Our team-by-team 2010-11 Premier League essay-o-rama continues today with Bolton. This time I'm making a call to the bullpen and bringing in the a lefty specialist, my friend from Georgia-cum-Philly, Erik Kriebel, who started a site -- Singing with the Corner Flag -- which you ought to consider checking out.
By Erik C. Kriebel
Cheer up Gary Megson,
Oh what can it mean,
To a sh*t football manager,
Who wrecked a good football teaammmm! (Sang to the tune of Daydream Believer)
The songs in the terraces at the Reebok during the first half of the 2009-10 season contained about as much positivity as an Elliot Smith record. As for the aforementioned chant, it started fairly early in the Bolton season and would ring loud among Bolton supporters till December.
If you recall manner in which Bolton played during Gary Megson era you’d have a hard time arguing with the discontent from Bolton supporters last season. Bolton was dreary, unimaginative, and downright negative for the first half of the year. The fans had been forced to watch an ugly brand of football from a manager many never really wanted in the first place.
Bolton supporters barely wanted to watch this team and it’s safe to say they weren’t alone. Those of you perusing the EPL schedule here in the states, how many times did you circle a Bolton match when it didn’t involve your favorite club or a side with an American player?
(I wouldn’t fault you if even those reasons still weren’t enough to get you out of bed on a Saturday or Sunday morning.)
From the outset of the 2009-10 season Bolton wandered right into the relegation zone and stayed within sniffing distance of the drop zone for the majority of the season.
Bolton finished the month of August in 18th place and never managed to sit higher than 12th for the remainder of the campaign. From August to December the performances grew more and more negative and the bitterness from supporters grew louder.
(See introductory chant, or might I suggest the Saturday, November 7th edition of BBC 606 after Bolton had just lost 5-1 to Aston Villa capping off a 3 match losing streak which included back to back 4-0 drubbings from Chelsea.)
By the time December rolled around Bolton was in 18th place again, with 12 points. The only person one the planet I could imagine who would have appreciated the style of play Bolton had adopted might have been Otto Rehhagel (Considering Don Revie is no longer with us). At times one could only be left to wonder if being the ginger Godfather of negative tactics had become paramount to winning matches for Gary Megson.
By late December the situation at Bolton was untenable. The team was still in the relegation zone; Megson had grown combative with the supporters and was citing the lack of depth and transfer funds as reasons for the team’s poor performance. Just before the turn of the year Megson was sacked and Bolton would lure Owen Coyle away from Burnley. Coyle’s side being three spots above Bolton in the table plus his ability take a lesser side and win with attacking football was likely all the convincing the Bolton front office needed to make a play at the Burnley man. However, there is a part of me that hopes Bolton Chairman Phil Gartside secretly loves WWE and was in part motivated by the passion of one motivated Owen Coyle fan’s desire to spread the gospel of Coyle’s ability.
Coyle gave Bolton supporters a hope of staying up and a promise of playing a more exciting brand of football. Coyle’s desire to play a more attacking brand of football saw him bring in Jack Wilshere (on loan from Arsenal), Vladimir Wiess (on loan from Manchester City), and Stuart Holden.
While Coyle’s 4-3-3 made Bolton a bit easier on the eyes the results were slow to come. At the time of Coyle’s arrival the club had managed 18 points in 18 matches. Coyle would essentially keep the club moving at the same pace picking up 21 points in the club’s final 20 matches. Bolton may not have improved a great deal in terms of wins and losses they did avoid the drop and looked to be developing a pleasing brand of football.
Depth and lacking the ability to create more goals troubled Bolton the entire season. Of the 67 goals conceded by Bolton last season 33 came between the 61st and 90th minute. Only four clubs scored fewer goals than Bolton last season and two of them will be in the Championship this year (Hull & Portsmouth). With those issues in mind Coyle set out this season to building a more attack minded team. In this summer are winger Martin Petrov from Manchester City and striker Robbie Blake from Burnley. Both players will fill the void left by the expiring loans of Wiess, Klasnic, and Wilshire.
If Bolton did one thing right last year it was managing to get points off lesser opponents. Of Bolton’s 38 points, 22 came from teams who finished in the six spots below them in the table. If Bolton can continue to that trend Wanderers supporters wills set their hopes on Coyle’s ability to nick points of the big clubs as he had done in the past should too see the club in much a better standing this season.
Bottom line -- Many U.S. fans proved last year we have the ability to endure some pretty awful play in order to watch one of our own (I’m looking at you Hull City). Regardless of whether or not Bolton’s play is pleasing to eye those with an interest in the USMNT will likely play close attention to Bolton with Stuart Holden expected to play a role in the side from week to week. The negative play is gone and, Owen Coyle has used a 4-3-3 formation during much of the pre-season. Having a roster that includes Martin Petrov, Lee Chung-Yong (who scored twice for South Korea at the World Cup), Stuart Holden, and Kevin Davies, Bolton should be a significantly more enjoyable side to watch this year. That being said you can rank the talent of the twenty teams in the EPL this season and be hard pressed to put Bolton in the top half of that list. The cast around Gary Cahill on the Bolton backline leaves plenty to be desired and Holden, Chung-Yong, and new signing from Marcos Alonso can perform on a consistent basis. Under Coyle Bolton should not end up in another relegation fight but will likely have to settle for a place in middle of the table, likely 11th-13th place.
In case you missed it:
* Blackpool
* Blackburn Rovers
* Wolves
* Wigan Athletic
* West Brom
Bolton Wandering
By Erik C. Kriebel
Cheer up Gary Megson,
Oh what can it mean,
To a sh*t football manager,
Who wrecked a good football teaammmm! (Sang to the tune of Daydream Believer)
The songs in the terraces at the Reebok during the first half of the 2009-10 season contained about as much positivity as an Elliot Smith record. As for the aforementioned chant, it started fairly early in the Bolton season and would ring loud among Bolton supporters till December.
If you recall manner in which Bolton played during Gary Megson era you’d have a hard time arguing with the discontent from Bolton supporters last season. Bolton was dreary, unimaginative, and downright negative for the first half of the year. The fans had been forced to watch an ugly brand of football from a manager many never really wanted in the first place.
Bolton supporters barely wanted to watch this team and it’s safe to say they weren’t alone. Those of you perusing the EPL schedule here in the states, how many times did you circle a Bolton match when it didn’t involve your favorite club or a side with an American player?
(I wouldn’t fault you if even those reasons still weren’t enough to get you out of bed on a Saturday or Sunday morning.)
From the outset of the 2009-10 season Bolton wandered right into the relegation zone and stayed within sniffing distance of the drop zone for the majority of the season.
Bolton finished the month of August in 18th place and never managed to sit higher than 12th for the remainder of the campaign. From August to December the performances grew more and more negative and the bitterness from supporters grew louder.
(See introductory chant, or might I suggest the Saturday, November 7th edition of BBC 606 after Bolton had just lost 5-1 to Aston Villa capping off a 3 match losing streak which included back to back 4-0 drubbings from Chelsea.)
By the time December rolled around Bolton was in 18th place again, with 12 points. The only person one the planet I could imagine who would have appreciated the style of play Bolton had adopted might have been Otto Rehhagel (Considering Don Revie is no longer with us). At times one could only be left to wonder if being the ginger Godfather of negative tactics had become paramount to winning matches for Gary Megson.
By late December the situation at Bolton was untenable. The team was still in the relegation zone; Megson had grown combative with the supporters and was citing the lack of depth and transfer funds as reasons for the team’s poor performance. Just before the turn of the year Megson was sacked and Bolton would lure Owen Coyle away from Burnley. Coyle’s side being three spots above Bolton in the table plus his ability take a lesser side and win with attacking football was likely all the convincing the Bolton front office needed to make a play at the Burnley man. However, there is a part of me that hopes Bolton Chairman Phil Gartside secretly loves WWE and was in part motivated by the passion of one motivated Owen Coyle fan’s desire to spread the gospel of Coyle’s ability.
Coyle gave Bolton supporters a hope of staying up and a promise of playing a more exciting brand of football. Coyle’s desire to play a more attacking brand of football saw him bring in Jack Wilshere (on loan from Arsenal), Vladimir Wiess (on loan from Manchester City), and Stuart Holden.
While Coyle’s 4-3-3 made Bolton a bit easier on the eyes the results were slow to come. At the time of Coyle’s arrival the club had managed 18 points in 18 matches. Coyle would essentially keep the club moving at the same pace picking up 21 points in the club’s final 20 matches. Bolton may not have improved a great deal in terms of wins and losses they did avoid the drop and looked to be developing a pleasing brand of football.
Depth and lacking the ability to create more goals troubled Bolton the entire season. Of the 67 goals conceded by Bolton last season 33 came between the 61st and 90th minute. Only four clubs scored fewer goals than Bolton last season and two of them will be in the Championship this year (Hull & Portsmouth). With those issues in mind Coyle set out this season to building a more attack minded team. In this summer are winger Martin Petrov from Manchester City and striker Robbie Blake from Burnley. Both players will fill the void left by the expiring loans of Wiess, Klasnic, and Wilshire.
If Bolton did one thing right last year it was managing to get points off lesser opponents. Of Bolton’s 38 points, 22 came from teams who finished in the six spots below them in the table. If Bolton can continue to that trend Wanderers supporters wills set their hopes on Coyle’s ability to nick points of the big clubs as he had done in the past should too see the club in much a better standing this season.
Bottom line -- Many U.S. fans proved last year we have the ability to endure some pretty awful play in order to watch one of our own (I’m looking at you Hull City). Regardless of whether or not Bolton’s play is pleasing to eye those with an interest in the USMNT will likely play close attention to Bolton with Stuart Holden expected to play a role in the side from week to week. The negative play is gone and, Owen Coyle has used a 4-3-3 formation during much of the pre-season. Having a roster that includes Martin Petrov, Lee Chung-Yong (who scored twice for South Korea at the World Cup), Stuart Holden, and Kevin Davies, Bolton should be a significantly more enjoyable side to watch this year. That being said you can rank the talent of the twenty teams in the EPL this season and be hard pressed to put Bolton in the top half of that list. The cast around Gary Cahill on the Bolton backline leaves plenty to be desired and Holden, Chung-Yong, and new signing from Marcos Alonso can perform on a consistent basis. Under Coyle Bolton should not end up in another relegation fight but will likely have to settle for a place in middle of the table, likely 11th-13th place.
In case you missed it:
* Blackpool
* Blackburn Rovers
* Wolves
* Wigan Athletic
* West Brom
Labels: bolton, EPL, epl 2010 preview, Premier League, Soccer, stuart holden
Today our Premier League team-by-team essay-o-rama stops at a newcomer to the top flight -- Blackpool.
Has a professional sports team ever entered a season as expectation-free as Blackpool does in its first time in top flight of English football during the Premier League era?
Literally nothing -- nothing -- is expected from Blackpool, aside from showing up all 38 matches and wearing matching uniforms. This, friends, is a team Jerry Seinfeld and George Costanza could have gotten behind and pitched to NBC executives if the year still happened t0 be 1992.
Few, if anyone without a Blackpool tattoo inside their lower lip, is making a case how the Tangerines will miraculously avoid the drop, much like Hull City did two seasons ago. There aren't stories about how this is a good footballing side, with underrated players.
In actuality, nothing much has been said about Blackpool other than it's a nice, surprising underdog tale for a club that was -- correct me if we've heard this before -- caught adrift for many decades, but have seen there fortunes change thanks to the investment of rich Latvian businessman Valeri Belokon.
No matter how you slice it (no pun intended), the Tangerines in the Premier League could get ugly.
Like "Troll 2" ugly.
Or, better yet, "The Room" ugly, with daffy manager Ian Holloway replacing Tommy Wiseau for the unintentional comedy. Sadly, for all the nutty lines that Holloway has said -- enough to inspire an entire book of quips -- even if things get bleak there's about a 0.00001 percent chance of him walking out to the center of Bloomfield Road and screaming, "You're tearing me apart."(*)
(*) Thus completes our, dated, once-was-hip, now is overplayed cult movies references for one post.
Not even after a long night at the pub, would be Holloway able to predict anything beyond a 20th place finish. By whichever preferred metric you choose to assess squads, it doesn't bode well for Blackpool.
The club only has 20 players in its squad, and even with Belokon's money they haven't spent wantonly (or at all for that matter) to supplement the team ranks. Arguably it's most influential player in the Championship promotion playoffs -- D.J. Campbell (*) -- is back for the time being at Leicester City.
(*) Shame he might not return since he played with both neck tats, and I think, an ankle monitoring unit.
It'll be hard pressed to convince most players with any pedigree to spend a season in the English resort town, too. Despite whatever charms Holloway or the Blackpool seaside amusement parks possesses, almost all modern footballers, despite their typically low IQs can read the situation for what it is -- a one-year holiday in the top flight.
For instance, rising U.S. star Michael Bradley's name was bandied about being linked to Blackpool. Sure he'd get plenty of playing time, but come May 2011 he's looking for another club once Blackpool is back down in the Championship. It'd be a way to dip his toes into the waters of English football, but could easily backfire and set his career back a season or two. Bradley is a nice prospect, but he can't carry a team like this on his shoulders -- perhaps no one short of a transcendent talent like Cristiano Ronaldo could.
What's left is a collection of lower-league journeymen like Brett Omerod, Stephen Crainey, Jason Euell and Gary Taylor-Fletcher to name a few.
If Holloway has this team within six points of safety in April, call up the Queen because he deserves an O.B.E.
That's the harsh reality for Blackpool, and your typical Championship playoff winners. It's a wonderful, inspiring underdog story when the plucky, unheralded club wins promotion. Yet once it reaches the Premier League, sports Darwinism takes over.
It doesn't matter how many classic interviews Holloway is able to make, or how quaint the stadium is. It's a results oriented business and Blackpool finds itself up against it. The club simply isn't equipped to swim in the same pools as the top tier clubs in the League.
Lately, the Championship playoff winners have become Premier League chattel, a departure from the turn-of-the-century when Ipswich Town finished fifth in its promotion season. Bolton, came up in 2001, and placed 16th but has remained in the Prem ever since.
Since 2003 five Playoff winners have gone straight back down -- Wolves (2000); Crystal Palace (2004); Watford (2006); Derby (2007) and Burnley (2009). Only Birmingham (2002); West Ham (2005) and Hull City (2008) avoided the immediate trapdoor and Hull's reprieve lasted but one season.
The bar for Blackpool is clearly very low.
If it finishes ahead of the meager 11-point, one win haul by Derby County in 2007-08 the year will be a moderate success. Even if it's somehow worse, the one-year financial windfall for reaching the Premier League should at least allow Blackpool to shore up it's books and get its house in order.
Yet, as grim as it seems for Blackpool from a purely, clinical sporting standpoint it's not going to matter all too much. Fans will cheer their lungs out when the big boys -- Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester United, etc. -- come to town.
For them it will be a season, however fleeting, in the sun.
Curbing your enthusiasm doesn't also mean curbing your fun while it lasts.
And for Blackpool, the clock is already ticking toward proverbial midnight when the Tangerines turn back into pumpkins.
Bottom line -- Blackpool should serve two purposes this year. First, the comedy potential by Holloway after a 5-0 drubbing at Stamford Bridge should be off the charts. Second, this club is without question a three-point ATM. Burnley were supposed to play this role last year but were pretty plucky until Owen Coyle left. It's not far-fetched to say Blackpool will have an impact on all of the Premier League's mini-tables. Teams that fail to take all six points off the Tangerines are going to be kicking themselves come May.
In case you missed it:
* Blackburn Rovers
* Wolves
* Wigan Athletic
* West Brom
Orange Dreamsicle
Has a professional sports team ever entered a season as expectation-free as Blackpool does in its first time in top flight of English football during the Premier League era?
Literally nothing -- nothing -- is expected from Blackpool, aside from showing up all 38 matches and wearing matching uniforms. This, friends, is a team Jerry Seinfeld and George Costanza could have gotten behind and pitched to NBC executives if the year still happened t0 be 1992.
Few, if anyone without a Blackpool tattoo inside their lower lip, is making a case how the Tangerines will miraculously avoid the drop, much like Hull City did two seasons ago. There aren't stories about how this is a good footballing side, with underrated players.
In actuality, nothing much has been said about Blackpool other than it's a nice, surprising underdog tale for a club that was -- correct me if we've heard this before -- caught adrift for many decades, but have seen there fortunes change thanks to the investment of rich Latvian businessman Valeri Belokon.
No matter how you slice it (no pun intended), the Tangerines in the Premier League could get ugly.
Like "Troll 2" ugly.
Or, better yet, "The Room" ugly, with daffy manager Ian Holloway replacing Tommy Wiseau for the unintentional comedy. Sadly, for all the nutty lines that Holloway has said -- enough to inspire an entire book of quips -- even if things get bleak there's about a 0.00001 percent chance of him walking out to the center of Bloomfield Road and screaming, "You're tearing me apart."(*)
(*) Thus completes our, dated, once-was-hip, now is overplayed cult movies references for one post.
Not even after a long night at the pub, would be Holloway able to predict anything beyond a 20th place finish. By whichever preferred metric you choose to assess squads, it doesn't bode well for Blackpool.
The club only has 20 players in its squad, and even with Belokon's money they haven't spent wantonly (or at all for that matter) to supplement the team ranks. Arguably it's most influential player in the Championship promotion playoffs -- D.J. Campbell (*) -- is back for the time being at Leicester City.
(*) Shame he might not return since he played with both neck tats, and I think, an ankle monitoring unit.
It'll be hard pressed to convince most players with any pedigree to spend a season in the English resort town, too. Despite whatever charms Holloway or the Blackpool seaside amusement parks possesses, almost all modern footballers, despite their typically low IQs can read the situation for what it is -- a one-year holiday in the top flight.
For instance, rising U.S. star Michael Bradley's name was bandied about being linked to Blackpool. Sure he'd get plenty of playing time, but come May 2011 he's looking for another club once Blackpool is back down in the Championship. It'd be a way to dip his toes into the waters of English football, but could easily backfire and set his career back a season or two. Bradley is a nice prospect, but he can't carry a team like this on his shoulders -- perhaps no one short of a transcendent talent like Cristiano Ronaldo could.
What's left is a collection of lower-league journeymen like Brett Omerod, Stephen Crainey, Jason Euell and Gary Taylor-Fletcher to name a few.
If Holloway has this team within six points of safety in April, call up the Queen because he deserves an O.B.E.
That's the harsh reality for Blackpool, and your typical Championship playoff winners. It's a wonderful, inspiring underdog story when the plucky, unheralded club wins promotion. Yet once it reaches the Premier League, sports Darwinism takes over.
It doesn't matter how many classic interviews Holloway is able to make, or how quaint the stadium is. It's a results oriented business and Blackpool finds itself up against it. The club simply isn't equipped to swim in the same pools as the top tier clubs in the League.
Lately, the Championship playoff winners have become Premier League chattel, a departure from the turn-of-the-century when Ipswich Town finished fifth in its promotion season. Bolton, came up in 2001, and placed 16th but has remained in the Prem ever since.
Since 2003 five Playoff winners have gone straight back down -- Wolves (2000); Crystal Palace (2004); Watford (2006); Derby (2007) and Burnley (2009). Only Birmingham (2002); West Ham (2005) and Hull City (2008) avoided the immediate trapdoor and Hull's reprieve lasted but one season.
The bar for Blackpool is clearly very low.
If it finishes ahead of the meager 11-point, one win haul by Derby County in 2007-08 the year will be a moderate success. Even if it's somehow worse, the one-year financial windfall for reaching the Premier League should at least allow Blackpool to shore up it's books and get its house in order.
Yet, as grim as it seems for Blackpool from a purely, clinical sporting standpoint it's not going to matter all too much. Fans will cheer their lungs out when the big boys -- Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester United, etc. -- come to town.
For them it will be a season, however fleeting, in the sun.
Curbing your enthusiasm doesn't also mean curbing your fun while it lasts.
And for Blackpool, the clock is already ticking toward proverbial midnight when the Tangerines turn back into pumpkins.
Bottom line -- Blackpool should serve two purposes this year. First, the comedy potential by Holloway after a 5-0 drubbing at Stamford Bridge should be off the charts. Second, this club is without question a three-point ATM. Burnley were supposed to play this role last year but were pretty plucky until Owen Coyle left. It's not far-fetched to say Blackpool will have an impact on all of the Premier League's mini-tables. Teams that fail to take all six points off the Tangerines are going to be kicking themselves come May.
In case you missed it:
* Blackburn Rovers
* Wolves
* Wigan Athletic
* West Brom
Labels: blackpool, English Premier League, epl 2010 previews, ian holloway, Premier League, Soccer
TOP 2010 EPL Countdown: Blackburn Rovers
0 Comments Published by Cardillo on July 29, 2010 at 2:12 PM.
We're almost at the two-week threshold before kickoff. Smell the excitement ... and there's nobody that gets the juices flowing quite like Sam Allardyce's Blackburn Rovers. Not really, but bear with me.
For years, almost decades, it's been easy to lob barbs in the direction of Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger for the lack of Englishmen in the Gunners squad. Granted, as American, these type of attacks don't quite make much sense, since if anything the Arsenal squad under Wenger has been a meritocracy.
Yet, Wenger is tragically French and prone to making faces on the sideline like he just ate some foie gras that had been sitting out in the North London sun for a couple hours. Like a moth to a flame, certain English speakers can't help themselves in mocking Wenger.
There's someone who, if you're an Englishman, you ought to consider saving your Jack Bull-like wrath for -- current Blackburn Rovers manager (Big) Sam Allardyce. When we're pointing out Allardyce's foibles it's usually for his love of wine or his fetish-like love of set pieces or the silly headset he wears on the touchline.
Wednesday Allardyce was quoted by an English paper, "I would like to coach a national team, if one came up, in another two years."
Now waitasecond!
Let's hope Allardyce isn't assuming he's going fill Fabio Capello's spectacles as the next boss of England. Another country, yes, but not England. No way.
If anyone's as guilty as turning the Premier League into a proving ground for high-priced foreign imports it's Allardyce, yet nobody likes to point this out. It's simply a lot easier to deride Wenger's preference to young Francophones, than it is to look in the mirror at an English manager like Allardyce -- remarkably one of only five Englishmen managing a Premier League side at the start of the 2010-11 season.
His current Blackburn(*) side has five, yes five, English players on the books -- two being backup keepers. That's two more than the supposedly foreign Arsenal squad. Odds are only two English players even play for Blackburn this year, No. 1 keeper Paul Robinson and midfielder David Dunn.
(*) Should we mention Allardyce's Bolton squad, aka the International House of Football, which at times had about 20 different countries represented?
Ironically enough Blackburn did have itself a promising young English striker -- Matt Derbyshire -- who was eventually loaned and sold off to Olympiacos of all places.
This little example illustrates the underlying problems in England. Don't talk to me about youth development or UEFA quotas.
When you have a club like Blackburn -- which has actually won during the Premier League era, look it up -- unable to sign or acquire English players, that's a problem, not so much Arsenal.
And it's a two-way street.
English players, at least international caliber ones, don't find a place like Blackburn, or Sunderland, or Stoke or anything non-London or Manchester/Liverpool as attractive options. Maybe it's because the discos in these places suck, I don't know, but they certainly don't want to play there. Of course, in the NBA, for example, players only seem to want to play in New York, Miami or Los Angeles ... again rich, young athletes priority No. 1 is always nightlife.
David Bentley was a breakout star at Blackburn, could have been their fulcrum, the team could have been his for the next five years, yet eventually he forced a move to Tottenham where he's in a timeshare with Aaron Lennon on the right.
I'm guessing if a club like Blackburn had it's druthers it would sign and keep all the English players it could handle -- or at least brainwash them into enjoying post-industrial northwest England. The problem is that by nature, English talents tend to end up costing more than their Mexican/Swedish/Algerian/Danish/Congolese equivalents.
Therein lies the double-edged swords the non-glamor clubs in the Premier League face. The good English players don't want to play there, while the nominal ones cost more than their less analogues.
That's why we have the Allardyce-approved, mish-mash at Blackburn, which is all actuality is still the core of the very decent side -- seventh place in 2007-08 -- assembled by Mark Hughes (*) before the siren song of Manchester City became too much.
(*) Side note: Tremendous hire by Fulham grabbing Hughes.
The old guard of Hughes -- Ryan Nelsen, Chris Samba, Brett Emerton, Jason Roberts (*) and Morten Gamst Pederson -- is still the backbone of the team.
(*) Maybe the least fancied striker in the EPL this side of Emile Heskey.
Allardyce recruits have been hit or miss. Martin Olsson and Steven N'Zoni look like capable Premier League squad players, while Michel Salgado looks past his sell-by date and young Croat Nikola Kalinić failed to impress last season.
Somehow this odd assortment of players managed a decent 10th place finish, though if you had to ask me to remember one positive moment of Blackburn football last season I'd draw a blank. My only recollections of this team was the beatings it sustained against teams like Manchester United.
The way the Premier League works, somebody has to finish 10th place every season and last year those "honors" fell to Blackburn.
A mediocre team, regardless of the nationalities of its players, is still a mediocre team.
Bottom line -- Probably more of the same. If my old pal Gamst ever could pretend it was still 2005, this team would be a lot more attractive to watch. I'm telling you, back then the Norwegian was a Top Five most exciting player in the Prem and used to rock Ewood Park. I saw it with my own two eyes.
For better, or probably worse, Blackburn are the new Bolton. Sigh.
In case you missed it:
* Wolves
* Wigan Athletic
* West Brom
Fade to Blackburn
For years, almost decades, it's been easy to lob barbs in the direction of Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger for the lack of Englishmen in the Gunners squad. Granted, as American, these type of attacks don't quite make much sense, since if anything the Arsenal squad under Wenger has been a meritocracy.
Yet, Wenger is tragically French and prone to making faces on the sideline like he just ate some foie gras that had been sitting out in the North London sun for a couple hours. Like a moth to a flame, certain English speakers can't help themselves in mocking Wenger.
There's someone who, if you're an Englishman, you ought to consider saving your Jack Bull-like wrath for -- current Blackburn Rovers manager (Big) Sam Allardyce. When we're pointing out Allardyce's foibles it's usually for his love of wine or his fetish-like love of set pieces or the silly headset he wears on the touchline.
Wednesday Allardyce was quoted by an English paper, "I would like to coach a national team, if one came up, in another two years."
Now waitasecond!
Let's hope Allardyce isn't assuming he's going fill Fabio Capello's spectacles as the next boss of England. Another country, yes, but not England. No way.
If anyone's as guilty as turning the Premier League into a proving ground for high-priced foreign imports it's Allardyce, yet nobody likes to point this out. It's simply a lot easier to deride Wenger's preference to young Francophones, than it is to look in the mirror at an English manager like Allardyce -- remarkably one of only five Englishmen managing a Premier League side at the start of the 2010-11 season.
His current Blackburn(*) side has five, yes five, English players on the books -- two being backup keepers. That's two more than the supposedly foreign Arsenal squad. Odds are only two English players even play for Blackburn this year, No. 1 keeper Paul Robinson and midfielder David Dunn.
(*) Should we mention Allardyce's Bolton squad, aka the International House of Football, which at times had about 20 different countries represented?
Ironically enough Blackburn did have itself a promising young English striker -- Matt Derbyshire -- who was eventually loaned and sold off to Olympiacos of all places.
This little example illustrates the underlying problems in England. Don't talk to me about youth development or UEFA quotas.
When you have a club like Blackburn -- which has actually won during the Premier League era, look it up -- unable to sign or acquire English players, that's a problem, not so much Arsenal.
And it's a two-way street.
English players, at least international caliber ones, don't find a place like Blackburn, or Sunderland, or Stoke or anything non-London or Manchester/Liverpool as attractive options. Maybe it's because the discos in these places suck, I don't know, but they certainly don't want to play there. Of course, in the NBA, for example, players only seem to want to play in New York, Miami or Los Angeles ... again rich, young athletes priority No. 1 is always nightlife.
David Bentley was a breakout star at Blackburn, could have been their fulcrum, the team could have been his for the next five years, yet eventually he forced a move to Tottenham where he's in a timeshare with Aaron Lennon on the right.
I'm guessing if a club like Blackburn had it's druthers it would sign and keep all the English players it could handle -- or at least brainwash them into enjoying post-industrial northwest England. The problem is that by nature, English talents tend to end up costing more than their Mexican/Swedish/Algerian/Danish/Congolese equivalents.
Therein lies the double-edged swords the non-glamor clubs in the Premier League face. The good English players don't want to play there, while the nominal ones cost more than their less analogues.
That's why we have the Allardyce-approved, mish-mash at Blackburn, which is all actuality is still the core of the very decent side -- seventh place in 2007-08 -- assembled by Mark Hughes (*) before the siren song of Manchester City became too much.
(*) Side note: Tremendous hire by Fulham grabbing Hughes.
The old guard of Hughes -- Ryan Nelsen, Chris Samba, Brett Emerton, Jason Roberts (*) and Morten Gamst Pederson -- is still the backbone of the team.
(*) Maybe the least fancied striker in the EPL this side of Emile Heskey.
Allardyce recruits have been hit or miss. Martin Olsson and Steven N'Zoni look like capable Premier League squad players, while Michel Salgado looks past his sell-by date and young Croat Nikola Kalinić failed to impress last season.
Somehow this odd assortment of players managed a decent 10th place finish, though if you had to ask me to remember one positive moment of Blackburn football last season I'd draw a blank. My only recollections of this team was the beatings it sustained against teams like Manchester United.
The way the Premier League works, somebody has to finish 10th place every season and last year those "honors" fell to Blackburn.
A mediocre team, regardless of the nationalities of its players, is still a mediocre team.
Bottom line -- Probably more of the same. If my old pal Gamst ever could pretend it was still 2005, this team would be a lot more attractive to watch. I'm telling you, back then the Norwegian was a Top Five most exciting player in the Prem and used to rock Ewood Park. I saw it with my own two eyes.
For better, or probably worse, Blackburn are the new Bolton. Sigh.
In case you missed it:
* Wolves
* Wigan Athletic
* West Brom
Labels: blackburn rovers, English Premier League, epl 2010 previews, Premier League, Soccer
"If you want to go down in history you don't just need to win, you have to entertain." -- Arrigo Sacchi
It seems every time you have a hot button topic, for instance gun control, the issue itself tends to get obscured by political rhetoric ... or whomever can yell the loudest.
In a lot of ways, that's the unfortunate situation MLS finds itself in. Ask any soccer fan in America and they'll have a myriad of opinions on the league itself and how to improve it. Ask them to identify Andy Najar out of a lineup or name the starting goalie on the San Jose Earthquakes, well, prepare yourself for a blank, vacant stare.
As much as I want to throw my unabashed support behind our American domestic league, for all the time I spend actually watching the matches themselves, I find myself in that first category, coming up with ways to tinker or improve the league than accepting it for what it is.
Above all, when we're done with this post, I'd like more people to be in that second category, because that's how the league is going to grow. You want the fans of the league counting down the days and minutes until matchday. You want people looking forward to attending a game live. In short, you want to win over the hearts and minds.
Or better yet, how fans of NFL teams can't wait until Sunday. (A much smaller scale, but that level of passion.)
Perhaps the biggest obstacle MLS will always -- at least in the immediate future -- is soccer fans in America know this isn't the top of the line when it comes to pro leagues. We call the Major League Baseball championship the World Series, although it's a domestic competition, still we realize it's the best of the best on the baseball diamond.
MLS? It still has the stigma, rightly or wrongly, of being minor league.
The best comparison that can be made for MLS' standing might be by looking across the border to our friends in the Great White North, Canada. The CFL has thrived for years in Canada despite it's second-tier gridiron status. That didn't stop over 46,000 people from attending the 2009 Grey Cup final in Calagary, a nuetral site.
Better yet, fans in Japan pack J-League stadiums despite it not being the Premier League or the Bundesliga. People still go to matches in Mexico and Argentina despite it not being La Liga or Serie A.
When you boil it down, the average 2009 MLS attendance of 16,000 is quite respectable across the world, albeit dwarfed by our other American team sports.
Less respectable, the fact WNBA telecasts are drawing a bigger rating than MLS matches on ESPN2. If there is a more embarrassing indictment on MLS, it would be hard to find.
Clearly there are people that care about MLS and their respective favorite teams, yet mainstream crossover appeal simply isn't there.
And MLS is already fighting uphill battle that in fact is two-front war, which would be tough for any sports league to handle. You've got the soccer fan who can dial up better games, on his television or computer, coupled with the fact their is a global competition for the best soccer talent, unlike, say the NFL. Then you have American sports fan who has so many alternatives, which isn't always the case around the world.
Another two-front war the league faces on a daily basis is the on-field issues vs. it's media perceptions. As ticket-buying entertainment, MLS isn't too far off. As a media commodity? Well, no need to harp on those ratings. It makes me feel bad.
Although I mostly fall on the negative side of MLS, but I've come to accept we haven't seen a league start from scratch almost half a century. If we look at MLB, the NFL and NBA in their infancy we'd probably see the same pratfalls and growing pains experienced by MLS, except missing the levels of communication and the need for instant gratification that we have now in 2010.
Since tonight is the 2010 MLS All-Star Game, which in-and-of itself encapsulates everything that is right, wrong and unique about the league. It is an event that is perfectly exhibits the hybrid set of challenges the league faces on a daily basis, doing things the "American way" to its position as a truly global sport.
Without getting into too many details, what does MLS gain from having its best play against a second-string Manchester United Wednesday in Houston, especially with Philadelphia and Kansas City playing United straight-up? It's a nice showcase, I suppose, and an easier sell for ESPN, but still, it further reinforces the notion that the league is second-rate and (gasp) "Mickey Mouse."
While it's easy to rail against the ills of MLS, there is room to grow. Plus the mere fact its survived this long and is slowly starting to thrive in certain pockets is reason to remain optimistic.
Here are a couple thoughts on the league four years after my first "Manifesto", or areas it could improve. This is mostly done from the approach of a media viewer/critic then anything else. It's also not everything right or wrong about MLS -- addressing the league's quest to covert Hispanic fans is worth a post by itself -- just some stuff I've been writing down since March which I felt like sharing.
* Promotion/Relegation/Single Table -- These are things that soccer-heads/purists want and MLS commish Don Garber is hell bent against (for the time being). Sure it would be cool if MLS were integrated with either the USL or nascent NASL, but that's a pie in the sky thinking. With a slew of new franchises and owners ponying up fees to join the league, it's not fiscally realistic to have clubs face the utter obscurity that is the joint second division. Once MLS establishes a ceiling on franchises or the second division rises to more prominence, it's unrealistic. Sure it would be cool, but we're a long way off. I can understand why people want this, but getting hung up on it, for the time being, is futile. As it stands, a drop from MLS to USL wouldn't nearly be as dramatic as Premier League to Championship, although the novelty of it in America could create some kind of a buzzworthy ripple.
* Low stakes regular season -- Around the globe, as we know, the majority of league champions are determined by the regular season. This isn't the case with MLS, which has its Playoffs and then championship Cup. Since the league began in 1996, only five times has the team with the best overall regular season record won the playoffs. In the last two seasons we've seen the No. 8 seeded Real Salt Lake win in 2009 while in 2008 the Red Bulls reachthe final.
Again, this is a tricky, hybrid situation.
It probably depends what you think is the better measure of a team, over 30 games of a regular season or a three-tiered, four-match playoff system? Essentially this is Cup football, which is different than League football, where it's much easier for the weaker team to get a result.
The border-line irrelevancy of the U.S. Open Cup further muddles the matter.
Since this is America we're always going to have some kind of playoff, but beyond the regular season champ earning the "Supporters Shield" -- aka an award that means nothing other than the ability to put up a banner or placard in the stadium -- added credence needs to be added to the season.
MLS wouldn't do it, but why not cut the playoff teams to six. Since Garber is insistent on divisions, give the regular season conference winners an automatic bye into the conference championship game. It only seems fair. This would solve two issues at once, it would make the regular season count much more on a game-to-game basis with only six playoff teams, meanwhile giving some incentive to placing first at the end of 30 games.
* Sparse Attendance -- MLS falls into the trap that even when there's a good crowd, of say, 15,000+ most of the time on television it looks like an empty stadium. It's very hard to disguise these empty seats unlike, say, the NBA which can keep the camera close and the lighting dark in empty sections. Appearance is everything and that shapes perceptions. Early in the 2010 season there was a nationally televised ESPN2 match at Pizza Hunt Park. If there were 1,000 fans, I'd be stunned. If you're scanning channels, you're less inclined to watch something from your couch nobody deems worthy enough to attend in person. There's really no solution for the league, aside from scheduling all its national telecasts from Seattle, Salt Lake, Toronto, Philadelphia, New York, Chicago or Los Angeles.
* Getting more from ESPN -- We can talk about the minuscule ratings MLS puts up on EPSN all we like, but for me it's a two-way street. Yes, it's wonderful the Worldwide Leader, out of the goodness of its heart, airs one MLS match per week -- usually buried on Thursday nights. Yet, that's essentially the alpha and omega of MLS on ESPN.
Do we ever see highlights from matches on "Sportscenter"? Better yet, does the bottom line ticker ever even list MLS goal scorers? These are little things, but it helps create brand awareness. A simple three-minute weekly around-the-league package to run on ESPNEWS every week would help.
We saw what ESPN's promotion did in June and July for the World Cup. Granted, MLS isn't the World Cup, but if ESPN threw it a little support from a marketing/general news standpoint, it would certainly increase ratings.
The best suggestion for ESPN, particularly in the summer when there is minimal live programming, why not show MLS matches on a better night, like Sunday or Monday? What's its competition? World Series of Poker? People are actively looking for sports to watch those days and MLS would be a nice counterweight to those unwatchable national baseball telecasts they parachute into. There are only so many times a human being can watch an ESPN-produced Cubs/Cardinals game before going on a homicidal rampage.
* Market the players -- How many truly world class players currently play in MLS? You could probably count them on one hand. Doesn't matter. The league doesn't do a good enough job marketing it's players outside of the Donovan and Beckhams of the world.
Every soccer league around the world has its own set of stars, heroes, villains and cult heroes.
Outside of the marquee names, the average MLS player seems like a nondescript, gray nobody. Maybe this is partly true, but the league could do better.
The Internet denizens know Bobby Boswell is a funny, out-going, genuine character. Why not the rest of America, or at least casual soccer fans, as an example?
* Playing style -- On the plus side, MLS is competitive. The quality of the athletes is quite good, especially since they have to play mostly in the warm summer months.
At the same time, the technical level of quality soccer players is sometimes lacking. This isn't suggest MLS should adopt an old-school 1980s English mentality of kick-and-chase, rock'em sock'em soccer, far from it.
It's just, how often do you see players cracking shots from distance? Or sustained levels of creativity? Dribbling wizards? Trickery? Stuff that people actively want to upload
Think back to the league's inception. At least back then the league was wise enough to import foreign ball wizards like Marco Etchevarry, Carlos Valderamma and even Roberto Donadoni. Nowadays the only consistently creative players with vision seem to be Donovan, Guillermo Barros Scheltto and Dewayne DeRosario.
Not sure if you can simply import these players, or try to create them out of thin air.
If MLS were able to raise the skill level, instead of defining itself by hard tackles it would make more people want to watch.
* Balancing act -- How does MLS present itself as a viable career option for young Americans or even established Americans? You'd think the league would be able to build and market around American players, yet many flee to the greener pastures of Europe, even if its the backwaters of Scandinavia.
For now, MLS will probably be stuck in the pattern where it develops players like DaMarcus Beasley or Bobby Convey, watch them go to Europe, then have them return when they've run out of other options. This isn't necessarily a good or bad thing, it simply is what it is.
As it stands, no matter how you slice it, since its inception in 1996 MLS has indeed helped the U.S. National Team by increasing the player pool.
* Better uniforms -- It's nice that Adidas furnishes the whole league with a similar-looking generic duds. One minor thing for me would be to create more distinctive looks, at least with away kits. Why not add some crazy neon designs or something eye-catching on the road. It's a small issue for me, but it couldn't hurt.
* The SuperDraft -- Much like the All-Star game, quintessentially American, yet almost pointless, as more-and-more high-level talents turn down MLS offers for looks overseas. It doesn't seem to make sense that a club can't develop its own talent through academies, but it can randomly draft a 23-year-old college player. Somehow MLS needs to find a way to stop splitting the baby in half, yes, its American league but soccer is a global sport. Trying to do it both ways doesn't work.
* Growing Dichotomy Between New and Old Blood -- At it's inception, MLS was unique. A single-entity, league with a collectivist mentality to keep costs down so the owner-operators losses were at least manageable. Professional soccer in America? It was laughed at in 1995, but through thick and thin, the original MLS group made it work, sticking with their vision.
At its lowest ebb in 2001, Tampa Bay and Miami were contracted. The charity of Phil Anschutz essentially kept the league alive.
That old guard of owners, the Hunts (Dallas/Columbus), the Krafts (New England) and AEG were there in the lean times. They were there when profit and MLS in the same sentence were a pipe dream. These were men who lived in utter fear of MLS becoming financially reckless like the old NASL.
Yet in the last few years we've seen new owners in Chicago and New York who seem to want to dream big. We've gotten buzzworthy expansion teams in Seattle, Toronto and Philly, with Vancouver, Montreal and Portland on the way. Plus the Galaxy, ever since they bought Beckham, have wanted to be a global team. These teams, or at least owners, weren't around for the hard times, when the league was about to go under.
It'll be fascinating to see what direction the league takes with more-and-more owners, with bigger ideas joining up.
In a way, it's not fair to the old guard, who helped put the footprint of the league down, establish soccer specific stadiums -- some, let's face it unaesthetic eye soars -- across the country and pump money into a losing cause.
But how long with the single-entity structure last? We've seen the laxing and creation of the designated player(s). Pretty soon the new blood is going to start dreaming bigger. Henry! Ronaldinho! Marquez!
This is probably, in the long run, a good thing. We don't need an evangelist, like the foolish trust-fund "Ho-Ho" from last season of "Mad Men" who was convinced that Jai-Alai was the wave of the future. It wouldn't hurt, though, if MLS owners or the powers running the league didn't operate like they were afraid of their own shadows.
Dare to be great, this is America after all.
I'd rather MLS dreaming big, even if it falls short, rather than accepting continued mediocrity, like we see in the Midwest trioka of Kansas City, Colorado and Dallas. The longer MLS operates in its tiny little bubble, where there's minimal outside pressures or interest, it'll continue to hold up it's low end of the sports totem pole, even as soccer's prominence in America continues to rise. If MLS continues to embrace the status quo, it'll remain stuck appealing to its small, hardcore audience, getting criticized by yahoo's like me and be ignored by the population at large.
What was good in 1996 or in 2001 isn't exactly in line with where we are in 2010.
Within five years, maybe less, I sense a seismic shift in the way MLS does its business. As Eddie Vedder said, "It's evolution, baby."
* Why does Chivas USA still exist? -- Not to be mean-spirited, or sophomoric or myopic. Seriously, what function does Chivas USA serve other than confusing non-MLS fans as to its geographic location?
I can see why they were invited into the league in 2004, when nobody wanted to invest in MLS it made sense for Meixcan businessman Jorge Vergara to invest in the league and try to bring some of the CD Guadalajara spark to Los Angeles.
Aside from some decent matches against the Galaxy, what else is Chivas bringing to the table?
I'm just looking at this rationally.
If you're a soccer fan in Los Angeles, why would you go to Chivas games over the Galaxy? Better yet, with the Mexican League readily available on television, why not just watch the real Chivas or Club America or Cruz Azul or what-have-you?
Chivas is averaging around 14,500 per game, which isn't terrible, yet any time I see one of their games on tv it looks like there are 5,000 people there.
Part of the appeal of the Mexican parent club is that is fields solely Mexican players. That obviously was impossible in MLS, yet why has the club's best products been young Americans Brad Guzan, Jonathan Bornstein and Sacha Kljestan? Hell, why last week did young American Sal Zizzo get stuck being assigned there?
It was a noble, dare I say smart, idea to create a team that would tap into the Hispanic market in the states -- the proverbial holy grail for MLS. Yet it just hasn't worked.
Yes, I understand it's nice to have a cross-city rivalry, but in a league that's rapidly approaching it's cap, why waste a franchise that will always be second fiddle to the Galaxy? As it stand MLS has not a single team in the traditional American South, notably soccer-friendly Charlotte. St. Louis, the cradle of American soccer, doesn't have a team.
Since the team plays at the Home Depot Center, it's hard to see it making that much profit. Not sure how big a check MLS would have to cut to Vergara to have him pack up shop or move the team?
If there's one thing I'll say about MLS, it's fun to go to a match and cheer in the end zones with the raucous supporters groups. It's flatly intoxicating.
That's MLS's big trump card. While most other America pro sports live experiences are sterile, chock full of canned music, silly distractions and contests, MLS games should be only about the game. About singing your lungs out. About spending a week making a bedsheet likeness of Ben Olsen. Lighting off flares. Cursing out the opposing goalie. Bouncing up-and-down for 90 minutes with your neighbor.
These are the league's best and brightest selling points. I couldn't believe it when 100+ Chicago fans made the trek to Red Bull Arena in March for the Fire's match.
Slowly but surely this passion spreads from a couple dozen, to a couple hundred to a couple thousand.
If it were feasible, I'd own New York Red Bulls season tickets and attend every match. The live experience of soccer, just the pageantry and passion of the fans, is so much better since you can see the whole field to watch plays develop is without par.
Sitting down and, frankly, forcing myself to watch MLS on television? That's another story.
The other issues MLS faces, the league structure, it's roster rules, it's playoffs. Those will work themselves out over time.
What needs to happen between now and then is more people to live, breath and die with their favorite teams. If nobody cares about the league itself, what exactly are we doing here in the first place?
It seems every time you have a hot button topic, for instance gun control, the issue itself tends to get obscured by political rhetoric ... or whomever can yell the loudest.
In a lot of ways, that's the unfortunate situation MLS finds itself in. Ask any soccer fan in America and they'll have a myriad of opinions on the league itself and how to improve it. Ask them to identify Andy Najar out of a lineup or name the starting goalie on the San Jose Earthquakes, well, prepare yourself for a blank, vacant stare.
As much as I want to throw my unabashed support behind our American domestic league, for all the time I spend actually watching the matches themselves, I find myself in that first category, coming up with ways to tinker or improve the league than accepting it for what it is.
Above all, when we're done with this post, I'd like more people to be in that second category, because that's how the league is going to grow. You want the fans of the league counting down the days and minutes until matchday. You want people looking forward to attending a game live. In short, you want to win over the hearts and minds.
Or better yet, how fans of NFL teams can't wait until Sunday. (A much smaller scale, but that level of passion.)
Perhaps the biggest obstacle MLS will always -- at least in the immediate future -- is soccer fans in America know this isn't the top of the line when it comes to pro leagues. We call the Major League Baseball championship the World Series, although it's a domestic competition, still we realize it's the best of the best on the baseball diamond.
MLS? It still has the stigma, rightly or wrongly, of being minor league.
The best comparison that can be made for MLS' standing might be by looking across the border to our friends in the Great White North, Canada. The CFL has thrived for years in Canada despite it's second-tier gridiron status. That didn't stop over 46,000 people from attending the 2009 Grey Cup final in Calagary, a nuetral site.
Better yet, fans in Japan pack J-League stadiums despite it not being the Premier League or the Bundesliga. People still go to matches in Mexico and Argentina despite it not being La Liga or Serie A.
When you boil it down, the average 2009 MLS attendance of 16,000 is quite respectable across the world, albeit dwarfed by our other American team sports.
Less respectable, the fact WNBA telecasts are drawing a bigger rating than MLS matches on ESPN2. If there is a more embarrassing indictment on MLS, it would be hard to find.
Clearly there are people that care about MLS and their respective favorite teams, yet mainstream crossover appeal simply isn't there.
And MLS is already fighting uphill battle that in fact is two-front war, which would be tough for any sports league to handle. You've got the soccer fan who can dial up better games, on his television or computer, coupled with the fact their is a global competition for the best soccer talent, unlike, say the NFL. Then you have American sports fan who has so many alternatives, which isn't always the case around the world.
Another two-front war the league faces on a daily basis is the on-field issues vs. it's media perceptions. As ticket-buying entertainment, MLS isn't too far off. As a media commodity? Well, no need to harp on those ratings. It makes me feel bad.
Although I mostly fall on the negative side of MLS, but I've come to accept we haven't seen a league start from scratch almost half a century. If we look at MLB, the NFL and NBA in their infancy we'd probably see the same pratfalls and growing pains experienced by MLS, except missing the levels of communication and the need for instant gratification that we have now in 2010.
Since tonight is the 2010 MLS All-Star Game, which in-and-of itself encapsulates everything that is right, wrong and unique about the league. It is an event that is perfectly exhibits the hybrid set of challenges the league faces on a daily basis, doing things the "American way" to its position as a truly global sport.
Without getting into too many details, what does MLS gain from having its best play against a second-string Manchester United Wednesday in Houston, especially with Philadelphia and Kansas City playing United straight-up? It's a nice showcase, I suppose, and an easier sell for ESPN, but still, it further reinforces the notion that the league is second-rate and (gasp) "Mickey Mouse."
While it's easy to rail against the ills of MLS, there is room to grow. Plus the mere fact its survived this long and is slowly starting to thrive in certain pockets is reason to remain optimistic.
Here are a couple thoughts on the league four years after my first "Manifesto", or areas it could improve. This is mostly done from the approach of a media viewer/critic then anything else. It's also not everything right or wrong about MLS -- addressing the league's quest to covert Hispanic fans is worth a post by itself -- just some stuff I've been writing down since March which I felt like sharing.
Issues:
* Promotion/Relegation/Single Table -- These are things that soccer-heads/purists want and MLS commish Don Garber is hell bent against (for the time being). Sure it would be cool if MLS were integrated with either the USL or nascent NASL, but that's a pie in the sky thinking. With a slew of new franchises and owners ponying up fees to join the league, it's not fiscally realistic to have clubs face the utter obscurity that is the joint second division. Once MLS establishes a ceiling on franchises or the second division rises to more prominence, it's unrealistic. Sure it would be cool, but we're a long way off. I can understand why people want this, but getting hung up on it, for the time being, is futile. As it stands, a drop from MLS to USL wouldn't nearly be as dramatic as Premier League to Championship, although the novelty of it in America could create some kind of a buzzworthy ripple.
* Low stakes regular season -- Around the globe, as we know, the majority of league champions are determined by the regular season. This isn't the case with MLS, which has its Playoffs and then championship Cup. Since the league began in 1996, only five times has the team with the best overall regular season record won the playoffs. In the last two seasons we've seen the No. 8 seeded Real Salt Lake win in 2009 while in 2008 the Red Bulls reachthe final.
Again, this is a tricky, hybrid situation.
It probably depends what you think is the better measure of a team, over 30 games of a regular season or a three-tiered, four-match playoff system? Essentially this is Cup football, which is different than League football, where it's much easier for the weaker team to get a result.
The border-line irrelevancy of the U.S. Open Cup further muddles the matter.
Since this is America we're always going to have some kind of playoff, but beyond the regular season champ earning the "Supporters Shield" -- aka an award that means nothing other than the ability to put up a banner or placard in the stadium -- added credence needs to be added to the season.
MLS wouldn't do it, but why not cut the playoff teams to six. Since Garber is insistent on divisions, give the regular season conference winners an automatic bye into the conference championship game. It only seems fair. This would solve two issues at once, it would make the regular season count much more on a game-to-game basis with only six playoff teams, meanwhile giving some incentive to placing first at the end of 30 games.
* Sparse Attendance -- MLS falls into the trap that even when there's a good crowd, of say, 15,000+ most of the time on television it looks like an empty stadium. It's very hard to disguise these empty seats unlike, say, the NBA which can keep the camera close and the lighting dark in empty sections. Appearance is everything and that shapes perceptions. Early in the 2010 season there was a nationally televised ESPN2 match at Pizza Hunt Park. If there were 1,000 fans, I'd be stunned. If you're scanning channels, you're less inclined to watch something from your couch nobody deems worthy enough to attend in person. There's really no solution for the league, aside from scheduling all its national telecasts from Seattle, Salt Lake, Toronto, Philadelphia, New York, Chicago or Los Angeles.
* Getting more from ESPN -- We can talk about the minuscule ratings MLS puts up on EPSN all we like, but for me it's a two-way street. Yes, it's wonderful the Worldwide Leader, out of the goodness of its heart, airs one MLS match per week -- usually buried on Thursday nights. Yet, that's essentially the alpha and omega of MLS on ESPN.
Do we ever see highlights from matches on "Sportscenter"? Better yet, does the bottom line ticker ever even list MLS goal scorers? These are little things, but it helps create brand awareness. A simple three-minute weekly around-the-league package to run on ESPNEWS every week would help.
We saw what ESPN's promotion did in June and July for the World Cup. Granted, MLS isn't the World Cup, but if ESPN threw it a little support from a marketing/general news standpoint, it would certainly increase ratings.
The best suggestion for ESPN, particularly in the summer when there is minimal live programming, why not show MLS matches on a better night, like Sunday or Monday? What's its competition? World Series of Poker? People are actively looking for sports to watch those days and MLS would be a nice counterweight to those unwatchable national baseball telecasts they parachute into. There are only so many times a human being can watch an ESPN-produced Cubs/Cardinals game before going on a homicidal rampage.
* Market the players -- How many truly world class players currently play in MLS? You could probably count them on one hand. Doesn't matter. The league doesn't do a good enough job marketing it's players outside of the Donovan and Beckhams of the world.
Every soccer league around the world has its own set of stars, heroes, villains and cult heroes.
Outside of the marquee names, the average MLS player seems like a nondescript, gray nobody. Maybe this is partly true, but the league could do better.
The Internet denizens know Bobby Boswell is a funny, out-going, genuine character. Why not the rest of America, or at least casual soccer fans, as an example?
* Playing style -- On the plus side, MLS is competitive. The quality of the athletes is quite good, especially since they have to play mostly in the warm summer months.
At the same time, the technical level of quality soccer players is sometimes lacking. This isn't suggest MLS should adopt an old-school 1980s English mentality of kick-and-chase, rock'em sock'em soccer, far from it.
It's just, how often do you see players cracking shots from distance? Or sustained levels of creativity? Dribbling wizards? Trickery? Stuff that people actively want to upload
Think back to the league's inception. At least back then the league was wise enough to import foreign ball wizards like Marco Etchevarry, Carlos Valderamma and even Roberto Donadoni. Nowadays the only consistently creative players with vision seem to be Donovan, Guillermo Barros Scheltto and Dewayne DeRosario.
Not sure if you can simply import these players, or try to create them out of thin air.
If MLS were able to raise the skill level, instead of defining itself by hard tackles it would make more people want to watch.
* Balancing act -- How does MLS present itself as a viable career option for young Americans or even established Americans? You'd think the league would be able to build and market around American players, yet many flee to the greener pastures of Europe, even if its the backwaters of Scandinavia.
For now, MLS will probably be stuck in the pattern where it develops players like DaMarcus Beasley or Bobby Convey, watch them go to Europe, then have them return when they've run out of other options. This isn't necessarily a good or bad thing, it simply is what it is.
As it stands, no matter how you slice it, since its inception in 1996 MLS has indeed helped the U.S. National Team by increasing the player pool.
* Better uniforms -- It's nice that Adidas furnishes the whole league with a similar-looking generic duds. One minor thing for me would be to create more distinctive looks, at least with away kits. Why not add some crazy neon designs or something eye-catching on the road. It's a small issue for me, but it couldn't hurt.
* The SuperDraft -- Much like the All-Star game, quintessentially American, yet almost pointless, as more-and-more high-level talents turn down MLS offers for looks overseas. It doesn't seem to make sense that a club can't develop its own talent through academies, but it can randomly draft a 23-year-old college player. Somehow MLS needs to find a way to stop splitting the baby in half, yes, its American league but soccer is a global sport. Trying to do it both ways doesn't work.
One big issue
* Growing Dichotomy Between New and Old Blood -- At it's inception, MLS was unique. A single-entity, league with a collectivist mentality to keep costs down so the owner-operators losses were at least manageable. Professional soccer in America? It was laughed at in 1995, but through thick and thin, the original MLS group made it work, sticking with their vision.
At its lowest ebb in 2001, Tampa Bay and Miami were contracted. The charity of Phil Anschutz essentially kept the league alive.
That old guard of owners, the Hunts (Dallas/Columbus), the Krafts (New England) and AEG were there in the lean times. They were there when profit and MLS in the same sentence were a pipe dream. These were men who lived in utter fear of MLS becoming financially reckless like the old NASL.
Yet in the last few years we've seen new owners in Chicago and New York who seem to want to dream big. We've gotten buzzworthy expansion teams in Seattle, Toronto and Philly, with Vancouver, Montreal and Portland on the way. Plus the Galaxy, ever since they bought Beckham, have wanted to be a global team. These teams, or at least owners, weren't around for the hard times, when the league was about to go under.
It'll be fascinating to see what direction the league takes with more-and-more owners, with bigger ideas joining up.
In a way, it's not fair to the old guard, who helped put the footprint of the league down, establish soccer specific stadiums -- some, let's face it unaesthetic eye soars -- across the country and pump money into a losing cause.
But how long with the single-entity structure last? We've seen the laxing and creation of the designated player(s). Pretty soon the new blood is going to start dreaming bigger. Henry! Ronaldinho! Marquez!
This is probably, in the long run, a good thing. We don't need an evangelist, like the foolish trust-fund "Ho-Ho" from last season of "Mad Men" who was convinced that Jai-Alai was the wave of the future. It wouldn't hurt, though, if MLS owners or the powers running the league didn't operate like they were afraid of their own shadows.
Dare to be great, this is America after all.
I'd rather MLS dreaming big, even if it falls short, rather than accepting continued mediocrity, like we see in the Midwest trioka of Kansas City, Colorado and Dallas. The longer MLS operates in its tiny little bubble, where there's minimal outside pressures or interest, it'll continue to hold up it's low end of the sports totem pole, even as soccer's prominence in America continues to rise. If MLS continues to embrace the status quo, it'll remain stuck appealing to its small, hardcore audience, getting criticized by yahoo's like me and be ignored by the population at large.
What was good in 1996 or in 2001 isn't exactly in line with where we are in 2010.
Within five years, maybe less, I sense a seismic shift in the way MLS does its business. As Eddie Vedder said, "It's evolution, baby."
One big question:
* Why does Chivas USA still exist? -- Not to be mean-spirited, or sophomoric or myopic. Seriously, what function does Chivas USA serve other than confusing non-MLS fans as to its geographic location?
I can see why they were invited into the league in 2004, when nobody wanted to invest in MLS it made sense for Meixcan businessman Jorge Vergara to invest in the league and try to bring some of the CD Guadalajara spark to Los Angeles.
Aside from some decent matches against the Galaxy, what else is Chivas bringing to the table?
I'm just looking at this rationally.
If you're a soccer fan in Los Angeles, why would you go to Chivas games over the Galaxy? Better yet, with the Mexican League readily available on television, why not just watch the real Chivas or Club America or Cruz Azul or what-have-you?
Chivas is averaging around 14,500 per game, which isn't terrible, yet any time I see one of their games on tv it looks like there are 5,000 people there.
Part of the appeal of the Mexican parent club is that is fields solely Mexican players. That obviously was impossible in MLS, yet why has the club's best products been young Americans Brad Guzan, Jonathan Bornstein and Sacha Kljestan? Hell, why last week did young American Sal Zizzo get stuck being assigned there?
It was a noble, dare I say smart, idea to create a team that would tap into the Hispanic market in the states -- the proverbial holy grail for MLS. Yet it just hasn't worked.
Yes, I understand it's nice to have a cross-city rivalry, but in a league that's rapidly approaching it's cap, why waste a franchise that will always be second fiddle to the Galaxy? As it stand MLS has not a single team in the traditional American South, notably soccer-friendly Charlotte. St. Louis, the cradle of American soccer, doesn't have a team.
Since the team plays at the Home Depot Center, it's hard to see it making that much profit. Not sure how big a check MLS would have to cut to Vergara to have him pack up shop or move the team?
Conclusion:
If there's one thing I'll say about MLS, it's fun to go to a match and cheer in the end zones with the raucous supporters groups. It's flatly intoxicating.
That's MLS's big trump card. While most other America pro sports live experiences are sterile, chock full of canned music, silly distractions and contests, MLS games should be only about the game. About singing your lungs out. About spending a week making a bedsheet likeness of Ben Olsen. Lighting off flares. Cursing out the opposing goalie. Bouncing up-and-down for 90 minutes with your neighbor.
These are the league's best and brightest selling points. I couldn't believe it when 100+ Chicago fans made the trek to Red Bull Arena in March for the Fire's match.
Slowly but surely this passion spreads from a couple dozen, to a couple hundred to a couple thousand.
If it were feasible, I'd own New York Red Bulls season tickets and attend every match. The live experience of soccer, just the pageantry and passion of the fans, is so much better since you can see the whole field to watch plays develop is without par.
Sitting down and, frankly, forcing myself to watch MLS on television? That's another story.
The other issues MLS faces, the league structure, it's roster rules, it's playoffs. Those will work themselves out over time.
What needs to happen between now and then is more people to live, breath and die with their favorite teams. If nobody cares about the league itself, what exactly are we doing here in the first place?
Labels: Don Garber, Landon Donovan, MLS, Soccer, thierry henry
Our journey through the 20 Premier League clubs takes us today to Wolverhampton, as we sort through the seemingly endless string of clubs that begin with the letter "W".
Every now and then I creep out from the proverbial basement at my mother's house and play actual living, breathing media member. Sort of a reverse Superman, actually, where I play the Clark Kent role. Granted, if I were actually Superman it would be the worst comic book of all time.
Yes, even worse than Plastic Man.
On two separate occasions, ahead of the 2006 and 2010 World Cup I've had the good fortunate to chat with U.S. national team third string keeper Marcus Hahnemann on the grass at Rentschler Field in East Hartford, Conn. Based on the 12 or so minutes of interaction, he's a class act and all around good dude. It's nice, too, that's unlike other players who've spent plenty of time playing professionally in England Hahnemann's remained a red-blooded, unabashed American. For more on this, read this candid interview with the Independent from earlier this year.
In May, instead of asking Hahnemann is top five death metal guitar soloists, there was one issue on my mind -- how exactly he understands Wolves' coach Mick McCarthy's thick Irish brogue.
Back in 2006 I remember sitting inside a cafe in Amsterdam watching France and Switzerland play out to a dull draw, with McCarthy's indecipherable commentary.
It went something like this: "Mbdbdb mfdfds mdndndmmd." Basically nine times worst than Ally McCoist on ESPN duty during the 2010 World Cup.
Bend an ear:
When I asked Hahnemann about this, he laughed and said he was able to understand McCarthy, which in-and-of itself, might be one of the toughest achievements in English football.
Coming a close second would be for Wolves to stick around in the Premier League for a third consecutive season, avoiding the drop in 2010-11.
In fact, Wolves might be in for the dreaded case of "second season syndrome," which afflicted Hahnemann's previous employers -- Reading. The Royals were a revelation in their first-ever top flight season in 2006-07, placing eighth after a record-setting promotion season in the Championship where it scored 99 goals en route to a record 106 points. A season later Steve Coppell's side lost all their mojo and crashed out the Prem, placing 18th.
Are Wolves in line for a similar fate?
The presence of Kevin Doyle -- barring a transfer -- doesn't exactly bode very well.
In Wolves' promotion season of 2008-09, where McCarthy guided them to a first place finish in the Championship, the buzz word around the Molineux was goals. Wolves pumped in 80 that year -- 26 more than second place Birmingham -- including 25 from Sylvan Ebanks-Blake alone.
Once again we saw a club that hit the bright lights of the Prem and it lose its nerve in front of goal. Wolves total League goals sunk to 32 -- lowest in the division -- lead by Doyle's nine. The fact that 35-year-old defender Joey Craddock was next on the list at five isn't a good sign.
Then again, it's probably unfair to compare the core of this Wolves team to that Reading team, which was actually quite a good "footballing" side. Wolves also haven't had any key defections, like Reading did when Steve Sidwell(*) sold out to force a move to Chelsea. Wolves seem to have actually gotten better with the addition, coincidentally enough, of ex-Reading midfielder Stephen Hunt, last seen at Hull City.
(*) Guess it was karma for Reading fans that the ginger Sidwell's only impact at Chelsea was a hard foul on David Beckham in that dreadful, made-for-ESPN Los Angeles Galaxy debut.
Credit, though, McCarthy -- however difficult he might be to comprehend -- for changing his approach to a more pragmatic style, which didn't win any beauty contests but was enough to ensure survival.
After failing with a two-striker system, McCarthy went with a more defense-first approach in a 4-5-1. More importantly on Nov. 29 he replaced Wayne Hennessey in goal with Hahnemann, a move which didn't seem like a big deal at the time yet proved to be one of the most critical of the season. You could argue no player outside last year's Top Seven had as much an impact as Hahnemann down the stretch for his team's fortunes. On a personal level it was enough for Hahnemann to make the U.S. roster for South Africa, too.
When McCarthy put Hahnemann in goal, whether it was coincidence or not, it seemed to turn around Wolves' fortunes. Immediately Wolves won three of their first four matches with the Seattle native in goal. Later, beginning on March 27, Wolves posted clean sheets in three of four matches. Overall, in Hahnemann's 30 matches, the team allowed only 30 goals, compared to 26 in the first eight.
Quite a change.
It wasn't all Hahnemann. McCarthy settled on a defense of Ronald Zubar, Christophe Berra, Craddock and eventually George Elokobi over Stephen Ward. The mid-season addition of Algerian international Adlène Guedioura further solidified Wolves, and gave them a very defensive-minded holding duo with captain Karl Henry.
This year to solidify the defense McCarthy bought 6-foot-4 Belgian defender Jelle Van Damme, who most Americans know as the player Oguchi Onyewu took to court over an alleged racial slur.
Now the big question for Wolves heading into 2010-11 is if McCarthy can keep the positive vibes and overall togetherness which the team found in the final stages of last season and apply it over a full 38 games? We've seen this approach work in stretches for clubs, but eventually over time the team tunes out the coach or vice versa.
It's hard to find a motivational carrot when you're in Wolves situation as a coach. You can't, again, play the nobody believes in us/avoiding the drop card. Realistically this team isn't good enough to make a run at a Europa League spot. So McCarthy is in a tough position. Can he get the club to set its sights on 14th place? Will this team have the resolve to dig down, commit to defense and grind out results once again?
You hear that cheesy acting cliche, "What's my motivation?" all the time. That's what Wolves players might be asking themselves throughout the season. At best, for the time being, Wolves could follow the path of other promoted sides like Stoke City.
On the plus side, Wolves should have six highly charged local derbies this season with Aston Villa, Birmingham and the Black Country derby against West Brom. This is good for the fans in the stands. The players? We'll see.
Bottom line -- Wolves, even with the additions of Hunt and ex-Burnley forward Stephen Fletcher don't have a midfield with enough quality to take the game to opponents. On paper the team does have more of a glided edge and won't be solely reliant on Doyle, assuming he isn't sold. If 24-year-old Matthew Jarvis continues his upward trend and Ebanks-Blake ever figures out Premier League defenses, this team could improve closer to mid-table safety. More than likely, this team will be fighting to avoid the drop all season.
In case you missed it:
* West Brom
* Wigan Athletic
Dire Wolves
Every now and then I creep out from the proverbial basement at my mother's house and play actual living, breathing media member. Sort of a reverse Superman, actually, where I play the Clark Kent role. Granted, if I were actually Superman it would be the worst comic book of all time.
Yes, even worse than Plastic Man.
On two separate occasions, ahead of the 2006 and 2010 World Cup I've had the good fortunate to chat with U.S. national team third string keeper Marcus Hahnemann on the grass at Rentschler Field in East Hartford, Conn. Based on the 12 or so minutes of interaction, he's a class act and all around good dude. It's nice, too, that's unlike other players who've spent plenty of time playing professionally in England Hahnemann's remained a red-blooded, unabashed American. For more on this, read this candid interview with the Independent from earlier this year.
In May, instead of asking Hahnemann is top five death metal guitar soloists, there was one issue on my mind -- how exactly he understands Wolves' coach Mick McCarthy's thick Irish brogue.
Back in 2006 I remember sitting inside a cafe in Amsterdam watching France and Switzerland play out to a dull draw, with McCarthy's indecipherable commentary.
It went something like this: "Mbdbdb mfdfds mdndndmmd." Basically nine times worst than Ally McCoist on ESPN duty during the 2010 World Cup.
Bend an ear:
When I asked Hahnemann about this, he laughed and said he was able to understand McCarthy, which in-and-of itself, might be one of the toughest achievements in English football.
Coming a close second would be for Wolves to stick around in the Premier League for a third consecutive season, avoiding the drop in 2010-11.
In fact, Wolves might be in for the dreaded case of "second season syndrome," which afflicted Hahnemann's previous employers -- Reading. The Royals were a revelation in their first-ever top flight season in 2006-07, placing eighth after a record-setting promotion season in the Championship where it scored 99 goals en route to a record 106 points. A season later Steve Coppell's side lost all their mojo and crashed out the Prem, placing 18th.
Are Wolves in line for a similar fate?
The presence of Kevin Doyle -- barring a transfer -- doesn't exactly bode very well.
In Wolves' promotion season of 2008-09, where McCarthy guided them to a first place finish in the Championship, the buzz word around the Molineux was goals. Wolves pumped in 80 that year -- 26 more than second place Birmingham -- including 25 from Sylvan Ebanks-Blake alone.
Once again we saw a club that hit the bright lights of the Prem and it lose its nerve in front of goal. Wolves total League goals sunk to 32 -- lowest in the division -- lead by Doyle's nine. The fact that 35-year-old defender Joey Craddock was next on the list at five isn't a good sign.
Then again, it's probably unfair to compare the core of this Wolves team to that Reading team, which was actually quite a good "footballing" side. Wolves also haven't had any key defections, like Reading did when Steve Sidwell(*) sold out to force a move to Chelsea. Wolves seem to have actually gotten better with the addition, coincidentally enough, of ex-Reading midfielder Stephen Hunt, last seen at Hull City.
(*) Guess it was karma for Reading fans that the ginger Sidwell's only impact at Chelsea was a hard foul on David Beckham in that dreadful, made-for-ESPN Los Angeles Galaxy debut.
Credit, though, McCarthy -- however difficult he might be to comprehend -- for changing his approach to a more pragmatic style, which didn't win any beauty contests but was enough to ensure survival.
After failing with a two-striker system, McCarthy went with a more defense-first approach in a 4-5-1. More importantly on Nov. 29 he replaced Wayne Hennessey in goal with Hahnemann, a move which didn't seem like a big deal at the time yet proved to be one of the most critical of the season. You could argue no player outside last year's Top Seven had as much an impact as Hahnemann down the stretch for his team's fortunes. On a personal level it was enough for Hahnemann to make the U.S. roster for South Africa, too.
When McCarthy put Hahnemann in goal, whether it was coincidence or not, it seemed to turn around Wolves' fortunes. Immediately Wolves won three of their first four matches with the Seattle native in goal. Later, beginning on March 27, Wolves posted clean sheets in three of four matches. Overall, in Hahnemann's 30 matches, the team allowed only 30 goals, compared to 26 in the first eight.
Quite a change.
It wasn't all Hahnemann. McCarthy settled on a defense of Ronald Zubar, Christophe Berra, Craddock and eventually George Elokobi over Stephen Ward. The mid-season addition of Algerian international Adlène Guedioura further solidified Wolves, and gave them a very defensive-minded holding duo with captain Karl Henry.
This year to solidify the defense McCarthy bought 6-foot-4 Belgian defender Jelle Van Damme, who most Americans know as the player Oguchi Onyewu took to court over an alleged racial slur.
Now the big question for Wolves heading into 2010-11 is if McCarthy can keep the positive vibes and overall togetherness which the team found in the final stages of last season and apply it over a full 38 games? We've seen this approach work in stretches for clubs, but eventually over time the team tunes out the coach or vice versa.
It's hard to find a motivational carrot when you're in Wolves situation as a coach. You can't, again, play the nobody believes in us/avoiding the drop card. Realistically this team isn't good enough to make a run at a Europa League spot. So McCarthy is in a tough position. Can he get the club to set its sights on 14th place? Will this team have the resolve to dig down, commit to defense and grind out results once again?
You hear that cheesy acting cliche, "What's my motivation?" all the time. That's what Wolves players might be asking themselves throughout the season. At best, for the time being, Wolves could follow the path of other promoted sides like Stoke City.
On the plus side, Wolves should have six highly charged local derbies this season with Aston Villa, Birmingham and the Black Country derby against West Brom. This is good for the fans in the stands. The players? We'll see.
Bottom line -- Wolves, even with the additions of Hunt and ex-Burnley forward Stephen Fletcher don't have a midfield with enough quality to take the game to opponents. On paper the team does have more of a glided edge and won't be solely reliant on Doyle, assuming he isn't sold. If 24-year-old Matthew Jarvis continues his upward trend and Ebanks-Blake ever figures out Premier League defenses, this team could improve closer to mid-table safety. More than likely, this team will be fighting to avoid the drop all season.
In case you missed it:
* West Brom
* Wigan Athletic
Labels: English Premier League, epl 2010 previews, marcus hanhemann, Premier League, Soccer, wolverhampton
TOP 2010 EPL Countdown: Wigan Athletic
0 Comments Published by Cardillo on July 27, 2010 at 2:00 PM.
Our club-by-club Premier League preview essays continues today with fan favorite, Wigan Athletic.
"I'm like a weed in Hitler's Bunker." -- George Costanza during his standoff with Play Now Sports.
If I've used that refrain to describe the fortunes of Wigan Athletic once, I've done it a thousand times.
It all seems from Wigan's promotion to the Premier League in the 2005 season. Leading up to the season nearly all the stories emanating from England about the Latics focused on how "unfancied" they were, basically labeling them a black sheep or irrelevant. Nobody came out and labeled Wigan a bunch of lepers, but let's just say, if you passed around the hat, it would take very long to pay for a couple tickets to Hawaii.
While other, established, dare I say "classic" English clubs like Leeds United, languish in the Championship, Wigan presses on its in unglamorous manner in the top flight.
Yet from its Premier League debut, ruined by a last second thunderbolt by Chelsea's Hernan Crespo, Wigan has kept on keeping on. Through thick and thin, with a League Cup final tossed in, here the Latics stand.
Through Paul Jewell, the first manager I know who may or may not of resigned over an S&M sex scandal, then to Steve Bruce's savvy central/south American transfer policy and now to ex-club standout Roberto Martinez, Wigan has preserved.
Has it been memorable? No.
Has the pitch at the JJB/DW Stadium during the winter looked more like a World War I era trench than a football field? You bet.
Did this team gainfully employ Titus Bramble(*) and live to tell about it? Yep.
(*) More on him when we get to Sunderland.
When we live of the bright lights and glamo(u)r of the Premier League does Wigan ever even cross into our minds? No way.
Somehow, this club has found a formula.
Grabbing a disgruntled Charles N'Zogbia away from Newcastle. Picking up capable Hondurans(*) Hendry Thomas and Maynor Figueroa (likely Liverpool-bound), after profiting off the sale of Wilson Palacios to Spurs. Unearthing players like 23-year-old Frenchman Mohamed Diamé and England U-19 striker Victor Moses, who can be used then sold for profit.
(*) Odd, Wigan seems like the seventh-circle of Hell to English players, but heaven on earth if you're Honduran. Who knew?
When you're Wigan you have to take a different route than Manchester United. Granted you're playing on a much lower plane of success, but so be it.
Once again, though, Wigan figures to find itself scrapping just above the relegation zone for the 2010-11 season.
Believe it or not, losing Bramble in the center of the defense and replacing him with unproven Paraguay international Antolín Alcaraz is a gamble. Couple that with the departures of established players like disgruntled Austrian utilityman Paul Scharner and ex-captain Mario Melchiot (now in Qatar) and the Latics are going to have big shoes to fill. If N'Zogbia is sold before September, the midfield will have little creativity. Plus counting on the inconsistent Hugo Rodallega to chip into another 10 goals minus much of a supporting cast is a recipe for disaster.
Through it all, despite Wigan's status as an easy punchline through the years -- the fictitious "When the Whistle Blows" from HBO's "Extras" was set in Wigan after all -- I'll at least partially being pulling for the Latics this campaign.
That reason? Roberto Martinez.
The affable Spaniard was the breakout star of ESPN's World Cup coverage this summer with his level-headed, shtick-free commentary. Frankly, I'd feel bad making fun or rooting against him. He seems like such an upbeat guy.
Is it enough for Wigan America fan clubs to spring up across the States? Doubtful, but it's more than the club's had going for it from a nuetral standpoint since that first season and plucky, err, unfancied underdogs. Will you ever want to chose to play as Wigan in "FIFA 11", unless Martinez's visage is rendered on the sideline, the answer is doubtful yet again.
However you want to slice it, as quality a commentator as he was, Martinez will have his work cut out for him. After Jewell's surprise 10th place finish in 2005, Wigan has finished 17th, 14th, 11th and 16th, skating by because there have always been at least three teams that were in bigger disarray then it.
Without many established players, or even the presence of a match-winner/talisman like ex-Latic Jimmy Bullard this team will struggle.
It certainly looks like Wigan's unlikely run in the English Top Flight comes to an end in 2011.
Surprisingly, we might actually miss them once they're gone.
Bottom line -- Clearly the non-promoted team with the most holes to fill and question marks. Last season Wigan got juuuuuust enough results when needed to avoid the black hole down to the Championship. It helped that Burnley, Hull City and especially Portsmouth all dealt with managerial changes, in Pompey's case point deduction, and overall lack of talent. This year with a revived Newcastle in the mix, Wigan can't sleepwalk to 16th or 17th position. Chances are Wigan and Wolves find themselves in a dog fight for the last survival place.
In case you missed it:
West Bromwich Albion
Wigan-Mart
"I'm like a weed in Hitler's Bunker." -- George Costanza during his standoff with Play Now Sports.
If I've used that refrain to describe the fortunes of Wigan Athletic once, I've done it a thousand times.
It all seems from Wigan's promotion to the Premier League in the 2005 season. Leading up to the season nearly all the stories emanating from England about the Latics focused on how "unfancied" they were, basically labeling them a black sheep or irrelevant. Nobody came out and labeled Wigan a bunch of lepers, but let's just say, if you passed around the hat, it would take very long to pay for a couple tickets to Hawaii.
While other, established, dare I say "classic" English clubs like Leeds United, languish in the Championship, Wigan presses on its in unglamorous manner in the top flight.
Yet from its Premier League debut, ruined by a last second thunderbolt by Chelsea's Hernan Crespo, Wigan has kept on keeping on. Through thick and thin, with a League Cup final tossed in, here the Latics stand.
Through Paul Jewell, the first manager I know who may or may not of resigned over an S&M sex scandal, then to Steve Bruce's savvy central/south American transfer policy and now to ex-club standout Roberto Martinez, Wigan has preserved.
Has it been memorable? No.
Has the pitch at the JJB/DW Stadium during the winter looked more like a World War I era trench than a football field? You bet.
Did this team gainfully employ Titus Bramble(*) and live to tell about it? Yep.
(*) More on him when we get to Sunderland.
When we live of the bright lights and glamo(u)r of the Premier League does Wigan ever even cross into our minds? No way.
Somehow, this club has found a formula.
Grabbing a disgruntled Charles N'Zogbia away from Newcastle. Picking up capable Hondurans(*) Hendry Thomas and Maynor Figueroa (likely Liverpool-bound), after profiting off the sale of Wilson Palacios to Spurs. Unearthing players like 23-year-old Frenchman Mohamed Diamé and England U-19 striker Victor Moses, who can be used then sold for profit.
(*) Odd, Wigan seems like the seventh-circle of Hell to English players, but heaven on earth if you're Honduran. Who knew?
When you're Wigan you have to take a different route than Manchester United. Granted you're playing on a much lower plane of success, but so be it.
Once again, though, Wigan figures to find itself scrapping just above the relegation zone for the 2010-11 season.
Believe it or not, losing Bramble in the center of the defense and replacing him with unproven Paraguay international Antolín Alcaraz is a gamble. Couple that with the departures of established players like disgruntled Austrian utilityman Paul Scharner and ex-captain Mario Melchiot (now in Qatar) and the Latics are going to have big shoes to fill. If N'Zogbia is sold before September, the midfield will have little creativity. Plus counting on the inconsistent Hugo Rodallega to chip into another 10 goals minus much of a supporting cast is a recipe for disaster.
Through it all, despite Wigan's status as an easy punchline through the years -- the fictitious "When the Whistle Blows" from HBO's "Extras" was set in Wigan after all -- I'll at least partially being pulling for the Latics this campaign.
That reason? Roberto Martinez.
The affable Spaniard was the breakout star of ESPN's World Cup coverage this summer with his level-headed, shtick-free commentary. Frankly, I'd feel bad making fun or rooting against him. He seems like such an upbeat guy.
Is it enough for Wigan America fan clubs to spring up across the States? Doubtful, but it's more than the club's had going for it from a nuetral standpoint since that first season and plucky, err, unfancied underdogs. Will you ever want to chose to play as Wigan in "FIFA 11", unless Martinez's visage is rendered on the sideline, the answer is doubtful yet again.
However you want to slice it, as quality a commentator as he was, Martinez will have his work cut out for him. After Jewell's surprise 10th place finish in 2005, Wigan has finished 17th, 14th, 11th and 16th, skating by because there have always been at least three teams that were in bigger disarray then it.
Without many established players, or even the presence of a match-winner/talisman like ex-Latic Jimmy Bullard this team will struggle.
It certainly looks like Wigan's unlikely run in the English Top Flight comes to an end in 2011.
Surprisingly, we might actually miss them once they're gone.
Bottom line -- Clearly the non-promoted team with the most holes to fill and question marks. Last season Wigan got juuuuuust enough results when needed to avoid the black hole down to the Championship. It helped that Burnley, Hull City and especially Portsmouth all dealt with managerial changes, in Pompey's case point deduction, and overall lack of talent. This year with a revived Newcastle in the mix, Wigan can't sleepwalk to 16th or 17th position. Chances are Wigan and Wolves find themselves in a dog fight for the last survival place.
In case you missed it:
West Bromwich Albion
Labels: English Premier League, EPL, epl 2010 preview, premier, roberto martinez, Soccer, wigan athletic
TOP 2010 EPL Countdown: West Bromich Albion
0 Comments Published by Cardillo on July 26, 2010 at 3:00 PM.
Greeting fellow Inter-nets travelers, with the 2010-11 Barclay's/English Premier League season rapidly approaching its kickoff August 14 with Manchester City v. Tottenham, we begin our club-by-club countdown with the team everyone in America is talking about ... that's right West Bromwich Albion. There's no specific order, but we'll be getting to the bigger teams as we get closer to the curtain raiser. Hopefully these will have a different approach than you're standard, manager, who's in, who's out, etc. capsules that you'll likely also read. Enjoy!
* * *
Welcome back West Brom.
Apologies immediately if that sounds like a bad title to a 1970s sitcom.
It's been slightly over a full calendar year since our dearly beloved Baggies have graced the Premier League. It's a shame, since their last foray into the top flight was nothing short of memorable.
Well, not exactly.
Flash back to West Brom's 2008-09 EPL campaign. What pops into your mind?
Mueller ... Mueller ... Mueller.
Exactly, not all that much.
If you want to be cruel, about the only noteworthy aspect of West Brom's last time in the top flight was the fact the club didn't even bother to sign a shirt sponsor.
Rest assured, West Brom's shirts will be adorned with the logo for Homeserve, which according to my 20-second research is some sort of insurance company for maintenance work -- something every viewer of the Premiership clearly needs on a daily basis.
So yeah, they've got that going for them, which is nice.
The thing is, nothing quite says English soccer better than name itself: West Bromwich Albion.
Can't you taste the blood pudding oozing out of it's casing whilst reading it? The team is nicknamed the Baggies for crying out loud and anyone and, remarkably, few people still alive exactly know its origin.
There is an anachronistic quality about West Brom as a whole. As the Premier League looks globally to assert its sporting dominance and rake in as much money as possible -- by any means necessary -- the West Midlands club continues looking inward. The whole lack of a shirt sponsor seemed to emphasis this point.
As easy as it is to poke fun at the quaintness that hovers over West Brom like an industrial-era cloud of soot from our comfy trans-Atlantic perch, yet the club's approach is actually somewhat admirable. At its roots soccer is a local, parochial game. The fact West Brom continues to look to the Midlands, instead of the Middle East isn't necessarily such a bad thing.
I know that if I resided in England, my prickly, cynical personality would probably lead me to hate the Premier League and it's hell-bent quest to dominate the world. I'd probably rail against Richard Scudamore and how he's allowed the chase of money to move the game away from its roots, to the detriment of the ticket-buying, working class fan -- the backbone of the game in its infancy in the late 1800s to today.
Modern day Premier League fans want big-name signing after big-name signing. It seems the bulk of the supporters and owners/chairmen/board of directors of big clubs would like their favorite team to be an Anglican version of the Real Madrid Galaticos and everybody else can go to hell. The collectivist, NFL mindset that pervaded the 1960s, where television revenue was shared equally, ensuring a high tide would raise all boats simply doesn't exist in England, or European soccer. It's a cutthroat business to the core.
In light of this, West Brom appears to be quite content to be the only "yo-yo/elevator" club in England. Since the turn of the century the Baggies have won the Second Division/League Championship once and placed second three times. That's a lot of back-and-forth, bouncing around.
The club, though, knows what it is. Life in the Premier League, or even an extended stay won't result in West Brom's navy-and-white striped shirts being spotted on the streets corners from Toronto to Tokyo. Even consecutive runs in the Champions League or a transcendent player might not push West Brom to those heights. The club, led by chairman Jeremy Peace, wisely hasn't overstepped its means in an attempt to become a "global brand."
In turn, they haven't wasted tons of money bringing in high priced transfers, which would jeopardize the club's bottom line.
Instead, West Brom seems happy to give it's fans Premier League football every other, or every couple of years. Play a somewhat attractive level of ball and entertain the 20,000+ loyal supporters that fill the Hawthorns each week. It's part of the reason it's been able to assemble a solid, respectable team that on the glided-edge of financial apocalypse, like a Portsmouth or numerous other lower-league clubs.
Is this current roster assembled by Italian coach Roberto Di Matteo going to set the world on fire? Most likely not. The biggest off-season signings are ex-Blackburn midfielder Steven Reid and Spanish defender Pablo. You know, moves that barely set off a ripple outside of central England.
As it stands the only iron West Brom appears to have in the fires is a move for ex-Manchester United flop Eric Djemba-Djemba, which, well, is hard to defend logically.
Across this board this team is fine in the Championship, but limited on the Premier League level. Look at Czech striker Roman Bednář is your typical player who can rip it up in the Championship, but become exposed by Premier League defenders. Bednář scored six in West Brom's last Prem appearance, a figured that jumped to 11 in the Championship last year. Same thing with Northern Irishman Chris Brunt, who led the team with eight league goals in 2008, then had 13 last season in the Championship.
If there's a bright spot it's 23-year-old Graham Dorrans, who was considered among the top five players in the Championship last season, by nearly all accounts. I won't pretend to tell you I know anything about him aside from what's been written. The transition from Championship to Premier League isn't easy for players, it's like television actors trying to become big time Hollywood movie stars. Sure it happens, but more often than not it doesn't.
It's at least encouraging West Brom was able to fend off interest from other clubs and keep the young Scot for the next four years. If West Brom had lost him along with Slovenia captain Robert Koren(*), who was released, the midfield would be a total disaster.
(*) Perhaps Di Matteo has a no jazz hands allowed policy? Hard to fathom why they wouldn't want to keep a player of his quality, even if they had to give him a raise.
Something struck me a few years ago while reading "FourFourTwo." Every month they do a segment interviewing a celeb about their favorite club. Many times it rings hollow and you can tell the photo is taken with a scarf freshly out of its plastic wrap. In this particular issue English comedian Frank Skinner -- one of the writers of "Three Lions" -- was interviewed about his love for West Brom. At the end, instead of an obligatory plug for an upcoming project or something, Skinner's tag basically said he was doing it to do it and said that tickets were on sale for the next West Brom home match.
Are we going to roll our eyes come a Saturday morning in October when West Brom is featured on Fox Soccer Channel's 10 a.m. match? Probably.
Is West Brom going to mind? Probably not.
And a team that knows it's role and its comfortable in its own skin? That's quite okay in today's game.
Last word -- Hard to do anything other than pencil in West Brom for 19th. Unless the club gets off to a quick start before Christmas, expect the Baggies fighting for their lives the rest of the way. Remember, too, West Brom starts with three of its first four matches against Chelsea, Liverpool and Tottenham. Good luck.
Double Bagged
Welcome back West Brom.
Apologies immediately if that sounds like a bad title to a 1970s sitcom.
It's been slightly over a full calendar year since our dearly beloved Baggies have graced the Premier League. It's a shame, since their last foray into the top flight was nothing short of memorable.
Well, not exactly.
Flash back to West Brom's 2008-09 EPL campaign. What pops into your mind?
Mueller ... Mueller ... Mueller.
Exactly, not all that much.
If you want to be cruel, about the only noteworthy aspect of West Brom's last time in the top flight was the fact the club didn't even bother to sign a shirt sponsor.
Rest assured, West Brom's shirts will be adorned with the logo for Homeserve, which according to my 20-second research is some sort of insurance company for maintenance work -- something every viewer of the Premiership clearly needs on a daily basis.
So yeah, they've got that going for them, which is nice.
The thing is, nothing quite says English soccer better than name itself: West Bromwich Albion.
Can't you taste the blood pudding oozing out of it's casing whilst reading it? The team is nicknamed the Baggies for crying out loud and anyone and, remarkably, few people still alive exactly know its origin.
There is an anachronistic quality about West Brom as a whole. As the Premier League looks globally to assert its sporting dominance and rake in as much money as possible -- by any means necessary -- the West Midlands club continues looking inward. The whole lack of a shirt sponsor seemed to emphasis this point.
As easy as it is to poke fun at the quaintness that hovers over West Brom like an industrial-era cloud of soot from our comfy trans-Atlantic perch, yet the club's approach is actually somewhat admirable. At its roots soccer is a local, parochial game. The fact West Brom continues to look to the Midlands, instead of the Middle East isn't necessarily such a bad thing.
I know that if I resided in England, my prickly, cynical personality would probably lead me to hate the Premier League and it's hell-bent quest to dominate the world. I'd probably rail against Richard Scudamore and how he's allowed the chase of money to move the game away from its roots, to the detriment of the ticket-buying, working class fan -- the backbone of the game in its infancy in the late 1800s to today.
Modern day Premier League fans want big-name signing after big-name signing. It seems the bulk of the supporters and owners/chairmen/board of directors of big clubs would like their favorite team to be an Anglican version of the Real Madrid Galaticos and everybody else can go to hell. The collectivist, NFL mindset that pervaded the 1960s, where television revenue was shared equally, ensuring a high tide would raise all boats simply doesn't exist in England, or European soccer. It's a cutthroat business to the core.
In light of this, West Brom appears to be quite content to be the only "yo-yo/elevator" club in England. Since the turn of the century the Baggies have won the Second Division/League Championship once and placed second three times. That's a lot of back-and-forth, bouncing around.
The club, though, knows what it is. Life in the Premier League, or even an extended stay won't result in West Brom's navy-and-white striped shirts being spotted on the streets corners from Toronto to Tokyo. Even consecutive runs in the Champions League or a transcendent player might not push West Brom to those heights. The club, led by chairman Jeremy Peace, wisely hasn't overstepped its means in an attempt to become a "global brand."
In turn, they haven't wasted tons of money bringing in high priced transfers, which would jeopardize the club's bottom line.
Instead, West Brom seems happy to give it's fans Premier League football every other, or every couple of years. Play a somewhat attractive level of ball and entertain the 20,000+ loyal supporters that fill the Hawthorns each week. It's part of the reason it's been able to assemble a solid, respectable team that on the glided-edge of financial apocalypse, like a Portsmouth or numerous other lower-league clubs.
Is this current roster assembled by Italian coach Roberto Di Matteo going to set the world on fire? Most likely not. The biggest off-season signings are ex-Blackburn midfielder Steven Reid and Spanish defender Pablo. You know, moves that barely set off a ripple outside of central England.
As it stands the only iron West Brom appears to have in the fires is a move for ex-Manchester United flop Eric Djemba-Djemba, which, well, is hard to defend logically.
Across this board this team is fine in the Championship, but limited on the Premier League level. Look at Czech striker Roman Bednář is your typical player who can rip it up in the Championship, but become exposed by Premier League defenders. Bednář scored six in West Brom's last Prem appearance, a figured that jumped to 11 in the Championship last year. Same thing with Northern Irishman Chris Brunt, who led the team with eight league goals in 2008, then had 13 last season in the Championship.
If there's a bright spot it's 23-year-old Graham Dorrans, who was considered among the top five players in the Championship last season, by nearly all accounts. I won't pretend to tell you I know anything about him aside from what's been written. The transition from Championship to Premier League isn't easy for players, it's like television actors trying to become big time Hollywood movie stars. Sure it happens, but more often than not it doesn't.
It's at least encouraging West Brom was able to fend off interest from other clubs and keep the young Scot for the next four years. If West Brom had lost him along with Slovenia captain Robert Koren(*), who was released, the midfield would be a total disaster.
(*) Perhaps Di Matteo has a no jazz hands allowed policy? Hard to fathom why they wouldn't want to keep a player of his quality, even if they had to give him a raise.
Something struck me a few years ago while reading "FourFourTwo." Every month they do a segment interviewing a celeb about their favorite club. Many times it rings hollow and you can tell the photo is taken with a scarf freshly out of its plastic wrap. In this particular issue English comedian Frank Skinner -- one of the writers of "Three Lions" -- was interviewed about his love for West Brom. At the end, instead of an obligatory plug for an upcoming project or something, Skinner's tag basically said he was doing it to do it and said that tickets were on sale for the next West Brom home match.
Are we going to roll our eyes come a Saturday morning in October when West Brom is featured on Fox Soccer Channel's 10 a.m. match? Probably.
Is West Brom going to mind? Probably not.
And a team that knows it's role and its comfortable in its own skin? That's quite okay in today's game.
Last word -- Hard to do anything other than pencil in West Brom for 19th. Unless the club gets off to a quick start before Christmas, expect the Baggies fighting for their lives the rest of the way. Remember, too, West Brom starts with three of its first four matches against Chelsea, Liverpool and Tottenham. Good luck.
Labels: English Premier League, EPL, epl 2010 previews, Soccer
Couple things to set the table as we change gears here toward the 2010-11 Premier League season.
* Starting Monday, I'm planning to write/run team-by-team essay type previews for the Premier League clubs. This will culminate with some season predictions and such on Aug. 13. We'll see how logistically possible that is.
Fortunately, some go-to readers are contributing for some of the clubs.
Face it, what's better than reading 600+ words on Sunderland's outlook on a hot and humid summer day?
If you fancy yourself a writer and or would like to contribute, get at me through Twitter or email. Can't guarantee anything, though. Bear in mind Fulham, Liverpool, Chelsea and Tottenham have already been claimed.
These won't be you're standard, boring "who's in", "who's out" type write-ups either. My hope is they'll be unique takes that you'll enjoy reading and won't find elsewhere on the Inter-webs.
First up will be West Brom.
* T.O.P. Fantasy is back. If you were in the league last year and already signed up for a team, you should be golden. If not, follow this link and use the code: 409759-102569.
There will be a prize this year, probably the jersey of the club of your choosing. The only catch, you have to be in the league all year. I'll be taking note at the start in Week 1, since I don't want some team jumping in at the end or something fishy like that. If you plan on playing, I'd suggest posting a comment with the name of your team, it may help me get in contact with you.
Good luck.
* Lastly, I'll also have a big, MLS piece coming next week in time for the All Star Game. Lot of different thoughts and suggestions.
Enjoy the miscellaneous, meaningless club friendlies being played at a city near you.
* Starting Monday, I'm planning to write/run team-by-team essay type previews for the Premier League clubs. This will culminate with some season predictions and such on Aug. 13. We'll see how logistically possible that is.
Fortunately, some go-to readers are contributing for some of the clubs.
Face it, what's better than reading 600+ words on Sunderland's outlook on a hot and humid summer day?
If you fancy yourself a writer and or would like to contribute, get at me through Twitter or email. Can't guarantee anything, though. Bear in mind Fulham, Liverpool, Chelsea and Tottenham have already been claimed.
These won't be you're standard, boring "who's in", "who's out" type write-ups either. My hope is they'll be unique takes that you'll enjoy reading and won't find elsewhere on the Inter-webs.
First up will be West Brom.
* T.O.P. Fantasy is back. If you were in the league last year and already signed up for a team, you should be golden. If not, follow this link and use the code: 409759-102569.
There will be a prize this year, probably the jersey of the club of your choosing. The only catch, you have to be in the league all year. I'll be taking note at the start in Week 1, since I don't want some team jumping in at the end or something fishy like that. If you plan on playing, I'd suggest posting a comment with the name of your team, it may help me get in contact with you.
Good luck.
* Lastly, I'll also have a big, MLS piece coming next week in time for the All Star Game. Lot of different thoughts and suggestions.
Enjoy the miscellaneous, meaningless club friendlies being played at a city near you.
Labels: English Premier League, EPL, Soccer
"Boring, boring Arsenal." -- an old, semi-derisive chant mocking Arsenal's mastery of the 1-0 win.
Read that quote, file it away into the recesses of your mind and by the end of this (experimental) essay it should make a boatload more sense ... and even have a soccer point or two tossed in for good measure, that or maybe it's 20-straight days of 90-degree heat have finally melted every synapse in my cranium.
You, the reader, will ultimately be the judge.
* * *
Ah the summer cineplex, if there's a better slice of America at the moment I'd like to see it ... don't be a wiseguy and say the Gathering of the Juggalos, either.
What better way to spend your hard earned money than on our dearly beloved Hollywood stars? And how about the communal guffaws we get during the hilarity of the latest Zach Galifianakis vehicle.
Wait, what's that you buzzing you hear in your ears? The sarcasm police sirens? Good, the sarcasm in the previous paragraph was dripping about as thickly as the slowly congealing buttery substitute atop movie theater popcorn.
Long-time readers here know my recent aversion toward watching movies.
In a nutshell, with the advent of Netflix, Hulu, big screen televisions, etc. it's simply a better value to watch a flick at home. Even then, my mind tends to get bored by most movies, so with the wealth of quality television on DVD I'd rather, say, watch back-to-back "Mad Men" episodes than your typical Hollywood cinema fare.
But that's just me. Admittedly this is an odd position to take and a difficult one to articulate. Bear in mind, the last movie I saw that I enjoyed was a Comedy Central broadcast of "Hot Rod" and lately I've been unable to avoid HBO re-airing "Red Dawn," so take my opinion with the smallest grain of salt possible, in fact take it was an atom of sodium.
The thing is, if I'm going to devote 90+ minutes to something it better be good, or present a world that gets my imagination working. As it stands, CGI special effects have left me totally burnt out, making most big screen action/adventure flicks an exercise in tedium. 3D? Pass.
My biggest issue is there's nothing that bothers me more than "chase" elements of movies. They leave me looking at my watch, since 99 percent of the time we already know the protagonist is going to avoid the bevy of bullets, bad guys and other pratfalls and walk off into the sunset happy.
Maybe what it all boils down to, is with a good serialized television show, at at the end of 44 minutes, the story has moved forward. When I watch a movie, half the time I just want it to end.(*) Many times, too, watching a world created in a film part of me wishes that it was the setting for a show, yet budgetary restrictions make that impossible.
(*) Cue the Jerry Seinfeld, "We alllll get it" voice. Actually the only joys of actually going to the movies is making sarcastic, obvious statements during the trailers.
All that said, Tuesday night I found myself in the movie theater watching "Inception."
You see, after a day of moving furniture across four different venues for my parents in a U-Haul truck when my brother suggested we go see "Inception" the prospects of a comfy seat and air conditioning were too good to pass up. It didn't hurt, either, that nearly anyone with a forum has been raving -- 9.3 on Imdb.com, let's settle down folks -- about the Christopher Nolan film(*). My friend Mike, who's opinion hold's more water with me than Roger Ebert or Peter Travers, told me on no short terms: I have to go see it.
(*) For what it's worth, I'm like one of seven people on Earth who thought "The Dark Knight" was nothing spectacular. Also, thought "The Prestige" was tedious.
Well, I did.
My one word review: Okay.
"Inception" was a fine, well-acted, technically proficient, aesthetically pleasing summer blockbuster with a couple good action set pieces and a little deeper plot points than your typical jive-talking/fighting robot fare. The idea of alternate reality has become a fairly common Sci-Fi trope in recent years and watching "Inception" I couldn't help but think of two other movies, the low-fi time travel flick "Primer" and the Charlie Kaufman weird-fest, "Synecdoche, New York."
For me, it fell into my usual trap. No matter what happened, I knew that with the subject matter and the way it was getting buzzed up, that there was going to be some kind of "twist" involved. The concept of shared dreaming(*), or "dream police" was neat and original, but I'd have liked to see a different story than the two main plots, which didn't engage me all that much. To borrow a line from Roman on the dearly-departed, "Party Down", "hard sci-fi" this was not.
(*) I'm sure this point has been made, but was "Inception" all that different than "Total Recall", well, except Ellen Paige didn't sport a three-breast prosthetic, now did she?
So yeah, "Inception" fit the bill for a summer flick.
In fact it left me feeling sort of the same way I did in the immediate wake of the 2010 World Cup final when Spain beat Holland 1-0 in Soccer City, South Africa. Sort of shrugging my shoulders, accepting it for what it is was.
The aftermath of the final left many wanting to sing the praises of Spain for winning, "the right way"(*), while vilifying the Dutch for overtly physical tactics, which kept them in the match until Andres Iniesta's 116th minute winner.
(*) Having just finished Jonathan Wilson's "Inverting the Pyramid" -- the best soccer book I've ever read -- my conclusion, there isn't a "right way" to play. You can scrap by to get results by any means necessary like the Estudiantes teams of Carlos Bilardo or the Helanio Herrera Inter Milan sides, or you can soar like Brazil of 1970. With the flexibility of the XI men on a soccer field, there are infinite ways to play the game, rightly or wrongly to get results. It's a matter of how you apply those tactics to the given situation.
What strikes me as odd, from a sporting standpoint, is how we look at important soccer matches or teams and apply an aesthetic quality to them, much like we do a movie. A common refrain after a match is, "so what did you think?" as if it's an open-ended question, which the scoreboard itself can't answer.
The result, while important, is to some not as important as how that result was achieved. Perhaps that's part of the fun, yet you'd never debate the technical merits of a World Series or Super Bowl, now would you? American team sports are nine times out of 10 explorations in black-and-white, while soccer thrives all these years later in shades of gray.
In America the result seems to trump all else, which might help to explain why mindless Michael Bay movies bank hundreds of millions of dollars, while a 90-minute soccer game is considered too boring. Granted, this is a story for another day.
Countless fans around the globe want soccer to be 11 v. 11 art on grass.(*) This, however, might be a dying notion, especially over the last 20 years with advancements in training, scouting and the overall homogenization of playing styles.
(*) This is part of the reason I tend to think the would-be explosion of statistical analytics aren't as readily applicable to soccer as they are to baseball, the NBA or even the NFL.
Still, it explains why Arsenal were chided, back in the day, for strings of uninspiring 1-0 victories. Or why we still celebrate the Dutch team from the 1970s, despite the fact they never won anything, losing in consecutive World Cup finals.
We want our soccer teams to play with style and panache, to lift spirits and inspire the imagination, even if it's just one fleeting moment of brilliance ... getting results in the process, lest we forget. That part of why we sometimes called it the "beautiful game."
Only in soccer do the aesthetics of victory seem to count and lead toward the overall romanticism of the sport. We ask ourselves after a match if the right team "deserved" to win.
So? Is the conclusion of the semi-rambling mid-summer posting that "Inception" was the Spain or summer blockbusters, or that Spain was the "Inception" of World Cup winners? That would be one way to look at it. Again, if soccer is indeed art, there isn't a right or wrong way to interpret it.
Back to my original screed against watching movies. The World Cup is a lot like a movie. It's relatively short, we know it's going to end in a reasonable amount of time, and we draw a lot of ideas from it. The level of play on the field might not be the greatest, but its at least dramatic.
Writing this only 10 days after the final, though, and the World Cup feels like old news. We're rapidly bearing down on the club season, which to complete my analogy is a lot more like watching a television series. There's time to develop story arcs, characters, etc., instead of cramming major action set pieces like most summer movies.
Allow this to be that transition into full club season mode, which is fitting since "Mad Men" season four returns to the air this Sunday.
And hopefully some of this made a least some sense. This idea, after all, did come to me in a dream.
Read that quote, file it away into the recesses of your mind and by the end of this (experimental) essay it should make a boatload more sense ... and even have a soccer point or two tossed in for good measure, that or maybe it's 20-straight days of 90-degree heat have finally melted every synapse in my cranium.
You, the reader, will ultimately be the judge.
Ah the summer cineplex, if there's a better slice of America at the moment I'd like to see it ... don't be a wiseguy and say the Gathering of the Juggalos, either.
What better way to spend your hard earned money than on our dearly beloved Hollywood stars? And how about the communal guffaws we get during the hilarity of the latest Zach Galifianakis vehicle.
Wait, what's that you buzzing you hear in your ears? The sarcasm police sirens? Good, the sarcasm in the previous paragraph was dripping about as thickly as the slowly congealing buttery substitute atop movie theater popcorn.
Long-time readers here know my recent aversion toward watching movies.
In a nutshell, with the advent of Netflix, Hulu, big screen televisions, etc. it's simply a better value to watch a flick at home. Even then, my mind tends to get bored by most movies, so with the wealth of quality television on DVD I'd rather, say, watch back-to-back "Mad Men" episodes than your typical Hollywood cinema fare.
But that's just me. Admittedly this is an odd position to take and a difficult one to articulate. Bear in mind, the last movie I saw that I enjoyed was a Comedy Central broadcast of "Hot Rod" and lately I've been unable to avoid HBO re-airing "Red Dawn," so take my opinion with the smallest grain of salt possible, in fact take it was an atom of sodium.
The thing is, if I'm going to devote 90+ minutes to something it better be good, or present a world that gets my imagination working. As it stands, CGI special effects have left me totally burnt out, making most big screen action/adventure flicks an exercise in tedium. 3D? Pass.
My biggest issue is there's nothing that bothers me more than "chase" elements of movies. They leave me looking at my watch, since 99 percent of the time we already know the protagonist is going to avoid the bevy of bullets, bad guys and other pratfalls and walk off into the sunset happy.
Maybe what it all boils down to, is with a good serialized television show, at at the end of 44 minutes, the story has moved forward. When I watch a movie, half the time I just want it to end.(*) Many times, too, watching a world created in a film part of me wishes that it was the setting for a show, yet budgetary restrictions make that impossible.
(*) Cue the Jerry Seinfeld, "We alllll get it" voice. Actually the only joys of actually going to the movies is making sarcastic, obvious statements during the trailers.
All that said, Tuesday night I found myself in the movie theater watching "Inception."
You see, after a day of moving furniture across four different venues for my parents in a U-Haul truck when my brother suggested we go see "Inception" the prospects of a comfy seat and air conditioning were too good to pass up. It didn't hurt, either, that nearly anyone with a forum has been raving -- 9.3 on Imdb.com, let's settle down folks -- about the Christopher Nolan film(*). My friend Mike, who's opinion hold's more water with me than Roger Ebert or Peter Travers, told me on no short terms: I have to go see it.
(*) For what it's worth, I'm like one of seven people on Earth who thought "The Dark Knight" was nothing spectacular. Also, thought "The Prestige" was tedious.
Well, I did.
My one word review: Okay.
"Inception" was a fine, well-acted, technically proficient, aesthetically pleasing summer blockbuster with a couple good action set pieces and a little deeper plot points than your typical jive-talking/fighting robot fare. The idea of alternate reality has become a fairly common Sci-Fi trope in recent years and watching "Inception" I couldn't help but think of two other movies, the low-fi time travel flick "Primer" and the Charlie Kaufman weird-fest, "Synecdoche, New York."
For me, it fell into my usual trap. No matter what happened, I knew that with the subject matter and the way it was getting buzzed up, that there was going to be some kind of "twist" involved. The concept of shared dreaming(*), or "dream police" was neat and original, but I'd have liked to see a different story than the two main plots, which didn't engage me all that much. To borrow a line from Roman on the dearly-departed, "Party Down", "hard sci-fi" this was not.
(*) I'm sure this point has been made, but was "Inception" all that different than "Total Recall", well, except Ellen Paige didn't sport a three-breast prosthetic, now did she?
So yeah, "Inception" fit the bill for a summer flick.
In fact it left me feeling sort of the same way I did in the immediate wake of the 2010 World Cup final when Spain beat Holland 1-0 in Soccer City, South Africa. Sort of shrugging my shoulders, accepting it for what it is was.
The aftermath of the final left many wanting to sing the praises of Spain for winning, "the right way"(*), while vilifying the Dutch for overtly physical tactics, which kept them in the match until Andres Iniesta's 116th minute winner.
(*) Having just finished Jonathan Wilson's "Inverting the Pyramid" -- the best soccer book I've ever read -- my conclusion, there isn't a "right way" to play. You can scrap by to get results by any means necessary like the Estudiantes teams of Carlos Bilardo or the Helanio Herrera Inter Milan sides, or you can soar like Brazil of 1970. With the flexibility of the XI men on a soccer field, there are infinite ways to play the game, rightly or wrongly to get results. It's a matter of how you apply those tactics to the given situation.
What strikes me as odd, from a sporting standpoint, is how we look at important soccer matches or teams and apply an aesthetic quality to them, much like we do a movie. A common refrain after a match is, "so what did you think?" as if it's an open-ended question, which the scoreboard itself can't answer.
The result, while important, is to some not as important as how that result was achieved. Perhaps that's part of the fun, yet you'd never debate the technical merits of a World Series or Super Bowl, now would you? American team sports are nine times out of 10 explorations in black-and-white, while soccer thrives all these years later in shades of gray.
In America the result seems to trump all else, which might help to explain why mindless Michael Bay movies bank hundreds of millions of dollars, while a 90-minute soccer game is considered too boring. Granted, this is a story for another day.
Countless fans around the globe want soccer to be 11 v. 11 art on grass.(*) This, however, might be a dying notion, especially over the last 20 years with advancements in training, scouting and the overall homogenization of playing styles.
(*) This is part of the reason I tend to think the would-be explosion of statistical analytics aren't as readily applicable to soccer as they are to baseball, the NBA or even the NFL.
Still, it explains why Arsenal were chided, back in the day, for strings of uninspiring 1-0 victories. Or why we still celebrate the Dutch team from the 1970s, despite the fact they never won anything, losing in consecutive World Cup finals.
We want our soccer teams to play with style and panache, to lift spirits and inspire the imagination, even if it's just one fleeting moment of brilliance ... getting results in the process, lest we forget. That part of why we sometimes called it the "beautiful game."
Only in soccer do the aesthetics of victory seem to count and lead toward the overall romanticism of the sport. We ask ourselves after a match if the right team "deserved" to win.
So? Is the conclusion of the semi-rambling mid-summer posting that "Inception" was the Spain or summer blockbusters, or that Spain was the "Inception" of World Cup winners? That would be one way to look at it. Again, if soccer is indeed art, there isn't a right or wrong way to interpret it.
Back to my original screed against watching movies. The World Cup is a lot like a movie. It's relatively short, we know it's going to end in a reasonable amount of time, and we draw a lot of ideas from it. The level of play on the field might not be the greatest, but its at least dramatic.
Writing this only 10 days after the final, though, and the World Cup feels like old news. We're rapidly bearing down on the club season, which to complete my analogy is a lot more like watching a television series. There's time to develop story arcs, characters, etc., instead of cramming major action set pieces like most summer movies.
Allow this to be that transition into full club season mode, which is fitting since "Mad Men" season four returns to the air this Sunday.
And hopefully some of this made a least some sense. This idea, after all, did come to me in a dream.
Labels: 2010 world cup, Arsenal, movies., Soccer, Spain, the beautiful game
Battling a dreaded summer cold -- blame it on the weather and excessive exposure to air conditioning.
A couple drips and drabs before the weekend to whet your appetite.
* Henry to the Red Bulls -- Forget the fact that New Yorkers may never fully support a team branded after a metallic-tasting energy drink. Forget the name David Beckham, too. Forget the debacle that was the French National Team down in South Africa. Forget the handball against Ireland -- if you can.
Thierry Henry coming to the New York Red Bulls is a big deal.
It's surprising how many people are underselling the move. Or they're focusing on the fact he's 32 years old.
In New York, it certainly didn't help that the Red Bulls announced the move in the wake of George Steinbrenner's death on a day -- the MLB All Star break -- which otherwise would have had zero sports news.
Don't forget. This is Thierry Henry.
Thierry F'n Henry.
Arguably the best player, or certainly the best scorer, in the Premier League era in England.
And he's coming to the States before his bones are fully calcified.
Your heart would have to be blacker than the stripes on Newcastle United's jersey not to be excited by this development. Is it too bad we as Americans didn't get to see Henry come to a "city near you" in his prime? Sure. Is it worth scoffing that we're getting the 32, going on 33-year-old version? No.
It's Red Bull ponying up the money. It's their financial risk. If he can pump up interest in the New York market, good for Red Bull. Conversely, if he flops, its on them, not the league.
You have to at least applaud Red Bull for dreaming big and wanting to create a club to be reckoned with. They've built the arena, signed a star, now they must wait and see if Gotham footie fans will come.
Ask yourself this, would you rather pay money to see Henry or generic player X? Aren't you a little more likely to give an MLS game featuring New York a second look if Henry is out there?
So long as Henry can stay healthy -- probably the biggest if in the equation -- it's a true boon to MLS. Pre-Beckham could we have even dreamed of a player of Henry's caliber coming to the league?
Simply stunned this move has, if anything, been undersold.
* Donovan, Donovan -- MLS, at least officially, says it won't sell Landon Donovan. Can't blame them. Why sell off your brightest, most marketable star? The rare American player the sporting public will pay money to watch play, or at least could pick out of a lineup.
The cards are probably in Donovan's hands, though. Does he want to go? Would he make it an issue? Couldn't he still, conceivably, go on loan from January to March again?
Everton is clearly a fit for Donovan, but is David Moyes going to drop $15 million (guessing) on him? Chelsea and Manchester City have both been linked to Donovan and have the money, but he'd be a fringe player at either club.
Better yet, what does Donovan have to gain going abroad at this point? The next World Cup isn't for four years. He already proved any naysayers wrong with his joint efforts at Everton and then at the World Cup. Why sully that memory?
Don't forget, either, he's try to reconcile with his wife. It's a lot easier to do that in sunny SoCal than dreary Northwest England.
If Donovan, at the peak of his career and off-field marketability, decides that yes, I do indeed want to play in MLS it would be the best boost to the league's credibility, yet. It's one thing to import a star like Henry, but homegrown American icons don't exactly grow on trees.
Maybe I'm in the minority, but if Donovan says the Galaxy is where he wants to be, that's as good an endorsement of MLS yet. I try my best when it's on TV to watch MLS. It's not always easy(*), but a truly great player like Donovan at least makes it a lot easier to watch, since he makes all his teammates that much better. It'd be nice if every team in the league had their own version of Donovan.
(*) My No. 1 issue with MLS remains there's not enough at stake in the majority of matches, though that's improving.
MLS is in a tough spot. It wants to increase the credibility of the league, yet the best American players want to prove their mettle across the pond, conceivably against the world's best. Above all, I think, Americans soccer fans want to root for American stars.
The world's foremost soccer expert, Bill Simmons, groused about MLS being a "Double A" league, and he would boycott until it let Donovan go to Everton. It's not an unrealistic viewpoint, one probably held by many.
Somehow MLS needs to find the balance were it can provide enough of a competition/financial incentive for its brightest stars to eschew the chance European glory, which in turn would make casual fans less skeptical about the league itself.
It's one thing when a guys like Clint Dempsey or Tim Howard leave the league for places like Fulham or Manchester United. It's entirely something else when you see a Michael Parkhurst jump to Denmark's Nordsjælland. On the flip side we've seen players go to Europe like Bobby Convey and Clint Mathis, as examples, return to MLS as shells of their former selves.
MLS, again, is in a weird spot. Ask 10 American soccer fans about MLS and you'll get 10 different answers. Don't forget, we're watching a league grow from its infancy, that not only needs to compete with other domestic sports leagues, but the soccer leagues across the globe. Sometimes I wonder if we're too hard on it?
In the end, would I be happy to see Donovan playing Saturday mornings against some of the world's best? Sure.
Long term, Donovan staying with the Galaxy does a lot more to help U.S. soccer and MLS grow into one of those league's we wish it already was.
Of course, if those whispers about Ronaldinho landing with the Galaxy are true, Donvoan is probably out the door quicker than you can say Goldenballs.
* Meanwhile, All Quiet on the European Front -- Strange, how in the wake of the World Cup there hasn't been a flurry of transfer activity in Europe. Carlos Bocangera moving from Rennes to Saint-Etienne, doesn't quite count.
Are we waiting on the first big domino to drop, i.e. what happens with Fernando Torres, before a deluge of activity?
As it stands, all these rumors -- particularly the Bob Bradley(*) to Fulham ones and the Cesc to Barca -- are simply making my head spin, summer cold or not.
(*) Quick take, it would be a big step forward for American coaches for a Yank to get handed the reigns of a Premier League club. Long-term that's a far more interesting set of arguments/questions going forward than Donovan getting sold to an English club. ... If the USSF are indeed considering extending Bradley's contract, it means they don't have any viable candidates to replace him.
* Memory Lane -- Forget I DVRed the US/Mexico Round of 16 game from the 2002 World Cup a couple days ago. Finally rewatched it.
Good times, especially Jack Edwards, "Scccoooorreeee" goal call, coupled with his amazing, "Land of the Free, home of the brave" declaration.
Couple quickee retrospective thoughts: a) 2002 team probably deeper and better than 2010 squad in South Africa. Bruce Arena had a lot more options across the field, especially since Tony Sanneh played out of his mind for two weeks. b) all the nice-ish things I tweeted about Mexico, I take them back, El Tri was a disgrace in South Korea that day. Even Nigel de Jong would've blushed at some of the kung-fu kicks attempted. c) Donovan used to be an excellent header of the ball, must've been the hair. d) Forgot Arena dropped John O'Brien to left back for that match. The guy was as skilled as we've ever seen from a Yank. Too bad he had the same bone composition as Arjen Robben. e) Forgot, too, how effective Eddie Lewis was at crossing the ball from the left side. f) ESPN actually sent Lisa Salters to the match and interviewed Arena on the field. g) Carlos Llamosa, legend.
Have a nice weekend, enjoy Spurs/Earthquakes Saturday afternoon on ESPN2.
Oh one last thing, thanks for the unsolicited World Cup thank you emails I received during the week. Truly mean a lot, even for a sarcastic jerk like me.
A couple drips and drabs before the weekend to whet your appetite.
* Henry to the Red Bulls -- Forget the fact that New Yorkers may never fully support a team branded after a metallic-tasting energy drink. Forget the name David Beckham, too. Forget the debacle that was the French National Team down in South Africa. Forget the handball against Ireland -- if you can.
Thierry Henry coming to the New York Red Bulls is a big deal.
It's surprising how many people are underselling the move. Or they're focusing on the fact he's 32 years old.
In New York, it certainly didn't help that the Red Bulls announced the move in the wake of George Steinbrenner's death on a day -- the MLB All Star break -- which otherwise would have had zero sports news.
Don't forget. This is Thierry Henry.
Thierry F'n Henry.
Arguably the best player, or certainly the best scorer, in the Premier League era in England.
And he's coming to the States before his bones are fully calcified.
Your heart would have to be blacker than the stripes on Newcastle United's jersey not to be excited by this development. Is it too bad we as Americans didn't get to see Henry come to a "city near you" in his prime? Sure. Is it worth scoffing that we're getting the 32, going on 33-year-old version? No.
It's Red Bull ponying up the money. It's their financial risk. If he can pump up interest in the New York market, good for Red Bull. Conversely, if he flops, its on them, not the league.
You have to at least applaud Red Bull for dreaming big and wanting to create a club to be reckoned with. They've built the arena, signed a star, now they must wait and see if Gotham footie fans will come.
Ask yourself this, would you rather pay money to see Henry or generic player X? Aren't you a little more likely to give an MLS game featuring New York a second look if Henry is out there?
So long as Henry can stay healthy -- probably the biggest if in the equation -- it's a true boon to MLS. Pre-Beckham could we have even dreamed of a player of Henry's caliber coming to the league?
Simply stunned this move has, if anything, been undersold.
* Donovan, Donovan -- MLS, at least officially, says it won't sell Landon Donovan. Can't blame them. Why sell off your brightest, most marketable star? The rare American player the sporting public will pay money to watch play, or at least could pick out of a lineup.
The cards are probably in Donovan's hands, though. Does he want to go? Would he make it an issue? Couldn't he still, conceivably, go on loan from January to March again?
Everton is clearly a fit for Donovan, but is David Moyes going to drop $15 million (guessing) on him? Chelsea and Manchester City have both been linked to Donovan and have the money, but he'd be a fringe player at either club.
Better yet, what does Donovan have to gain going abroad at this point? The next World Cup isn't for four years. He already proved any naysayers wrong with his joint efforts at Everton and then at the World Cup. Why sully that memory?
Don't forget, either, he's try to reconcile with his wife. It's a lot easier to do that in sunny SoCal than dreary Northwest England.
If Donovan, at the peak of his career and off-field marketability, decides that yes, I do indeed want to play in MLS it would be the best boost to the league's credibility, yet. It's one thing to import a star like Henry, but homegrown American icons don't exactly grow on trees.
Maybe I'm in the minority, but if Donovan says the Galaxy is where he wants to be, that's as good an endorsement of MLS yet. I try my best when it's on TV to watch MLS. It's not always easy(*), but a truly great player like Donovan at least makes it a lot easier to watch, since he makes all his teammates that much better. It'd be nice if every team in the league had their own version of Donovan.
(*) My No. 1 issue with MLS remains there's not enough at stake in the majority of matches, though that's improving.
MLS is in a tough spot. It wants to increase the credibility of the league, yet the best American players want to prove their mettle across the pond, conceivably against the world's best. Above all, I think, Americans soccer fans want to root for American stars.
The world's foremost soccer expert, Bill Simmons, groused about MLS being a "Double A" league, and he would boycott until it let Donovan go to Everton. It's not an unrealistic viewpoint, one probably held by many.
Somehow MLS needs to find the balance were it can provide enough of a competition/financial incentive for its brightest stars to eschew the chance European glory, which in turn would make casual fans less skeptical about the league itself.
It's one thing when a guys like Clint Dempsey or Tim Howard leave the league for places like Fulham or Manchester United. It's entirely something else when you see a Michael Parkhurst jump to Denmark's Nordsjælland. On the flip side we've seen players go to Europe like Bobby Convey and Clint Mathis, as examples, return to MLS as shells of their former selves.
MLS, again, is in a weird spot. Ask 10 American soccer fans about MLS and you'll get 10 different answers. Don't forget, we're watching a league grow from its infancy, that not only needs to compete with other domestic sports leagues, but the soccer leagues across the globe. Sometimes I wonder if we're too hard on it?
In the end, would I be happy to see Donovan playing Saturday mornings against some of the world's best? Sure.
Long term, Donovan staying with the Galaxy does a lot more to help U.S. soccer and MLS grow into one of those league's we wish it already was.
Of course, if those whispers about Ronaldinho landing with the Galaxy are true, Donvoan is probably out the door quicker than you can say Goldenballs.
* Meanwhile, All Quiet on the European Front -- Strange, how in the wake of the World Cup there hasn't been a flurry of transfer activity in Europe. Carlos Bocangera moving from Rennes to Saint-Etienne, doesn't quite count.
Are we waiting on the first big domino to drop, i.e. what happens with Fernando Torres, before a deluge of activity?
As it stands, all these rumors -- particularly the Bob Bradley(*) to Fulham ones and the Cesc to Barca -- are simply making my head spin, summer cold or not.
(*) Quick take, it would be a big step forward for American coaches for a Yank to get handed the reigns of a Premier League club. Long-term that's a far more interesting set of arguments/questions going forward than Donovan getting sold to an English club. ... If the USSF are indeed considering extending Bradley's contract, it means they don't have any viable candidates to replace him.
* Memory Lane -- Forget I DVRed the US/Mexico Round of 16 game from the 2002 World Cup a couple days ago. Finally rewatched it.
Good times, especially Jack Edwards, "Scccoooorreeee" goal call, coupled with his amazing, "Land of the Free, home of the brave" declaration.
Couple quickee retrospective thoughts: a) 2002 team probably deeper and better than 2010 squad in South Africa. Bruce Arena had a lot more options across the field, especially since Tony Sanneh played out of his mind for two weeks. b) all the nice-ish things I tweeted about Mexico, I take them back, El Tri was a disgrace in South Korea that day. Even Nigel de Jong would've blushed at some of the kung-fu kicks attempted. c) Donovan used to be an excellent header of the ball, must've been the hair. d) Forgot Arena dropped John O'Brien to left back for that match. The guy was as skilled as we've ever seen from a Yank. Too bad he had the same bone composition as Arjen Robben. e) Forgot, too, how effective Eddie Lewis was at crossing the ball from the left side. f) ESPN actually sent Lisa Salters to the match and interviewed Arena on the field. g) Carlos Llamosa, legend.
Have a nice weekend, enjoy Spurs/Earthquakes Saturday afternoon on ESPN2.
Oh one last thing, thanks for the unsolicited World Cup thank you emails I received during the week. Truly mean a lot, even for a sarcastic jerk like me.
Labels: bob bradley, EPL, Landon Donovan, Michael Bradley, MLS, Soccer, thierry henry
It's been some time since we've heard anything concrete from USSF President Sunil Gulati about the USMNT coaching job, which still belongs to Bob Bradley and likely will until after that August friendly in New Jersey against Brazil. That is, unless these Fulham rumors prove accurate.
Ex-Chile coach Marcelo Biesla's named was floated a week or two ago, but that's about it. As it stands the only name anyone worth their salt can seem to come up with as the man to lead the U.S. to Brazil in 2014 is eternally optimistic German legend Jürgen Klinsmann. (Apparently everyone is okay with a U.S. National Team coach who speaks with an accent of a rejected Mike Meyers character.)
Obviously Gulati is a smart, shrewd character and at least that's the image he presents outwardly to the public.
Reading between the lines, he wants the Federation to go in a different direction, namely a foreign direction after almost 15 years of Steve Sampson, Bruce Arena and Bradley.
He's probably right, too, it is time for some fresh ideas, a new set of eyes. If Ghana can come within a Luis Suarez handball of the semifinals without its theoretical best player behind unheralded Serb coach Milovan Rajevac, then the U.S. can look outside it's borders for a coach. It's not like the U.S. is Holland, which can reach down to Feyenoord and pluck up Bert van Marwijk to coach the national team. Some day, yes, right now? No.
In light of what transpired in South Africa the last month, here's the first question I'm asking any prospective candidates for the job, because (cue the Peter Falk "Columbo" voice) ... this is the way I sees it:
"You see that 20-year-old kid we started at forward all four matches, Jozy Altidore? You're familiar with him, yes? You've seen his physical gifts on the field, right? ... So what are you plans so his name is on the Golden Boot shortlist for 2014?"
This isn't another lament that 20-year-old Thomas Mueller won the 2010 Golden Boot AND Best Young Player. There's simply no fair way to compare a kid raised in the Bayern Munich system who played in the Champions League final to Altidore, who got stuck at the disaster that was Hull City.
It's infuriating, yes, but sort of a weird statistical quirk or coincidence more than anything.
The fact remains the U.S. has gone two consecutive World Cups without a natural forward/striker scoring a goal, which was specifically cited by Gulati after the loss to Ghana in the Round of 16 as an issue that needs to be discussed.
And as it stands the U.S. forward pool is at kiddie pool depth right now.(*)
(*) No, this is not a Jozy Diver joke or insinuation, swear.
Beside Altidore, the U.S. sent over two middling MLS guys -- Edson Buddle and Robbie Findley -- as well as Herculez Gomez. Not to knock this guys, but even the most ardent MLS lovers would hesitate to call that collect world class -- Altidore included. The U.S. doesn't need to be blessed with overflowing talent like Spain or Argentina, but a nation of 300-plus millions should produce at least more than a half-dozen viable World Cup options.
Yes, the Charlie Davies car crash and resulting injuries (and false hope)compounded matters beyond any coaches control and will remains one of those lamented "what ifs" for years to come.
Still, it is remarkable that the U.S. has produced an assembly line of top class goal keepers, a steady group of defenders, some nice midfielder grinders and some true attacking midfield gems, yet the list of elite level strikers, leaves us all waiting for Godot (or Guffman if you prefer). You'd think, with the emphasis placed on scoring at the youth level, that it would only be a matter of time for U.S. star striker to emerge.
Maybe that's the problem, too. We've been waiting for this player for so long that whenever a player with some talent emerges like, say, Eddie Johnson we're quick to anoint him and then when he doesn't pan out -- for whatever the reasons -- we're upset.
As it is, the standard bearer remains for U.S. strikers is either Eric Wynalda (who's post-career commentary probably overshadows his on-field contributions) or Brian McBride, a blue collar worker who put his body on the line in 90 minute intervals.
Why the U.S. or, specifically Gulati, needs to address this issue sooner rather than later is deciding if Altidore is a building block for 2014. Wouldn't most coaches worth their salt drool at the chance to work with, develop and put a player like Altidore on the field in his starting XI to lead the forward line?
Altidore along with Michael Bradley are probably the two guys from the 2010 roster you can say will be hitting their soccer primes in 2014 without playing with too many "if" scenarios. You can safely pencil them in at forward and midfield and cross your fingers they stay healthy and build around them with aging players like Donovan and Dempsey and some fresh blood at other positions.
Here's my thought on Altidore and why the next U.S. coach needs to have a plan.
There is no debating Altidore has the skills and raw physicality to perhaps blossom into an elite level striker. Sure he goes to ground just a little too much, but we've seen him overwhelm defenders at all levels and at least show some kind of knack for scoring, at least vs. CONCACAF opposition. It's too early to give up on him, so we'll have to spend the next four years to see if Altidore can make that next step, the leap from promising prospect to an actual, living, breathing elite goal-scorer.(*)
(*) Judging by his endorsements, at least, adidas already thinks he has.
The question though is this, can Altidore thrive as a lone forward in the international game?
Why do I mention this?
For whatever it's worth from a tactical standpoint, of the eight teams that made the 2010 quarterfinals, only two -- Uruguay and Argentina -- played what you'd count as a traditional two-forward system. Maybe come 2014 the now-preferred 4-2-3-1 will be out the door with a new flavor of the month, but I'm not so sure.
Even clubs seem less inclined to the tradition 4-4-2 forward tag teams of yore.
It's probably unfair to cite the formations or playing style of Spain, which is blessed with some much talent across the field it could win the World Cup with Fernando Torres a shadow of himself. A better comparison is Germany, which has plenty of strikers, yet stuck to Miroslav Klose (and Cacau in the third place match) isolated alone up top.
Teams at all levels seem less inclined to pair to same-minded players, when they can field more versatile, slippery attackers in wider positions or in secondary striking roles, playing off a target man.
At his best, Altidore and Davies formed that traditional tag-team of speed and power. Even at Hull City, Altidore seemed a little better when he played in a slightly withdrawn position behind a big target like Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink. Don't forget, too, in his brief time in MLS Altidore had the luxury of playing beside Juan Pablo Angel.
So perhaps as Altidore matures -- where he winds up this summer remains a mystery, with Villareal holding all the cards -- and by the time he's 24 he's more capable of playing that now in-favor single striker, both winning balls and scoring goals.
Maybe the U.S. remains committed to the 4-4-2 backbone. Maybe Davies, miraculously recovers from his long list of injuries, and is the player we saw tear it up in 2009.
Maybe Altidore finds the right club home, gets the playing time he needs and emerges as the long ago promised U.S. soccer striking star.
Perhaps a player, who like Altidore was 16 at the end of the previous World Cup, comes from the fringes and enters the fray as the next U.S. soccer messiah.
It's a lot of what ifs and conjecture. Without access to a cache of plutonium and a tricked out Delorean, we simply will not know how the next four years pan out.
The next coach of the USMNT, does however, need a plan for an issue like this, who sees the tactical changes in the ever-evolving game of soccer. A coach who can take his best players and meld them with a system.
And, above all, it's never too early to start planning and building for Brazil.
Ex-Chile coach Marcelo Biesla's named was floated a week or two ago, but that's about it. As it stands the only name anyone worth their salt can seem to come up with as the man to lead the U.S. to Brazil in 2014 is eternally optimistic German legend Jürgen Klinsmann. (Apparently everyone is okay with a U.S. National Team coach who speaks with an accent of a rejected Mike Meyers character.)
Obviously Gulati is a smart, shrewd character and at least that's the image he presents outwardly to the public.
Reading between the lines, he wants the Federation to go in a different direction, namely a foreign direction after almost 15 years of Steve Sampson, Bruce Arena and Bradley.
He's probably right, too, it is time for some fresh ideas, a new set of eyes. If Ghana can come within a Luis Suarez handball of the semifinals without its theoretical best player behind unheralded Serb coach Milovan Rajevac, then the U.S. can look outside it's borders for a coach. It's not like the U.S. is Holland, which can reach down to Feyenoord and pluck up Bert van Marwijk to coach the national team. Some day, yes, right now? No.
In light of what transpired in South Africa the last month, here's the first question I'm asking any prospective candidates for the job, because (cue the Peter Falk "Columbo" voice) ... this is the way I sees it:
"You see that 20-year-old kid we started at forward all four matches, Jozy Altidore? You're familiar with him, yes? You've seen his physical gifts on the field, right? ... So what are you plans so his name is on the Golden Boot shortlist for 2014?"
This isn't another lament that 20-year-old Thomas Mueller won the 2010 Golden Boot AND Best Young Player. There's simply no fair way to compare a kid raised in the Bayern Munich system who played in the Champions League final to Altidore, who got stuck at the disaster that was Hull City.
It's infuriating, yes, but sort of a weird statistical quirk or coincidence more than anything.
The fact remains the U.S. has gone two consecutive World Cups without a natural forward/striker scoring a goal, which was specifically cited by Gulati after the loss to Ghana in the Round of 16 as an issue that needs to be discussed.
And as it stands the U.S. forward pool is at kiddie pool depth right now.(*)
(*) No, this is not a Jozy Diver joke or insinuation, swear.
Beside Altidore, the U.S. sent over two middling MLS guys -- Edson Buddle and Robbie Findley -- as well as Herculez Gomez. Not to knock this guys, but even the most ardent MLS lovers would hesitate to call that collect world class -- Altidore included. The U.S. doesn't need to be blessed with overflowing talent like Spain or Argentina, but a nation of 300-plus millions should produce at least more than a half-dozen viable World Cup options.
Yes, the Charlie Davies car crash and resulting injuries (and false hope)compounded matters beyond any coaches control and will remains one of those lamented "what ifs" for years to come.
Still, it is remarkable that the U.S. has produced an assembly line of top class goal keepers, a steady group of defenders, some nice midfielder grinders and some true attacking midfield gems, yet the list of elite level strikers, leaves us all waiting for Godot (or Guffman if you prefer). You'd think, with the emphasis placed on scoring at the youth level, that it would only be a matter of time for U.S. star striker to emerge.
Maybe that's the problem, too. We've been waiting for this player for so long that whenever a player with some talent emerges like, say, Eddie Johnson we're quick to anoint him and then when he doesn't pan out -- for whatever the reasons -- we're upset.
As it is, the standard bearer remains for U.S. strikers is either Eric Wynalda (who's post-career commentary probably overshadows his on-field contributions) or Brian McBride, a blue collar worker who put his body on the line in 90 minute intervals.
Why the U.S. or, specifically Gulati, needs to address this issue sooner rather than later is deciding if Altidore is a building block for 2014. Wouldn't most coaches worth their salt drool at the chance to work with, develop and put a player like Altidore on the field in his starting XI to lead the forward line?
Altidore along with Michael Bradley are probably the two guys from the 2010 roster you can say will be hitting their soccer primes in 2014 without playing with too many "if" scenarios. You can safely pencil them in at forward and midfield and cross your fingers they stay healthy and build around them with aging players like Donovan and Dempsey and some fresh blood at other positions.
Here's my thought on Altidore and why the next U.S. coach needs to have a plan.
There is no debating Altidore has the skills and raw physicality to perhaps blossom into an elite level striker. Sure he goes to ground just a little too much, but we've seen him overwhelm defenders at all levels and at least show some kind of knack for scoring, at least vs. CONCACAF opposition. It's too early to give up on him, so we'll have to spend the next four years to see if Altidore can make that next step, the leap from promising prospect to an actual, living, breathing elite goal-scorer.(*)
(*) Judging by his endorsements, at least, adidas already thinks he has.
The question though is this, can Altidore thrive as a lone forward in the international game?
Why do I mention this?
For whatever it's worth from a tactical standpoint, of the eight teams that made the 2010 quarterfinals, only two -- Uruguay and Argentina -- played what you'd count as a traditional two-forward system. Maybe come 2014 the now-preferred 4-2-3-1 will be out the door with a new flavor of the month, but I'm not so sure.
Even clubs seem less inclined to the tradition 4-4-2 forward tag teams of yore.
It's probably unfair to cite the formations or playing style of Spain, which is blessed with some much talent across the field it could win the World Cup with Fernando Torres a shadow of himself. A better comparison is Germany, which has plenty of strikers, yet stuck to Miroslav Klose (and Cacau in the third place match) isolated alone up top.
Teams at all levels seem less inclined to pair to same-minded players, when they can field more versatile, slippery attackers in wider positions or in secondary striking roles, playing off a target man.
At his best, Altidore and Davies formed that traditional tag-team of speed and power. Even at Hull City, Altidore seemed a little better when he played in a slightly withdrawn position behind a big target like Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink. Don't forget, too, in his brief time in MLS Altidore had the luxury of playing beside Juan Pablo Angel.
So perhaps as Altidore matures -- where he winds up this summer remains a mystery, with Villareal holding all the cards -- and by the time he's 24 he's more capable of playing that now in-favor single striker, both winning balls and scoring goals.
Maybe the U.S. remains committed to the 4-4-2 backbone. Maybe Davies, miraculously recovers from his long list of injuries, and is the player we saw tear it up in 2009.
Maybe Altidore finds the right club home, gets the playing time he needs and emerges as the long ago promised U.S. soccer striking star.
Perhaps a player, who like Altidore was 16 at the end of the previous World Cup, comes from the fringes and enters the fray as the next U.S. soccer messiah.
It's a lot of what ifs and conjecture. Without access to a cache of plutonium and a tricked out Delorean, we simply will not know how the next four years pan out.
The next coach of the USMNT, does however, need a plan for an issue like this, who sees the tactical changes in the ever-evolving game of soccer. A coach who can take his best players and meld them with a system.
And, above all, it's never too early to start planning and building for Brazil.
Labels: 2010 world cup, bob bradley, Jozy Altidore, Soccer, sunil gulati, USMNT, ussf
"There is no language in our lungs/To tell the world just how we feel." -- XTC, "No Language in our Lungs.
Spain 1, (the) Netherlands 0 a.e.t, 2010 World Cup Final.
Oh where to begin?
Driving home in the wake of Sunday's final match of the 2010 World Cup that XTC song popped up on my iPod. Any television nerds will recognize the tune from an episode of the cult-classic "Freaks and Geeks" during the gym class picking teams scene. (Starts at the 4:24 mark.)
Seemed like the absolute worst song to here while you're trying to untangle your brain synapses after a very strange 120 minutes of soccer, capping off a very unusual World Cup, which saw the Third Place Play-off produce both the Golden Ball winner -- Diego Forlan -- and the Golden Boot winner -- Thomas Mueller.
So like any independent blogger worth his salt, what did I do?
The answer's fairly obvious. I broke my own personal 10-month streak of avoiding movie theaters to watch "Predators"(*) on the big screen. Suffice to say there aren't any connections to be drawn from malevolent alien hunters and what transpired at Soccer City Sunday. Hell, there isn't even a cheap, easy Carlos Puyol hair joke to be made.
(*) Not to tell anyone how to raise their children ... but ... is taking a toddler to the 8 p.m. Sunday night showing of a movie like "Predators" the right idea, like the one who couldn't stop crying in the row behind me. I don't blame the kid, he shouldn't be there in the first place. Sorry. I forgot that common sense isn't cool any more.
What made writing difficult in the immediacy of Spain's triumph could be chalked up to a lot of facts. For one, riding the Dutch bandwagon all Cup it was a gutting loss, not for me personally but I certainly felt empathy for the Oranje Army, true hearty fans who probably feel like the pre-2004 Boston Red Sox or Minnesota Vikings at this point. ... so close, yet so far away and they might need to wait another 32 years to make a final, you never know.
Nor was it due to any personal enmity for Spain.
It was just going to be tough to sit behind the laptop in my sweaty, humid, condo knowing that in a few scant hours, come Monday morning for the first time in five weeks I'd wake up without the din of the vuvuzela in my ear or the friendly voice on ESPN saying, "Hola" or "ta da" to open the broadcast.
The 2010 World Cup was over.
Even if it wasn't an utterly classic World Cup, it's simply sad to see it whisked out lives almost as quickly as it arrived. It was hard to watch the highlights later Sunday or even muster up the brain power to read about it, without an overwhelming sense of numbness and sadness. (Bear that in mind as you dig into this post.)
Then again, doesn't it -- cue the Desmond Hume voice -- seem live another lifetime (brother) when the U.S. playing England seemed like a big deal. Better yet, doesn't the bitter defeat to Asamoah Gyan and Ghana seem ages ago.
Nearly five weeks of one sporting tournament is probably just about right.
And that's part of the reason why we saw what happened in Soccer City Sunday.
If there's a big takeaway from South Africa -- from a pure international soccer standpoint -- is the playing field has been leveled. Few, if any teams, are going to play at a World Cup and physically out-skill opponents and cruise to the trophy.
Despite it's reactionary policies toward on-field improvements -- officiating for one -- FIFA's old boy's club can't stop the wave of globalization or the beaming of satellite television. It's not going to be able to keep teams from knowing each other inside and out at major tournaments. Time and space on the ball? In the modern-day World Cup, those come about as often as a Sasquatch sighting.
That's part of the reason why we saw Spain -- clearly the cream of the tournament -- advance through four knockout matches via 1-0 scorelines. Spain, however, were the best XI on the field, typifying a tournament where the team over shadowed the individual. Seemingly if only to prove this point, Spain's biggest star -- at least to English speakers, Fernando Torres -- faded further and further to the back of the periphery as the tournament progressed, eventually pulling up lame like an injured race horse after coming on late in extra time.
Spain, to it's credit, has uncovered a system that has left the other 200-odd FIFA sanctioned nations chasing.
Primarily it's the Barcelona-style passing, possession game of Andres Iniesta and Xavi. Yet Spain, by claiming a World Cup two years after the winning the European Championship showcased it's nationwide depth. In 2008, Luis Aragonés' squad wasn't Barca-junior. Don't forget the importance of guys like Marcos Senna, Santi Cazorla and Dani Güiza -- all three of whom didn't make the plane to South Africa. Or the influence of David Silva in Austria/Switzerland and who was pushed to the shadows in South Africa, scapegoated after the World Cup opening loss to the Swiss -- which too seems like a dog's age ago. Hell, at the Euro Spain got through the knockout rounds with a dinged up David Villa, who came off after 34 minutes in the semifinal win over Russia.
If anything, Spain had more continuity in defense with Iker Casillas in net, Carlos Puyol, Joan Capdevilla and Sergio Ramos all back, with Gerard Pique stepping in for Carlos Marchena the only change.
It's nice, too, to play an extra time match and have a player like Cesc Fabregas to bring on in reserve.
The Spanish blueprint is out there.
Now try and stop it. Amazingly, in the last two years, only the U.S.(*) and Switzerland have figured out a way to stop it.
(*) Guess when it's all said-and-done, beating Spain at the 2009 Confederations Cup has to be Bob Bradley's greatest achievement with the USMNT, right?
It was pretty clear that Dutch coach Bert van Marwijk(*) watched Jose Mourinho's game tapes from the recent Champions League, trying to copy what Inter Milan did in the return leg at the Camp Nou in the semifinals against Barcelona.
(*) If van Marwijk has one tactical regret, it's sticking with a completely useless Robin van Persie all tournament. However you want to slice it, the Arsenal-man didn't have a good tournament.
Van Marwijk didn't exactly have the same defensive tools as Mourinho to slow down the diminutive Spanish attackers, but he used the heavy-footed challengers Mark van Bommel and Nigel de Jong as enforcers. Was it elegant? Was de Jong's (*) Johny Cage shadow kick to Xabi Alonso's solar-plexus a straight red card? Was English ref Howard Webb having way to much of an impact on a championship game? (or more honestly, was he handed an impossible task)?
(*) Aside from that one red card-able offense, de Jong did seem on his best behavior.
Yes on all fronts.
The Dutch on Sunday in Soccer City were more Jaap Stam than Johan Cruyff.
That said, for 116 minutes van Marwijk's clutch-and-gasp, frustrate, game plan worked. We saw the anti-soccer tactics turn Sergio Busquets into crying for a foul on seeming every play, even Iniesta wasn't immune to the Webb-sponsored bitch fest.
And if Rafael van der Vaart is an inch or two taller and his leg block's Iniesta's winner, van Marwijk might have ended up an immortal in Holland. Instead, people will always look at those Oranje shirts just a little differently than they once did.
What, though, were the Dutch supposed to do? Sit back, let Spain pass the ball around all day with ease, eventually producing a goal? To the Netherlands credit, it went down swinging and had its chances to win the match.
This, of course, is the trouble we sometimes find ourselves in with soccer.
Calling it the "Beautiful Game" is both a blessing and a curse. For whatever reason, aesthetics on the field seem to count. It's crazy that a sport exists where large segments of its fan base would rather watch a graceful loss than an ugly win. But this has been a part of soccer since the early days, since the Austrian Wunderteam, who seemed content to conduct a ballet on the field, with scoring goals and winning matches an ancillary concern.
A win is a win, or it seems that should be enough to satisfy every sport except (sometimes) soccer.
The man who'll probably go to his death bed debating these eternal soccer questions will be Arjen Robben, who after the last 31 days was proven to be a truly a one-of-a-kind sort. A deadly, dangerous ... diver. A 25-year-old going on 75-year-old, skilled, assassin, who's engine is more finicky than a high-end race car.
Twice in the final Robben broke up the middle, latched onto a pass and found himself 1-v-1 with Iker Casillas. First the soon-to-be sainted Spanish keeper flicked away his effort with a diving leg save -- again fractions of inches -- with something off the Real Madrid training ground.
There was a reason Casillas' post-game tears might be the enduring legacy of this match. He, in his heart, probably knew just how close Spain came to losing, making the eventual win taste all the more sweeter.
The second play, well, Robben will probably regret that in extra time of the World Cup final he decided to take the noble course of action. This was the man who I slaughtered all tournament on Twitter for having glass bones. This was the man who's diving and writhing on the ground in a ball became an Internet meme. This was the man who goes to ground after a rough sneeze by his marker.
Only at the time almost everyone could have rationalized him doing a belly flop to the grass, he stayed on his feet, instead of likely getting Puyol sent off or giving the Dutch a dangerous free kick at the edge of the area.
It was stunning.
To paraphrase the adidas Zinedine Zidane ad one final time, "Suddenly showing some balls in a contest of diving ... the irony."
Robben, for a welcome change, plays by the rules and likely costed his team a better chance at winning the World Cup.
But that's soccer. The "dark arts" are part of the game. Part of why we keep coming back. Perhaps there's something to be said for a sport that still seems to have plenty of shades of gray, whereas most other sports are either black or white. Maybe Sepp Blatter isn't so crazy after all, thinking controversy gets people talking.
This match certainly had talking points, namely from the book of Webb.
Sure, the amount of yellow cards was obscene. What killed me seemed to be the inconsistency throughout the match, of what was and wasn't a foul. It's one thing to allow physical play, but Webb's scales of justice slid back and forth way too much.
Look at Johnn Heitinga, finally sent off -- rightfully -- for bringing down Iniesta in extra time. His first booking came in the first half on a play which Webb was only a few feet away from and didn't even deem a foul until the Spanish player stayed on the ground and the ball was kicked out of bounds.
Not to slaughter Webb, since the Dutch tactics would have made it a challenge for any ref, but he was in over his head. Unless we can get Pierluigi Collina out of retirement, not sure how it improves by 2014.
Though the fouls over shadowed the game, I do have to say I found myself on the edge of my seat from the 60th minute on. Yes, it was choppy and start-stop. Yet I was in rapt attention since it seemed each team, when given free range in the opponent's half was ready to make something happen. It wasn't a classic by any means, but not as bad as it may have seemed in real time.
A good question to ask yourself was when was the last time a Cup final in any soccer classification was a thrilling match? Liverpool's comeback over West Ham in the 2006 FA Cup final? Liverpool's all-time classic win over AC Milan in the 2005 Champions League Final?
It's a shame that the World Cup is such a wonderful tournament for 63 matches and then for it's final act it usually lays an egg. But that's a Cup final in any form of soccer, nerves are high, the chance for negative tactics, the pressure, etc. It all adds up and in today's game -- teams can slog their way through them. The days of teams opening it up and playing a wide-open, carefree match are probably long gone.
Fortunately it didn't end in penalty kicks.
Nobody wanted to read about that argument proposed by American sports writers over the next four years, though reading their silly ideas to resolve extra time matches are fun.
Anyway, I'm bummed out. Bummed out the Dutch lost. Bummed out the World Cup has come and gone and now we must all wait for another four years.
Thanks for everyone who's stopped by this here little slice of the Inter-nets during the last month. I appreciate each and every one of you, even if you're just Googling pictures of Bastian Schweinsteiger's girlfriend. If you're new to the site, don't worry the fun doesn't stop here and the Premier League season and the madness it brings it barely a month away.
At least this World Cup finally put the out-dated idea that Americans don't care about soccer to bed. The last five weeks aren't setting off a sea change across the states, but let's say there's more than just a few minor soccer beach heads. The seeds planted years ago have taken root, grown and spawned seeds of there own.
This, as always, remains a story to debate and discuss the next four years, though I hope we can finally got past our collective insecurities of being a soccer fan in the U.S. After 2010 there's no more shame associated with loving the sport in the States. We can thank Landon Donovan & Co, with an assist from Ian Darke (and all of ESPN) for that.
However, unless you're a Spanish fan, still reveling in the glory of becoming an all-time iconic, great side, Monday morning must feel a lot glummer than most. It's almost cruel, to have this much fun picking apart and enjoying a sporting event, only to have it ripped away from us almost as quickly as it arrived.
Perhaps there's a reason it only rolls around every four years.
That majority of casual American sports fans, though, will move on, find the next even to care about. By Tuesday they'll probably have forgotten what the word Jabulani even meant. Hopefully as the dust settles the "Americans caring about soccer," doesn't land in the same head-scratching file as things that were bizarrely popular for a period in time -- like Limp Bizkit.
Me? I'll try to support MLS in the next few weeks as I prep for the EPL season, the soccer world will move on, but for now it's a system shock waking up without a World Cup game to look forward to.
I'll miss: the ironic irony of Zinedine Zidane; Joachim Loew's touchline fashion show; Vincente del Bosque's 'stach; Dirk Kuyt; "World Cup Primetime" on a 2 a.m. replay; Andy Gray's digital chalk board; Ruud Gullit, Roberto Martinez and Steve McManaman; Forlan's one-man virtuoso attacking performance; Muller's goofy face and goofier haircut; Kevin-Prince Boateng's neck tats; people bitching about the vuvuzela; people bitching about the Jabulani; ESPN's African music intros and of course, Go Go USA, etc.
In closing, there was another song I heard on my drive back from the movie theater -- "Monsters" -- by Band of Horses.
Think it sums up that empty pit in all our soccer-loving, World Cup gorging stomachs.
"Though to say we got much hope
If I am lost it's only for a little while"
You know what, though, 2014 in Brazil will be here before we know it.
And as a U.S. fan that can only fill me with one emotion -- hope.
* * *
Finally, congrats to the owner of "The Ghost of John O'Brien" for coming out on top of the Yahoo! World Cup pick 'em league. Also a tip of the hat to "My Technical Area Itches" who picked the most games correct with 38. ... I screwed up trying to go for it early, picking Portugal to beat Spain. D'Oh.
In the ESPN league, the tremendously named "Danny Dubersteins" took first with a fine showing, nailing 3/4 in the semifinals, placing in the 100th percentile.
Well played, all.
Keep your eyes peeled for Premier League Fantasy, it's coming soon.
Spain 1, (the) Netherlands 0 a.e.t, 2010 World Cup Final.
Oh where to begin?
Driving home in the wake of Sunday's final match of the 2010 World Cup that XTC song popped up on my iPod. Any television nerds will recognize the tune from an episode of the cult-classic "Freaks and Geeks" during the gym class picking teams scene. (Starts at the 4:24 mark.)
Seemed like the absolute worst song to here while you're trying to untangle your brain synapses after a very strange 120 minutes of soccer, capping off a very unusual World Cup, which saw the Third Place Play-off produce both the Golden Ball winner -- Diego Forlan -- and the Golden Boot winner -- Thomas Mueller.
So like any independent blogger worth his salt, what did I do?
The answer's fairly obvious. I broke my own personal 10-month streak of avoiding movie theaters to watch "Predators"(*) on the big screen. Suffice to say there aren't any connections to be drawn from malevolent alien hunters and what transpired at Soccer City Sunday. Hell, there isn't even a cheap, easy Carlos Puyol hair joke to be made.
(*) Not to tell anyone how to raise their children ... but ... is taking a toddler to the 8 p.m. Sunday night showing of a movie like "Predators" the right idea, like the one who couldn't stop crying in the row behind me. I don't blame the kid, he shouldn't be there in the first place. Sorry. I forgot that common sense isn't cool any more.
What made writing difficult in the immediacy of Spain's triumph could be chalked up to a lot of facts. For one, riding the Dutch bandwagon all Cup it was a gutting loss, not for me personally but I certainly felt empathy for the Oranje Army, true hearty fans who probably feel like the pre-2004 Boston Red Sox or Minnesota Vikings at this point. ... so close, yet so far away and they might need to wait another 32 years to make a final, you never know.
Nor was it due to any personal enmity for Spain.
It was just going to be tough to sit behind the laptop in my sweaty, humid, condo knowing that in a few scant hours, come Monday morning for the first time in five weeks I'd wake up without the din of the vuvuzela in my ear or the friendly voice on ESPN saying, "Hola" or "ta da" to open the broadcast.
The 2010 World Cup was over.
Even if it wasn't an utterly classic World Cup, it's simply sad to see it whisked out lives almost as quickly as it arrived. It was hard to watch the highlights later Sunday or even muster up the brain power to read about it, without an overwhelming sense of numbness and sadness. (Bear that in mind as you dig into this post.)
Then again, doesn't it -- cue the Desmond Hume voice -- seem live another lifetime (brother) when the U.S. playing England seemed like a big deal. Better yet, doesn't the bitter defeat to Asamoah Gyan and Ghana seem ages ago.
Nearly five weeks of one sporting tournament is probably just about right.
And that's part of the reason why we saw what happened in Soccer City Sunday.
If there's a big takeaway from South Africa -- from a pure international soccer standpoint -- is the playing field has been leveled. Few, if any teams, are going to play at a World Cup and physically out-skill opponents and cruise to the trophy.
Despite it's reactionary policies toward on-field improvements -- officiating for one -- FIFA's old boy's club can't stop the wave of globalization or the beaming of satellite television. It's not going to be able to keep teams from knowing each other inside and out at major tournaments. Time and space on the ball? In the modern-day World Cup, those come about as often as a Sasquatch sighting.
That's part of the reason why we saw Spain -- clearly the cream of the tournament -- advance through four knockout matches via 1-0 scorelines. Spain, however, were the best XI on the field, typifying a tournament where the team over shadowed the individual. Seemingly if only to prove this point, Spain's biggest star -- at least to English speakers, Fernando Torres -- faded further and further to the back of the periphery as the tournament progressed, eventually pulling up lame like an injured race horse after coming on late in extra time.
Spain, to it's credit, has uncovered a system that has left the other 200-odd FIFA sanctioned nations chasing.
Primarily it's the Barcelona-style passing, possession game of Andres Iniesta and Xavi. Yet Spain, by claiming a World Cup two years after the winning the European Championship showcased it's nationwide depth. In 2008, Luis Aragonés' squad wasn't Barca-junior. Don't forget the importance of guys like Marcos Senna, Santi Cazorla and Dani Güiza -- all three of whom didn't make the plane to South Africa. Or the influence of David Silva in Austria/Switzerland and who was pushed to the shadows in South Africa, scapegoated after the World Cup opening loss to the Swiss -- which too seems like a dog's age ago. Hell, at the Euro Spain got through the knockout rounds with a dinged up David Villa, who came off after 34 minutes in the semifinal win over Russia.
If anything, Spain had more continuity in defense with Iker Casillas in net, Carlos Puyol, Joan Capdevilla and Sergio Ramos all back, with Gerard Pique stepping in for Carlos Marchena the only change.
It's nice, too, to play an extra time match and have a player like Cesc Fabregas to bring on in reserve.
The Spanish blueprint is out there.
Now try and stop it. Amazingly, in the last two years, only the U.S.(*) and Switzerland have figured out a way to stop it.
(*) Guess when it's all said-and-done, beating Spain at the 2009 Confederations Cup has to be Bob Bradley's greatest achievement with the USMNT, right?
It was pretty clear that Dutch coach Bert van Marwijk(*) watched Jose Mourinho's game tapes from the recent Champions League, trying to copy what Inter Milan did in the return leg at the Camp Nou in the semifinals against Barcelona.
(*) If van Marwijk has one tactical regret, it's sticking with a completely useless Robin van Persie all tournament. However you want to slice it, the Arsenal-man didn't have a good tournament.
Van Marwijk didn't exactly have the same defensive tools as Mourinho to slow down the diminutive Spanish attackers, but he used the heavy-footed challengers Mark van Bommel and Nigel de Jong as enforcers. Was it elegant? Was de Jong's (*) Johny Cage shadow kick to Xabi Alonso's solar-plexus a straight red card? Was English ref Howard Webb having way to much of an impact on a championship game? (or more honestly, was he handed an impossible task)?
(*) Aside from that one red card-able offense, de Jong did seem on his best behavior.
Yes on all fronts.
The Dutch on Sunday in Soccer City were more Jaap Stam than Johan Cruyff.
That said, for 116 minutes van Marwijk's clutch-and-gasp, frustrate, game plan worked. We saw the anti-soccer tactics turn Sergio Busquets into crying for a foul on seeming every play, even Iniesta wasn't immune to the Webb-sponsored bitch fest.
And if Rafael van der Vaart is an inch or two taller and his leg block's Iniesta's winner, van Marwijk might have ended up an immortal in Holland. Instead, people will always look at those Oranje shirts just a little differently than they once did.
What, though, were the Dutch supposed to do? Sit back, let Spain pass the ball around all day with ease, eventually producing a goal? To the Netherlands credit, it went down swinging and had its chances to win the match.
This, of course, is the trouble we sometimes find ourselves in with soccer.
Calling it the "Beautiful Game" is both a blessing and a curse. For whatever reason, aesthetics on the field seem to count. It's crazy that a sport exists where large segments of its fan base would rather watch a graceful loss than an ugly win. But this has been a part of soccer since the early days, since the Austrian Wunderteam, who seemed content to conduct a ballet on the field, with scoring goals and winning matches an ancillary concern.
A win is a win, or it seems that should be enough to satisfy every sport except (sometimes) soccer.
The man who'll probably go to his death bed debating these eternal soccer questions will be Arjen Robben, who after the last 31 days was proven to be a truly a one-of-a-kind sort. A deadly, dangerous ... diver. A 25-year-old going on 75-year-old, skilled, assassin, who's engine is more finicky than a high-end race car.
Twice in the final Robben broke up the middle, latched onto a pass and found himself 1-v-1 with Iker Casillas. First the soon-to-be sainted Spanish keeper flicked away his effort with a diving leg save -- again fractions of inches -- with something off the Real Madrid training ground.
There was a reason Casillas' post-game tears might be the enduring legacy of this match. He, in his heart, probably knew just how close Spain came to losing, making the eventual win taste all the more sweeter.
The second play, well, Robben will probably regret that in extra time of the World Cup final he decided to take the noble course of action. This was the man who I slaughtered all tournament on Twitter for having glass bones. This was the man who's diving and writhing on the ground in a ball became an Internet meme. This was the man who goes to ground after a rough sneeze by his marker.
Only at the time almost everyone could have rationalized him doing a belly flop to the grass, he stayed on his feet, instead of likely getting Puyol sent off or giving the Dutch a dangerous free kick at the edge of the area.
It was stunning.
To paraphrase the adidas Zinedine Zidane ad one final time, "Suddenly showing some balls in a contest of diving ... the irony."
Robben, for a welcome change, plays by the rules and likely costed his team a better chance at winning the World Cup.
But that's soccer. The "dark arts" are part of the game. Part of why we keep coming back. Perhaps there's something to be said for a sport that still seems to have plenty of shades of gray, whereas most other sports are either black or white. Maybe Sepp Blatter isn't so crazy after all, thinking controversy gets people talking.
This match certainly had talking points, namely from the book of Webb.
Sure, the amount of yellow cards was obscene. What killed me seemed to be the inconsistency throughout the match, of what was and wasn't a foul. It's one thing to allow physical play, but Webb's scales of justice slid back and forth way too much.
Look at Johnn Heitinga, finally sent off -- rightfully -- for bringing down Iniesta in extra time. His first booking came in the first half on a play which Webb was only a few feet away from and didn't even deem a foul until the Spanish player stayed on the ground and the ball was kicked out of bounds.
Not to slaughter Webb, since the Dutch tactics would have made it a challenge for any ref, but he was in over his head. Unless we can get Pierluigi Collina out of retirement, not sure how it improves by 2014.
Though the fouls over shadowed the game, I do have to say I found myself on the edge of my seat from the 60th minute on. Yes, it was choppy and start-stop. Yet I was in rapt attention since it seemed each team, when given free range in the opponent's half was ready to make something happen. It wasn't a classic by any means, but not as bad as it may have seemed in real time.
A good question to ask yourself was when was the last time a Cup final in any soccer classification was a thrilling match? Liverpool's comeback over West Ham in the 2006 FA Cup final? Liverpool's all-time classic win over AC Milan in the 2005 Champions League Final?
It's a shame that the World Cup is such a wonderful tournament for 63 matches and then for it's final act it usually lays an egg. But that's a Cup final in any form of soccer, nerves are high, the chance for negative tactics, the pressure, etc. It all adds up and in today's game -- teams can slog their way through them. The days of teams opening it up and playing a wide-open, carefree match are probably long gone.
Fortunately it didn't end in penalty kicks.
Nobody wanted to read about that argument proposed by American sports writers over the next four years, though reading their silly ideas to resolve extra time matches are fun.
Anyway, I'm bummed out. Bummed out the Dutch lost. Bummed out the World Cup has come and gone and now we must all wait for another four years.
Thanks for everyone who's stopped by this here little slice of the Inter-nets during the last month. I appreciate each and every one of you, even if you're just Googling pictures of Bastian Schweinsteiger's girlfriend. If you're new to the site, don't worry the fun doesn't stop here and the Premier League season and the madness it brings it barely a month away.
At least this World Cup finally put the out-dated idea that Americans don't care about soccer to bed. The last five weeks aren't setting off a sea change across the states, but let's say there's more than just a few minor soccer beach heads. The seeds planted years ago have taken root, grown and spawned seeds of there own.
This, as always, remains a story to debate and discuss the next four years, though I hope we can finally got past our collective insecurities of being a soccer fan in the U.S. After 2010 there's no more shame associated with loving the sport in the States. We can thank Landon Donovan & Co, with an assist from Ian Darke (and all of ESPN) for that.
However, unless you're a Spanish fan, still reveling in the glory of becoming an all-time iconic, great side, Monday morning must feel a lot glummer than most. It's almost cruel, to have this much fun picking apart and enjoying a sporting event, only to have it ripped away from us almost as quickly as it arrived.
Perhaps there's a reason it only rolls around every four years.
That majority of casual American sports fans, though, will move on, find the next even to care about. By Tuesday they'll probably have forgotten what the word Jabulani even meant. Hopefully as the dust settles the "Americans caring about soccer," doesn't land in the same head-scratching file as things that were bizarrely popular for a period in time -- like Limp Bizkit.
Me? I'll try to support MLS in the next few weeks as I prep for the EPL season, the soccer world will move on, but for now it's a system shock waking up without a World Cup game to look forward to.
I'll miss: the ironic irony of Zinedine Zidane; Joachim Loew's touchline fashion show; Vincente del Bosque's 'stach; Dirk Kuyt; "World Cup Primetime" on a 2 a.m. replay; Andy Gray's digital chalk board; Ruud Gullit, Roberto Martinez and Steve McManaman; Forlan's one-man virtuoso attacking performance; Muller's goofy face and goofier haircut; Kevin-Prince Boateng's neck tats; people bitching about the vuvuzela; people bitching about the Jabulani; ESPN's African music intros and of course, Go Go USA, etc.
In closing, there was another song I heard on my drive back from the movie theater -- "Monsters" -- by Band of Horses.
Think it sums up that empty pit in all our soccer-loving, World Cup gorging stomachs.
"Though to say we got much hope
If I am lost it's only for a little while"
You know what, though, 2014 in Brazil will be here before we know it.
And as a U.S. fan that can only fill me with one emotion -- hope.
Finally, congrats to the owner of "The Ghost of John O'Brien" for coming out on top of the Yahoo! World Cup pick 'em league. Also a tip of the hat to "My Technical Area Itches" who picked the most games correct with 38. ... I screwed up trying to go for it early, picking Portugal to beat Spain. D'Oh.
In the ESPN league, the tremendously named "Danny Dubersteins" took first with a fine showing, nailing 3/4 in the semifinals, placing in the 100th percentile.
Well played, all.
Keep your eyes peeled for Premier League Fantasy, it's coming soon.
Labels: 2010 world cup, andres iniesta, hup holland, netherlands, nigel de jong, Soccer, Spain
