I suppose I could just predict what will happen at this point, but…I’ve gotten really shy about predictions.  Remember my MLS preview this year?  That’s right, I punted it, because even now the season is over two months old and I got no idea who will finish where.  (I would have badly overrated Chicago and DC, for one thing.  And I would have picked the Galaxy to win it all again, and who wants to read that crap again?  Not you.)

And the Robbie Rogers to Wherever saga will mean two very, very different things depending on where he ends up.  (Or three.  Have we ruled out a return to Stevenage?)

Option one is that LA, MLS, and/or Rogers force a trade where the Fire get nothing.  (Let alone the Crew, the team he actually played for.)

Not completely unprecedented, but said precedents are worrisome.  Three jump to mind.  Doug Logan – you know, the guy who made track and field America’s number one pastime – re-assigned Carlos Valderrama to the Tampa Bay Mutiny from the Miami Fusion, a move that helped make MLS in Florida what it is today.  Dallas was obliged to trade the Freddy Adu draft pick to DC United in exchange for a player allocation – and for all I know, Dallas still has that allocation.  Of course, whatever rights the San Jose Earthquakes had over Landon Donovan were effectively vetoed by Landon himself, causing an allocation shuffling that made the Adu mess a year earlier look positively straightforward.  (Or you can believe the official story, that San Jose traded Donovan for an allocation to the Galaxy, who then had to trade Carlos Ruiz to Dallas for a different allocation.  I want to say that the Quakes ended up with Danny Califf for their trouble, but at this point it’s just choosing the right color for a relief map of Narnia.)

Much much much more common is where the club that holds the rights, for whatever silly reason, pulls the strings.  Brian McBride’s rights were held by a club that didn’t exist when he left Columbus, and Toronto got a starting forward, a first round pick, and “future considerations.”  In the hands of a club that knew what it was doing, that would have been enough right there to build a contender.  Just because Toronto FC could screw up the recipe for a glass of water doesn’t mean that the MLS reserve system didn’t triumph.

What is it with the Columbus Crew being completely left out of conversations about their most famous players, anyway?  If Brad Friedel came back to MLS today, his rights would probably go to Chivas USA.  Maybe the Crew will get Carlos Bocanegra when he comes back, because things fall apart, the center cannot hold.

Anyway.  I say this flying in the teeth of Grant Wahl’s update today, saying it would be an embarrassment for the league if Rogers were kept out of Los Angeles, but I think Chicago Fire brass meeting cordially with Robbie is more indicative than his tweet mocking the idea they held his rights. 

The other reason I think it’s more likely that Rogers “stays” with Chicago is that the Galaxy are still owned by Phil Anschutz.  The ramifications of Mr. Anschutz becoming the first team owner to cut a check to an openly gay male player are, well, numerous.  Because of Anschutz, I thought the Galaxy would be the last MLS team, not the first, to field a gay player.  And they may still be.

There’s also the awkwardness of how much he will be paid, and how much he is worth.  He is approaching, chronologically, his physical peak…but so is Danny Szetela.  I’m going to take Galaxy and Fire leadership at their words that Rogers is a high-quality option.  Which raises the question of whether either team will shell out Designated Player money for him…or just shy of that, which then becomes a cap issue.  The reason Rogers differs from nearly every other player is that there is now positive publicity around him aside from his skillset.  The Galaxy have a reputation these days of seeing Designated Players through a marketing lens, and Rogers now fits that profile excellently well. 

But he’s not the only one.  In fact, I think that’s why we’re still waiting. 

Which will make for a pretty terrible scene in the eventual movie.  Picture Branch Rickey telling Jackie Robinson “Sorry, we’re waiting to see if Frank Lampard is going to re-up with Chelsea.”

If they want to help this kid, go to marrow.org. Get registered. Get tissue-typed & be a donor. It is incredibly easy & painless. It just takes a commitment of time & effort. In so doing you very well may save a life. I’m sorry if that sounds trite – but it really is true.

Of course, I encourage you all to do so.  The Portland Timbers have gotten themselves a free pass into heaven this week with their wonderful friendly against the Green Machine, but you don’t have to be an MLS franchise to fight cancer.  Stop reading now if you don’t want to hear all about me.

The last two times I gave blood, I flat-out fainted.  After juice and cookies, I was politely told by the very nice people at the Red Cross to not give blood anymore, dumbass.  This is a very different procedure, but it’s still something I need to nut up and go through with.

“Loney, you wimp, we all did it already, back when we first heard about Alston.  And ever since we heard about Atticus Lane-Dupre and Portland, we’ve been telling our friends.  Where have you been?”

I know, I know, it’s nothing, I should have done it years ago.  But I felt light-headed just signing up at marrow.org, and felt I had to get permission from my wife before signing up.  If my number is called up, hold my feet to the fire and make sure I go through with it.  And make me re-read the FAQ’s where it says that it’ll hurt less than stubbing your toe.

Fine, so I thought they took a power drill and scooped out the delicious bone goo.  I’m an idiot.  But I’m an idiot who signed up, at least.  Maybe next week I’ll, I don’t know, get back to the comedy.

Sadly, not anytime soon.

Okay, I realize people are getting really tired of my ponderous social justice crap, but it would really be a shame if closeted MLS players let Jason Collins hang out to dry without a word.

Well, maybe there aren’t any closeted MLS players.  I’ll take that theory under advisement.  But it’s been a few days now, and the silence is starting to get pretty deafening.

Fine, it’s a tough, tough call.  Just like it was for Collins.  There’s really a surprisingly easy rule of thumb for this.  If a player’s reason for remaining silent is so good that he could look Collins in the eye and say, “I’m not coming out because of X,” then fine.

Even today, it’s really no one’s call except the player himself and the fellow in the mirrow.  But this is one of those historical, cut and dried, where were you when, either be a union man or thug for J.H. Blair moments that define legacies.  That’s not my opinion, that’s just bleeding obvious.

Maybe if it were me in the jock instead of at the keyboard, I’d think differently.  Although I would hope I’d see Collins out, realize that the risks he’s taking are also mine, and support him.  It’s easy – VERY easy – for me to say I wish I could, but I can’t, so it’s up to someone else whose voice would matter.

Of course it’s not the easy way.  Because that’s why people become pro soccer players in America, they want to do things the easy way.

I don’t mean to pick on MLS, of course.  Closeted NFL, MLB, and other NBA players – also hockey, which some are calling America’s fifth major sport – they’re doing Collins, themselves, and posterity a disservice too.  But since MLS is the one that’s been so justifiably proud about their acceptance campaign, it would be refreshing to see someone take them up on it.

Because right now, we’re heading for “Only Gay Male Professional Athlete In America Comes Out,” and that’s just stupid.

Here’s what bothers me, in a nutshell – go read this Wikipedia chart real quick and come back.  I’ll wait.

Two years?! between Jackie Freaking Robinson, Larry Freaking Doby, and the two guys on the St. Louis Browns, before another team integrated.  Sure, all those guys did was help turn Brooklyn and Cleveland into contenders, but the Dodgers and Indians had always been powerhouse dynasties and perennial champions.  Apart from the odd decade or two without a pennant before integrating.  Other teams should have been falling all over themselves to help themselves to the talent, and there are no untroubling reasons why they didn’t.

It also certainly wasn’t as if there weren’t other good black players.  If, in another reality, Bill Veeck had signed black players onto the wartime Phillies, it would have been players like Satchel Paige, Cool Papa Bell, Josh Gibson, Buck Leonard and Double Duty Radcliffe against a bunch of white 4-Fs.  The Phillies would have won 130 games and swept the World Series.

This is how entrenched racism was in American society.  Six years after Robinson’s debut, more than half of major league baseball was still segregated.  The Boston Red Sox would cheerfully have spent decades being the Yankees’ whipping boys rather than integrate.  The Yankees themselves resisted integration vigorously, and were the one exception to the rule that integrated teams had more success…but they would pay the price in the 1960′s, when the farm system ran dry and the Kansas City Athletics ceased to be their major league subsidiary.

I’m not here to play Which Prejudice Is Worse or Which Prejudice Is More Intractable, but the fact remains that none of Robinson’s existing teammates could “come out” as black.  Gay players could (and do) choose to remain invisible.

Except for two things – with black players in the 40′s and 50′s, clubs could bar the way before those players were signed.  Closeted players today, as I’ve pointed out repeatedly, have already leaped that hurdle.

If closeted players don’t support Collins, then we’re going to see, at best, another scenario where it’s years before other players follow.  And Collins, sadly, is nobody’s all-star.  Robinson and Doby played season after season putting up stellar numbers, and still integration was a tough sell.  It could easily be the same for gay players.

There is of course the concern that coming out of the closet might hurt future employment.  Which, while not a particularly noble reason for remaining quiet, is understandable.  Interestingly, a certain former Leeds United player seems poised to add another dimension to the story.

Although there’s drama in Major League Soccer this week about signing an openly gay player…and predictably, because it’s Major League Soccer, there has to be a battery acid fight over player rights.  I have a sneaking suspicion we’ll hear more of that story next week – hell, I sat on this damn post all week waiting for the other shoes to drop.  But depending on what happens where and to whom, our league may have a story that will actually have repercussions greater than Collins.

Seriously, every soccer blogger, twitterer, Facebooker, and open the window and shoutinger are just drooling at the thought of Robbie Rogers to the Galaxy or not.  It’s like waiting for Christmas.   We’ll do to electrons what Herod did to Judea’s toddlers.  It’ll be glorious.

Gordon has since apologized: 

Although I said it in the heat of the moment, that language has no place in our game. That is not my character, but there is still no excuse for saying what I said.  I made a mistake and I accept full responsibility for my actions.

Coupla things.

First, when Gordon himself releases a full confession and an apology, it’s okay to stop using the word “alleged.”  O.J. Simpson is no longer an alleged trespasser, and Gordon is no longer alleged to have used the slur.  We can debate what’s in Gordon’s heart, I suppose, just like we can with Colin Clark and Luis Suarez and whoever else.  I wasn’t going to sleep with Alan Gordon anyway.  But he certainly said it. 

And it’s very reassuring to hear that Gordon will accept full responsibility – presumably the alternative was to blame Johnson for challenging Gordon’s sense of manhood with his overwhelming sexual magnetism.  Because I imagine the price will be high, mitigated perhaps only by Gordon’s evident brain damage.  If you’ve watched more than forty-five seconds of MLS coverage this year, you will have seen a campaign titled “Don’t Cross the Line.”  It’s not about coloring books.  Alan Gordon will have seen reminders of this campaign every single day this year. 

Since the point of the campaign is “However negative you feel about racial, ethnic and gender minorities, please don’t shout such negativity at the top of your lungs, thank you in advance,” we can conclude that the campaign made about as much impression on Gordon as plankton sweat in the gullet of a blue whale.  The league has to make an example of Gordon, because from the league’s PR point of view that was about as helpful as shouting “MLS isn’t as good as Liga MX, and people who watch are settling for an inferior product!”  Gordon has thrown himself on the mercy of MLS, and shouldn’t be surprised at the strained quality of said mercy.

Even if MLS hadn’t been so concerned with linear integrity, you will also have noticed that one of the bigger stories in American soccer this year was the abrupt retirement of Robbie Rogers.  Robbie even helpfully included American soccer as a bastion of intolerance, or at least acceptance of intolerance.  You will have noticed, but Alan Gordon evidently didn’t.  If he had, he might not have let loose with the most ill-advised challenge since Osama bin Laden told Seal Team Six they didn’t have the guts to pull that trigger.

All this is more than enough for MLS to put Gordon inside the wicker man and unleash the bees. 

I suppose it’s theoretically possible that this was drummed into players’ heads so much, that it ended up like being told not to think of a polka-dotted rhinoceros.  Fine.  There’s another aspect of this that bothers me, and that’s the “heat of the moment” defense.  And it is a defense, really.  It’s seen as a mitigating factor – otherwise, why bring it up at all?  No one imagines Gordon said it like William F. Buckley debating Gore Vidal.

Let’s say Gordon had been addressing the other Timber Johnson, and let fly the N-word. 

Well, why not?  Was it not the heat of the moment?  Did Gordon not wish to anger Johnson? 

Alternatively, is it not a mere uncomplimentary verbal joust?  Why is one worse than the other? 

The answer of course is that they are supposed to be the same.  In society these days only Bull Connor fresh off the TARDIS would consider yelling the N-word in public.  We seem to be almost there with the F-word. 

Oh, one other thing.  This is probably obvious to the point of physical pain, but Johnson is not the aggrieved party here.  Alan Gordon was insulting an entire swath of society.  One percent of an entire stadium is still a lot of people, and what Gordon was telling them – again, almost certainly “in the heat of the moment” – was that he does not respect them, and that if that’s the sort of thing they prefer they should cheer for Will Johnson and Portland instead of Gordon and San Jose. 

Of course he wasn’t thinking of this when he said it, because he wasn’t thinking at all.  But in the course of a career that has taken him from Los Angeles to Toronto to Chivas City to San Jose to the US national team, Gordon has been cheered by gay and lesbian fans.  It’s mathematically impossible that hasn’t happened.  So how are those fans now supposed to feel? 

MLS has to unleash an unprecedented punishment for a highly precedented action.  Either the league has painted itself into a corner with their “Don’t Cross the Line” campaign, or it now has an opportunity to show this policy has teeth.  We’ll find out pretty soon, but I’m guessing two months.  The world is watching.

Kei Kamara isn’t the first former MLS player to try his luck abroad and fail, but for Kamara and Norwich to give up on such a ballyhooed loan after barely more than a month?  It’s almost completely unbelievable.

Having this come a week after MLS took credit for tying the Mexican national team in Azteca – that has to be a blow.  If we’re going to talk about all the bright young stars who became successful, then we also need to own our failures.  Especially since, according to Kamara’s tweet, Kansas City is welcoming back with open arms.

Well, Peter Vermes and Sporting need to really consider whether this is a good idea.  Having a player come back under a cloud can really affect a team’s chemistry.  And Kansas City is one of those young, talented teams that think they can go way beyond Open Cup wins.  Now is not to time to rock the boat, even with a nominally familiar face.  Maybe Kamara couldn’t handle the pressure of the EPL, and Kansas City is more his speed – but then, what does that say about MLS?  Why does it produce players capable of manning up in Mexico City, but not in Norwich?  Is MLS doing as good a job grooming players as they’re claiming?

Kamara’s an isolated incident, you say.  Look at David Beckham, after all.  It took years, but Bruce Arena turned a spoiled, selfish celebrity into a useful and dedicated teammate.  When he came to Los Angeles, it was “me, me, me.”  Then, it was “we, we, we.”  And now in Paris, it’s “oui, oui, oui!”

Okay, enough humor.  Forget about Kamara.  What about Herculez Gomez?  One minute he was preparing for a Champions League game at Santos, then completely out of nowhere he returns to MLS.   What happened here, exactly?

This isn’t about Chivas USA signing a Latino player.  This is about the allocation process.  Herculez Gomez is a national team star, and there are rules for such players.  I’ve checked every inch of MLSnet.com, and I haven’t seen anything about Chivas USA trading cash, or players, or draft picks, or anything, to move up in the order.  In fact, it seems like the league is just trying to bury the story in the hopes that we won’t notice.

“Oh, hey, we’re just going to send this game-changing, popular player here arbitrarily, never mind, Portland, Philadelphia, etc. etc.  We’ll make it up to you.”  That’s what the league told Dallas when they were deprived of Freddy Adu.  And the league is still up to its same old tricks.

And from what I can tell, Chivas USA fans aren’t even happy about Herculez joining their team!  Take a look at the comments on those tweets – CUSA fans are furious!  And rightly so – Gomez is a former Galaxy player and current US national team player!  That irritates both long-time Chivas USA fans, and potential Guadalajara fans.  Don Garber should have known this, and never permitted this signing.

But the worst news was the announcement of the new MLS franchise.

The author of this article shares a lot of my snarky reaction – yes, I’m sure it was literally minutes of negotiation.  The ramshackle nature of this announcement reeks of unprofessionalism – for example, exactly where in Kentucky?  One assumes Louisville, but there’s no divining that from the story, or (naturally) anywhere on MLSnet.com.

It’s not because Louisville is necessarily a doomed market.  The university doesn’t dominate the sports landscape quite as brutally as OhioState does Columbus, and there aren’t even as many major league professional teams in competition as there are in Portland or Salt Lake City.  Kentucky FC will be the state’s only major league team in any sport.  You could say the same about Vermont FC or North Dakota FC or Alaska FC, but there’s still at least some potential.  It’s possible the South will embrace Kentucky as “their” team, but it’s not likely – at least Houston and Dallas were actually in the Confederacy.

But what did happen with Orlando and Miami?  Why did MLS spend months talking about a second team in New York, and then immediately turn around and pick another city?

Especially a city that’s had no buildup, from what I can tell.  Even the timing is mysterious – why make this announcement in early April?  Why not the All-Star Game, or MLS Cup?

What’s even worse is the marketing.  “Kentucky FC.”  Think about it.

That’s right – it’s obviously going to be confused with the University of Kentucky!  Which is the kiss of death for a team playing in Louisville.  (They certainly can’t call themselves “Kentucky” while playing in Lexington.)  The marketing miscalculation here is just monumental.  MLS has been on a winning streak of new, successful expansion teams, so it’s awful to see Don Garber lose the plot like this.

Put together, yesterday was a troubling, troubling day for the league.  We as fans demand answers.  I’ve sent several emails to Mr. Garber asking for comment, and gotten nothing.  So I’ve written the league’s owners, Sunil Gulati, and Sepp Blatter.  Don Garber can run, but he can’t hide.

Ya know what, before we go any further, let’s look at the Kyle Dane Hexagonal chart, as it stands right this second.  (For those of you just joining us – the theory behind these standings, in one sentence, is that you’re supposed to win at home and draw on the road.)

Costa Rica:  -1
United States: -1
Panama: -2
Honduras: -3
Jamaica: -3
Mexico: -4

We’re going to hold the Cupcake and Corn Smut charts for a while, because it looks like you all might have been right, this group is evenly balanced.

Anyway, the US and Panama did what they were supposed to, Costa Rica lost a forgivable point, and the other three teams basically tap-danced on their ding-dongs.  The first commandment of World Cup qualifying is Thou Shalt Not Drop Points At Home.

“Mexico will qualify with ease” was Ian Darke’s refrain in the second half, which was well in keeping with what a colossal freaking outlier that game was.  Chart says otherwise, and here’s why.  Once Mexico finishes burning those black uniforms, they can contemplate having thrown away two out of five home games for the first time, like, ever.  It goes without saying they need to win all three of the remaining.  They also need to make a few other teams violate the first commandment, and probably not simply with ties.

Finishing off Honduras would have been a significant mitigating factor, to say the least.  But tying on the road isn’t bad.  Tying at home is bad.  Doing it twice is, well, not wonderful.

So what does Mexico do at this point?  They could panic and fire Chepo.  Or, they could relax, take a few weeks, calmly assess the situation, and then fire Chepo.  Or, they could let Chepo drop a few people who badly need dropping – looking at you, Johnny Two Saints.  Or, they could shine more laser pointers at the opponents.  (Seriously, bitch move.  Jail those jackasses.)

But they have to do something, because that was an uninspired and uninspiring team breaking the hearts of an entire country.  Sure, Mexico deserved to win at least 1-0.  They were the better team.  It would be easy to blame the refs for the loss, but this wasn’t a team that should have been relying on the referees in the first place.

Whatever ends up happening, it will be delightful to watch from afar – like, say, a rooftop overlooking a closed practice.  What Klinsmann went through last week will seem like sweet whispers from soft lips compared to what Chepo has bought himself.

Speaking of which.  I’m not going to tell Brian Straus how to do his job, but what I want to read more than anything – even the posts from Mexico fans on this forum, which I am just salivating over – is a nice, detailed follow-up from his anonymous contributors.  Don’t tell me they only sing when they’re losing.  Where you at, guys?  Step up to the mic.  They can stay anonymous, too – well, obviously they should – I just want to get the reactions.  Come on, AOL Sporting News, cheap hits beckon.

You know what they could say?  Klinsmann is crazy and incompetent.  Who starts an inexperienced back line in the Azteca?  Who leaves DaMarcus Beasley out there to get murdered and murdered and murdered?  Was there an offensive game plan to speak of?  Should you need to tell guys as experienced as Bradley and Edu not to commit controversial calls on the road in the penalty area?  Why can’t he get a damn thing out of Altidore?  What did he think was going to happen with that cobbled-together group of names picked out of the phone book and told to wish upon a star?

Turns out, I guess, he was watching players in practice, and picked guys he had faith in.  The worst option would have been that Besler and Gonzalez got totally exposed.  Once the game went an hour, Klinsmann accomplished his main mission and earned his salary – they held off Chicharito in Azteca for sixty minutes plus.  Maybe something will scare them again in their entire lives, but it won’t be on a soccer field.  They’re still in single digits, cap-wise, but they have experience that, well, would have been wasted on trotting Bocanegra out there again, if you ask me.

Sure, it could have gone horribly wrong, and maybe it should have.  Part of it is that guys like Gonzalez, Besler and Guzan passed their finals with flying colors.  I don’t know how Sporting Kansas Wizards intend to deal with Besler’s future (or for that matter, Graham Zusi, who I thought was just electric out there), but if you live in an MLS town, try to stop by and wave to Omar on his way out.  You can’t spell Gonzalez without “gone.”  LA was lucky to have him this long.  Go with God, tall guy.

Hey…turns out Camp Cupcake actually mattered.  Knock me over with a feather.

Oh, one guy who was not anonymous, and probably owes us a follow-up?  Omar’s club coach.  Wait, gotta cue up Rick Derringer’s “Real American” real quick.

Did you happen to catch how many guys for the US were born in Germany?  Try none of them.  Did you happen to catch how many guys for the US spend or spent significant time in MLS?  Try every god-damned one of them.  It was as if Klinsmann picked out a lineup, and picked out a series of injuries, just to make Bruce Arena look silly.

This result should keep Klinsmann safe, just like it did for the last guy to get a qualifying point in Azteca oh wait.  Actually, for those of you just joining us – Klinsmann duplicated a feat first accomplished by Steve Sampson.  Sampson ended up making qualifying look extremely difficult, and Alan Rothenberg (the Sunil Gulati of the 90′s) considered canning him after the 1997 Hex.  Which is a decision he probably wishes he could have over, wherever he is now.  Probably swimming in his pool filled with money like Scrooge McDuck.

Realistically, this is still a United States team with many flaws, deep and wide.  All the good done today is wiped out and then some if Mexico marches into Columbus and avenges Winfield Scott this September.  Or if Klinsmann says “I proved I don’t need Donovan, now I’ll prove I don’t need Dempsey!” and Jamaica and Panama take turns pantsing us.  You never know what will happen next, not with the United States National Team.  A hundred years of chaos.  Forget the snake or the flying ball, the USSF should put Schroedinger’s cat on the crest.

The other thing that will be worth watching is the fallout among America’s casual sports fans.  This was yet another example of a 0-0 game that was intense and exciting, if not exactly adorable.  Right now, America kinda likes the US National Team, and will jump on board in a big way if things start looking good.  Americans like seeing Americans as underdogs, and this game was approaching Miracle On Ice territory.

The other thing the average sports fan will learn is that there is literally never a dull moment in the Hex.   I expect to see a big, big uptick in interest over the next few months. Come September, Ohio State may have to take a backseat in Columbus for a couple of says, that’s how big.

All this, because the United States did what it was supposed to do.  Imagine if they ever do something really special, like win a road game.

Anyway, younglings, trust me that whenever the national team is de-captainated, there is, shall we say, a period of adjustment.  Trust me even more that compared to the Harkes affair – er, sorry – the current saga is a parade of respect and professionalism.  And that’s just in American soccer history.  Some day we’ll gather around and talk about Eric Cantona, or Roy Keane, or any Holland team picked at random.  If you think this week is some sort of international soccer outlier – well, not to pile on the smarm too terribly, but – I see the bruise you got from falling off the turnip truck yesterday is healing nicely.  So how are you enjoying your very first rodeo?

The definition of national team manager is bruising egos.  Star players are shunted to roles, brought off the bench, kept on the bench, dropped in camp, or ignored entirely.  You literally cannot do the job without pissing off, or on, popular people.

Seriously, what were you expecting?  “Klinsi saw through my BS like Superman through Saran Wrap, and I’ll always love him for it”?

But the actual news isn’t news.  What makes this news is the stakes.  Are the stakes.  Whatever.  If Klinsmann bungles qualification…well, let’s not find out what it’s possible for American soccer to survive.*

However, there’s not yet any reason to believe qualification is in peril.  If literally everything we’ve read about Klinsmann and Vasquez is hideously accurate – well, we’re at home, and the other team has called up Roy Miller.  Less than three points would be disastrous, but unlikely.

I know, I know, what if our inexperienced back line decides to, I don’t know, deliberately encroach during penalty kicks or something.  How can such a young, green team cope with the pressure in playing in front of a friendly crowd in Denver against a team that has never won in the United States?   (EDIT – er, oops.  Corrected by readers below.  I apologize for the error, seriously.  Can’t imagine what I was thinking.)

Okay, not to be flip, but Bryan Ruiz and Alvaro Saborio would be troublesome for almost any US backline.  They’re very good, as Panama found out to their considerable cost.

If only we could field defenders who were familiar with Saborio.  If only we had a player who was familiar with how Ruiz plays at Fulham.  If only we had a ball-winner like Michael Bradley.  If only we had a Premiership-level goalkeeper to step in for Tim Howard.  Whatever shall we do.

For the Azteca game – gang, we should have been mentally prepared for an ass-kicking in this fixture since the second half of the 2011 Gold Cup final.  It’s not like we have a coach who has ever won in Mexico City, either.  What?

Of course we’re right to worry.  The most likely outcomes for this weekend, pointswise, are, in order: 3, 1, 0, 2, 4, 6.  So horrible options are, in total, more likely than acceptable ones.  That’s understandable to be concerned about.

And it would be easy to say US fans have the attention span of schizoid goldfish for turning on Klinsmann a year and change after turning on Bradley.  But the fan base has grown considerably – it may not be the same people who yelled about Bob now yelling about Juergen.  And Klinsmann, unlike his predecessors, came into office promising hope and change, and oh by the way cost something like four times as much in salary as his immediate predecessors.  Someone getting paid two million fish per annum ought to be scrutinized very carefully.

As long as we’re fair about it.  Brian Straus was shooting fish in a barrel.  Which is much more difficult than it sounds.  First you have to find a barrel, then get ahold of several cubic feet of fish, and THEN you have to find a way to get the fish in the barrel.  They weren’t born in that barrel, you know.  Even dead fish are bulky and slippery, and presumably these are live fish, because otherwise why bother shooting them?

But still – a bunch of different lineups?  Stupid Klinsmann, choosing to coach a team where players get injured when he has perfectly good Cylons available.   Starting inexperienced players?  Good point, I guess…except well, now Cameron and Gonzalez do have CONCACAF experience.  And will get even more this coming week.  Including, frankly, the best option to get said experience – a terrible, intimidating Azteca where, nonetheless, a loss is far from the end of the world.

Yes, new players should have been broken in during friendlies.  Stupid Omar, getting hurt last year – that sure was stupid of him.  I don’t think it’s unreasonable that the focus is getting experience now for Brazil, rather than squeezing the last bit of juice out of Carlos Bocanegra.

Again, I hate to dismiss people’s worries, but complaining now is like telling me Klinsmann is a worse coach, and his control of the team is more tenuous, than Steve Sampson.  I can’t get there.  But I can accept difficult games mixed in with taunting from our green friends to the south.

What, you wanted a sport where the US makes everything look easy?  Basketball’s ready when you are.

*That said, American soccer would certainly survive qualifying through the backdoor fourth place playoff upset over New Zealand.  My theory, which is mine, is that the US does not need to play beautifully to win fans.  Wearing a flag while celebrating will be enough.  Quick quiz – were the 1980 US victories over the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia pretty, ugly, or a mixture of the two?

Right – who cares.  Who remembers.  MLS needs to talk pretty one day, but the US Mint just needs to get to the final tournament, and get acceptable results once there.

Another quick quiz – how impressive, out of context, is beating Algeria 1-0 on a neutral field?  That was an awe-inspiring, glorious finish…and it was a rebound off a muffed shot after ninety-plus minutes of pure frustration.  Admit it - after regulation was up, you would have greeted Bradley, Donovan and company at the airport with an armload of tomatoes and your best fastball.

Now that you can see
How you groove with me
What else can I do
To get closer to you

We both are here to have the fun
So let it whip

- NBC Sports, as interpreted by the Dazz Band (because the Devo reference was too easy, and the Liz Phair reference too 90′s)

About four hours into Rivalry Week, I had a post going about how funny it would have been if there had been ten hours of MLS coverage on NBC Sports, and not a single goal. 

Yes, goalless draws can occasionally be intense and dramatic.  Hold that thought.

Then came what my DVR called The MLS Whip Around Show, and what the network called MLS Breakaway. 

I had to remind myself that this wasn’t actually anything new.  The show’s direct ancestor is the NFL Red Zone, and the concept probably goes back to the first round of the NCAA basketball tournament.  The format is the alternative answer to “How do we decide which game to show?” – the answer being, all of them.

It wasn’t perfect, by any means.  For that, blame the beautiful game.  By Saturday evening, Arlo White, Kyle Martino and Russ Thaler must have been pondering NFL football with seething jealousy.  Cutting into games that take long, delicious pauses in between plays, where everything is timed meticulously, where by definition of the “Red Zone” title you don’t need to pay attention until one team gets close enough to score…absolute child’s play compared to juggling soccer games.

It also benefits the casual observer at the expense of the diehard fan, but presumably the Earthquake partisan was watching the Crew game on a different outlet, and not sitting their resentful of sharing his space with three other games he or she cared less about.  Much better to get a taste of the Impact-TFC game than nothing at all, though. 

Yes, it was frustrating occasionally seeing five minutes of nothing going on in Chester, before cutting back to New York in mid-sentence.  That’s going to happen less often, but it can’t be eliminated – not in a game with constant action.  Those of you who watch soccer to immerse yourself in the flow and psychology of a match…well, here are some long-form highlights instead.

Thaler, Martino and White will also benefit much less often from the March Madness factor – blowouts in MLS are much less likely than in the first round of the NCAA tournament.  When CBS or TNT (or whoever, I’ve lost track) says “We’re cutting away from Duke-Oberlin because the Supreme Court has outlawed televised executions,” that’s done not for the viewer as much as the broadcasters and technicans.  One less game to worry about, and more resources for all the other stuff that’s going on.  MLS is not going to give that opportunity that often – even MLS blowouts tend to get out of hand in the final minutes, so Whipaway would me more, not less, likely to show fans the carnage.  And they would still have to worry about a game where something was still at stake.

The Whipaway format also takes mitigates some of the league’s manufactured publicity – when a goal is scored, it’s on the “highlights” show, right then and there, for a wide audience of fans.  There’s only so much time to talk talk talk about whichever Designated Player before they have to cut away to an MLS player actually accomplishing something.  That’s a significant benefit – stars can come from anywhere.

Well, at least goalscorers, and to a lesser extent keepers who specialize in big saves.  Goalkeepers who were in the right position, defensive midfielders cutting off the passing lane, defenders cancelling the attack before it can develop…this format won’t do those players any favors.  Then again, if you wanted to be famous, why did you become a defender in the first place?

But you know what else we saw – commercials.  They finally figured out a way to avoid going forty-five minutes plus stoppage without ads.

Now, like all of you, I pray daily for the overthrow of capitalism and all its works – but here finally is the way for sponsors to assert themselves as much as they do in lamestream American sports…and be charged as such.  Which, if we accept that a professional league needs money to survive, and that more sponsors are good, is a blessing.  It seems idiotic, but missing four games while the commercials are going is less annoying than missing just one.  After all, the show promises you won’t miss anything important.

Yes, I know, it’s all important.  But this is a show for casual fans (or for those of us who have finite amounts of time to watch teams we don’t support). 

On the other hand, NBC will need that sponsor money, because this is a difficult show to produce.  Not necessarily from a technical standpoint – it’s pretty much the technology to change channels.  It’s more the manpower and expertise.  People have to watch those games, and quite carefully.  Even experts can’t tell where the next goal is coming from, and making the call on which game to show live – well, I hope for their sake Motrin signs up as a sponsor.

The onscreen presenters have to work at least four times as hard, probably more.  Thaler was very open about saying when he was handed relevant information, which did several things.  One, it showed how hard and quickly the people behind the scenes were reacting on the fly.  Two, it was great seeing a presenter not pretend he knew all this stuff off the top of his head – that actually added to Thaler’s reliability.  Three, it added an immediacy and intensity to the proceedings, like late returns were coming in from a crucial precinct. 

In a lot of other sports, the studio presentation is fluff at best.  There’s no relaxing on this show while the games are on.  It’s a high-wire act.  And that’s why I’m not even thinking about whether I liked it or not, although I liked it a lot.  I’m thinking about whether I watched the future of American soccer, or American sports.  This is an amazing way of getting new fans in to the sport, quickly. 

This is why leagues and networks haven’t been doing this all along – it’s a great idea, but it needs a large fanbase, and it asks a lot from its participants.  Seriously, picture Skip Bayless doing this crap. 

NBC has been back in the soccer broadcasting business for, I don’t know, fifteen minutes, and they’ve made breakthroughs that Fox and ESPN didn’t in many years.   I apologize for the reservations I had about MLS potentially alienating Fox and Disney.

And it’s certainly nice to have something optimistic to write about, what with my favorite team gagging away an ugly victory after being up a man unfairly in front of less than 20,000 fans while the team’s ownership has gone full soap opera and all.  Oh, but it was a beautiful Sunday afternoon, so the fans stayed away, because fans hate seeing games in nice weather.  Praying for hail against the Rapids Saturday.

The US Soccer Hall of Fame could easily have focused on whichever Builder and Veteran makes it this year.  It’s not like anyone’s going to travel to see the induction. 

But, there is a rule that one suspects was passed sometime between the Noneonta of the Above Class of 2008 and the Hall’s closing the next year.  When nobody makes the 66.666% threshold needed for election into the Hall, we have a second ballot.

I didn’t actually know there would be a second ballot in this instance, otherwise I wouldn’t have been quite so strident in pleading with my fellow voters to get the lead out. 

But my motive was to prevent players from possibly being ignored by history, and to add to the variety and depth of the story of soccer in the early MLS era.  And also, under my plan, the players involved wouldn’t necessarily know they were being let in under a mercy rule. 

This way, however, there’s no getting around it.  Someone’s getting in that would otherwise not have.  If the person I think will get in does get in, well, that person would have eventually made it anyway, either by veterans or by my fellow media members coming around.  (Like I did – I didn’t vote for the player the first time, but changed my mind in subsequent years.)

Still, it’s a clumsy way to bestow the highest honor American soccer has to offer.  Some tact might have been in order.

….which tact I myself might be spoiling.  The Hall of Fame page (run by US Soccer these days) says nothing about a second ballot…although seeing as how a second ballot was sent to hundreds of people who run their keyboards all day, I don’t see how it was supposed to remain a secret.  I think there’s probably a more depressing reason why the page hasn’t been updated since January.

When one day the mighty United States Soccer Hall of Fame building towers over downtown Sioux City (or wherever) in its majesty and grandeur, remember these days, when even the Hall of Fame subsisted on electrons and love.

Anyway, here’s who I voted for:

Chris Armas
Mauricio Cienfuegos
Marco Etcheverry
Robin Fraser
Jason Kreis
Shannon MacMillan
Joe-Max Moore
Ben Olsen
Cindy Parlow
Taylor Twellman

And here’s the second ballot:

MacMillan
Etcheverry
Armas
Parlow
Moore

One of these five will be elected, thanks to a failsafe that’s not really anything like the Doomsday Device in Dr. Strangelove but I can’t think of a better metaphor.  We are asked to award points on a scale of 10,000 to 3.14159 – no, from 1 to 5, 5 being the most worthy.  Also, those who returned blank ballots have not been asked to participate in this second ballot.

Which I suppose is vindication – the Hall (or the Fed, or whoever is running the store at this point) agrees with my Big Hall approach rather than a Little Hall.  As if standards for a more exclusive Hall are any more quantifiable, or even defensible, than mine, now that I think about it – why is my opinion less valid?  Because I make ten-page long dick jokes?

In any case, I expect the winner will be MacMillan – who is also the person I gave five points to, as you might have guessed from the above list. 

So this probably isn’t any way to run a Hall of Fame.  But if you have to run a Hall of Fame this way, it might as well be while no one is paying much attention.

No, not Chivas USA – are you kidding?  Like you didn’t see this coming up 190th Street.  Chivas USA has been trying to sell bacon-wrapped shrimp at the Wailing Wall for nearly a decade now.  There’s a reason they’re not in the newspaper.  Chivas USA screwing up isn’t news, it’s not sports because the outcome is preordained, and it’s not weather – climate, unlike Chivas USA, has changed.  The world will little note nor long remember them, and this franchise of the idiots, by the idiots and for the idiots will soon disappear from the earth. 

I’m talking about the Galaxy.  The numbers for Sunday afternoon’s opener: 20,124 for a 27,000 seat stadium.  The team wasn’t particularly lazy or complacent about marketing, either – there are at least two billboards featuring the mugs of Juninho and Robbie Keane gracing my neighborhood, and covering the Galaxy’s catchment area from my house to Carson and beyond ain’t cheap.  Rapid transit is also brightened up with the cheerful golden gloating of aligning stars. 

So what, in short, gives?  Let’s examine the possibilities.

1.  What problem?  Last year, the Galaxy signed a hilariously lucrative deal with Time Warner Cable.  Today, AEG announced that the Home Depot Center will soon change its name to accommodate StubHub.  The Stadium Club will be changed to the StubHub Club, where they will serve StubHub pub grub.

Jesus, I’m sorry – I lost my mind for a second.  One might assume that with the spin in the media about Home Depot choosing not to re-up, and what with the depressing length of time FC Dallas Stadium has taken to re-whore itself out, and basically with the whole economy starting its fifth year of an extended bellyflop, that the lucrativity of the new naming deal would be something to sneeze at.  One would apparently assume incorrectly, or at least I did.  Unless AEG just flat-out lied to Street & Smith’s Don Muret:

Shervin Mirhashemi, president of AEG Global Partnerships, said the value is greater than that of the deal Home Depot signed in 2003 when the facility opened. The old agreement carried a value of $70 million over 10 years.

This deal was made, keep in mind, with Beckham long gone and Chivas USA loudly telling anyone who will listen about how much they hate the place and can’t wait to leave.  Also, the tennis stadium makes a fair boxing ring, the track stadium makes a fair reserve game venue, the San Diego Chargers are nowhere in sight, and the velodrome makes about as much profit as you’d expect a velodrome to bring in, and did I mention the economy since 2003 has died and gone to hell?  StubHub paid what it paid largely on the strength of the LA Galaxy.  Just like Time Warner did last year.  If a few empty seats here and there are a problem, all of MLS should have such problems.

But the Home Depot Center – sorry, Parc du StubHub or whatever they end up calling it – is not oversized by any means.  It was built specifically to create scarcity in the Southern California MLS marketplace.  It’s tougher to get Galaxy tickets than some other teams I could mention, but it’s a rare StubHub radio commercial that bothers to mention the Galaxy…and StubHub commercials are not what you’d call rare.  21st century teams aren’t remotely as dependent on box office as their forebears, but you don’t see a healthy team that struggles at the gate.  And I think over six thousand seats available is an issue.

2.  Missing stars.  Every team loses players.  But as all the soccer world knows, the Galaxy started the year without two of their most accomplished international stars, who have been identified with the team for years.  Even though there’s a significant brand strength that gets a lot of corporate attention, the fact is fans love players.  The Galaxy, even with those trophies, have to reinvent themselves for the public.  And let’s be honest.  No matter how successful a club, or how devoted the fans – when a team loses players like Edson Buddle and Christian Wilhelmsson, there’s no guarantee the fans will come back. 

Oh, yeah - Beckham, Donovan, something something oranges something.

The Galaxy have been very frank (heh) about how they intend to solve this – either Lampard or Kaka or someone about the hit the downslope of their career like Franz Klammer.  (Balotelli to MLS is when, folks, not if.)  But six years of Beckham built the fan base to where…they don’t sell out their season opener as double defending champions.  Lampard or Kaka will bring just a different set of looky-loos.

LA seems, as of this writing, to have done the impossible, and won over Robbie Keane.  Maybe the most mercenary Irishman since Brian Boru has finally found a home, who knows.  Some of this was the original MLS plan in the Doug Logan era, with legitimately big names like Campos and Valderrama.  It worked so well they nearly shut the league down.  Beckham was a poker bluff away from making the team a global laughingstock, too, remember.  It’s a thin line between Henry and Marquez, and I don’t know if the Galaxy can afford to be caught on the wrong side.

3.  I suck.  In this case, I, the Los Angeles soccer fan.  Full disclosure – I didn’t go to the game, either, and not for a reason anyone would care about.  But I thought 27,000 others would, so I thought, what the hell, I’ll see them later in the year.  In any case, I do have season tickets, so I was counted anyway. 

But Los Angeles is almost Miami when it comes to fickle support of sports.  It’s an article of faith that Los Angeles fans need a shiny object – Campos, Hermosillo, Hernandez, Hong, Beckham, Keane, Stephens – to draw a crowd. 

My counterpoint to that is the LA Kings, an AEG property, and for four decades California’s answer to the Maple Leafs.  The LA Palm Leafs.  Anyway, they got good all of a sudden – I mean, seriously, in the space of a month or two – and won something very heavy.  People here love the Kings now. 

Name an LA King. 

Thought as much.  The Kings had a few decades’ head start, so maybe the answer is simply time.  But big heavy pieces of metal don’t work for the Galaxy as much as for the Kings, and that should be addressed.  We’re not even frontrunning as well as we should be.

4. Chivas USA sucks.  When it comes right down to it, Chivas USA and the Galaxy are selling the exact same product at the exact same place.  When Chivas USA sells tainted horsemeat with e.coli and rat paws in their burgers, it’s not going to make customers hungry for a Quarter Galaxy with Cheese.  Especially if the Galaxy is priced ten times as high as the Goat on a Shingle.  I’ve called the Galaxy/Chivas USA dynamic a negative feedback loop before, and in fairness the Galaxy have pulled out of their doldrums of the Yallop era.  But there’s good, and there’s good in comparison, and Chivas USA is the kind of wingman that gives dives a bad name.

There’s also a finite amount of coverage in the media for two soccer teams, especially in Crazytown.  It would be nice if each outlet sent a separate guy to follow each team, and gave them both the same amount of attention.  It would also be nice if dogs crapped rainbows.  When an outlet devotes even the minimal time and space to a partial-birth oil spill like Chivas USA, those inches/minutes aren’t coming out of the Lakers’ time.

Counterpoint: the Clippers.

Countercounterpoint: the Galaxy want to be the Lakers so badly – and vice versa, seeing as how the Lakers went with big names over common sense this year, but I assume all of you care about the Lakers even less than I do, which is very little indeed – but aren’t anywhere near there yet.  The Clippers didn’t come into town until after Magic Johnson did, after all.  In comparison, Chivas USA is a snake in the Galaxy’s cradle.  A rubber snake, but a snake nonetheless.

5.  Price point.  Or, as a human being would say, price.  Thanks partly to the Home Depot Center Until The Timbers Game, and thanks partly to Designated Player salaries, Galaxy tickets are something less than the biggest bargain in the league.  Because I am lazy and innumerate, this thought exercise will work just as well assuming all 27,000 seats are general admission.  A general admission ticket for a Galaxy game is $35.  Convenience fees are not included.  20,124 times 35 is $704,340.  (I know we’re talking about tickets distributed, not paid for, but since not every ticket is general admission I think compensating error kicks in a little.  In any case, it’ll do for the purpose of the exercise.)  If prices were lowered to $25, they would sell out the stadium…and make $675,000.

So at $35, it’s easy for the Galaxy to go back up to #1 and say “What problem?”  (In case you were wondering, general admission single game tickets for Chivas USA are $17.) 

Counterpoint – so sell one ticket each game for a million dollars each!  I mean, you only have to sell one ticket every two weeks!  Not to belabor the point here, but we’re building a sports team.  There are so many intangibles about being a sports fan – loyalty and belonging and things that I absolutely do not want to trivialize, because occasionally something comes along and lets you know that this silly stuff isn’t always that silly.  (Clicking through recommended, but the story is very raw and emotional, so, be warned.)  You are trying to build a community.  Overpricing and bare bleachers make that task harder. 

Anyway, those cheapskates who would show up for $25 tickets, but not $35, are still paying for parking, probably buying concessions, usually buying souvenirs, and if the team and supporters groups are doing their jobs, leaving the park fans for life, so they’ll come back and spend $25 again and again. 

6.  This is not a rebel song.  This is Sunday Bloody Sunday.  I asked the Galaxy and MLS if they had any comment, and to my amazement, they did not tell me to go **** myself in new and interesting ways.  In fact, they provided me with this:

2012 – 27,000 (Saturday night)
2011 – 27,000 (though the number of fans in the building was far lower due to a deluge that hit that day) (Sunday evening)
2010 – 21,376 (Saturday night)
2009 – 18,013 (Sunday afternoon)
2008 – 27,000 (Saturday night)
2007 – 23,596 (Thursday night)

My counterpoint – well, as much as it’s possible to counter actual data would be the Galaxy’s average season attendance for those years:

2012 – 23,136
2011 – 23,335
2010 – 21,437
2009 – 20,827
2008 – 26,009
2007 – 24,252

And AEG was so delighted with last year’s Galaxy numbers that they fired their President.  No pressure, Chris Klein.

This goes to whether it’s fair to say that the Galaxy are underperforming in the first place – I say yes, because I just wrote a lot of crap about it.  The Galaxy and MLS have PLENTY – maybe millions – of reasons to say no, and it’s their buttcheeks in the blender when it comes right down to it.  I certainly don’t want to be the Galaxy attendance equivalent of the US fan who wants us to win every Central American road game.

But I don’t think I’m lying with numbers.  There are eight million stories in the city, and only twenty thousand of them are stories about the Galaxy.

Oh, and by the way – the Galaxy are for sale.  They’re still officially the only MLS team in town who are for sale.  Sure, the cost is $7 billion, and there are some ancillary throw-ins to complete the deal, but the Galaxy are the MLS team in Los Angeles on the block, not Chivas.  AEG has put a great deal of time and effort into the club, and succeeded on a number of fronts.  But they haven’t finished the job yet, and they will sell the club before they do.  It is vastly more important for MLS to get the Galaxy right than Chivas USA, and I hope and assume Garber and the other MLS owners realize it.

Except both “Finding the Game” by Gwendolyn Oxenham and “This Love Is Not For Cowards” by Robert Andrew Powell have been out, like, forever, so many of you have probably already read these.  Alackaday.

“Finding the Game” is the Book of the Film, but you don’t need to have seen Oxenham’s documentary to enjoy the book.  (The crackhead roommate, for example, wasn’t in the movie.)  I asked her a few questions about the film, the book, and the aftermath:

_______________

Me: Since Egypt sounded horrible, where do you wish you had gone, but weren’t able to for whatever reason?

Gwendolyn Oxenham:  Ha–it’s embarrassing to all of us that we never made it to Mexico. It was always part of the plan–after the economy crashed and we lost our funding, we intended to just pile in the car and drive down to Tijuana, but there was so much drug violence (and our car kept dying). And we were all busy trying to make ends meet and raise money for editing equipment and then festival deadlines snuck up on us.

It’s also embarrassing that we didn’t go to Spain (although we certainly had an encounter with Spain football thanks to our EURO2008 snafu). And I would’ve liked to do more in Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, Southeast Asia…hmm, I guess I wanted to go everywhere .
 
DL.  Having said THAT – soccer has been fairly tightly wound with the recent unrest in Egypt.  Was that something you had an inkling of when you were there?
 
GO:  We were there a couple years before the upheaval. And we got detained in Israel, which cut a day out of Egypt, and then we got sick–so we pretty much only had one day to see Cairo. Not enough time to really have any idea what’s going on. 
 
DL.  Have you had a chance to follow up with any of the people you played with?  I’m so cheering for the Iranian national women’s team now.

GO:  Facebook, for all its flaws, is truly great for keeping in touch. One of our friends from Mathare in Kenya owns an internet cafe right on the outskirts of the slum so we keep in regular contact with a lot of those guys. We also had a screening on Austin’s Field about a year ago.

AK, from China, is also active on FB. He now lives in Canada and is in school for accounting–and he’s trying to spread freestyling on the streets of Toronto. And Ronaldinha, the tiny Brazilian wonder, I found on FB a few months ago and am able to follow her current adventures – she recently traveled to England for football. (It’s frightening how grown up she looks now–much more “woman” than “girl.”) I also keep in touch with Niloofar, from Iran, through email. 
 
DL:  Last year you wrote in the New York Times about the state of pickup soccer both here in the US and what you saw in Brazil.  Why is pickup soccer important?

GO:  There’s the joy element: pickup is people at their happiest. It’s a chance to create, to improvise, to invent–all of that freedom is good for both your development as a player and your peace of mind as a person. 

DL:  How difficult is the transition from player to fan?

GO:  Eh, I think that first year is a little tough for any player who reaches the end of their career. But you realize that it still feels good to try hard and play well–and that you don’t need a stadium or a coach to do that. You bask in a Barcelona game and then you go to your own field and try to reenact it.  
 
DL.  We’re in the midst of a very soft NWSL rollout – are you optimistic or pessimistic about the new league?
 
GO: I’m encouraged by the city locations. Portland, Kansas City, Seattle: they have such awesome, supportive MLS fan bases and I think there’s a great chance many of those fans will get behind the women’s teams. They are soccer mad cities.

_________________________

“This Love Is Not For Cowards” is, for my money, better than “Miracle of Castel di Sangro.”  Part of the reason is that the backdrop is so much for tragic.  Robert Andrew Powell was also kind enough to respond to some questions I emailed:

DL.  I guess my favorite “character,” if I can belittle them with that term, was Ken-tokey – how’s he doing these days?

RAP:  He’s doing quite well. Still living in Juárez, still involved with Sofia, his girlfriend in the book. He’s finishing up his university studies, majoring in architecture. Happily, he’s close to securing a visa so he can finally cross over to El Paso. And he’s “kinda, sorta” rooting for the Monterrey team Tigres these days. “Not like Indios or anything close,” he tells me, “but yeah I felt like it I needed to cheer for someone and celebrate goals.”

DL.  Just as a chronicle of a fan group, the book was amazing – how much of that intensity was borne out of Juarez being in the middle of a dark, dark period, and how much of that is just Mexican fans being more amped up than us Americans?  I got the feeling that even by Mexican first division standards, the Indios fans were unusually committed.

RAP:  The fans in Juárez were incredibly grateful to have the Indios, and to root for their city, which they did with their full hearts. Soccer was very much a break from the violence. But I think the intensity that made an impression on you is more endemic to Mexico in general. Mexican fans are indeed more amped up. I don’t know what would compare in the U.S. Certainly not MLS games. Raiders fans might bring it at the same level, though I’ve never made it to the Oakland Coliseum to check. Rooting for the Miami Hurricanes football team back when they were good and back before they tore down the Orange Bowl was a riotous rush. But still, the relationship between Mexicans and their soccer teams is exceptional. The fans for Monterrey Rayados were super intense, totally rabid, hundreds of them rushing the chain link fence protecting the field after ever Reyados goal. Even a relatively bland team in a less exciting city – oh, let’s pick San Luis — has a barra brava banging drums and dancing all game long. Passion for fútbol is woven into the national culture.

DL:  Why were fans from freaking Juarez less violent than some of the dopes who follow soccer in first world European countries?

RAP: It has to do with one of the main (and unanticipated) revelations of my book: that people in Juárez, by and large, are law-abiding, decent, objectively normal people. Yes, soccer culture attracts kooks who want to break the law, to spray paint sidewalks and smash a bottle or two, but even the most committed Juárez ultras, El Kartel, struck me as fundamentally charming. I don’t know enough specifics about Italy and Turkey and Egypt to speak to their soccer geopolitics. The old-school hooliganism covered in Among the Thugs – about a good a book as there is, by the way – was rooted in a strict social hierarchy. Compared to England in the 1980s, the class divisions in Juárez are much less oppressive. The previous mayor told me of a nightclub in Juárez that tried to set up a velvet rope outside the front door, which is a common practice at the clubs in Miami Beach. Everyone in Juárez protested, immediately. It’s not a velvet rope city, the mayor told me, with some pride. Juárez is still a striated society, of course, like everywhere, but there is a sense of inclusion in the city, that the people are all marooned in this desert outpost together. It’s one reason why Juarenses bonded so deeply with the Indios. The players were brothers in the struggle. To pull a quote from a story I wrote for the New York Times:

“Everybody in Juárez identified with the team,” said Ramón Morales, the former head of the Indios’ press office. “Even when they were losing, the Indios got up early and worked hard, which is what we do in Juárez. The club represented all of us here who are fighting against the wind to survive.”

DL.  A lot of the coverage of your book focused on how the citizens relied on the club to cheer them up – and, since this was a crash-and-burn relegation year on the way to non-existence, it was sort of the opposite of New Orleans embracing the Saints on their way to the Super Bowl.  Is that actually good for a city, though?   Or were the problems Juarez faced so great, that without Indios they would literally have had nothing?

RAP: It’s not fair to say Juarenses would have had nothing without their Indios. There’s still ice cream in the city. And beer. And at least one really good golf course. Sunsets reflecting off the desert dust can be breathtaking. Couples fall in love in Juárez every day. Kids graduate from college and parents return from long days at work in time to watch young daughters take their very first steps. All that sort of shit. It’s real life there, and the real world. Unfortunately, at the time I was there, epic violence exploded all around the city, every day. For the most part people tried to put the violence out of their minds, to ignore it as best they could. Keep Calm and Carry On. But the more time one spent in Juárez the closer the violence got. Ken-tokey’s best friend was murdered while I was there, and Kento had to skip the funeral out of fear of gang retaliation. He told me about his friend’s murder as we were tailgating prior to an Indios game. When I saw how sad he was that night, out in the parking lot, it was easy to gauge the value of the team. Ken-tokey still showed up to cheer on the Indios, as shattered as he was emotionally. He was grateful for the escape.

Yeah, it sucked that the team crashed and burned. But even so, it was inspiring that the team had even made it to the top league in the first place. Good or bad, the Indios were ambassadors for their city.

DL.  There’s been a little bit recently about Juarez recovering – their murder rate getting back down to the level of a minor war, and so forth.  You painted a fairly bleak picture of frail public institutions completely co-opted by the cartels – is Juarez even close to a solution?

RAP:  The murder rate in Juárez has dropped dramatically. That’s good news. Good enough to inspire a round of optimistic stories in the international press. “Juárez is back,” we are told. Business is back, people are going out, it might be time to buy a house there. It’s a ludicrous conclusion. Thousands and thousands of people have been murdered in Juárez in the past five years. Virtually none of these murders has been solved. That takes a toll on a city’s psyche. Despite the cheerleading from creepy current mayor Teto Murguia, you can’t just press the reset button and declare everything better now, not with that many ghosts still haunting the city. Murder remains fundamentally legal in Juárez. It can’t be a functional city until that basic bedrock of government – Thou Shall Not Kill – is enforced.

Here’s an example of how Juárez “is back”: Weecho, the gargantuan luchador from my book, recently had his truck stolen from him in Juárez, at gunpoint, while he was driving it. Weecho’s an enormous dude, and a professional wrestler, yet the carjackers felt bold enough to stab Weecho six times, four times in vital organs, and leave him on the road to die. (He didn’t die, luckily.) Were the carjackers ever caught? Of course not. Carjacking remains pretty much legal, too. The city is still broken, and heartbreaking.

DL.  There’s a new Indios these days – what do you think of them?  They look from a distance to be struggling at best.  Has soccer turned a corner, at least, in Juarez?  (I always thought the north of Mexico was baseball territory.)

RAP: I like the new Indios, the latest soccer team to play in Juárez under the name shared by every sports team in the city. They’re affiliated with the university, and they’re struggling at a really low level. The quality of play is poor; they might as well be one of the college’s intramural teams. “I’ve gone to a few games,” says my friend Saul Luna, a member of El Kartel. “It’s cool and all, but no, it’s not the same.” Still, I’m glad to again see soccer played at Juárez’s stadium. Life goes on, and soccer is a big part of Mexican life.

And you’re right, the North of Mexico is baseball territory, traditionally. They’ve just finished building a new stadium for Juárez’s baseball team, which is also called … wait for it … the Indios. But  no sport is bigger in all of Mexico than soccer, a dominance that only grows. Tijuana, long a baseball border town, is Mexico’s new soccer capital. Santos, in the northern city of Torreón, won a title recently. Soccer has grown into Mexico’s king sport, nationwide.

That’s how it works. Miami, where I live, is a football town. It has virtually no basketball history. Yet we sure like the Heat these days. And also the Miami Hurricanes in college basketball, ranked in the top ten for the first time ever. If something good comes into your life, you adapt!

DL.  After such an intense year, how do you watch soccer these days?  How have you adjusted to the much, much milder atmosphere of American soccer and the relaxation of watching games at home?  It seems like Fox Soccer Channel or MLS would be pretty tame in comparison.

RAP:  My love of soccer only grows. I grew up playing soccer and ice hockey through college. I’ve long been a fan of other sports like baseball, football and college basketball, yet as cable TV and the internet shrink the world, I find that everything besides soccer (and I guess also the NFL) is falling away. I don’t even have to go to a game in person. Watching last year’s Champion’s League final at Churchill’s Pub in Miami was plenty fun and intense and thrilling, as well as intoxicating on multiple fronts. I go to bars for the bigger games, just to share the experience socially.       I started writing the book in Seattle, working at the Central Library downtown. Riding the bus home at night, I’d see Sounders fans wrapped in their scarves, talking about the matches they were heading to or returning from. It sure wasn’t Juárez. The passion for soccer in Seattle – which is genuine – is more polite than in Mexico, and isn’t really my flavor. I prefer a rougher ride.  

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 Both books take place, for want of a better term, at a moment in history.  The situation in Juarez was completely untenable, and I see Powell shares my doubts that the current “recovery” is anything more than a respite.  Powell’s book seemed to end abruptly, what with him getting the hell out of town and all, but the story was told.  The team still existed at the end of “This Love,” but had only months to live.  The city, like the team, had bottomed out.  Powell, fortunately, survived, but thousands didn’t.

Oxenham’s trip to Iran was utterly fascinating to me – at the time, and on occasion since, the United States had been considering going to war against Iran, after all, so it’s hard to overstate the tension in that trip.  I hasten to add that the chapter, like the book, is non-partisan, and that both pro- and anti-Iran war advocates will find incidents to support their opinions.

The other thing that both books do is make me feel like a dilettante as a fan – and I consider my own self fairly hardcore in the grand scheme of things.  But no one’s going to write a book about kicking back and watching the reserves play the Tijuana B-team in the rain, I suppose.