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

Maybe I am deluded. Maybe I tie my heartstrings to the newest soapbox too fast only to aid the ripping out of that engine which powers my body and soul when the platform is pulled out from beneath my feet. Hyperbole? Damn right; words can’t tell how badly I want a Vanity Fair.com or a New Yorker.com just for soccer. Daily bits of news, humor, and commentary from around the world sandwiched between the bread and butter of investigative, long form journalism.

I’m dealing with a bit of postpartum depression from dropping the Clint Dempsey feature a few months back. Juggling TIAS and my other life is a balancing act even most truly professional soccer writers understand. From the field work and research to the writing, all on top of a full-time job, it took me more than three months (at least two months longer than it would have otherwise–and in a perfect world a writer could be working on several stories at once over the course of months). The story is one of but a few examples now in the TIAS archives that exemplify exactly what I wished this website to be all the time, and a big part of what I want from every soccer journalism outlet.

But that’s all just a dream. Or is it?

Good luck finding a place that will pay a writer, photographer, or editor a living wage to produce a handful of in-depth stories every year. It takes a New Yorker to produce that kind of work on a consistent basis, especially as major media properties are in decline at the moment (oh by the way, The New Yorker is reportedly losing money). At newspapers, things are worse, both financially and because deadlines are god, so great stories like this one about 37-year-old would be MLS Owner Marcelo Claure are ended just as I’m settling into them.

At TIAS, I’m lucky if I have the time to do one long project a year. Even at the big outlets there are troubling signs. Simple signs like stories coming down in length and complex details about the way stories are reported and written prove that even with access to great writers, sources, and contacts the content is shallow, the expense accounts for stories zero. In most cases, professionals are literally phoning it in. Expense accounts affording experience are held by the lucky few. The unlucky need to travel? Better schedule your vacation around a World Cup qualifier in Honduras.

Soccer just doesn’t fit into the economic needs of anybody involved (which makes the closed MLS/SUM account books all the more beguiling). From writers and editors to corporate executives and advertisers, no one has enough or is getting enough to do what they really want. Imagine good Will Hunting if they never let you past basic algebra. How big would the whole in your heart be?

This is American soccer. So after moments of movement towards to the goal, inevitably reality slides in, sweeping the legs of my dreams.

Then Goal.com hired Andrea Canales to be their U.S. editor under the direction of Greg Lalas. Again my heart jumped. The international company founded in Italy was stepping up their U.S. presence, adding the thoughtful insights of Canales to the rising star of Lalas. Could this be the beginning of something real? Can a foreign brand win the U.S. market share? Should Soccernet be worried? Will Goal.com deliver the financial resources necessary to create the content that could once and for all get this thing right? Or will it be just another big grab bag of potential, without the real resources, without the real commitment of time and space for writers to tell the story of this game—all those things that hold every single American soccer writer and editor from doing what they see in their own dreams?

I caught up with Andrea to peer into the future, where the soon-to-be former teacher’s classroom just got a lot bigger… and where her dreams may become reality…

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When I got around to turning on the recorder, Andrea was already into a ramble on how for the last few hours she had been racking her brain to learn the Goal.com site management software, which was written completely in Italian. She was answering questions I didn’t know to ask. I mean who would know Goal.com would be based worldwide while maintaining a single Italian system?

Truth is I didn’t know much about Goal.com before speaking with Andrea. I didn’t know it was based in Italy with employees from Indonesia to England on every continent. I didn’t even know Greg Lalas was the director of the American site. All I knew was that it was a busy site, with busy pages filled full of news tickers and headlines and columnists from around the world–an opinion it turns out was not mine alone. It reminded me a little bit of CNN: news from all over, with little time spent on any one subject. They had their stable of voices. It was all news that came in less cluttered forms for American soccer fans from professional filters like Goff’s Insider and Ives’ SBI and stronger writers like Wahl, Carlisle, and Andrea/

So why Goal.com? Before I could delve into that, I needed to get a handle on what the deal was with the website.

Andrea Canales: The owner of the site is Gianluigi Longinotti-Buiton, and he developed the site there. But he has it in so many languages now. They just added Arabic and Farsi. But a lot of it is still run off of the original Italian engine. We’re going through a redesign in the coming months and launching a lot of stuff that should be good to go in 2009. I‘m hoping that engine is one of the things that gets updated. But in the meantime I want to be a good soldier and learn how to work it—it’s just taken me longer that I expected.

Well hearing that and realizing how little I actually knew about Goal.com, I’m curious to know what you knew of the site?

They brought content to Sports Illustrated. Because they have so many editions around the world, they are able to move on whatever breaking news is happening very quickly. So if you go to Sports Illustrated site you will see that a lot of their breaking news or their Truth and Rumors will be stuff that came from Goal.com. They were one of the first ones for example to have the Beckham to Milan bit, because the editors in Milan—the original Goal.com editors—picked that up immediately and translated it for the English editions. They are one of the biggest sites in Africa. And not just one of the top sports sites, but one of the top sites. It is one of the few places that follows and reports on some of these smaller teams that people are really interested in. I mentioned the new Farsi site. They want to become the #1 site in Iran. They aren’t expecting to make much money off many advertisers from those sites, but to them they really believe in the power of the sport and the global outreach of the sport.

One thing I mentioned to you over email was that I was worried about the system in part because I could accidentally post something to the Indonesian site. (laughing) It’s not that easy to do, but it is actually possible. So that just gives you an idea as to the reach of the site. When the Beckham story broke I was getting quotes from Bruce Arena and once I got back and put them up for other editors, boom, there were new stories up in Italy moments later. Just across platforms I knew it was big because when I clicked on to Goal.com the menu bar with all the different languages was an indication to me that this has worldwide reach. Lets be honest, I didn’t go to the site regularly because it seemed to be such a fast pace—just almost like a ticker, lots of breaking news. And that is one big aspect of it, but they want to add more feature elements and more original reporting. I have to be careful what I say about all of Goal.com because there are so many sites within Goal.com and each is focusing on their own goal, so to speak. I don’t want to say anything makes it seem like I speak for all of Goal.com. They hired me because I have an idea of what the American soccer audience wants and that’s why they are trusting me when I tell them that people come to sites they have a personal connection to. People like to have something that is personal, analytical. It has personality. In the US certain writers have a following. On a soccer level what is going to bring people back is not just the latest news as quickly as possible but that the site provides an interesting prism through which to look at soccer. And that there are well written stories.

I know that is one thing you focus on in your blog—that kind of death of the contemplative, long form story, and how soccer especially because it is not covered by other places is more ripe for that sort of thing—well, that’s not on Goal.com yet, but that is one of the things I am shooting for. Because again with the reach, if I have someone in Italy or if an American player goes to Italy or wherever I can get someone to go and do interviews and spend some time with them and coaches. We can really cover a lot of aspects of the journey of the American player now. I’m really looking forward to doing that one day. Some of the players I’ve been covering since their Under 17 days, like Jozy Altidore, he’s now in Spain. That history I have with them and their path combined with new access and reach who now watch him now for Spain’s Goal.com site offers a lot of great possibilities, but right now I just have to learn the system and begin just posting stories. I need to figure out what works and what doesn’t before we can fix it, so it’s a process, but I’m really excited about it.

That is why I’m so interested in them grabbing you, in that it shows I think at least some commitment to step it up.

Yeah, well as you know I’ve been trying to make a go at this soccer writing for a while now so it feels incredible to be able to really focus on it. And now instead of trying to craft just one good article or one good story – to put together a continuing vision and not have to jump from one assignment to another or hustle here and there. Because that is kind of a precarious existence. At the same time I have such a wide reach. Honestly, I was always impressed by their work, but there was part of me that would envy people like Goff who was able to write about soccer full-time and also follow his team and beat with DC United, but right now I don’t envy anybody because my beat isn’t just one team; it isn’t just a league, it’s everything that is going on in the U.S. I’m really glad now that I was freelancing and hustling so many assignments for so long because that’s what allowed me to get experience in those things. Freezing my butt off at some youth soccer game, you know. Going to some of the women’s team practices where there was nobody else. Under 16 US girls v Germany. And people are like “are you related to her, is that your sister out there?”

Right now a lot of the stuff on the site is directly from the different feeds. If an American fan goes on right now it doesn’t necessarily feel like it is their site. Right now we’re looking to start a process where instead of direct feeds we can go into a bin of stories and cherry pick the ones out that we think are relevant and edit them accordingly not only for minor details like American spelling, but the whole focus. If it is a Championship game with American players, than the focus of our version of that game story might focus on that. Not to make it so jingoistic, or pass over stories that aren’t American—we’ll use our resources to have all the big matches and stories covered—but if there is a small mention of maybe Ferrari scoring or starting in a second tier Italian league match, we’ll give that more attention that we otherwise would. If you really want to find out what is going on in the Championship you really don’t have to go to the U.S. site; you go to the English section of Goal.com and get all the details from all the English leagues.

How will the new gig affect the amount of writing you do? Will editor duties limit your time out in the field?

I should be writing more actually. My output had really dropped off recently. I wasn’t having much time to write—and it’s interesting how sometimes things come along. In Hollywood, in LA where I live you hear all the time about some actor who set the deadline and then decided to go back to Canada, Australia, or Kansas, you know. Like by March, and they suddenly get this role in late February. It’s kind of similar to that because I had stopped freelancing and had really scaled back a lot of stuff to go back to teaching and was interviewing for full-time jobs. I had held off on holding for a teaching job because I was really trying to make of go of the writing, but it was starting to get a little too unstable, especially as the economy took a turn for the worse. I was thinking it wasn’t going to happen. Soccer is not big enough. Not big enough to support me anyway. I had a lot of colleagues who I sat next to at the press box that suddenly weren’t there anymore. Who was I to think that I was going to be the great exception? I just couldn’t depend on it. Just this year there were assignments—I was supposed to go to China for the Women’s World Cup. I was supposed to go to the Olympics. They all fell through. Didn’t happen. So you go through that disappointment and you start thinking a little negatively about the possibilities in the future. I hadn’t quite given up on it, but almost. I was just writing occasionally from ESPN and figuring maybe this is what I will do. I’ll be a teacher who occasionally writes about soccer. But it’s really hard to do on a part time basis. You can’t go to practices; you can’t call people back for interviews. You can’t get to your computer and start working contacts for a breaking story. You’ve got to grade papers. Give a test. Go to the next class. Those things came up and I didn’t know where the soccer writing was going to go. And then this came along.

But I will be writing a daily column. Which will be under my own homepage as it is with Kyle McCarthy and Pat Walsh and our other columnists. So as a writer and an editor of the site, that is one of my responsibilities. So I will actually be writing more than I have in a while, but will also have editor responsibilities as well.

It’s interesting that it took foreign money to make that happen. As opposed to some American entrepreneur. Do we just not have true faith in soccer?

I’m not really surprised that it was someone from abroad. I was explaining to one of the investors who is American, who is friends with Gianluigi. His daughters play soccer and he was saying how their big Red Sox fans; they’re in the Boston area. And I was saying how in soccer there is a big gap between the kids who grew up playing and those who become real fans. They’re the lost kids. As soon as they are no longer kids, they stop believing in soccer and transition into baseball and football. He said his daughter is a passionate baseball fan even though what she actually plays is soccer. We have a culture set up to be fans of these others sports. And part of that culture is media and the media is part of that gap.

I noticed it when Beckham signed and the press box was full of a lot of people who normally didn’t cover soccer and how uncomfortable and out of their element a lot of them were. There were a few who were thrilled. They were fun to see. They had been sort of closet soccer fans all along and finally an assignment came along to actually cover soccer. But the majority were just like “what’s going on? What just happened” It was very much “I don’t want to be here. I don’t understand this. I don’t know how to explain this to my readers.” And just resentful that such a big name had come in and actually forced them to cover their lack of knowledge. They didn’t like it. And it makes sense. Writers grow up being told write what you know, so what do you do when you are asked to write what you don’t know?

American media developed a lot of exciting ways to cover sports but you don’t see that applied to soccer. You even see those things applied to soccer in other countries now, taken from other American sports. Another example of this second tier status in the media I remember finding curious was how MLSnet, who I used to freelance for, their whole system is set up on a baseball platform. The company that is set up to pay the writers and the whole way the website is set up is built on a platform that they had from baseball. That’s kind of an indication of Major League Soccer getting the hand me downs of what’s been established for another sport and not really developing its own innovations. Which is not to say it’s not progressing. But as far as the vision to see the potential for soccer, I’m not surprised that it came from abroad.

Do you feel responsible now for proving to them that they weren’t wrong in investing here?

I do. It’s a chance to do a lot of things I have wanted to do for a long time, but I have to make sure I make the most of it. I don’t think the sport is riding on my shoulders or anything, but I do feel like a little bit like a pioneer, I don’t know. Maybe I get too geared that way. Like when I went to the press box for the first time, I felt this whole… you get there and you realize that you are the only female and the first thing I thought was, well, I better not screw up, because for these guys here it may not be fair but I am sort of representing women and I want to make sure I know everything and represent well. Now, with this one, I’ve seen friends who wrote about soccer who have found other jobs or who are still scrambling from assignment to assignment–-I feel like I am representing all of them. If I do a good job and pull it off, who knows, maybe I will be able to hire other soccer writers. Maybe other sites will start to think soccer is worth investing in.

I like that analogy. On the global scale an American soccer editor is the one female in the press box.

Yeah, I didn’t even know that until I got a little welcome message and it said, “gentlemen, let me introduce you to the first lady of…” and I’m like, “am I really the first?” He said, “yes, you are the first.” But again, its an honor and a responsibility.

What kind of editorial staff are you joining for the U.S. site?

I’m the Chief Editor. And I work directly with and under Greg Lalas, who is the site director. Shane Evans and Allan Ramsey are editors on the East Coast. Zac Lee Rigg is an editor on the West Coast. And we have a number of contract writers that are in the position I was in, where we pay them by article or some of them I believe are paid on contract for a certain number of articles. And we have a lot of partnerships, such as the one with SI. We have a content partnership with Yahoo Sports and we’re working on others. At a place like Yahoo, it is a chance to get soccer stories in front of general audiences. We want to be THE soccer provider. If we can produce content of a high quality than a lot of places might want it. Or maybe if they just can’t produce the resources to cover it, we can fill that need for them. So at the moment our staff is small, but our reach could be huge.

We will be bringing on an editor for our new youth section, which should launch in 2009. I think one of the reasons they chose me is because of the history I have covering youth soccer with Top Drawer and others in the past. But we will bring on an editor to run that. And an editor will come on for Women’s soccer. I hope we will be adding more full-time staff but I am also not sure actually how all the writers are paid. Some of them might be full-time. But those new sites will be great. The women’s page, for example, won’t just be the U.S. women’s team and the new domestic league, but women’s professional soccer leagues from around the world. To think that you could have a women’s soccer site that has information with a global reach is long overdue to an under-served audience. And same for youth soccer. There should be a place for all those kids and clubs to go to follow the various competitions.

One of the best parts about Goal.com for me is that they really believe in the power of the sport, that it is a common tie. I found that in my travels and here in LA, and it’s amazing that I am on board with people who believe in that and are willing to invest in it without necessarily getting a return on their investment in every market. Africa is harder to make money in, for instance, but they expect to make money in the U.S. But they do it all because it is important to them.

Just the sheer size of it the network is pretty amazing. For me at least it was off the radar, but now I’m real curious to see how all these resources can be harnessed for you.

It’s something I’m still trying to wrap my brain around. I don’t think I completely understood how far it went. To open your in-box and have there be messages from China and Indonesia saying “welcome aboard, if you have any Beckham quotes please send them my way.” (laughing). “our fans here can’t get enough Beckham.” Ok, I’ll do what I can. It’s exciting. That’s what I used to do anyway. I would used to go home and post on Sidelines Views so that people could maybe see a little video of Beckham or read a quote about something, and now instead of people going to that blog, I’m sending that information to editors who are then getting it out to the whole world. And people excited to be getting something more immediate. It’s not like they are doing me a favor. This is stuff they are really interested in.

Hopefully one day they will be interested in more things over here than just Beckham, but it is amazing the possibilities the internet and soccer can offer.

Yeah, I keep saying that. But I really do think it’s a new horizon. And it is a little mind boggling for me to go from thinking ‘oh well, I’m gonna give up writing about soccer,’ to know having all these new options and possibilities. You kind of have to take stock of everything. It’s like you’re so hungry and now you have this whole buffet in front of you. I’ve got to figure out where to start and take it one step at a time. But right now I am the kid in the soccer candy store.

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banner photo depicting the Hat-in-the-Ring insignia on the fuselage sides of Nieuport 28 fighters from the U.S. Air Service’s 94th Aero Squadron found at the Smithsonian’s artifact restoration page.