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Terry Byrne talks exclusively with TIAS about the relaunch of the New York Cosmos (and that book about his buddy)

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This is what we know. The New York Cosmos are back with intentions on being the 20th MLS franchise in 2013. It’s run by famous industry names like Paul Kemsley, Terry Byrne, and famed advertising executive Carl Johnson, as well as more locally entrenched talent like Giovanni Savarese and Joe Fraga. They got Pele as the honorary president. They purchased Copa NYC (soon to be called Cosmos Copa), a citywide amateur World Cup of sorts. They’ve obviously got some money, not just because of the ownership group’s personal assets, but because they launched youth academy teams in New York and Los Angeles, both of which will be free to players. They have a partnership with Blau Weiss Gottschee, the most historic of the city’s elite youth clubs. They launched a branded ball and kit, produced by Umbro, which signed on as kit and equipment sponsor. They have a website, a Twitter account, a Youtube, Flickr, and Facebook page. They have as of yet, however, no men’s team, professional, amateur, or otherwise.

But for a club with no men’s team, no MLS franchise for at least a couple more years, it sure seems like everyone is talking (or complaining) about the Cosmos… Click HERE for the full story…

this is all five parts of the story.

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Sacha Kljestan throws up his hands. He did his best and doesn’t know what else to do. Maybe it’s time to quit. He’s thought about it before. One guy can only do so much. So many factors go into success or create failure. The opponent is only one of them.

Sacha sizes up his pre-teen cousin Moselle, who has her younger brother, Sterling, bouncing and banging up and down as she yanks harder on the back of his underwear. No one seems determined to make her stop. Sacha tries one last time. He’s out of his chair and tugging on her arms, but Moselle only releases a wicked smile and cackling laugh as she jerks harder on the elastic waist band as if the pull chord on a stubborn lawn mower. And Sterling is no help, enjoying the victimization a little too much. His giggling and screaming mixed with the occasional wince in his toothy smile roughly translates to: “What? Wedgies aren’t cool during dinner parties? Look at me!”

“Enough!” Sacha’s aunt, Robin, says with all the defeated charm a mom can muster when she knows her words hold little sway over the popular attention this audience holds for her children. Moselle finally relents. She and her brother scamper off to the family room. Sacha returns to the table. Little kids are curious things.

It’s two nights before Sacha’s fifth MLS season opener, and ten members of his extended family overflow the dining room of his parents’ modest two-story home on a quiet street in Huntington Beach, California. With the skirmish over, attention returns to Sacha. The more alcohol that goes down, the more opinions that come up. None of us can fathom Sterling’s delight in the wedgie, but neither can we make much sense of Sacha’s career. Click HERE for the full story…

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

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…