Good to see America's best print soccer columnist making the leap to ESPN.com along with NJ.com. http://soccernet.espn.go.com/feature?id=318229&cc=5901 Nice work Ives. Sachin
Beat me to it. I've thought for the last year and half that this guy would make a great 'national' soccer columnist. Good for Ives.
Did the Rapids form their own country? When did I miss that? My guess is that the United Nations won't recognize the Rapids. MLS barely recognizes them.
Where did this guy come from? When I first read the article he sounded like a Euro snob. What's his background and why should I respect him?
He writes for a newspaper in New Jersey. I can't remember which one. He has done a great job covering the Metrostars and occasionally covered other players or teams in the league. I have never gotten the impression that he is a Eurosnob. In fact, I have only seen him write about European teams when an American player is involved.
aye... he's been doing it for awhile now... he's pretty damn good at times, i'll admit.. he does rub me the wrong way... but 90% of the time... it's great stuff it's mostly metros related... but he'll also throw in mls and national team stuff on a regular basis
Ives & I went to Ramapo College in Mahwah, NJ. He was more of a journalist in communications while I was studying more in the TV Communications field.
His articles when Szetela was selected by Columbus in the ping-pong lottery were just plopped together information that smelled of hometown bias, he slammed the Columbus FO in the articles without ever attempting to contact them to get their side of the trade negotiations with the Metros FO. He's a joke and will need to leave that blantant bias behind when doing "national" stories.
At least the Rapids recognize what the playoffs look like. Maybe the relcoated Earthquakes will bring the playoffs back to Texas...
i dunno... if he is supposed to be expressing his opinion he should keep it up... we have enough people covering what happens... how about some damned opinions?? but i do agree that was pretty bad when he was railing against the lottery
Ives actually a year ago wrote a piece ripping Landon for staying here, and shying away from Europe. He's the best reporter on MLS. Sure he's a homer, but he writes passionately and loves the Metrostars. And I don't think he has to lose that homer appeal. Gammons has never shied away from the fact that he's a life long Red Sox fan, but he can still do his job well.
Yeah but you think everyone is a eurosnob. Seriously you use that word way too often. Congrats to Ives.
I can smell a Euro Snob miles away. MLS with 9 year history and Euro teams with 105 year of history and if I dislike something I stay away from it. Go cheer for Euro teams.
I like Ives, but I thought one of his columns after the Szetela lottery was awful, the one where he completely slammed Columbus for its trade demands and how could any team in the Crew's position not make one of the rumored trades and cripple a conference opponent (I think it was Szetela for Glenn and Lisi). It just seemed, to me, to be one long whine by a writer who, if I recall correctly, has some ties with the Szetela family. Some of the information in that column ran counter to what we were hearing in Columbus about Szetela's comfort here. As far as the regular season, Columbus did quite well despite being idiots in Ives's eyes. That's one of the few columns/articles he's written, though, that came across to be as a blatant homer as opposed to a guy covering the local team.