Some random thoughts on the US win and the upcoming game against Costa Rica

The Greatest US Win I Have Never Seen.   A lot has already been said about how absurd it was that this game was not broadcast to the average US fan, so there is no reason to continue to beat this dead horse.  Beyond the television rights, Grant Wahl’s twitter on the game failed to tweet, the ussoccer.com twitter was intermittent at best and their Match Tracker did not work at all (at least for me), so switching between the New York Times Goal! update and Ives Galarcep’s running update was the best I could do.  It was easier to get information about North Korea’s political divisions than it was to figure out what was going on in the game.

Last night’s win was as impressive as the win against Spain in South Africa.  There are a lot of ways to hedge the win against Spain – it was in a neutral stadium, the Spanish took us for granted, it was as much a holiday as a tournament for Spain, etc.  There are no qualifications needed for what happened last night.  The stadium was absolutely rockin (check out Ives’ Youtube from three hours before the game began http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5C8mh-Vhrw).  Honduras had absolutely everything to play for.  We went a goal down at the same time that we knew Costa Rica was ahead and going to get three points.  Nevertheless, the US stepped up and won the game.  And yes, it was lucky that Pavon put the PK over the bar, but no less unlucky than that Holden had a completely fluky handball to set up the PK. 

Is Connor Casey the next Jozy Altidore or the next Eddie Johnson?  Many fans, including myself, were flummoxed to see Connor Casey in the starting lineup in place of Jozy Altidore or Brian Ching.  I guess that is one of several thousand reasons why Bob Bradley is the coach and I am not.  Nevertheless, one game does make a regular US National.  Remember Steve Ralston’s goal against Mexico last qualifying round?   Remember the great run that Johnson had in qualifications for 2006?  Neither do I.  I would suspect that Casey has gotten himself a ticket to South Africa, but I am not convinced he has a place in our starting XI.  I hope that Jozy plays Wednesday against Costa Rica because he should be playing like a man with something to prove.  In fact…

The entire team has something to prove against Costa Rica.  Our worst loss this year was not the Gold Cup final, which came with a boatload of “what ifs.”  It was the 3-1 loss against Costa Rica at Saprissa in June.  The 3-1 score line flattered the US as Costa Rica dominated the game from the beginning to the end.  The US was not just out-played but also out-competed.  Additionally, if we beat Costa Rica, we will have won the Concacaf hex, and….

Winning the Concacaf hex is far more impressive than any hex win in the European qualifying.  For all the talk about the minnows in Concacaf, the truth is winning the Concacaf hex is far more difficult than anything Spain, Italy, England or Germany or any other European team had to do to qualify for South Africa.  None of those teams had a road game that compares with going to Azteca, Saprissa or last night’s games at San Pedro Sula.  There are no Montenegros, Faroe Islands, Andorras or Liechtensteins in the Concacaf hex.  In fact, the worst team in our hex, Trinidad and Tobago, is probably better than the worst 10 teams in the European qualification.  Reigning champion Italy has qualified with six wins in its nine games (just like the US), but Italy has had to play Ireland, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Montenegro and Georgia.  Did you know that Cyprus had 1,100 people show up for one of their WCQ games?  All those Euro football snobs can go stick it.  If the US wins the Concacaf, it will be a fantastic achievement.

With less than a month left in the season, this is promising to be one of the more exciting run-ups the MLS has ever had.  The new playoff format which allows wild card teams (teams that finish outside of the top two of their conference)to qualify based on their overall record rather than conference standings has made the table a complete jumble.  As it stands now, this is the table and the playoff qualifiers:

As it stand now, five teams for the west and three from the east would see post-season action.  If this was the final table, the playoff picture would look like this:

The battle for the Home Depot Center looks especially tasty in the West and Chicago’s trip to Seattle looks like one of the games of the year.

As Robert below points out, as the table now stands, Seattle would play Columbus.  With Sigi Schmidt facing his old team, that would be a series to savor.

Of course, this table will almost certainly not be the final table.  Chivas and New England have a pair of games in hand and the potential to make big strides up the table if they can convert them into wins.  This weekend’s games will have huge playoff implications which will radically affect the table.  This weekend’s lineup includes:

Chicago at Los Angeles

Chivas at DC United

Seattle at Columbus

New England at Colorado

Kansas City at Houston

For Chivas in particular, the run-in is particularly tricky.  Although they have five games to go where as all the other playoff battlers have only three or four, they have to play those five games in 22 days.  They travel to DC and Chicago and play Kansas City (without Bornstein or Kljestan who will be with the US team), San Jose and Houston at home.   Chivas really blew a chance this past weekend to gain three vital points by drawing the lowly Red Bulls at home.

I’ll update this table every week through the end of the season.

New Jersey, the Garden State, is famous and infamous for many things: the Mafia, Atlantic City, Frank Sinatra, Bon Jovi, stone-washed jeans, the Pine Barrens, Bruce Springsteen, teased hair, the Meadowlands, the Jersey Devil, pharmaceutical companies, the Turnpike, the Lindbergh Kidnapping, diners, and soccer, yes, soccer. While many American soccer fans are familiar, even if just in passing, with the game’s history in St. Louis, not as many are aware of how deep the Beautiful Game’s roots stretch in New Jersey.

On November 6, 1869 Rutgers and Princeton faced off in a game that gave birth to two American traditions: football a/k/a soccer and American football a/k/a gridiron a/k/a throwball. While the NFL and NCAA love to point to this match as the birth of their game, what they don’t like to acknowledge is that the teams involved played a game that was a variation of the 1863 London FA Rules.

If New Jersey is one of the birthplaces of soccer in the United States, then Kearny, New Jersey is the birthplace of soccer in New Jersey. Kearny, which is located on the Passaic River, across from Newark, was home to Michael Nairn & Co. as well as a Clark Thread Company factory, both of which had attracted a substantial Scottish workforce. In 1883, Clark Thread Company started an athletic association for its employees and named its soccer team Our New Thread, a/k/a ONT, in honor of the development of the first thread that could easily be used in sewing machines. The various garment industries located in Kearny and throughout the West Hudson area of New Jersey had strong ties to England and Scotland and many of the industry’s workers played for various amateur, semi-professional, and professional soccer clubs over the following decades, including the two incarnations of the American Soccer League, as detailed below.

While the first professional soccer league in the United States emerged in 1894 (the American League of Professional Football), the first viable professional soccer league, the American Soccer League, started in 1921 and was primarily based in the northeast. New Jersey was well represented in ASL I over its 12 year existence by the likes of the Harrison Soccer Club, Jersey City Celtics, Paterson Silk Sox, Newark Skeeters, and the Newark Americans. Although the initial ASL died in 1933, a new ASL emerged in 1934 and survived until 1983. It was in this version 2.0 of the ASL that some of the truly great New Jersey sides emerged, including Kearny Irish, Kearny Scots, Newark Germans, Paterson Caledonians, Trenton Highlanders, Kearny Celtic, Elizabeth Falcons, Newark Portuguese, and Newark Ukranian Sitch.

The great Billy Gonsalves played for the ASL’s Kearny Scots in the 1941-1942 season and later served as a player-coach for the German-American Soccer League’s Newark club from 1947 to 1952. Gonsalves remained in the Newark area for the rest of his life, dying in Kearny on July 17, 1977.

Gene Olaff, considered by some to be one of the greatest American goalkeepers, was born in Bayonne, New Jersey in 1920. He earned a cap in 1949 and missed out on the 1950 World Cup because his employer, the New Jersey State Police would not give him a leave of absence to go to Brazil. Olaff played for several ASL teams in the New York City area until his retirement in 1953. In 1975, Gene Olaff served as Superintendent of the New Jersey State Police, but retired soon after due to the agency’s age restrictions. Olaff currently lives in Florence Township, New Jersey, where he’s actively involved in youth soccer.

Despite the demise of the ASL in 1983, New Jersey’s influence in soccer on the American landscape continued because the Garden State produced several of the best known American soccer players, including numerous U.S. National Team players. Among the soccer players who were born or grew up in New Jersey are Tab Ramos, Claudio Reyna, Gregg Berhalter, Jozy Altidore, Giuseppe Rossi, John Harkes, Glenn Davis, Vincenzo Bernardo, Tony Meola, and Tim Howard.

Unfortunately for New Jersey and its soccer roots, the modern era of professional soccer has treated the Garden State in the same manner it has been treated by the NFL. The Cosmos might have spent their most famous years playing at the Meadowlands, but they were still the New York Cosmos, not the New Jersey Cosmos (yes, I know there was a period when the team, full of self-importance, played as just “The Cosmos,” but really, everyone knew they were New York’s team.) Initially, the MLS tried to do right by New Jersey, initially putting fielding a team called the New York/New Jersey MetroStars (and based their kit on the colors of the A.C. Milan kit). Unfortunately, in 2006 the Austrian firm Red Bull GmbH bought the club and renamed them RedBull New York, clearly dropping New Jersey from the team’s name. Despite this change, the squad’s new stadium will be located in Harrison, New Jersey, a town, as detailed above, with a strong soccer past.

Recently there has been talk of putting an MLS expansion team in New York, putting the MLS on the same level of the other professional sports leagues which all have two teams in New York. However, I think the MLS would be smart to take the time to recognize the role that New Jersey has played in the development of the Beautiful Game in the United States and place that expansion team in New Jersey proper.

In order for Soccer to find the success it seeks in the U.S., it must make changes to the traditional rules without changing the integrity of the sport.  Soccer can be that viable alternative for sports fans in the U.S. if it plays with American rules and also promotes the game to fit U.S. sports fans expectations, not the expectations of soccer enthusiasts.

The game of Soccer, like all other American spectator sports, must be tinkered with from time to time in order to maintain its entertainment value for the newest generation.  But, the sport must not be altered significantly to where it is not recognized as Soccer.  The integity of the sport must be kept intact (10 on 10 where no one touches the ball with their hands and one Goalkeeper for each side).

In sport, it is common for rules to vary from country to country.  FIBA, the International Federation of Basketball plays its games under its rules, including a trapezoid key (paint).  The U.S. adheres to these rules during international play and reverts back to its own rules for play in the NBA.

All strategies for delivering the product must adjust to the spectatorship landscape of the U.S. sports fans.  If done with an American flavor, soccer can be an enduring spectator sport in the U.S.  It has the ability to provide unique drama, escape and entertainment.  It is definitely possible to raise the American consciousness for the appreciation of Soccer and it can become the 4th most dominating spectator sport in America. 

Soccer needs to be serious, competitive, fun, and unapologetically American.  The rules changes and marketing schemes must take responsibility in perfecting the art in the sport.  They must make sure that the skill involved in the sport is showcased and that every match is played with contemporary sports drama and theatre.  Action, tension during the contests and common sense in the rules must take precedence so that every game has the potential to rise to the occasion and be an unforgettable sporting spectacle.

There is a lot that must be done for American soccer to succeed.  Sports fans in the U.S. expect more from their spectator sports.  They are different than sports fans from other parts of the world.  They are more sophisticated and they have been spoiled.  The greatest moments in the recent history of sports have occurred in American sports or with American athletes.

The sport has been built-up significantly over time at the youth level and upwards through high-school and college levels.  But, in order for professional soccer in the U.S. to derive the most amount of fan support possible, the marketing must become event-driven and reach the diehard sports fans.

Soccer can become a fabric of the American sports fans environment just as football, basketball, and baseball have consistently achieved from year to year.  Soccer must think progressive in their rules amendments and consider what makes 4th down, the 3 and 2 count and the last-second shot so appealing to sports fans.