It’s lonely at the top

My Chargers just hired Norv Turner to be head coach??!!!! What’s Spanos thinking???!!! I mean, this has to be….errr…sorry, wrong football.

So, Zidane isn’t greedy. After all, he doesn’t want Backham money. Someone needs to explain to him that Beckham isn’t being paid to play. Perhaps MLS should structure a deal just like the one Becks has. Half of shirt sales etc. Nah, he’s French. It’s not as if the French are arrogant or anything.

Speaking of Becks, does anyone feel sorry for their current house hunting plight? Finding the right home for the right price in LA isn’t easy. Besides, why are they so opposed to remodeling? I’m sure they could have everything done by July.

Now that the US is playing in Copa America, people are still complaining. Ok, so it’s only Jamie Trecker. Problem is, he’s missing the point. First thing, the coaches of the players who are with teams in Europe probably aren’t too excited about them playing in two tournaments this summer. It’s much easier for him to justify playing them in our own competition than in a tournament where we are invited guests. Second, the World Cup is now 3 1/2 years off. Most of the Gold Cup players have played in big events and have that experience. The younger players he’ll be taking South for the most part won’t have that experience. Why not give them a chance to get their feet wet in games which don’t mean anything to teams from our Confederation?

The reason the Gold Cup (and Open Cup) is perceived as meaningless (as Trecker pointed out) is because hacks like him make it out to be that. Well done to Bradley for doing this right.

Could the World Cup be returning to these shores? I’d be willing to bet it will sooner rather than later.

FIFA does it again

This time FIFA has managed to get itself in a bit of trouble. It turns out their signing Visa as a new sponsor (partner) breached their existing agreement with MasterCard. This is being reported only a couple of days after another black eye they gave themselves.

What I find really bad about this whole thing is their attitude about this.

While the FIFA witnesses at trial boldly characterized their breaches as “white lies,” “commercial lies,” “bluffs,” and, ironically, “the game,” their internal emails discuss the “different excuses to give to MasterCard as to why the deal wasn’t done with them,” “how we (as FIFA) can still be seen as having at least some business ethics” and how to “make the whole f***-up look better for FIFA.” They ultimately confessed, however, that “[I]t’s clear somebody has it in for MC.”

But what do you do? The whole organization is run but shady people and as far as I know there’s nothing which can be done to change that. We are stuck with more of this.

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