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

in 2010, photos change, words not so much.

MLS Superdraft breakdown - you know you’re not getting that here. But every year the draft marks the beginning of a new soccer season. Beyond the MLS hot stove, it means the first USMNT game of the new year is around the corner, with the Gold Cup just down the road. And this year the USWNT reboot after fighting through new domestic league difficulties to prepare for what should be the most competitive Women’s World Cup in history. The new beginnings force away past memories, and everybody gets a chance to win again… or for the first time. Looking over the recent past, however, I find State Of The Union pieces that still hold true (2006, 2007, 2009) or at least haven’t much changed. But the photos always change (2008’s gallery), so instead of trying to ride down the homestretch in a beaten horse, I’ve picked through my images of the past year, collected in a click-able thumbnail gallery after the jump. 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…

This is part 5. Here is part 4. Here is part 3. Here is part 2. Here is part 1.

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Sacha is in line for a spot in the American midfield, but where exactly he stands only Bob Bradley knows. The American coach deals in elusive simplicity, which he projects to the media and, sometimes it turns out, even his players. Sacha didn’t know what Bradley was thinking. He wasn’t sure if he had any chance of going to the World Cup. In November of last year, following the game against Denmark, coach and player sat down one-on-one.

“He is a bit vague sometimes when he speaks to us,” Sacha says about his past, present, and he hopes future coach. “He and I had a pretty long and hard conversation in Denmark. And it was really tough to hear. I don’t want to go into detail about what he told me, but yeah it was tough. And disappointing for sure, and hard, but I guess another doubter, another person who doesn’t believe in you at one given point or time, and you have to change their mind.” Click HERE for the full story…

This is part 4. Here is part 3. Here is part 2. Here is part 1.

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The dream team. Not The Dream Team. The Hulking NBA players walked next to the soccer team at the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Oylmpics, but for an U-23 American soccer team, this was the best yet. Dreaming back to 1996 and his 100-meter hero, Sacha asked Adidas if they could make him gold boots. They gave him silver instead. Hey, U.S. men’s soccer has never won any color medal. “I told them silver would do just fine,” Sacha says.

President Bush addressed all the athletes in a big gymnasium prior to the procession. “I don’t know a lot about sports,” the former owner of Major League Baseball’s Texas Rangers said. “But go out and win the gold for the USA.” Click HERE for the full story…

This is Part 2 - Here is Part 1.

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He is Sacha’s father. He was his first coach. He taught his boys to play soccer a certain way. He battled to become an American citizen, lost his mother in war, and damned if he isn’t going to have his say. With carpenter hands, a bartender’s mouth, and the disposition of an all-knowing CEO, Slavko sits back and explains matter of fact that his son’s technical skills outweigh what are still conceived as physical deficiencies. Slavko has coaching licenses and agent licenses, and he’s been through too much to let this dream die, the dream he once held out for himself.

Just about every coach didn’t know what he was doing. You’ll excuse a father for making such rash statements. But follow the rest of Sacha’s career—a study on American soccer hegemony and its coaching styles, of the importance of finding a coach that understands a player’s game and how best to use it—and it becomes harder to argue with Slavko. But by all means, have fun trying. Click HERE for the full story…

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…

TEN DAYS IN JOHANNESBURG: SPECTACLE v REALITY

Foreign children run amok in the tiny square that sits out front of my hotel, ringed with upscale restaurants and shops, and within the security gates that make the Truman Show-ed blocks of the artificially perverse Melrose Arch in Johannesburg safe for such shenanigans. Outside the gates, the story is different, right?

Indeed sidewalks outside the malls, gated city blocks and security patrolled neighborhoods are as empty as the barrel of a gun before the trigger is pulled—the void created between extreme wealth and abject poverty as tangible as a duel at high noon in the old American West. But the fear only exists if you expect that the trouble is pointed at you. Every time for me a smile suffices in breaking the seal between tourist and resident. I mean, should I really not walk around? But I don’t dare test it, not when it seems all we hear Stateside about this country, this continent, is trouble and crime (hotel staff also strongly discourage any sort of walking outside of Melrose Arch or a few other hotel/retail/casino centers around town). So what you’re left with, without real effort, is a relatively inauthentic South African experience. All around me was a feeling that this is not real.

Click HERE for the full story…

greenwich village resident outlines a major league vision for manhattan’s pier 40

In just ten days, the brand new and beautiful Red Bull Arena will finally open to soccer fans with a sold-out exhibition between Red Bull New York and Brazil’s famed Santos football club. New Yorkers will hop on the PATH train and in about a half-hour arrive at the Harrison, NJ, based stadium without most of the problems of traveling to the Meadowlands, the previous home of RBNY and the now defunct Giants Stadium.

But for many who live East of the Hudson River, the biggest problems still remain. Will the best soccer stadium in the country be able to draw fans across the river? Can a building straighten out a mismanaged franchise with a history of failure? Will there be a honeymoon, and if so, how long will it last?

RBNY has its new home, but another structure’s future also places the city’s soccer future in the wind. Pier 40, one of the largest and most-used sports facilities in Manhattan, is in dire need of rehabilitation. Just as with RBNY, many plans have failed. But Greenwich Village resident Patrick Shields thinks he has the answer. An ambitious answer… Click HERE for the full story…

The treasure is not always what it seems. Didn’t Jack T. Colton teach us anything? It’s not a shiny, Tiffany-made cup. It’s not a three-day party of networking and one-night stands. It’s a moment where truth and disbelief bleed into the surreal. It’s a band on parade with a madcap leader out front. It’s the fans and all the swag they buy, creating a cohesive gang of support whereby the entire stadium is a supporters group. It’s the stadium with as many images of Sounders as Seahawks. It’s the Emerald City itself–the temporary end of the yellow brick road until there is proof that it can be extended. Seattle didn’t pave the way for American soccer, and stadium banners be damned it didn’t save MLS, but it steamrolled every obstacle so far in the adolescent league’s path (well, there is that one little munchkin about the turf).

So when the tears crept toward my eyes and memory transported me back to the banks of the Thames, I knew I found what I had been seeking. The sousaphones swirled around me like a tornado, the drums hammered me with their thunder.

Tap Tap Tap. Tap Tap Tap. There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home. Click HERE for the full story…

Four days in Mexico City and nothing to complain about. Well, there is that one thing. And as a new friend told me after the US MNT lost 2-1 to Mexico at Azteca, these photos would look a lot better if we won…

But as should have been obvious in the previous post, there is more to life than winning. Click HERE for the full story…