Not famous, but a name that will ring a lot if bells among those of us who followed American soccer during the dark ages of the 80s Former Indiana standout Ken Snow died from Covid complications yesterday. He was50. https://www.frontrowsoccer.com/2020...out-2-time-hermann-trophy-winner-passes-away/
World's number 1 Tennis player Novak Djokovic tests positive for the coronavirus. https://www.tennis.com/pro-game/2020/06/world-no-1-novak-djokovic-tests-positive-coronavirus/89329/ I love sports. But, maybe it's too soon, to bring sports back?
Yeah maybe. What I wonder when reading this is that you get some tennis players together for a few days, they all infect each other. Meanwhile Pence and Trump traipse around a WH that is strewn with COVID-19 cases and they're doing just fine.
No kidding...talk about a teflon presidency! As for the sports, I really think football seasons across each spectrum of play will be negatively impacted this fall. Until there is a reliable vaccine for this strain of virus, sports will never be the same, if they are played at all. You're seeing cases crop up with college football players, baseball and basketball players from MLB and NBA. I don't see how they can manage, even if front of no fans. Things seem to be going alright in Germany, Italy, and England, but it's still too early to tell if soccer players there are infected and to which degree. Nick Watney tested positive for COVID-19 prior to last weekend's PGA tour stop in South Carolina and went home to quarantine himself.
Nobody dead yet.... But Djokovic, whom I used to really like, has turned into an incredibly privileged asshole. Has an antivaxxer. He thinks he walks on water. He's great at tennis. Sucks at being a decent human being.
RIP Ken Snow He was Alexi Lalas, Jovan Kirovski, Landon Donovan of his day. The one thing I really hope happens is that US Soccer will treat these pioneers right. The guys who built the foundation of the game going back 30 years ago when there were almost no opportunities for young American players. I don't begrudge today's rookies who make 100K, but if it wasn't for the struggles of Snow and all the guys like him, none of this would be possible
Wow, you are cruel! Is there a bigger insult than calling someone the "Alexi Lalas" of his day. (I guess calling someone the "Carlos Ruiz" of ANY day). Really, I remember Ken Snow from my indoor-watching days, when he played for the Chicago Power. I still have a Chicago Power mini soccer ball with Pato Margetic's signature. RIP, Ken Snow.
Go Baltimore Blast! No, I'm not excited, I just think you're supposed to include the exclamation point.
Well, Lalas was pretty well-regarded in his pre-MLS days. He was the first American to play in Serie A, can speak Italian, and was a pretty good player in the Nats team. He scored against England at Foxboro and slid in front of the England bench and, since it was the second goal, he showed them that many fingers! Then, once MLS started, he (and a lot of the other Class of 94) turned to utter crap. Tony Meola was really the only one who had a good MLS career--all the rest of them were content with being "stars" even though by their play, they were not even close to the best MLS players of the day.
I am Italian and I distinctly remember that, in the first season that he played in Padova, Alexi Lalas was one of the reason why his team barely avoided relegation.
Back to Snow... he was a clinical finisher and obviously has heaps of talent to get the accolades he did in college. But I do think his game was much better suited to college, indoor or “mainstay MLS status” than being one of the better domestic MLS guys or a core spot on the national side. He was king of like the Müller or Klose of college soccer. The two guys from that IU vintage who always struck me as having the best shot at MLS (if it was around) stardom or a regular spot with the US were Ken’s little brother Steve and Chad Deering. Steve was somewhat more limited athletically but he was slippery as hell. Ken might have been the best pure American finisher from the late 80s/early 90s (and I’m including Wynalda there too), but Steve wasn’t too far off. The difference as that Steve was extremely good creatively in tight spaces. With a fully developed squad, I always felt he was good enough to at least be that spark you bring on in the last 20-30 minutes to find a goal. Injuries and attitude hurt his progression. Deering has better pace and his skill set seemed like it was made for Europe. I always felt like he was somewhere between an Eddie Lewis and Hejduk both athletically and technically at the same age. Clearly people saw it. You don’t get time as an American in the Bubdesliga if they don’t. It just never quite seemed to come together for him. He carved out a pretty solid career, but he didn’t quite get over the hump.
Sorry, I am bad as usual at English. I meant that they barely avoided relegation and that Lalas was one of the reasons why they weren't relegated. He was constantly one of their best defenders and his height was usually very useful in defending CKs and FKs. Back then I was still following men's soccer (I gave up around 2005-2006 and started following women's soccer instead since 2011): I remember that I had Lalas in my fantasy-soccer team for that season and I never regretted it (I had made a team out of supposed scraps of the market that would have actually revealed excellent instead). I had assumed it was obvious that Padova was a little team apparently having no business remaining in Serie A, so they were supposed from the start to "barely" avoid relegation, if they ever were to make it! They had just been promoted from Serie B the season before and, as a curiosity, in Serie B they were playing a very young Alessandro Del Piero at the beginning of his career, on loan from Juventus.
I remember watching Rai every week back then on my 12' satellite dish. After the match it was 90° Minuto with all the recaps. Roby Baggio was and still is my favorite player unless someone mentions Bergkamp...then I waffle. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct...=fRFP4f1p-yU&usg=AOvVaw0NavEXoy8kaI1ouGqKynal
Ah, yes, we had got it here in Italy too: Lalas had also become famous here because he had learnt to express himself in "some sort" of Italian, but the problem was that quite often he was carelessly spouting off tremendous prophanities during TV-interviews. At the time we thought the blame was mostly on his team-mates: Padova is in a region of Italy where people use these kind of words in everyday's language probably more often than anywhere else in our country and we figured that they probably hadn't cared to teach Lalas which words weren't appropriate in formal situations. Now, I have the doubt that it could be that Lalas was ********ing everything up by himself. I'd show you some exemple of that in a video, but I am not sure how much you could appreciate it, guys, if you aren't well versed in Italian prophanities; on the other hand, the reactions between embarass and laughter of the people around him were anyway quite obvious...
Nick Cordero, late of Bullets Over Broadway fame, at age 41. https://www.washingtonpost.com/loca...wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook