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

QUICK PROGRAMMING NOTES:

TIAS, Du Nord, The Original Winger, Soccer By Ives, and The Offside Rules will be hosting a party Friday night 9pm in downtown Seattle at Kell’s Irish Pub (FYI - bar charges $5 cover, which is not going to us). It’s a true soccer bar I’m told, should be a good time. Won’t you join us?

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New Podcast Coming To iTunes: WaitingForGaetjens.com
Hear me butcher first and last names and attempt to make co-host Greg Lalas laugh as he tries to bring serious analysis to the world of American soccer. We’re looking towards a weekly schedule to begin after a special week of several run-up shows revolving around MLS Cup. Those few shows will also be downloadable at MLSnet.com. The plan is to pull in the best guests we can and keep it entertaining and informative. Please check it out–RSL GM Garth Lagerway joins us tomorrow–and let us know who you would like to see on the guest list. We’ll get it right next time.

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Now back to regularly scheduled programming already in progress…

I can’t remember the last time I put up a player interview on the site, but I’ve been fascinated with Lee Nguyen for awhile now. And then over a stretch of one month this fall the 23-year-old attacker went from Vietnam superstar to Arsenal trainee to FC Dallas off-season practice attendee. Curious, I went looking for some info, but found few answers. Here’s this kid living large over in Vietnam, cover of GQ, etc, etc. But we never hear much about him Stateside. We can’t begin to pronounce his Vietnamese club team and know nothing of his life in the far East, which is entirely different from every American soccer player, maybe in history.

On the phone the Texas native with Vietnamese roots sounds like his fellow Texan Clint Dempsey–that rough southern drawl lazy on the crackling cell phone satellites…

Click HERE for the full story…

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Want improvement? A century ago as America’s eastern cities overpopulated it was, “Go west, young man.” For soccer a century later the trumpet sounds the same. Only going west means tracking back to the previous western frontier. In mainland Europe. Or at least that’s what Simon Kuper believes and writes in his and economist Stefan Szymanski’s new book, Soccernomics.

I transcribed the entire interview, and he didn’t say it once. Maybe it’s the American wife and three American kids. Maybe it was living in Palo Alto as a kid or Boston as a young man. Maybe it’s why he wrote a new chapter (NFL v EPL) and had the book edited and printed specifically for an American audience. But not once in my hour-long conversation with Kuper did he use the word football. I don’t think that means anything, but it was nice.

The PR take-away is that it’s Moneyball for soccer, but has it come too late? Can soccer even compete with baseball when it comes to statistical break down? It’s surely tempting fodder for those for whom soccer is religion and those who see sport as science. But those two will always fight. And while it will instigate and educate, Soccernomics can also ring all too true for the pragmatic few who can subtract passion from reality and who have been cursing the fiscal and emotional insanity of professional (Western European) soccer for years. But no matter your take-away, at least it’s not another book about some strange and historic season of Anytown FC.

Kuper and Szymanski set out in late 2007 to write a different kind of soccer book, to change the discussion, to surprise with data. On the day of the book’s American release, Kuper took time over the phone from Paris to discuss the book, the reaction to it, and what it means for American soccer. Click HERE for the full story…

Los Angeles artist Noe Valladolid continues his illustrated soccer biography

The TIAS Diary Project returns with the 2nd part of a series put together by a young man in Southern California. This is his life’s story, his soccer story in words and pictures. Consider it a stab at a TIAS graphic novel.

For the first installment, I referred to it as a stab at a comic book, but “graphic” now seems to be a better fit, as Noe’s story takes a turn for the darkness… 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…

so, you’re crossing the border for usa v mexico on august 12 at azteca.

now what gringo? welcome to the TIAS and Du Nord travel special

Across the Rio Grande River, through the Sierra Madre Mountains, in the Basin of Mexico, next to the Volcano Popocatépetl cultural beauty sits amid chaos, built layer upon layer through history. If a city was soccer, it would be Mexico City and its 19 million inhabitants—history, brilliance, art, and madness.

Walking out into the thin air of Estadio Azteca you are greeted by the jeers of 100,000 Mexico fans. It is both incomprehensible and exhilarating, like the city itself. How can so many people fit in one place, and how is it possible that an American can find himself in the middle of it all? Azteca may be the best backdrop for a World Cup qualifier, Its wall of sound encircling a field, buzzing like a beehive.

This is Mexico City, a junction of history and people so big that you can’t understand it all, yet you can’t help but want to try. What better way to see one of the world’s largest cities than to combine it with a visit to Estadio Azteca for a World Cup qualifier? And what better way to take in a USA v Mexico than to mix it with Mexico’s fascinating history, outstanding food, and rich and diverse culture? Would it be too much to hope for a USA victory? Regardless of the result, this is the best trip a US soccer fan can take. Will you be there?

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Click HERE for the full story…

Steve Nash and friends throwdown for the showdown in chinatown, take 2

It’s never as good as the first time. The rain, the grand stand bleachers, the wet turf, the steady cam man on the field, the crane cam hovering over the crowd. What was an underground experiment last year became the mainstream mainstay as Steve Nash and Claudio Reyna hosted their 2nd annual Showdown in Chinatown to benefit each of their namesake charities. The line-ups, tweaked a bit from last year, will star in a Fox Soccer Channel documentary about the game.

That’s not to say it won’t be the best sporting event all summer in New York City. Standing over Thierry Henry’s shoulder while he watched the first half from the bench is not something one takes lightly. It was a mid-eighties Michael Jackson moment for some, which is why this event will forever be, no matter how many times they play it, a once in a lifetime experience. Click HERE for the full story…

foreign failure (and a blind date) nets New York a soccer film festival in july

In a soccer game, as in a movie, a narrative unfolds for the viewer. There are action scenes and sad scenes, comedy and drama. But unlike other sports that stop and start, aiding in the collection of immense data, soccer builds a non-stop story that can challenge the viewer—full of dialogue that may seem meaningless until the entire tale unfolds. And even then you may not get a final payoff; as fans of soccer and Woody Allen films know, you must enjoy the ride. Life follows the same path, so I guess it’s no surprise those three things converge into one around the first-ever American film festival dedicated to soccer.

When Kicking and Screening opens on July 14, that moment of success, that convergence of soccer, film, and life will not be lost on the festival’s founder, Rachel Markus, who had the red carpet pulled from underneith her festival in London before the idea’s resurrection in New York. “Soccer is art,” she says. “Film is art. It’s not a question of the final outcome, but how you got to that final outcome where the beauty lies.” Click HERE for the full story…

A group of ambassadors to the United Nations, including Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon of South Korea, played a little pick-up soccer at my home field of Pier 40 in New York over the weekend. Balls found the back of the net, but the real goals were to raise money for Play 31, a relief program in Sierra Leone, and awareness around the power or soccer to unify people after conflict.

The New York Times Goal Blog ran a preview of the so-called DiploMatch, and I figured someone would give this some post-game coverage–but after years of covering soccer in America maybe I should have known better.

I found a good vantage point above the action that I hope through photography allows for not just a celebration of sport, but the unusual location as well. Click HERE for the full story…

The Third International Amateur Soccer Tournament- aka The Challenge for the Tiffany Trophy Cup - is going down in Washington, DC until April 11th for a select group of 17-year-olds. This year’s roster includes the D.C. United Academy Team, Blackburn Rovers FC of England, El Deportivo Saprissa of Costa Rica, Chivas de Corazón of Mexico, Real Madrid CF of Spain, Pachuca FC USA Internationals (Potomac, Maryland), Freestate Soccer Alliance Elite (Bowie, Maryland), and Great Falls A ‘91 Elite (Great Falls, Virginia).

As the games approached, the visiting foreign coaches agreed to answer a short survey. Only two came in, and as the tournament is going on this week, I thought I would throw them up. I tried to craft the questions to be generic enough for all to answer while at the same time hopefully pulling from them something more than generic. While my fears were realized with largely politically correct answers, I do think there is something here–that thing that is always around. One question above all else… 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…