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…

Discovered at the age of 10 in New York. In an elite American residency program in Pennsylvania at age 11. Three seasons at FC Metz youth academy in France at 13. A year in Italy as an amateur on AS Livorno’s reserves at 17, followed by a spell in Scotland at St. Mirren.

A soccer vagabond by the age of 19, Devann Yao is now back home in New York, and that’s where he wants to stay. What’s a kid got to do get a little attention around here? Click HERE for the full story…

(this is all five parts of the story in its entirety)

Ron Isley croons from the stereo of the Audi A6 Quattro Clint Dempsey purchased from sports agency-mate Ryan Nelsen. “You fool one day you’re here and then you’re gone.” But before the beat drops, before UGK’s Pimp C and Bun B have a chance to trade verses about making the most of the Texas youth they were dealt, before we’re even out of the parking lot of Dempsey’s apartment, we’re out of the car.

Across the street private preparatory school blazers are tossed to the sidewalk; tiny fists on fragile arms flail like loose garden hoses. “What the…. Should we break up that fight?” Dempsey asks without a glance to me, his big black eyes fixated on the fracas as if he already has his answer. “Sure, your town your call,” I tell him beginning to crack open the passenger seat door. We jump out of the car stopping traffic on the bustling two-lane road in London’s Wimbledon neighborhood. The dozen kids, no older than 12 maybe 13, turn toward us as we approach, taking notice of the bigger boys calling out, “Hey, what are you….”

Click HERE for the full story…

I wasn’t sure Frank Dell’apa would want to talk to me. Like most I presume, I heard via du Nord that he was being moved at the Boston Globe, where he has been a sports reporter since 1989, from covering his preferred beat (Revolution and international soccer) to the Celtics. To be moved from soccer to basketball would be a promotion to most, but not to Frank, not to his loyal readership. It would be understandable if he just didn’t want to talk about it for a number of easy to deduce reasons.

But he said yes. And as with his decades of reporting, we are all the more lucky because of it. And for the digital time capsule of this here site, it kind of comes with perfect timing (sorry Frank). It is just that for a man who has spent his life in sports journalism chasing soccer this unexpected career tangent elicits perspective, which begs to be gathered up, marked down, and reconsidered as we determine the future—-journalism and soccer, observers and participants. Our conversation is after the jump. Click HERE for the full story…

I think there was more media there than any soccer event I have ever been to. And throughout all the coverage you’re gonna see the only thing I can say I got that they don’t is this photo. It’s a keeper.

I’m gonna go with the annotated photo story for this one, because that’s sort of the hand I was dealt. Seated on the ground behind a goal isn’t the best place to watch the game, but it gets you some good camera angles. And from the looks of it–I mean people I knew from glossy magazines were there–you’re going to be hearing plenty about it. I’m hoping someone writes it up as a real game story. That would be fun to read. So on to the Steve Nash Foundation Charity Classic presented by (I didn’t recognize the logo on the t-shirt)…

(UPDATED WITH BEST VIDEO YOU WILL SEE OF THE EVENT)

—- Click HERE for the full story…

I don’t care for the comedy of Ray Ramano. It’s just not my thing. I’m more of a David Cross/Patton Oswalt kind of guy. I can watch the same Seinfeld episode a thousand times, but new episodes of The Simpsons can’t hold my attention.

Comedy might be the most subjective medium of all the creative arts. Because looking at the award tally, not to mention the pop culture award du jour that is a Simpsons guest appearance, it appears everybody indeed loves Raymond. I’m just not one of them.

Sports broadcasting isn’t that much different. He’s got one of the plum jobs in broadcasting for FOX, but I can’t stand Tim McCarver (re: thanks Deion Sanders). I love the measured intelligence of Joe Simpson. I really don’t care for Dick Vitale. Lots of people seem to love him (and he’s got a pretty good gig himself) but I’m just not one of them. And I don’t like the comparisons between him and GolTV’s Ray Hudson. Sure, they are both, um, individuals to say the least, and share a radical emotion for the sport they love, but Vitale paints the most mundane statistics not with a brush, but with a paint grenade of hyperbolic emotion. It can be a source of comedy, but you won’t find yourself laughing with (or at) him.

Hudson’s commentary, unlike his opinion, is harder to pin down, though he’s not afraid of pulling the pin on a grenade or two . You of course have the metaphor bombs, but watching an entire game with GolTV’s team delivers the give-and-take that finds moments of brotherly bickering in an Abbott and Cosetello frame that sets it apart like the best local baseball broadcasts over the course of that lengthy season. You’re not just waiting for the next explosion, you’re smiling, getting argumentative, and yes laughing, sometimes all at once, as if you’re watching the games with your crazy uncles. At its worst GolTV’s broadcasts with Ray Hudson are silly, over the top nonsense. At their best, it’s a soccer sitcom as the team captures the essence of the beautiful game in the broadcast booth. Click HERE for the full story…

Fulham v Birmingham City. Saturday 03-May-2008 3:00 pm.

Riverside Stand. Block X Row 2 Seat 11.

I’m a little lost for words. But not tears. It was unexpected. But taking my seat in the second row 20 yards up the sideline, the crowd singing and smacking their Clap Banners, I kind of lost it, a boy welcomed to the bosom of the mother he never met.

Click HERE for the full story…

Gotham Hall, Midtown Manhattan. The 2008 Streets To Fields black tie gala put on by MLS W.O.R.K.S. and the U.S. Soccer Foundation to “celebrate the sport of soccer in the United States” donated proceeds to Harlem Youth Soccer “to help build a soccer field for its players and develop an after-school soccer and leadership training program.” The New York Times reported that $300,000 was raised by the very unpublicized event. David Beckham gave “the award to the man,” in his words, honoring Pele for his lifetime achievement in supporting American soccer. A leadership award went to Phil Anschutz while the philanthropy award went to freshly minted New York Governor and Harlem-born David Paterson. Presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush showed their support through pre-taped videos.

Behind all the glitz, glamor and sculpted ice there was a reason for this banquet. Full feature to come on the whirlwind year in the life of Executive Director Irv Smalls and the biggest little club in New York. For now, a photo story to wet your appetites.

Click HERE for the full story…

Scene One

(The Field House at Chelsea Piers in lower Manhattan is to an athletic child as Wonka’s factory is to the holders of a golden ticket. The enormous building breaks down into four sections: gymnastics, indoor soccer, baseball batting and pitching cages, and basketball. The warehouse-meets-locker room is absent of nearly all decoration, save for some muted banners, schedules, and a dozen sugar-filed vending machines guaranteeing to refill any calories lost to exercise. Would-be gymnasts swing from bars and rings falling onto the quintessential blue of padded mats and pools of foam cubes. Young girls bounce from room to room in leotards in search of their parents. Teams of uniformed children populate the spectator holding pen outside the two plexi-glass and net-lined soccer fields waiting for their chance to take the field. They are the saplings to the tree trunks of the teenagers waiting on the batting cages and basketball courts. The words Chelsea Piers are written across the front of every soccer player’s jersey, except for one team. Arsenal is here in authentic glory, and the shimmering maroon jerseys stand out like a celebrity among the masses - as if Spike Lee or someone was here. And then in he walks with his son, Jackson).

Click HERE for the full story…

The building that is New York City’s Martin Luther King Jr. High School fits how the outside world views its occupants, fits the knees of the ML King Soccer team, fits the fields they play on. Scabs, the lot of them. Torn open with pain, healed, and torn again. The high culture and high polish of Lincoln Center looks down upon dirty windows and metal detectors whispering of hoodlum immigrants, gun shots and stabbings. Standing as a virtual prison yard, synthetic field turf berates nature behind a chain-link fence and locked gates where freedom is slashed along with the skin from a knee. This isn’t the norm for New York City Soccer, but it isn’t exactly odd either. What it is, is the story of the most prolific soccer program in the nation.

Click HERE for the full story…