S.A. in hunt to land MLS franchise in 2006 - San Antonio Express News College Notes - Hartford Courant Young athletes get better quicker and older ones stay good longer - CNN/SI (Deford) WUSA Closer To Returning in 2004 - AP Article, Chicago Daily Herald Still Hope For League Revivial - Hartford Courant (Trecker, Sr.) Universes of pro, college soccer collide - USA Today (Dure) Sachin
Un equipo capaz de hacer lo mejor y lo peor - Clarin "A team capable of the best and the worst" (a respectful look at the US U-20 team by an Argentine daily) It has this great paragraph (very loosely translated): "When this group of boys, 20 years old or younger, but already with bodies of men, arrived at the Al Maktoom Stadium, they heard more whistles than at any other time in their careers. Egyptians, Arabs, Argentines and Ivoireens all, equally, booed the 20 members of team and the coaches. But this team has nothing to do with the antipathy that US generates in a fair part of the world. This was the beginning of the quarterfinal against Ivory Coast. Little more than an hour and a half later, the silence of everyone ended up being the best acknowledgement for the US team that they had beaten, without problems, the African sub-champions."
Dure's piece in USA Today concerning players who go to college and those who go to play professionally or MLS project 40 is also interesting, particularly from an outsiders perspective. But one point I didn't quite understand... In it he states 'Just when college soccer seems to have completed the descent into irrelevance'. Can I take this to mean that college soccer is becoming irrelevant because people who have great soccer skills when they're of an age to go to college are tending to attempt to go professional as soon as possible?
That's how I read it. Irrelevant as a way of developing players' skills so that they may play at a higher level, not irrelevant as a way of getting one's higher education subsidized. You've probably looked in on some of the arguments about the role of college soccer for developing the US National Team. It was crucial for 1990 and 1994, and is far less so now. Still, some decent players are coming from the college ranks, and will continue to do so for awhile.
From that: Sounds like a definite maybe you want to stay tuned. So by 2pm today we'll have already reached the point here where we know how well SA will do on the field in 2006, and that Garber should be fired for putting a team there, and what city the team will land in once they move it because of poor attendance.
The interesting quote there is "not to read anything" into the Cleveland expansion. What does that mean? It coould mean that the Cleveland selection means nothing to the SA bid. OR it could mean that Cleveland is far from a done deal, as has been speculated.
Re: Re: 12/11 - Your Momma Don't Dance Has any city been ruled out? As far as I know, Topeka, Toledo, Omaha, and Missoula are still in the hunt for a MLS franchise. But San Antonio certainly brings up a new list of problems--they want to play indoors at the Alamodome, which still has the old-style turf.
1) Re: Soccer in a dome = No thank you. The league is moving, incrementally, towards every team playing on decent sized, grass fields. SA is a regression and I don't care if they put the new crap down. 2) Beau's article is pretty interesting. What strikes me is that you really can tell, from a confidence standpoint, which of the U-20s are pros. The bottom line is that we are creating a) a parallel system and b) casting a wider net. It's a good thing, IMO. MLS is at least a decade away from having true reserve squads and proper training facilities/academies (I have doubts that will ever happen). The wider the net, the more chances of a Knox Cameron rising to the conscious of MLS and USSF.
Is it just me or did Deford totally miss the boat? He mentioned soccer without completely dissing it. "The times they're a changin' " How does the Hartford Courant article have ANYTHING to do with soccer? Some articles from the Rochester D&C: WUSA Revival OpEd Saying Wambach Could Be Female Athlete of the Year in the Near Future (has more soccer info than the Courant article)
Why is it I can never finish reading a Deford piece? I start, but he never gets to a point soon enough, then I move on to other things.
I, too, do not think this is a bad thing... the college game may uncover some "late maturing" players who would never get a look in a pro setup that is designed to identify players at age 15-16 and then discard the ones that don't hack it (as the system works in much of the world)... I doubt that the next Pele is going to come from the college ranks, but there have been many good pros who have come through this system... I think having more than one path to the pros can only help.... now, if only we could get the colleges to play according to the world's rules and permit enough games to not actually impede development.... rand
probably cuz everyone is terrified to be his editor could you imagine that egomaniac on your ass if your were so bold as to cut his article down into something readable of course we cannot imagine this cuz he is a rare genius among us pure losers lucky enough to get to read his glory
Adams not out to get hands on Butt - ESPN Soccernet Ok - not MLS related, but I couldn't help but laugh.
From Beau's otherwise good article: On the other hand, skipping college hasn't hurt Convey, DaMarcus Beasley, Edson Buddle, Tim Howard or Landon Donovan. I just want to point out that Buddle did play one season of college ball. He went to State Fair C.C. in Missouri and led them to a national Junior College title in 1999 then signed with the A-League's Long Island RoughRiders for the 2000 season. http://www.thecrew.com/club/bio.cfm?ID=1&header=TEAM
I liked this line from Beau: Meanwhile, hundreds of talented players get some financial help toward a degree, and they generally don't have 30-something hacks aiming at their legs, scrimmages with temperamental D.C. United veterans aside. Heh.
The Alamodome can accomodate a full-sized soccer field, due to the fact that it doubles as a convention facility and has very configurable seating. When the CFL had teams in the US, the Alamodome was the home to the San Antonio team and it accomodated the CFL field, which is larger than a soccer field. But I agree with you about the surface, even if the heat won't be a problem.
CFL fields are 65x150 yards, much longer than a soccer field, but narrower than anybody would want for soccer.
It can accomodate an ice hockey rink (200 feet long = 66-2/3 yards long) lengthwise, plus seating, in the area between the two football sidelines:
Not to advance San Antonio too far past the Building-Manager-Is-Hopeful stage, but would Alamo Stadium make more sense as a fixer-upper than the dome? I mean, I believe the place was a pit 20 years ago when the Gunslingers used it, but I have never been there. For all I know, by now they've put down grasstroturf and permanent football lines.
What's interesting is that they give major props to EJ, correctly calling him the "goalscorer of the tournament", naming the Dallas Burn as his team, but don't mention Convey, who's been getting raves from other places, at all. The only other player the article singles out is Freddy - and they talk mostly about his Nike contract. But overall, good things are said about the team in genera.
Nothing in that article indicates that they've seen any of the games the US has played. It says they are fast and don't give up. The rest is just looking at stats and where we finished in qualifying. Of course they figure Johnson is the star--he has four goals! Although Johnson has played very well...