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

While a photo may be worth a thousand words, I hope I helped the case that they can’t tell 10,000. And while I’ll always take the best book over the best photo book, nothing is better than when the two are combined. That being said, I love photographs, in that they bring something no words can, no matter the number.

So I grabbed some of my favorites over the last year here at TIAS. If nothing else, they tell of the best stories I reported on this year. And to celebrate the year that was, a photo contest: pick a photo from this lot, elsewhere on TIAS or the greater internet. Send me the photo or a link to the photo and a few sentences as to why it’s your favorite and what it might say about the past year in American soccer. Doesn’t have to be a soccer photo, but you’ll have to tie it back to American soccer somehow. A winner selected at random from the entries will receive a free Bumpy Pitch T-shirt. Deadline for entries is the turn of the new year. Happy Solstice! Click HERE for the full story…

nbc is banking on olympic soccer — michael cohen is hedging that bet

When we hear people talking about hiring staffs in American soccer, be it for front offices or broadcast booths, they talk about the need to hire soccer people. Well, you can’t say NBC didn’t do that for the Olympics.

Almost a month ago I received an e-mail from PartnersofNBCOlympics inviting me to become an “official partner” and share with my readers their extensive Olympic soccer coverage through the use of Super Widgets and RSS feeds embedded on my website. Uh, no thank you, but it drew my curiosity. The invitation hinted at an unusually bold marketing maneuver, a network prioritizing soccer (and Judo?). So it’s not just soccer they are pushing, but they are setting aside an entire channel for the sport. With rumors of ESPN looking into an all-soccer ESPN 3 (which I don’t buy), does NBC want to test the waters?

No one is going to answer those questions, and while I didn’t have much interests in the widgets, I was curious to talk to someone about the move. It could not have taken long for them to think of Michael Cohen, who overseas the production of Olympic soccer on the networks and cable channels and heads up the NBC Olympic soccer channel. It surely didn’t take long for me to realize I found the right guy.

Click HERE for the full story…

an all-star break think piece

Sometimes things have a weird way of coming together. Sometimes you hear something, see something, read something that inspires you. Maybe it pushes you further along your path or causes you to blaze a new trail. A couple of weeks ago I attended a concert at Lincoln Center—Honest Jon’s Revue—put together by a small British record label founded by Blur/Gorillaz front man Damon Albarn and an independent neighborhood record store in London.

I went mainly to see a few relatively obscure Malian musicians I was familiar with and the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, that I profiled for Wax Poetics back when they were just a street band getting ready to back-up Mos Def. But I became fascinated with the label while researching it. At the pre-show symposium I asked label co-founder Alan Schloefield about the profitability of the label and store. “That’s really getting to it,” Schloefield said. “We just brace ourselves for the future and try to make a living.”

Another attendee asked if Honest Jon’s might be an example that supports the Long Tail theory. Um. Long Tail Theory? From the answers and crowd response it was unclear if anyone knew what he was talking about. It went over my head. Click HERE for the full story…

…little miss attitude on the far left for sure. Following a finalist appearance in US Soccer’s first annual “best blog” awards, TIAS took home 35 percent of the vote to win best MLS blog over at Soccerlens. Not exactly a mandate, but well out front of the closest competition, MLS Underground at 20 percent. There is no mention which way the super delegates voted, but after acknowledging TIAS the Soccerlens editors abruptly threw their weight behind The Offside Rules. Isn’t democracy wonderful? Thanks to all those who voted!

SAVING THE SOCCER MAGAZINE. OR NOT

I woke one morning a few weeks ago to Ives Galarcep highlighting a few soccer magazines and noting he would come back regularly and begin summarizing them, maybe something like Slate’s handy Today’s Papers column.

I commented that I was planning to do this for American soccer magazines, and Ives had beat me to it. But then I realized he had left me a window because he chose all international magazines. Ives came back with this:

“I have to be honest and say I just don’t have time to read the American magazines. Whenever I get my hands on a Soccer America I will check it out but that’s about it. The new Major League Soccer magazine looks nice but the information in the first one I read felt so dated to me. I guess that’s my problem. For the most part I will have already heard most of what I will find in American magazines. I will leaf through them on occasion when at Barnes & Noble but have yet to find one that compelled me to take it home.”

I know that feeling. It’s the reason why I had been sitting on this ‘American soccer magazine review’ idea since first getting my hands on the inaugural issue of MLS magazine. What was that, in July? Click HERE for the full story…

2007 FOUND AMERICAN SOCCER IN SEARCH OF ITS HEAD

It started with the retirement of Brian McBride from international duty after the 2006 World Cup and has continued downhill to the incapable feet of otherwise able bodies.

The national team’s striker regression, however, highlights more than one team’s struggle to find a player fit for a role. Throughout the ranks of American soccer, the national team’s shortcomings up front lay bare the game-changing skills, mental and physical, still largely missing in America’s version of the global game. It reverberates throughout American soccer, making this the year of a headless beast. Click HERE for the full story…

special to tias, a guest column by Ryan O’Hanlon

“American soccer” seems to be a redundant term. Is the United States just trying to be different from the rest of the world? Is this a metric system situation? Australia kicked soccer to the curb in 2004 when it officially announced that ‘football’ was the proper nomenclature. New Zealand and South Africa still commonly use the term soccer, but I’m beginning to think ’soccer’ is more than just a word. It represents how the game is played, especially here in the United States. Watch any game, whether MLS, Division 1, or even the US National team, and soccer is what you get - a sport that relies on physical strength, speed, and supreme conditioning over tactical acumen or technical skill.

Soccer can still be the beautiful game, but too often it is the waiting game. Click HERE for the full story…

If you are like me, good design helps keep you around. For example, I routinely flip through Dwell and Surface magazines, but I can’t remember ever reading something in either of them; maybe Dwell. My point is, beyond the fact that I can’t read more than a nut graph about design and architecture, aesthetics will never trump content in my mind, but they can have mutual interests. My point is it’s been more than two years of TIAS. I figured it was about time I changed my clothes.

What it means for you after the jump. Click HERE for the full story…

I got nothing. But a whole lot is in the oven I promise. As a small taste, I was recently turned on to Twitter, a great place to share/dump/file all those thoughts running through your head. Maybe its a waste of time, or maybe somebody is giving me free space to keep notes for further gestation. Like most things, it is what you make of it. Me, I’ve got a lot of questions…

Do we need a week between MLS playoffs games? Can MLS only find an audience on Saturdays? Does defensive soccer have to be ugly soccer? Do we need to change the MLS playoff structure? Garber just alluded to “no” on 2nd DP slot for 2008, but everybody seems to thinks it’s happening. Will Galaxy’s offseason look like the Yankees? More than 30K tickets have been sold for MLS Cup final. Clearly there is an audience for a soccer game that matters, right? Does it matter to American soccer if U.S. hosts World Cup? Would you rather go to Australia in 2018 or Orlando for a game? Would you rather have Blanco or Beckham? What do I have to do to get GolTV in New York? It’s like getting books at Shawshank.

Get in and join the discussion at http://twitter.com/TIAS

‘ATWITTER’ cartoon by sarahl.com

I’m waiting on a DVD to be released so that I can drop what might be the longest interview among long interviews here at TIAS. There’s also a few other big irons in the fire that will be delivered soon and explain in part the lack of recent posts. I’m also waiting for the MNT friendly this week and for Hope Solo to see the field again (not holding my breath). I’ve never wanted to see a story end happily ever after more than this one, and I’m usually the guy rooting for the bad guys. Should I wait for MLS to get a bump in coverage as the playoffs draw near or is that wishful thinking? What are you waiting for? MLS Playoffs? Beckham’s return? “Rossi to be an American” as one e-mailer wrote me?

Drop in the comments section or e-mail me and express what you’re waiting for. We can come back to it over the holidays and see if any of us got our wishes.