My Letter to Wales OnLine

This was the Orig­i­nal Wales Online Story:

 Does Oppor­tu­nity Knock in US for Bluebirds

I read with some amuse­ment your piece bemoan­ing the stan­dard of Major League Soc­cer and Amer­i­can play­ers who have come to the U.K. I would like to point out to you that not every player in MLS is Amer­i­can, in fact 75% of the qual­ity play­ers in MLS that have made the league com­pet­i­tive in inter­na­tional club com­pe­ti­tions are in fact for­eign­ers, and mostly hail from South America.

Judg­ing MLS by sim­ply a hand­ful of Amer­i­cans you have heard of would be like me as a foot­ball com­men­ta­tor in this coun­try (which I am: I co-host a twice weekly foot­ball radio pro­gram) judg­ing the Pre­mier League and Cham­pi­onship sim­ply based on play­ers from the home nations. If I did that I could ques­tion openly the stan­dard of your foot­ball. It seems British writ­ers sim­ply com­men­tate and con­sider what is com­fort­able for them. You fit into this unfor­tu­nate pat­tern with this story. If a player has never played in one of the domes­tic leagues in the UK, then he must have no value when play­ing abroad.

Oguchi Ony­weu by the way who you list as a yank stinker never played a minute in MLS. He did not work out at St James Park, but how that reflects poorly in MLS is lost on me.

As far as Kenny Cooper is con­cerned the jury is still out on him which is why he has only been capped twice for the US National Team. In other words he’s over val­ued right now.

On a lighter note, Swansea and Cardiff pro­vides you with a Cham­pi­onship Derby this year. The world, myself included will be watch­ing this with fascination!

Kar­tik Krishnaiyer