. Of course, with the added content keeping us views in front of the box, they can slide in a bunch of advertisement breaks. To be honest, I’ve always hated the way broadcasts have always cut away to something else as players walk off the pitch. I know, they do the same for NFL and other sports here. Personally, I can’t wait for those broadcasts.

Also, FSC will be broadcasting the Gold Cup next summer. I wonder how much better the matches will look if they do 3 hour blocks for each match there…or double headers with studio comments in between. Either way, the coverage of both the Gold Cup and MLS on FSC will be better than we’ve seen in the past.

Well, my over/under on when the new US coach will be announced just moved into the over. I was certain Klinsman would be announced by November 15. Oh well, will they get it in before Thanksgiving? Anyone else noticed that Canada and Mexico are also still looking for a coach?

Hey, RSL changed their name to XanGo. Oh, that’s a sports drink who have paid $1 million/year for the honor. Good deal. Now we’ve got two (Red Bull being the first) teams with corporate sponsored shirts. Money is money. Take it however you can.

Is it just me, or is the league slowly moving away from the Americanized version of the league and taking on more of a global image?