The denial MLS circulated today has a hole large enough to drive a semi through. It carefully makes clear that MLS supports the current owner and denies that that owner is moving Chivas USA anywhere.
But what does it say about another owner moving the team?
I stand by what I wrote completely.
Atlanta and its planned replacement for the Georgia Dome appear to be candidates join MLS sooner rather than later.
I had a nice discussion today with a source familiar with the widely reported process underway that has Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim buying Chivas Guadalajara from Jorge Vergara. During that conversation I gleaned a bit of information about where MLS is thinking Chivas USA (CUSA) could end up.
That said, before we get to where CUSA might move, there is the pesky reality that CUSA’s valuation is apparently proving to be a point of contention between Vergara and Slim. Slim does not want to purchase an MLS team, which means that MLS needs to find a new investor/operator for the team fairly rapidly.
Beyond just the issue of the MLS club, I’ve been told could still be potential snags that could delay or derail the sale of Chivas Guadalajara and its assets to Slim. That said, I’ve been told that the sale could be announced within 12 hours if no eleventh-hour surprises emerge.
But on to the fun part, and that’s examining where CUSA could move. Here’s what I know about the cities/regions that are currently in play. Continue Reading…
I’ve been pretty vocal that I don’t think DC United’s management group, hemorrhaging money everyday at RFK and distracted by the current success of partner Jason Levien‘s Memphis Grizzlies, wouldn’t fire coach Ben Olsen or GM Dave Kasper. Since arriving, all United’s new ownership group has done is cut costs and that has now shown dramatically on the field. Last night, though, prominent American soccer agent Robert Colosia, tweeted the following.
@SoccerInsider he is waiting Neil the end of he nba season to pay attention to this team and finally blow out mgmt—
Robert Colosia (@agenterob) May 16, 2013
“The World Cup is more than just stadiums. It’s an array of social and cultural activities around the competition. It’s not rational and reasonable to play in June-July.”
So I’ve updated and redesigned the site here in order to make it a little simpler for me to post something without having to spend forever formatting text and photos in order to make it look halfway decent. This new template allows me to do just that and hopefully will lead to me actually get some more content on this site.
Don’t worry, nothing is changing about the show. This is purely a change to my little site to make it a bit easier for me to post stuff that is a bit too long for a tweet.
If, in using the site, you find you’re having problems with it, please let me know by tweeting me or using the contact form at the top of the page.
Here in happier, if no more successful times, Sunil Gulati (far left) and Dan Flynn (far right) will be the ones that will have to decide Klinsmann’s fate.
If the US men’s team goes “oh-for” this weekend in matches against Costa Rica and Mexico, fans will be clamoring for coach Jurgen Klinsmann’s head in a way we haven’t heard during a qualifying sequence in a long time. Would USSF President Sunil Gulati fire a man whom he has invested so much money and reputation into? I suspect it comes down to just how much money US Soccer would stand to lose in the short/medium term by not qualifying for this one World Cup.
That puts the answer in the hands of Dan Flynn, US Soccer’s CEO and Secretary General, and the guy most responsible for the improved financial health of the organization. If the answer to the question I posed above is “not so much as to really affect USSF operations,” then I suspect Klinsi will be allowed to see qualifying through to the end. If the answer to the above question is “a lot,” then I suspect Flynn tells Gulati to can him.
Gulati hasn’t disagreed often with Flynn during their successful tenure atop the USSF. Would Gulati be willing to stick with Klinsi even if Flynn wants him gone? I tend to doubt it.
Verifying what has been an open secret around American soccer media circles, Richard Deitsch reported today that Fox Sports is grooming Gus Johnson to do play-by-play on Fox’s biggest soccer matches starting with the upcoming Champions League match between Real Madrid and Manchester United.
Fox is bucking the recent trend of bringing in British voices including Martin Tyler, Ian Darke and Arlo White to broadcast matches, even those including MLS or the US National Team. As someone who has crusaded, ever since ESPN unceremoniously dumped JP Dellacamera from its TV broadcasts prior to the 2010 World Cup, for American commentators to broadcast American matches, I’m thrilled to see Fox being a bit brave here.
That said, what Fox is doing isn’t that different from what ESPN did in the early 2000s by appointing Jack Edwards as its no. 1 play-by-plan leading eventually to harsh criticism of his “over-the-top” and “jingoistic” performance during the 2002 World Cup. ESPN followed that up in 2006 with the seemingly steadying arrival of baseball and basketball commentator Dave O’Brien. He turned out to be an even bigger disaster both inside the booth (where he sounded unprepared and even bored) and then outside it where he took a swipe at US soccer fans in USA Today calling them “petulant” and “mean-spirited.”
Unlike O’Brien though, Johnson is beloved by a large segment of mainstream American sports fans who first noticed him with his very excitable style of calling college basketball and the NFL for CBS. The story hadn’t been out for more than 30 minutes when no less of an indicator of the sports mainstream than Bill Simmons had this to say about the move.
Today is now a holiday. Everybody go home, you have the rest of the day off. sportsillustrated.cnn.com/soccer/news/20…—
Bill Simmons (@BillSimmons) February 05, 2013
I’ve made it clear, on the air and in many other places, that I think it’s both an embarrassment and destructive to the growth of the sport to have foreign voices broadcasting US National Team games. Fox’s move to put Johnson front-and-center is a great chance to change the perception that soccer cannot be broadcast well unless it’s being done with a British or Irish accent.
That said, the move is risky for Fox because it provides critics a big target to shoot at. At this early point, those critics appear to be divided into two camps:
Category one is the soccer purist bunch who will view this as a move to “Americanize the game” and to appeal to “non-soccer fans.” Take a look at the comments beneath Deitsch’s piece and you’ll see that group’s criticisms starting to take form. In this group, you’ll find both the self-hating types who, raised on EPL matches and FIFA video games that feature English accented commentators, don’t accept that a major soccer event could or should be broadcast by Americans. It also includes the “defenders of the clique,” and of soccer’s perceived “identity culture.” It includes those who don’t think Johnson belongs on the broadcasts because he hasn’t been a soccer fan since utero and probably can’t tell you, at this moment, who the best player on Spartak Cluj is. I’ve explained before why that is completely nonsense and I won’t waste your time by repeating it all here.
Category two is the group of mostly middle-aged caucasian college basketball fans (this means you, Will Leitch) who sees Johnson as a circus act overshadowing the action on the court, and nostalgizing the days when college basketball was a) of superior quality and b) had a season that was worth watching until March Madness. Those days are gone and I suspect to some, Johnson for a couple different reasons, represents this. This is the kind of person who also defends Joe Buck. (Hey wait, this also means you, Will Leitch).
Here’s my response to those in category one. This is a major sporting event that is being broadcast on a major terrestrial network – of course Fox is going to take some steps to make it more appealing to the mainstream. That’s just life and it comes with a sport that is increasingly stepping out of the shadows of American sporting obscura and increasingly, during events like the World Cup, arriving into the popular sporting and even cultural discourse. That’s a good thing, even if it makes you feel less “cool” or “underground” than before.
My response to category two is this. Gus Johnson is fun. Gus Johnson makes the events he broadcasts more fun. Just because you are a member of a past generation of sports fans raised on understated, taciturn caucasian commentators doesn’t mean the following generations require it as well. I think the rhythms of college basketball and the rhythms of soccer aren’t that different. It’s not like Johnson is being asked to broadcast golf or baseball.
Assuming that Johnson and the others around him at Fox are being honest that he’s sincere in his interest in the game and his interest in learning how to broadcast it, I think he will do a great job.
One final thing. I think it’s absolutely great that the voice of the US Men’s National Team will be someone who, for the first time that I can think of, isn’t caucasian. The US men’s team is one of the diverse teams in American sports and it represents a country only getting more and more diverse by the day. Why should the team’s broadcasters continue to either by white guys from the Northeast (Ley, Edwards, Dellacamera and O’Brien) or England (Darke and White)? We should have a commentary team that better represents both what this team looks like, what this team’s fans look like and what this country looks like. Fox’s inclusion of an African-American like Gus Johnson, is much-needed move in that direction.
Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, the Bayern Munich and ECA Chairman
Rather than either a) allow FIFA to unilaterally interrupt the 2022 club season with a World Cup in Qatar or b) start belligerently threatening to hold out players or start legal action, the 207-member European Club Association (ECA) and its chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge has proposed (or at least trial ballooned) a plan that would see the European clubs agree to a winter 2022 World Cup but only as part of a move to a ”summer” club calendar starting in January and concluding at the end of autumn. The major international tournaments and the qualifying for those events would be tacked on at the end of each club season.
This move would “ghettoize” international matches into a very small window after a very long club season making it even easier for clubs to keep their players out of international matches/tournaments by being able to, with no small justification, claim fatigue and injuries.
But as intriguing as the move itself would be to the sport long-term, the short-term strategy behind such a proposal is remarkable. To me, this deal looks like the ECA trying to force FIFA down one of two paths.
It seems to me that this plan is a very clever maneuver on the part of the ECA. Even if the deal is a poison pill, allows them to claim they’re working constructively and puts FIFA in the position of the being the intractable opposition going into an almighty fight over moving the 2022 World Cup to the winter. If FIFA agrees to its plan, now club soccer has just acquired the most attractive months of the year in which to play and shoved international play into a tiny window (more of a box, really) that will more easily allow clubs to reduce the burden of international play in their players.
I’ve said for a while now that I think FIFA’s decision to award 2022 to Qatar and then push for it to be held in the winter would prove to be the start of a transformative process/conflict that would, for better or worse, lead to the reduction in both the quantity and the importance of international play. As the money the clubs invested in these players via transfer fees and wages increased, they were always going to want to reduce the risk that comes with loaning your players out to their national teams. This latest idea from the ECA has only solidified this belief in my mind.
On this week’s Big Question Show, we’re taking a break from the usual hand wringing over results, youth development, or FIFA corruption to instead talk about something we all love and enjoy – beer. Joining me to talk about the close links between the American soccer community and the craft brewing community is Daniel Wiersema, the founder of the Free Beer Movement. We’ll talk about the recent trends of breweries creating beers to commemorate MLS teams and even supporters clubs. We’ll also touch on supporters homebrewing their own beers honoring their teams.
Why do you think there is such a crossover between American soccer fans and craft beer nuts? Feel free to let me know how you feel on the issue in the comments below or on Twitter. The best and most interesting comments or questions will be read on the air.
Tune in live at 8pm on Thursday, January 31 at NASN.tv or download the podcast from here or at iTunes starting on Friday morning.
Fans of Portland (above) and Seattle have been angered by MLS’ move to trademark the phrase “Cascadia Cup.”
On this week’s Big Question Show, I’ll discuss the recent “Cascadia-gate” kerfuffle with Zach Slaton, a Sounders fan and writer whose work has appeared on Forbes.com, in The Blizzard, and The Howler. We’ll also be joined by an additional guest that we’re still confirming.
This issue has spurred great debate amongst fans across MLS. Feel free to let me know how you feel on the issue in the comments below or on Twitter. The best and most interesting comments or questions will be read on the air.
Tune in live at 8pm on Thursday, January 24 at NASN.tv or download the podcast from here or at iTunes starting on Friday morning.
