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

I can’t be everywhere at once. That’s where Rusty comes in. It’s where you could come in too. Send me your soccer-related story ideas, adventures, and anecdotes, and we might use ‘em here at TIAS. We’re in the early stages of ramping up the site and will be looking for contributors to exact an exciting perspective that maybe I’ve missed. I can’t be everywhere, and that’s where Rusty comes in…
Click HERE for the full story…

So I have been wanting to do something with Soccer In The Streets for some time, and when I got the letter below from their director Jill Robbins, I finally had a peg. I had something written on the organization a long time ago, but after reading Jill’s letter, on top of my belief that whenever possible, the best way to tell a story is to let those whose story it is tell it, I decided I’d simply share her words with you.

My piece basically explained my belief that Soccer In The Streets is just about the greatest organization in the world of soccer. Then, Jason Longshore, their communications director, sent me some photos of the kids they work with, which made me replace the words ‘just about’ with ‘most definitely’.

Please follow the links to their homepage, and think about how you might be able to contribute to this great cause. Just as soccer is treated in the United States – that one time every four years that you stop and pay attention to something really really really great – more important things such as poverty, racism, and the overwhelming inequities of our societies are too seldom recognized, addressed and given the proper attention.

Jill’s letter is after the jump.
Click HERE for the full story…

American soccer is going global, and it has nothing to do with Germany, unless we’re talking Bundesliga and Keller. Our country’s trade deficit doesn’t translate to soccer, where our exports greatly outweigh our imports. While it hurts on some level to see the players go, you understand that they want to play for, with, and against the best, where they can get better and earn higher salaries. If you can accept this (and everyone should at this point because it means a stronger US MNT even if it detracts from MLS), that only leaves one question: how do I follow DaMarcus Beasley’s PSV or Onyewu’s Standard Leige? As we wait for what I would like to think are inevitable changes - players and broadcasts will be venturing Stateside in the future - we’re still left with a gap to fill now.

Enter Yanks Abroad, who beat everyone to that gap, and have been filling it (while emptying their bank accounts) ever since. YA stands with a small group as one of those things you come across, and just love it. It fits you; it gives you what you need. It’s first love; it’s perfect; it’s, a wait-why-didn’t-I-think-of-that kind of moment. One could argue the writing leaves a little bit to be desired - as with any news service, the information overload and daily grind of deadlines, not to mention understaffing, doesn’t always allow for fine prose - but the YA guys have done an immense service to American soccer fans, and I give them the biggest compliment you can get in the world wide web: signing up for the e-mail newsletter. With a strong business model, they could eventually, someday, you never know, reap financial gains, allowing more time for quality while not skimping on the quantity. And who doesn’t want to get paid to go to soccer games, European club teams no less?

With the Diary Project, my goals have been to capture a moment in time for American Soccer. With any adolescence, we have this teetering maturity that in any consecutive moments is infantile and full grown. With every answer there are two more questions. You’ll never quite sure who will show up for the next game or the next year. The light at the end of the tunnel is a strobe light, on-off, on-off quicker then you can count. It’s a constant cycle of consumption and growth, purging mistakes, missteps, and malcontent. In short, you pay your dues. You scrape and crawl without apology to the next test, and then work even harder. The story of Yanks Abroad is the same as our nation in that degree. Success is not granted. There is also a symbiotic relationship between the two, As goes US soccer, so goes Yanks Abroad, because without yanks abroad, there is no Yanks Abroad. It will be interesting to see what kind of variable MLS will play, in buildiing American soccer, in polishing players for European games (and YA reports), and maybe one day in closing the trade gap.

Rich poor win lose grow fade away? You just can’t say right now for US soccer, so we take a moment to look around so we will know from where we came. Thanks to Chad Winger, Mark Flannery, Rich Fidler and Greg Seltzer for the document. Their moment is after the jump.
Click HERE for the full story…

With Alaska, there are always questions. For me, the first question was “when do we go.” I’ve long been fascinated with the 49th state, urging my parents to take me there in high school, and dreaming of going back the day we left. I chose topics for my master’s thesis that allowed me to travel back to the state in 2004, spending a month meandering throughout the Alexander Archipelago like the peripatetic whales I spent days kayaking next to. I’ve seen the endless midnight sunlight of summer along knife-edged ridges miles above the sea and swam in the bluest glacial waters. When I die, if we get to chose, I want Alaska as my heaven. So when Elias Ulvi wrote me from from the last frontier, I knew I had to get him to contribute. It turns out he knows about Alaskan questions as well, and that is where we start our next installment of the Diary Project…

Click HERE for the full story…

MLS and MLB both started their seasons over the weekend. Spring is in the air. Every year about this time, taking a look down at those few extra pounds that found there way to my midsection over the winter, I wonder what could have been. What if I stuck with soccer, stuck with any sport for that matter. Could I have gone pro? Call me a complete idiot, I still think I could have. Idiot.

Life is full of choices. Or at least that is what my mom told me when I fought that kid in fifth grade over a four square game, called him a son of a motherless goat (The Three Amigos was huge then), and had a little meeting with the principal. She also fed me that cliche when I got caught with three teammates from the Varsity soccer team smoking marijuana after practice, and again, got a glorious meeting with the principal.

It happened countless more times. Life is full of choices. It took me all the way to college to fully realize the choices we make. For the first time, I was in control. I could choose my college, my major, my life in no uncertain terms. I chose to stop playing soccer for the first time in more than a decade, for no small part because I could do what I wanted now without the threat of the principal’s office or the watchful eye of parental wisdom. It wasn’t that I hated soccer, but I knew it wasn’t going to be my career because I wasn’t THAT good, and moreover, there were a lot of things I wanted to do.

As the years slide by, you are faced with more questions with less or at least different opportunities. What do you want to do and how bad do you want it? Answer those questions honestly and proceed accordingly. It’s that simple.
Click HERE for the full story…

Chris Carlone, no matter what he says below or what you take from this first photo, is no geek. He’s just like everybody else, except for maybe that rock and roll band thing, but i don’t want to spoil it. I’ll let Chris explain, but remember, he aint no geek.

you wish you were me

So I play on this indoor team. One night I give him a ride to our game to this guy. Small talk in the car inevitable turns into “what do you do,” so I casually ask him what he does for a living. He says he works for a company that films all the Nike US Soccer “Don’t Tread On Me” ad campaigns. Shit, I thought to myself. I consider myself a pretty high level US MNT fan…or should I say…geek. Actually, I’d say I’m a pretty big geek, so you have to know this drew some serious interest to me. I’m kind of surprised the guy didn’t jump out of the car and take rolling on asphalt at 50 mph than listen to my “oh shit man that is so cool, tell me all about it” shtick. Lucky for me, and his future self, he stayed, and to my surprise, ended up competing with me for title of #1 fan, at least as far as this automobile was concerned. I’m sure there are much bigger fans than me. How should I describe my fandom? How about this: I own the last three jerseys and have them on my wall (I happen to be 36 and married, not 16), I regularly check ussoccer.com and post on Big Soccer Boards and read Soccer America magazine religiously. I heavily follow any foreign team that carries any national team player; I even don’t hate Landon Donovan (even though he left my favorite MLS team - the now defunct Earthquakes - to join the dark side, a.k.a. LA Galaxy). And of course, I go to any National team game I can and watch every game on TV I can’t go to. And I should probably share that watching the game on TV is more like standing and screaming the entire time. So like I said, I know there are much bigger fans out there, but for a 36-year-old man with jerseys on his wall, I’d say I could hold my own with the big boys, or at least the big geeks. Click HERE for the full story…

When Peter Hockaday, a Senior Sports Reporter for The Casper Star-Tribune, wrote me an email, there really wasn’t any question about whether I was going to read it or not. The subject line read “Crap, Piss, and American Soccer.” Now who among us could say no to that? Here is what I found inside:

This is a decidedly Wyoming story, because that’s where I live and where this story is set. The state motto here is “Equal Rights” but it might as well be “Don’t Tread on Me.” Much like the American soccer team, Wyoming is a state that is overlooked and unknown. I admit I knew little about Wyoming before moving here for a job after college almost two years ago. I soon learned two important things about the state: the wind is as prevalent as Starbucks in my hometown of Seattle, and the terrain is surreal in its flatness. But that latter part can be a positive, too. To my delight, I found that my new place of residence had a sprawling 12-field soccer complex.

In the summer, we have the regular rec soccer leagues that I imagine take place in cities from South Carolina to California. But in the winter, that’s when things really get interesting. When the wind blows the snow across the road so hard you can’t see two feet in front of your car, when your nose hairs freeze every time you step out the door, that’s when the soccer players in Wyoming pull back the curtain and reveal quite a show. Click HERE for the full story…

And so it begins… the ‘Diary Project.’ The seeds were planted back with Dre and his military team, but now there is a conviction that was not present before. Over the next few months you will be periodically hearing from a lot of new people. As described in previous posts, the goal here is to expand our knowledge of the reality of soccer in the United States by sharing personal histories, anecdotes, and essays. Together they will rest as a diary for American soccer. To my knowledge, nothing like this exists. We have an opportunity to do something. You have an opportunity to contribute. The response to the last post has been great - I’m daily going through your stories and opinions - and I only want everyone to continue to share there stories with me.

I mentioned a young man last time out from Argentina. His story, his predicament really, is, well, why don’t I let him tell it. Meet Mariano Malisani.

I’m a 20-year-old Human Resources Management student at Ashworth College in Rosario, Argentina, the last country before you get to the land of Shackleton and Scott, of Emperor Penguins and ice, and the country in which I was born, raised and have lived my entire life. So why do I LOVE the US MNT? Mine is a country filled with soccer history (not just the “Hand of God”), beautiful women, and a constantly struggling political system (so it’s not like it is that different from the United States).

yes or no?
Click HERE for the full story…

Say what you will about the holiday season - the materialism, the overlooked history, the trampling of that little old lady so that you could get that last Xbox 360 - there’s still something left to be said in the defense of kindness.

Remember Andrea, our new friend stationed in the Persian Gulf (check the archives for ‘a few good men’ if you missed it)? Well, I recently heard from him again. He wanted to pass along some thankyou’s from his team.

When Andrea first sent me some photographs, I saw something I hadn’t seen in years. They were still using one of those old indoor balls that looks like a giant tennis ball and has the touch of a rubber playground ball made for dodgeball or four square, not soccer. Being that I hadn’t seen one of those furry green behemoths in more than a decade, I thought i’d try to my way into freebies from Nike. I thought it made perfect sense to send some swag over to the Air Force guys. Nike threw in some Don’t Tread On Me t-shirts that they could use as their team jerseys - Andrea said they were using pennies. My thinking was that I wanted to thank Dre for taking the time to help me out, they had to put the tennis ball to sleep, and really, who else can relate to Don’t Tread On Me better than someone in the military? It was a perfect fit. Click HERE for the full story…

Most of the e-mails I receive from people offer up their stories in hopes that I will write about them. I welcome this mail. As a writer, I am always searching for great stories, be it soccer or otherwise. And although I do receive a good amount of e-mails regarding the blog, it still amazes me that people are interested enough, if that is the right word, to take time to write just to say ‘thank you’ or ‘good work’ or ‘hello.’ A few weeks ago, a young man named Andrea Cantatore (or Dre) wrote me. His message was short and to the point. “I play soccer when I get a chance,” he wrote. “But it isn’t very often. I wanted to thank you for writing some good articles.” This in itself is not the reason I thought people might be interested in him. It was the only other sentence in his e-mail–the one I can not quote or paraphrase because of security risks–that engaged me to what might lie beyond his simple words. Click HERE for the full story…