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

Laugh about it, shout about it / When you’ve got to choose / Every way you look at it, you lose
—-

Lost in the whirlwind tour of South Africa and the Confederations Cup, which brought outlets from Harper’s to Deadspin to what seemed like every newspaper in the country out for a week-long soccer columning festival, was the demise of Brad Friedel’s once heralded (here at least) soccer academy in Ohio. So why does that matter?

In the last two weeks I’ve received emails asking why I didn’t write anything about the Confederations Cup or when I would. I’m still wondering, what really is there to say? Dan Loney did the best job I’ve seen of basically saying just that while pointing out the US MNT is not that good and doesn’t have any depth and doesn’t have the best coach they could. Too many of the rubberneckers came with, as Loney put it, “nonsense like winning games and getting good performances out of our players.” So where should the attention be going? Click HERE for the full story…

NY Red Bulls face off against the Navy’s USS Roosevelt to help kick-off Fleet Week

A celebration of the U.S. Armed Forces held around Memorial Day in New York, Fleet Week offered up one of the best PR events Red Bull has ever held and a precious photo opportunity. Under blazing sun cut by the riverside breeze, the teams played two small-sided games on the flight deck of the former USS Intrepid, (now a museum) which sits docked along the Hudson River on the west side of midtown Manhattan.

Sadly few fans turned out for the weekday afternoon event, but TIAS was there… Click HERE for the full story…

Cosmos’ owner wants bygones to be bygones, and someone to take the team into MLS

In the May issue of Britain’s FourFourTwo magazine Welsh midfielder and onetime New Englander Andy Dorman lists his MLS highlights as such: Winning the US Open Cup, playing against Cuauhtemoc Blanco, and “also, one time New York brought the old Cosmos players over and I met Pele and Beckenbauer. Not much tops that.”

You can’t go very long in the American soccer world before running into the Cosmos, be it through celebration of their successes or condemnation of their part in the NASL collapse. Today it may be little more than a tape library hidden away in New Jersey, but for sure people know the name; a foreign magazine sees no need to print explanation.

And while it’s hard to get past the fact that MLS built its entire league in direct financial opposition to seemingly everything the Cosmos stood for—a high-powered SuperClub built to thrill audiences and roll over lesser opponents—the Designated Player rule now allows for at least one big signing per team, The Beckham Experiment will teach a few lessons, and the upcoming collective bargaining will at least test the stubborn salary cap.

Sure it’s still a frugal league, but MLS is inching towards the Cosmos.

Click HERE for the full story…

SOUNDERS LOOK TO THE FUTURE IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE WITH RECENT HIRE

Once the next generation comes along, the argument goes, American soccer will finally succeed—on the field and in the national consciousness. People been saying that for more than a few decades. But with each new crop of players and coaches and players who become coaches there is new hope created. If for no other reason everyone feels at some point that their generation is the next generation, and dammit it’d be different if we were in charge (because they made it that way).

My first coach was a teammate’s dad, not a soccer coach. My first school coach was a Deadhead, and while the tour anecdotes were priceless, the soccer experience wasn’t there. My varsity coach played at Notre Dame but his practices weren’t much different from that first father. But now, as the global stars of soccer are increasingly younger than me, I’m wondering if it was merely wishful thinking when my adolescent angst promised it would be different—“just wait till guys like me are coaching.”

Minus the coaching experience at every amateur level and the NCAA national championship, and well, in fact, the entire college career, Kurt Schmid is a guy like me. And at 27, he’s younger than me–the first MLS coach that I can say that about. Just 26 when we has hired, Schmid has to be one of the youngest MLS coaches ever when he joined the Seattle Sounders as assistant coach and scout (MLS hasn’t kept track of every assistant coach).

So I guess there’s a few things that separate us after our teenage years. Oh, and that little thing about his dad. After the jump, TIAS steals time with the younger coach Schmid to get his story and figure out how we avoid making liars out of another soccer generation. Click HERE for the full story…

“Springtime Portland weather is grumpy, almost schizophrenic. It loathes changing from rain to sunshine, instead lurching through contemptuously cranky storm fits in every shade of gray. Every now and then, however, bright lights and rainbows find their way to Oregon.”

Brian Costello was a witness. This is his account of history… Click HERE for the full story…

brazil is 4000 miles and a world away from american soccer

(even if you could beat them, join them)

Almost a decade ago, and just one week after Manhattan Kickers FC president and director Curt Rosenthal moved to New York, he met his wife, Maria. Originally from Rio de Janeiro, Maria’s presence suddenly made Brazil a big part of Curt’s life, and with every year it gets bigger.

At just 35-years-old, the little-known coach (who spoke before to TIAS about his life and club) holds the North American rights to bring clubs and coaches down to Brazil to train with CBF staff and play games against Brazilian youth national and club teams.

While a few weeks in Brazil isn’t alone going to spawn superstars, Rosenthal realized it was a special opportunity after immediately seeing big changes in his teams after their South American sojourns. Brazil–surprise–has something to offer that the American version of the sport was desperately lacking. And it goes way beyond soccer.

Click HERE for the full story…

a young coach from ohio, a tiny club in new york, and the future of soccer in america

New York City is an untapped market. You don’t hear that phrase too often–the media capital of the world is hardly off the radar. For soccer, though, it rings true. MLS is based here, the president of USSF teaches school here, and though countless kids are playing the global game from the asphalt lots and turf fields of Manhattan to the dusty parks of the outer boroughs, when it comes to developing the city’s youth players, the ball has been dropped, kicked to the suburbs and surrounding states.

That’s not a radical statement, it’s pretty obvious. Building a serious academy singularly focused on soccer development here would help… that’s also obvious but never really attempted. Which means Manhattan Kickers FC represents radical change. Curt Rosenthal, 35, the club’s president and director and a relative newcomer to the city, is breathing new life not just into the game but into the system here, proving in just the few short years since he founded the club that with serious soccer, success need not wait long.

Jeff Carlisle’s five-part series on American youth development lays out the present framework on the national level. After the jump, TIAS goes in-depth with Rosenthal on his story, his club, and what could be the future of cutting edge American youth clubs competing on the world stage. No baggage; just get on board.

Click HERE for the full story…

Indoor is in a weird place. If you think soccer has it bad in the American sporting landscape, how bad is it for its little indoor brother, a wholly unique being known to most players as that crazy game that filled the cold winter months between club seasons? Better than you might think actually.

I loved it as a kid. Playing inside that oval felt like being inside a virtual video game. There were penalty boxes. It was hilarious. But professional? That was the farthest thing from my young imagination, even considering that before the 1994 World Cup the only professional soccer I saw as a kid was the Atlanta Attack indoor team. But even as a kid you knew those guys weren’t making much money.

Yet then and now guys are working, doing their thing, earning a living, maybe doing better for themselves than if they were in MLS. But still indoor is one of those things people forget existed if they ever knew at all, like so many local (maybe backwoods) sports. I saw some figure-eight car racing in Northern Illinois as a kid that still blows my mind when I think about it today. People get paid to do some crazy stuff. And people who may or may not know who the players are come out for the entertainment. Click HERE for the full story…

Another day passes, another American soccer club partners up with a European counterpart. But I didn’t want this one to just pass. Because this time it is Rush Soccer. Once a tiny club in Colorado, Rush is now 33,000 players strong with 20 clubs across the nation (that’s not a map of democratic states up there, but states in which Rush has a member club). Former national team player Tim Schutz, who has coached and played at just about every level of the game, is the president of Rush. Oh, and they want a MLS team under their brand.

If you didn’t know before, it’s quickly appearing to be a youth soccer world of “Rush against them.” After the jump President Schutz takes a phone call to make sense of the mother of all clubs.

Click HERE for the full story…

The Charleston Battery defeated the Seattle Sounders on penalty kicks Tuesday to advance to the Open Cup Finals against D.C. United, who beat the New England Revolution 2-1 in their half of the semi-finals. TIAS traveled to Battery’s Blackbaud Stadium to take in the historic victory along with a crowd greatly thinned by rain. Photos and commentary from the deep south after the jump. Click HERE for the full story…