This Is American Soccer, US Soccer, MNT, WNT, and MLS - Tackling the subject of Soccer in the US, and worldwide.

There is a problem with practice.

Take two sound bites following the MLS All-Stars against Chelsea:

Dwayne De Rosario, MLS All-Star:

“It’s huge. The whole world is watching this game. A lot of people had doubts, probably thought we were going to get spanked. I think we opened a lot of eyes and showed what kind of soccer we have in America.”

José Mourinho, Manager of Chelsea:

“For me this was a training session against other players. And no more than that.”

I found these two quotes in more than a few articles reporting on last Saturday’s exhibition game. It’s a pretty standard he said/she said. I’ll let you decide who the woman is in the conversation. We could argue this to death, but until MLS either creates or is allowed into a European tournament, this comparison problem will continue. When one competitor is told to treat a game like work, as MLS Coach Nowak advised his players, and the other is told it’s no more than practice, what in the hell is the point?

The point, it seems (if there is any) is this: a few more fans may have been turned on to American Soccer. As Soccernet’s Jeff Carlisle surmised, “And while everyone knows that the players in MLS are not the best in the world, the league is still worth watching. By caring when there was nothing at stake, the All-Stars have hopefully convinced a few more fans that this is the case.”

a REAL solution

World Club Championships. It’s a Champion’s League for the world. Keep a coach’s and writer’s poll to rank club teams by continent. Pair those teams in the standard way (best v worst, etc, etc), slowly bring continents into hemisphere brackets, finally cutting it down to one world bracket. It’s the NCAA Tournament for soccer. And I’ll be the first to say it… It would be better than the world cup, what with teams who know how to play together and all.

Bright Spots from Saturday:

Eddie Robinson’s goal saving-ESPN-top-play. Bobby Boswell’s staunch defense. Chris Albright is actually worthy of some dap. Joe Cannon or Troy Perkins looked better than anything I’ve seen from Keller [for US MNT] in recent years. And even Adu showed some nice minutes (more than the Chelsea teenagers ) and had the best sportsmanship moment for the game when the two Ghanians met for pre-game salutations; it’s not everyday we get to play with our heroes.

And a few words about Sunday:

92,650. That’s how many people reportedly packed Southern California’s Los Angeles Coliseum to watch CD Guadalajara (Chivas) take FC Barcelona to a 1-1 draw. It’s being reported by MLSnet as the most fans ever to watch a club soccer match in the United States, and more fans than attend USC football games on average.

FC Barcelona heads to Houston on Wednesday vs. Club America and the tri-state area on Saturday vs. New York Red Bulls. I’ll be there and tagging along with press junkets as we approach the weekend.

Side Note:

Oguchi Onyewu to stay at Belgian club Standard Liege (for now).

The 24-year-old defender, who even before a strong showing in Germany was rumored to be moving to a higher-profile, European team, turned down a move to Middlesbrough in the Premiership, in his words, due to “a few details in the contract.” He said the financials were good, so it is anybody’s guess at to what these details were. No matter what the media reports, a proper number of years and corresponding number of zeros on a paycheck are the likely culprits. Note to Standard Liege: make that Holiday gift a going away present.