Thanks to my readers and commenters! It’s been fun!

-Mateo

To be fair, as is usually the case, this most recent round of Surviver: Nordecke Edition was kicked off by the Crew organization. Crew GM Mark McCullers is threatening to evict members of the North End for engaging in profane organized chants:

Meanwhile, back at fan headquarters, the fans are complaining about highschoolers in togas coming to the section, fat chicks showing their boobs, wondering if people remember how bad the section sucked the last time this happened, and alternately telling people to STFU or that they’ll never come back if they get thrown out. Even local god Steve Sirk has waded into the mess and started throwing people around.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx3jica-A4g"]YouTube – Romeo and Juliet Soundtrack – Local God[/ame]

Anyway, it’s sort of like the Matrix. Someone – Matt Bernhardt, Zak – gets sacrificed to the soccer gods, the section falls apart, and then Crewfighter thinks he’s Neo until he’s dead too. Lather, rinse, repeat. It’s a story as old as time, and somewhat entertaining to watch in real life if you’re into that sort of thing. A better-than-cable moment, if you will.

To be fair, the self-immolation going on right now isn’t nearly as bad is it’s been for things like the West Ham game. And doubtless the real debate centers on the culture/power relationship between the McTeams and their most passionate consumers. The behavior of Evil Bert on game day is a persistent thorn in the side of those who are seeking to extract monies from the wallets of the affluent who keep their profanity behind closed doors.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21OH0wlkfbc"]YouTube – Bert & Ernie tries Gangsta-Rap[/ame]

The power dynamic here is such that the Crew fans have little or no voice in how their culture will look. They either need to bend to The Crew’s idea of what a supporter’s section looks like or they’re gone. This is a problem in American Soccer, where the corporate interests running the game are able to unilaterally dictate whatever terms they want to fan groups that are disorganized, small, and desperate for a taste of the game they love at a relatively high level. I’m not talking about reasonable terms – I’m talking whatever terms they want.

This is not a defense of organized profanity, nor is it necessarily a criticism of the club. It’s a recognition of a power dynamic that leaves fans disenfranchised. And I’m inclined to think that if fans want to work on building any kind of strong, legitimate supporter culture here in the states, they need to primarily do it outside of MLS stadiums.

So why aren’t I sharpening my pitchfork or bitching about losing Sigi and Brad Evans? Because honestly, things aren’t all that grim.

A game that I’ve been playing with this team is “let’s look at the corresponding fixtures from last season.” Not temporally, but spatially. And what do we find?

2008
Toronto FC W, 2-0
@ Toronto FC T, 0-0
@ Chivas USA L, 2-0
Colorado Rapids W, 2-1
Chicago Fire T, 2-2
@ Real Salt Lake L, 2-0
@ Houston Dynamo L, 2-0

Total Points: 8

2009
at Houston Dynamo T, 1-1
Toronto FC T, 1-1
at Real Salt Lake L, 4-1
at Chivas USA L, 2-1
Colorado Rapids T, 1-1
Chicago Fire T, 2-2
at Toronto FC T, 1-1

Total Points: 5

When you look at it this way, the Crew have dropped all of 3 points compared to last year. They’ve given up 3 more goals (12 to 9) and scored 2 more (8 to 6). This with having almost every member of the starting 11 except O’Rourke, Schelotto and Gaven miss time due to call ups or injury.

Temporally in 2008 the Crew had an easier schedule and went 6-1-0: home to hapless Toronto, away to hapless NY (the loss), home to Chivas, away to hapless DC, home to Houston and KC, and then away to expansion San Jose. Of those teams, three didn’t make the playoffs, two scraped in by the skin of their teeth, and two were quality opponents that came to Crew Stadium.

This year, only two of the teams the Crew has played currently have less than 10 points, and only one would be *in danger* of missing the playoffs if they started today.

So what can we learn from all this?

1) The Crew’s schedule in this part of the season has been hard. Brutal even. Much harder than last year at this time.
2) The Crew’s level of play has not dropped off that much, despite a roster gutted by injuries, suspensions, and call-ups.
3) The Warzycha-coached Crew plays a more open game than the Sigi-coached Crew did, as five more goals have been scored this year than last year’s corresponding fixtures.

One can even argue the Crew have played *better* than they did last year at this point, having played each and every one of their opponents off the field with the exception of Chivas and Real Salt Lake, only to see two wins turn into draws under bizarre circumstances (bizarro own goal vs. TFC, corrupt red card vs. Chicago). In the other draws ties were certainly snatched from victory against Colorado and TFC, but the team really only has to look at itself for those dropped points.

The point of this is to not overlook the fact that the Crew really struggled in the middle of 2008 when their schedule looked a lot more similar to the way it started this year. And even with the abysmal start, the Crew are within 7 points of the top of the east.

The danger with an “under achieving” team like this year’s Crew is to rationalize away real problems. The most glaring weak point in this team is the central midfield. Brian Carroll has decidedly not been the same player he was in 2008, and Emmanuel Ekpo has looked lost playing next to him. The multiple injuries to Adam Moffat loom large – if he can’t play more than half of this season’s games, the Crew will continue to struggle. Newly healthy Pat Noonan could be tried in that position, but it wouldn’t be natural to him, and it’s clear Warzycha wants him to back up Guillermo.

With every game without a win, the pressure to make up those lost points builds. But not yet. Since last year’s extra KC game at home gets swapped for a Sounders game that should be easier to win (yeah, that’s right), the Crew could draw KC and still not be in danger. They could even draw in LA and claim to have not dropped points.

However, this part of the schedule looks to be as soft and chewy as any other part, and it would be an excellent opportunity to not only pick up points but make up lost ground. The next 8 games see a home and away against a KC side that has only beaten San Jose, Seattle, and New York (2 of three at home); home games against aforementioned terrible San Jose and New York; a trip to league-worst Dallas; a trip to Seattle; and home to Nightmare Chivas. 5 or even 6 wins with a draw on top are not out of the question.

If the Crew can find themselves on 17-24 points at the halfway mark with only 4 more tricky fixtures ahead of them (away at New England, Colorado and Chicago twice), they will have every shot at the best record in the east.

They may not win the Supporter’s Shield this year, given their injuries, smaller roster, and dropped points. But they will make the playoffs, and rumors of the Crew’s demise as a league power are greatly exaggerated.

Presumably the dry dates would be sanctions applied by the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario. The AGCO is a

The important part here is the administration of the Liquor License Act, which you can read in full here if you like that sort of thing. A far more helpful guide of “don’ts” for those licensees looking to avoid being sanctioned is here. Some of the more relevant suggestions include:

Any number of the above don’ts could be potential trip-ups for BMO, and it’s difficult to speculate where TFC ran afoul. Underage drinking? Thrown beer cups? Intoxicated people? Drugs? Noise? All of the above?

The apparent increase in enforcement and visibility of the AGCO that’s recently taken place makes this scenario even more interesting. According to this article in the National Post from back in January, the number of license suspensions has increased 60% in the last decade. The manner of enforcement seems bizarre:

If enforcement is being done on border-line situations described in the article, it strikes me that the AGCO is overplaying its hand, with the danger of looking like it’s standards are arbitrary.

Furthermore, will dry games make any difference? Just about everyone recognizes that the people causing trouble at TFC games are drunk. But a ban in the stadium just means people will drink more before they go inside. By way of comparison, Ohio Stadium has no shortage of intoxicated spectators, even with Karen Holbrooke’s crackdown on open-container violations.

What a license suspension will do, no matter the reason, is put the focus back on Toronto’s recent fan behavior, which is the sort of attention I’m sure TFC doesn’t want.

As for the prospects for actual World Cup qualification:

Not to mention these teams have a game in hand over the Hungarians. Anything is possible – but those of us who’ve watched the Hungarian national team over the last few years know that World Cup qualification will be a big challenge.

If there is a difference this year, it’s that Hungary has actually won it’s games against teams it should win games against – Albania and Malta. It’s surprising the number of times Hungary has blown games against teams of that caliber. These games inevitably have followed a respectable draw in Sweden or Italy or some such place.

After Hungary’s Lothar Matthaus experiment went about as well as MLS’s, it’s nice to see the national team getting some points and attention. But these days the problems for professional football in Hungary are many and varied, and any hopes for a return to 50′s glory in the near future are as misguided as hopes for reunification with Transylvania in same time frame.

EDIT: Check out Pestiside.hu’s wonderful take on the NYT headline change for Jack’s article.

[ame="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8654482333448019932&hl=en"]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8654482333448019932&hl=en[/ame]

After I listened to the podcast, I thought more and more about Ben Knight’s meltdown. It really did seem to come out of nowhere, and it had a bit of an edge on it. It got me wondering where his anger toward Bill came from.

The day before the now infamous game between TFC and the Crew, Ben posted “A Letter to Columbus” on his blog. At times reads like a letter to Bill, and I urge you to read the whole entry:

After leveling this charge at Bill, Ben goes on to say to “Columbus” that if things get out of hand at the game, people should act as peace keepers. More on that later.

I was curious as to what sort of material Bill had posted that would lead Ben to accuse him of thinking all TFC fans were hooligans. So I read back through Bill’s blog. Leading up to the game, Bill posted a season preview:

A week one review:

And a week 2 preview:

And as far as I can tell, that’s it about Toronto. To find something Bill wrote about Toronto fan misbehavior on his blog, I had to go all the way back to the last time the two teams played in September 2008 when there was trouble at BMO after the game. And what did Bill say?

That hardly sounds like a person convinced “that all Toronto soccer fans are kill-crazy death-bots,” to use Ben’s words. Maybe there’s something further back in Bill’s blogging record that is more incendiary, but Ben implied that there was something temporally closer in nature. So what was it?

Bill didn’t post in the thread about the commemorative coin distribution at the TFC game on the Columbus board. He didn’t post in the Columbus/TFC Pregame thread. In fact, he didn’t make a single TFC related post leading up to the game.

But he did comment on two of *this* blog’s entries.

From his comment on my initial game preview:

And from another post I made:

It should be noted that the latter statement was in response to an obvious troll who suggested Columbus should be contracted. In the absence of *any* other written evidence on the internets I could find from the week leading up to the game, we’ve got these two statements to some fairly tame blog posts by yours truly. If there’s something else out there, please let me know – I’d love to hear about it.

Foul as the first one is, I still fail to see where Bill is painting the TFC fan base with the broad, broad brush Ben accuses him of using. Furthermore, I can see Bill, or just about anyone else who talks smack before a game, saying something similar about any other team.

But apparently that sort of thing bothered Ben. A lot. And when Bill let loose on Don Garber and the bad fan behavior with both barrels, culminating in a comprehensive beatdown, it lead to some serious charges from Ben on the podcast:

I e-mailed Ben and asked him if he would clarify his statement about Bill not telling the truth, but he didn’t give me a lot more to go on.* A few minutes later in the podcast came the meltdown:

And after Bill left, Ben said:

So what’s the problem that Ben’s talking about? What’s the damage? At first blush, it seems like he might be referring to the relations between the TFC and Crew fan bases, that by writing what he does Bill inflames people to hatred and violence. Ben appears to say as much when he tells Bill that he needs to calm down.

While there’s no question that many TFC fans (those that even read him) won’t like what Bill has to say in those pieces, will those fans cause problems at games because of what they read? If so, they’d be validating Bill’s whole piece, and I think it’s unlikely to happen in such a causal manner. It’s equally unlikely that 150 Hudson Street Hooligans gather every Thursday in the basement of Ruby’s where they read Bill Archer’s latest anti-Toronto screed and whip themselves into a frenzy of hatred as they dance naked to Rammstein in preparation for Saturday.

Furthermore, if Bill has a responsibility as a blogger to keep incendiary material out of his blog before a rivalry match, he did that. And even in the two instances where he did say stuff, he posted run of the mill smack in a place that gets even fewer visits than the Crew forum. There’s nothing there about all TFC fans being hooligans. The *best* argument Ben has is the implied violence toward the people who caused problems at BMO, which is about as faux-tough talk as it gets and just about identical to Ben telling Bill to stay out of Leaside.

I think the real problem, the damage that Ben sees and what caused him to be so frustrated on Saturday is in the form of that to TFC’s image. In BigSoccer circles, there’s a lot of jealousy toward TFC due to the fact that they sell out every single game and haven’t even been in the league three years. A lot of hate flows their direction because of that and their self congratulatory fans. But *nobody* in MLS thinks that TFC is going to go away anytime soon. And a lot of people envy the sheer number of supporters TFC gets.

Apparently though, the situation in Toronto is much more fragile than the rest of us realize. In the aftermath of this event, the Toronto media unleashed an assault on TFC fans. From Duane, aka SweetOwnGoal, aka “some moron”:

And from Ben.

It’s clear that this reaction shook and alarmed the TFC bloggers. During the podcast Saturday, the bloggers asked the TFC VP of Operations if he thought soccer would just up and disappear in Toronto. He laughed the question off, but the hosts were a bit nervous. They pressed him with followup questions on the topic. One of them even said something like “I’m glad you’re confident, because I’m worried.” It was ludicrous to listen to, because not even fans in “beleaguered” Columbus are really worried about their team going away these days.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to connect the somewhat irrational fear of TFC disappearing with Ben’s anger toward Bill, who’d rather see teams in American cities and has voiced his opinion of that on more than one occasion. And for Ben and the others the fear is very real that repeated, strong, negative media reactions in Toronto will lead the disappearance of TFC, or at the very least, BMO emptying out and becoming the sort of place that Dallas and Colorado fans are accustomed to watching a game at – a ghost town that fans of other teams speculate won’t make it through next season.

I think (I hope) that these fears will fade the longer Toronto is in the league, and that it’s fans will mature the way fans have at other clubs. But I didn’t realize just how deep the concern for the future of their team is. Because that’s what Bill ultimately represents for Ben – not just a writer who criticizes the team he knows and loves, but a symbol of that entire team being taken away.

*The response I got back was, “I don’t know where to start, [Mateo]. **I think the entire exercise speaks for itself. He contradicts himself — and his writing — and it’s all there if you haven’t made your mind up.”

Apparently two un-named FIFA officials, one from Britain and the other from Luxembourg, consumed two soft drinks at a bar. Little did they know that the prostitutes who chatted them up were ordering some pretty stiff drinks:

For those of you keeping score at home, that’s almost $2300. The FIFA officials were then frog marched to an ATM where they were forced to withdraw the cash under threat of being beaten. The three men who helped them in this task were later arrested.

Interestingly enough:

Had this been an official visit, no doubt the Hungarian FA could have helped with that tab. As it is, the arrest of the men is an impressive display of justice. Many times tourists are SOL.

And the Toronto bloggers think Bill is a liar?

1) Before Bill went on, a TFC executive admitted that they like “tension” in the stadium, and wanted to toe the line where it felt like “something was about to happen.” Of course the TFC supporters nodded enthusiastically, but when you deliberately foster a fan culture that toes the line of stadium violence, you get what you deserve.

2) The Toronto guys appeared to be surprised Bill liked to talk about his own point of view. Really? You thought he would be different?

3) I felt the Toronto guys had the better of it until one melted down and accused Bill of lying (without providing an example) and then called Bill a jackass. Guess what, you just got owned. Bill is so far inside your head you couldn’t stand it. After that Bill had a slight advantage.

4) After Bill hung up the TFC guys talked at length, and basically aired their grievances about him. Not classy, but it was hard to get a word in edgewise when he was on the line. The TFC guys seemed to think that Bill was inciting violence toward their team, but were not willing to admit their own fan issues at BMO, nor would they admit that their fans caused problems during last week’s game. They also said Bill contradicted himself a lot, but didn’t really offer examples. One of the TFC guys admitted that he wanted Archer on so they could discredit him. Not sure that happened.

5) Granted, phoning into a radio show is not Bill’s best medium. He stuttered and generally wasn’t as smooth as the guys with practice.

6) The best moment for the TFC guys was bringing up the anti-Canadian banners in the Crew end, which Bill wasn’t all that concerned about. They could have pushed forward on that front, but didn’t, and it more or less lost its effectiveness.

7) Bill for his part never really got the TFC guys on the defensive, but they were so bothered and shaken up by his sheer advocacy, it didn’t matter.

8) Bill’s best moment was where he said that as a fan of MLS, he was worried about the TFC fans breaking up stadiums because of the image problems it creates. The TFC guys really didn’t have an answer.

9) Mrs. 319 said, “They basically didn’t listen to each other. I didn’t enjoy listening to it.”

10) I didn’t feel there was a clear winner, but the TFC guys probably left more frustrated than Bill did.

Insta-Result: TFC Guys 2-2 Bill Archer

Dear readers who listened to the show, what are your thoughts? Was there a clear winner?

and instead came across this:

Which looks an awful lot like – no, is – one of Dan’s blog posts, except it’s on BleacherReport, not BigSoccer. After the confusion wore off, I thought I should investigate since I’m so fond of tromping on people for double posting blog entries in a feeble attempt to build traffic.

After long hours of investigation and interrogation my super-secret sources revealed that not only am I somewhat late to the party (as these blog posts have shown up in various corners of BigSoccer already) BigSoccer is purposely syndicating blog content to build traffic, visibility, and rank higher in the Googles.

I immediately wondered what Google’s policy on duplicate content would say about that.

Syndication and duplication are two different things. The former is a legitimate reuse of content to broaden readership, the latter could be plagiarism, theft, or just plain doucheness. There’s nothing particularly sinister about syndication, especially in this instance where the Bleacher Report articles are pointing back to BigSoccer.

But what’s the point of creating an online community like BigSoccer if the content you’re pimping to draw more users to your site is instead sending users to *another* online community where the cut of the advertising is probably less? And even more importantly, the user experience for this particular transaction absolutely sucked. I’d never heard of Bleacher Report, and didn’t want to go there. And when I got there, I wondered what the hell was going on.

And to say it presents the BigSoccer bloggers a flattering light would be very wrong. Did you know that Dan Loney looks like this:

And his bio says:

Yeah, I want to read what that guy has to say. Scintillating. To top it all off, the BR version of Dan’s post was edited – and I’m assuming “edited” means changing the headline to something that sucked – by this clown:

who loves “oral hygiene and the Harvard comma.” Yeah, that’s exactly who I want checking over Loney’s stuff.

There’s no question that Google has problems properly indexing BigSoccer – the optimization either hasn’t or can’t be properly done. It’s also well known that the BigSoccer user experience is already pretty bad. Syndicating these blogs (and it looks like it’s only a few of the “chosen”) doesn’t make things better, it makes it worse.

Back in the day, not many people read my post on BigSoccer’s new blogging initiative. But in that long post I referenced this statement from the BigSoccer Terms of Service:

The train wreck that is the Bleacher Report syndication is Exhibit A of why this term sucks and needs to be changed. BigSoccer shouldn’t have the power to do whatever it wants with the blog content if it’s just going to make things look like ass and screw up the user experience even more than it already is.