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

This week you read what ranks as maybe my favorite conversation I’ve had here at TIAS. It’s one thing to speak to soccer writing’s professional all-stars like Grant Wahl and Steve Goff, but it’s all together something different and special to be able to speak to a man like Greg Hamilton. Certain people, certain work, transcend the medium for which they reside in this terrestrial world. Greg, his film, his work, and his soul all qualify. To conclude our chase, after the jump Greg brings us up to speed on what he has been up to since we spoke last November… Click HERE for the full story…

one man finds the reward from a rare sport is family

Chinlone, who knew? Greg Hamilton’s dedication to his sport is something we can all - RBNY? - learn from. We pick up the conversation after the jump. Click HERE for the full story…

a rare sport on the other side of the world saved his life - now he wants to give back.

“Chinlone and soccer – same family. There’s just something better about manipulating a ball with your feet, whether it’s keeping it in the air or to score goals with it or whatever. And then to do it as a team, there is something really extraordinary about that – extraordinarily difficult and you know, you’re just part of this weird fabulous thing. You know we are so good at using our hands, but a foot sport is just like wow – its odd in a way and it shows something about humans who would do something so odd and be driven to do so out of nothing more than the joy of it.”

A team combination of sport and dance with no opposing team, Chinlone, a sport native to Myanmar, is essentially a non-competitive exercise not too dissimilar to juggling a soccer ball. There is no scoreboard, no winner, no loser, however the sport is as physically demanding as any. Those who come to know it, practice it, seldom master it, yet find they are nearly unable to live without it.

Greg Hamilton is such a man, and Mystic Ball, the documentary film he made with movie partner Matthew London was his first gift back to the sport. In the years since its creation, it has won numerous awards and prizes, and Greg has continued giving back, as the sport continues to bestow gifts on him.

A year ago this November I spoke to Greg about his long journey through life to Chinlone, and struck up one of those friendships that could only exist in our digital world. I had just seen Mystic Ball, and though it had nothing at all to do with soccer, the visual similarities were too striking for me to let it pass. What I found on the other end of an e-mail, after a long long phone conversation, forced my hand. I had to share it. It’s not American soccer, but American soccer could learn something from chinlone.

But the world got in the way. Greg’s global traveling, from film festivals to Myanmar, hindered my deadlines. Our mutual hope that the film would be purchased for theatrical release had me holding the story in hopes of timely publication. But it didn’t happen that way. And then a few thousand monks started marching… and here we are.

Chinlone is a search for community, and it should be no surprise that Greg, after beating back the anger of his childhood through martial arts, would be drawn to something like Chinlone, Myanmar, and the people of Mandalay. And once you read the interview, it should be no surprise why people are drawn to Greg. But it started much more simply than that. There was no spiritual lightning bolt when Hamilton happened upon a man juggling an unusual, woven ball in a park in Toronto. But there was a sense he needed to learn more. He had to know what it was. I had to know why? After the jump begins our 3-part conversation, with parts 2 and 3 following in the coming days.
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From Irv Smalls (back, center, with the shaved head in the above photo), Director of FC Harlem:

On Saturday Dutch soccer star Edgar Davids and his street soccer team from the Netherlands, Monta, paid a visit to FC HARLEM’s travel teams. ESPN filmed the piece on the handball courts at Jacob Schiff Playground. The Harlem community turned out to watch our FC HARLEM LIONS learn some tricks from some of the best free style players in the world before taking them on in a small-sided 4v4 game. FC HARLEM players held their own, In fact Monta and Edgar were so impressed with a few of our high school players they invited some of them to play on Sunday against the NIKE Futsal Team, going as far as to inquire about their availability to travel with them!

I was unable to attend the fun this weekend, but Irv was nice enough to share a few photos after the jump. Every league, director, coach, and parent out there should be watching this guy…
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MLS expansion has come sooner than I thought it would. San Jose gets its Earthquakes back in 2008, giving the league 14 teams. Refilling a once (fairly) proven market seems like the safe choice, the right choice if you have to expand the league, but do you have to? Do you want to? There’s a lot more to this than it would first appear, and before I launch into a tirade about diluting an already weak player pool, I feel like I need to revisit the arguments here. 2010 is likely the next time we’ll have this topic in the headlines, so let’s see if we can’t figure it out.
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Under the guise of allowing the youngsters to play and letting Bradley look at his boys, I’m not addressing Copa America today. I think I said everything I needed to say in the last post (Keller starting? Players playing their way off the team). So I’m here today to give you something else, far from the back and forth between the USA haters and apologists. Although it is a back and forth…

Toronto FC’s rocket launch aside, arguably no other team has created a soccer atmosphere like DC. Maybe it was always meant to be – for reasons you’ll see below – but you can’t overlook the outreach methods taken by the team, the media, and their fans. The team signed players to represent the various immigrant communities in nation’s capital – almost as if the roster was in ratio with the region. The media, from local cable to its national newspaper, The Washington Post, assigned coverage. The internet wasn’t far behind. Post copy editor turned beat reporter Steve Goff entered the blogosphere, following what was already healthy world wide work from supporters’ groups and fan sites like DCenters.

In journalism, there is this idea of convergence, bringing all the available platforms and technology together in order to maximize things like dissemination and market share. The same term could be used for American soccer, USSF, or a MLS club. Offer everything in hopes of attracting everybody. There will always be hits and misses, but it wouldn’t be hard to argue that no one has a better track record than United.

Continuing to mine the microcosm of American soccer that is the growth rate and/or fate of the professional soccer writer, we turn our attention to Mr. Goff, his Washington Post, and their Soccer Insider blog. Steve joins the discussion after the jump…
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The popularity of the Houston Dynamo has helped bring some attention to the sport there.

“Kind of neat, huh?” Those are the words Houston Chronicle sports columnist Richard Justice used to end his column yesterday regarding the ‘club or country’ question that invades soccer like no other sport. The phrase is a perfect proposal for Justice, a writer and sometime television and radio guest, who in this world of sports talk insanity where two guys yelling at each other goes for journalism is a beacon of honest reportage and sincere opinion.

Richard is not a soccer guy, but he’s long been one of my favorite baseball writers (I’ll apologize right now if this sounds like some lauding celebrity profile, but…). He delivers the occasional scoop, but more importantly, he knows what he is talking about and presents it in an entertaining and professional manner, safe for all viewers in a world where journalists are increasingly coming forth with extreme volume if not some lame schtick suited for a PG-13 crowd. He even maintains this persona when placed in the shark tank that is any number of ESPN’s programs.

Not that he is alone in that department, but it’s been downsized in the last few years like Milton at Initech, in turn raising the profiles of writers like Justice to those of us who want our ‘eyes and ears’ to stay the course and avoid the express train to talking-head fame, and nights out on the town with “you’re with me with, leather” or ”lemme know”.”

Now, maybe Richard is a wild man who just keeps his indiscretions far from blogger eyes, but he does not have a catch phrase or a penchant for prescribing nicknames, and I love him for it.

So imagine my surprise yesterday when I came across his column in the Houston Chronicle – a paper, I might add, that has some of the most thorough soccer reporting in the nation. Richard Justice on soccer? I had to know how this happened. How often do top-level, mainstream columnists, who aren’t soccer writers, cover the sport? You know, without it being a complete hack job or rag fest? It took a little convincing – “Adam, I’d talk to you about almost any topic other than soccer. I just don’t have enough knowledge on the topic” - but finally Richard obliged me a few questions.

After the jump, Richard Justice on soccer. Kind of neat, huh?
Click HERE for the full story…

Ives at the helm during last year’s World Cup opening match between Germany and Costa Rica

After lunch at a brew pub, which has become my soccer office of late in Times Square, New Jersey Herald Red Bulls beat reporter Ives Galarcep expressed his slight hesitation in participating in a profile about himself, in that he would incite criticism for his lack of being a soccer player, and as he put it, “I’m not nearly as interesting as Jack Bell or Grant Wahl.”

Not one to cast off Ives’ opinions, which I’ve come to greatly respect over the years, I considered it, and then cast it aside. Ives might be more interesting. As he remarked on his blog, he doesn’t have photos of himself with Pele or Ronaldinho, but what he has is the day-in day-out life of a fulltime soccer writer, something Jack and Grant can’t say. So, for that reason only, Ives has something to share that is rare. And we should all pay attention, because as Ives goes, so goes our soccer coverage. Will his paper continue to cover soccer? Will his newspaper… continue? None of those answers are crystal clear.

What is clear, however, is that Amado Guevara is no fan of Ives. Just one day after our meeting, in which one of the topics we addressed was the unique relationship between beat reporters and the players they cover, Guevara banned Ives from his media circle for some critical columns he wrote about the Honduran striker. Just another day on the beat. At least Clint Mathis and him are friends again (keep reading).

For one of the first times in print, the coveted life of an endangered species is exposed. OK, I didn’t spend three years waiting for images of a snow leapord in the Himalayas, but soccer beat reporters, they’re no less a fascinating breed.
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New York Times’ Jack Bell with FC Barcelona’s Ronaldinho.

If a publication came to you and said you could write a story about Ronaldinho but you’d have to pay your own way to Barcelona, what would you say? Ok, easy question. What if you had been a journalist and editor for more than two decades covering soccer from the Cosmos to the MLS? Would your answer be any different? For New York Times Jack Bell, passion has to trump payment from time to time.

It’s a problem in American soccer journalism. It goes along with the naysayers of my Red Bulls ticket give-a-away plan: if you start giving it away for free, who is going to pay for it? More than the fact that there is only so much news to go around to so many writers, the editorial powers that be contend a market is not there to demand it. They’re not wrong, but they’re not exactly right either.

Bell’s Ronaldinho story became one of nytimes.com’s most-read stories after it was posted, but it isn’t any easier for him to get soccer stories published (it’s a bit easier when you have a name like George Vecsey). If you’re like me, you believe a news outlet like the New York Times has an obligation to cover American soccer, even if only on-line, even if behind the veil of the pay-to-play Times Select.

It turns out that pay-to-play goes for some writers as well, a situation I’ve been on losing side of with some of the top outlets in journalism, garnering responses like, “We’d be happy to publish the work if it’s good, but we can’t pay you for it.” It should be no surprise that money talks, but during my hour-long conversation with Jack Bell over lunch in Times Square, I was surprised to learn a veteran of the genre would face the same obstacles.

Our conversation, including his thoughts on the Times’ treatment of soccer and many other subjects are after the jump, along with a few photos from inside Ronaldinho’s house that were passed up by the Times and are now a TIAS exclusive…
Click HERE for the full story…

photo credit: David Doubilet

I may have been too harsh with Frank Dell’Apa. When I criticized his column in Friday’s Barometer, there was an important detail I failed to consider. He’s a columnist, not a reporter. So when I asked, “is not that your job” in regard to his call for “concentrated research,” the answer was no. While he could take it upon himself to do the reporting, he’s a columnist, and by rule, columnists don’t do much reporting. At least not anymore. They’re the veteran professors on tenure, giving lectures, but essentially retired from conducting and publishing research, which is at the heart of the most sought after academic minds.

In a way, you could say columnists were proto-bloggers, holding court in broadsheets before blogs were a glint in the eye of silicon valley. So, Sorry Frank. You’re off the hook. But if not Frank, than who? Who’s going to do the concentrated research?
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