Dave's random mumblings…

A nice change of pace this evening after one of the worst England performances I can remember, the game I shall mention no more… OK, no more than once more any way.

Tonight was my first Mariners game of the year. Inter-league play with the Cincinnati Reds in town for a weekend series. I got invited and had no idea who was pitching and glanced at the standings for the first time in a couple of weeks and found the M’s were doing worse than I thought. Won 25, lost 46 and 13 games out of first place in a four-team division.

Safeco Field on a June evening.

While I enjoy baseball and certainly went through a year or two of going to maybe 20 games a year, it’s been one or two games a year for the last few seasons. Sitting in a three-quarter empty Safeco Field in the cold Seattle spring is not exactly conducive to a great atmosphere. Carl had a spare ticket for this evening, and it was time for a trip to Safeco Field.

Carl, showing what he assures me is his best side

And the “hydro races” on the big screen drive me potty. Three boats racing around a course and you’re asked to choose your favorite… At least the game where you follow the hat the ball is hidden under requires concentration. The hydro races and picking the winning boat is total guesswork and for some unfathomable reason the hydros got the biggest cheer of the evening.

I like baseball for the same reasons I like cricket, and it’s not really the game itself. You go there with friends, be social and watch while a story unfolds in front of you.

As with many American sports I dislike all the artificial rabble rousing that baseball feels is required to get some noise and create an atmosphere. I hope the Sounders have shown Seattle that if the team shows passion for the game along with an educated crowd you can dispense with the requests for clapping and yelling.

Spending years immersed in the European football culture (both passionate good and hooligan filled bad) and going to my first baseball game (Astros vs. Giants in the Astrodome in ’86) it all seemed very strange and rather forced. The Astrodome was spectacular, way beyond any other stadium I’d been too. The score board with galloping horses unlike anything I’d seen before and the game interesting (I had someone who knew baseball explaining it to me), however I could never quite understand the attempt at creating an atmosphere.

That’s my problem with the whole American sporting experience. Baseball is perhaps the worst offender, it’s a naturally slow game and that seems to be part of the appeal. As I said, I like how it slowly unfolds in front of you over a period of two and a half or three hours. However the same artificial sense of urgency is present in basketball, hockey and to a slightly lesser extent American football.

If you have a crowd educated in the game it seems unnecessary, football (round ball) has never needed it, even among casual supporter. Whatever the sport it’s clear when things are exciting, it’s clear when things are not going well. I don’t think stadiums need to tell the audience that.

Onto tonight’s game. Turns out Cliff Lee, the M’s top pitcher was starting. He pitched the entire game, only 110 pitches to get through 9 innings. He gave up 6 hits, struck out 7 and gave up no runs. Very impressive outing, he worked fast and the game was over in a little over two and a quarter hours.

Mariners won 1-0 in a very fun to watch defensive game.

Briefly back to the England performance. It really was atrocious, hopefully this gives Capello the kick he needs to actually examine the way they play. I’ve not looked at the British red tops yet (the more mass-media newspapers), but I’m sure they have plenty to say.

Wayne Rooney was upset at the England fans booing the team of the pitch. The team played with no energy, no passion and there was no excuse for that performance at this level. It’s very fair for the fans to make their displeasure known.

If this really is the best they can do, then they don’t deserve to go on. I hope this is the wake up the team needs, I hope Capello makes the changes necessary to do what they have to against a decent Slovenia on Wednesday, where nothing less than a win will be enough.

Stuart Pearce knows more than anyone what pulling on the three lions should mean, if the players don’t get that, if they don’t understand how big a stage this is and the millions of people that this matters too then they should not be on the field.

That’s it, I’ve said my piece about England’s performance against Algeria, not going to mention it again.

There are all these complaints about biased refereeing from the Sounders Nation and a couple of writers who should know better. Unfortunatly it does make the fans sound like a bunch of whiners. Yeah there have been some questionable goals, missed off side calls and a couple of important missed hand ball calls.

In return the sounders have had a couple go their way too, most notably the goal against New York. Over the course of a session the bad calls will balance themselves out.

It’s time to stop whining and blaming the refs, typically (with a couple of obvious exceptions) they have been fairly consistent within the game, even if what gets called changes game to game.

This year has not started well, only three wins so far and out the play off positions. While not in danger of loosing touch yet, the time is coming when we need to start picking up points and make a run up the table. Salt Lake showed (as did NY in 2008) that if you make it into the playoffs anything is possible.

Last year Seattle did miss the injury bug almost totally, Ljungberg missed a few games and that was really about it. This year has been an entirely different story: Nate Jaqua was the second highest scorer last year and a certain starter has yet to play a minute. Jhon Kennedy Hurtardo is out with a torn ACL, not a career ending injury anymore, but season ending certainly.

Another starter spending time on the sidelines this year was Osvaldo Alonso (quad, three games so far).

Then there are role players that have missed time. Michael Fucito (seven so far), Brad Evans (two games), Peter Vagenas (four games) and Pat Noonan (three games) have each missed significant time due to injury.

The resigning of Jeff Parke was very timely with the injury to Hurtardo. The return of Brad Evans and Nate Jaqua along with the signing of Blaze Nfuko gives some cause for optimism.

Ultimately all that really matters is to somehow get into the playoffs and hit your best form. Manage that and what happened in April and May would soon be forgotten about.

I am going to start with a little history, it’s relevant to the rest of this post. The Act of Union 1800 merged Great Britain with the Kingdom of Ireland and created the imaginatively named United Kingdom. The monarchy and government were in London and that’s how it was untill the Anglo-Irish treaty partitioned Ireland in 1921.

Because of political instability, occasional famine and opportunity there was a significant emigration from Ireland to Scotland in the 19^th and early 20^th century and settled in East Glasgow and Edinburgh. In 1876 the Irish in Edinburgh formed Hibernian FC, a few years leter Celtic FC were founded in East Glasgow, both clubs have very strong Irish and catholic identity.

A couple of years earlier Ranger FC started play in Glasgow, originally the club had no particular religious or ethnic identity, they just wanted to play football.

In the late 1800 Rangers and Celtic became the two biggest clubs in Glasgow and the rivalry grew. Around the turn of the century Rangers took on a more and more protestant identity, untill the club and religion were almost inseparable.

Clearly this is more than a regular sporting rivalry, there is a complex history that’s a mix of politics, religion, bigotry and occasional violence that have come together to make it so much more than just a game. The clubs have made moves to keep the worst of the sectarianism out of the grounds, but they also get the importance of the religious divide to the rivalry. A game at either club had a tremendous atmosphere and any football fan should make the trip to Celtic Park or Iborx for a game, it’s quite an experience.

This is all background to where I’m going. In last weeks Sunday Times Graham Spiers wrote an interesting piece about Ranger and Celtic leaving the Scottish Premier League and joining the English league pyramid.

I don’t feels it’s quite as inevitable as Graham Spiers does, but it’s a move that makes sense for what are two of the best supported clubs in the world, and today money is what makes world football go around.

Financially it’s a no brainer, the SPL clubs are getting just under $4million a year from TV, while Premier league teams get closer to $70million. Then there are the so called “big games”, currently they play each other three times a year. In the EPL they will have a full stadium every week.

There is some football precedence for this that sets a precedent. FC Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver are Canadian teams play in US football leagues. Cardiff and Swansea both play in the English leagues and Wellington (New Zealand) play in the Australian top tier.

I’m sure the most vocal opponents will be the smaller Premier league clubs, a pair of which will be displaced from the big money top division into the championship to make way.

The Scottish league is in a financially perilous state after the collapse of Sentana last year, and loosing the big pay day clubs get when they play Ranger and Celtic will not make it healthier. However I can’t think of a country that has as many nominally professional clubs as Scotland, and a little thinning of the heard as clubs go part time will be painful, but ultimately may benefit the game in the longer term.

How they would join the Premier League is another question. There has been some talk about the creation of “Premier 2” to make two 18 team divisions. If this were to happen then the inclusion of the Scottish giants becomes fairly straight forward. Of course the formation of Premier 2 depends on TV money, and this year the Scottish teams have seen how quickly that can go away.

As ever some clubs will miss out on the payday that premier league TV money brings, today Coventry City would be one of those teams on the “Premier 2” bubble, add two more clubs and admission to the top tier become more difficult again for the Sky Blues.

I can see significant positives for Rangers, Celtic and the English clubs they would play. There are negatives, but ultimately TV money will decide which way it goes. If “Premier 2” happens then I agree with Graham Spiers that we will see the old firm playing in England, I think it’s more difficult to pull off if the structure does not change.

I’m interested in seeing what happens next.

In ’95 the European Court of Justice ruled that Standard Liege, the Belgium FA and UEFA had broken all sorts of EU employment rules when they refused to allow jouneyman player Jean-Marc Bosman to move to French club Dunkerque after his contract has expired.

However Liege did not like the transfer fee Dunkerque offered and said no to the move. At this time (1990) players out of contract that took a transferred to another federation the clubs involved had to agree a fee.

Bosman was forced to rejoin Liege, however he was no longer a first team player and took a significant salary cut. Bozman filed his case, and the rest is history.

The Bosman ruling created a single marker place for European footballers. It meant that any player that was a citizen of a European Union country could move to any other club in the EU with no compensation owed to the club that lost the player.

In some countries (notably England, Scotland Germany, Portugal and Holland) transfers of out of contract players was restricted. In the UK there was an independent transfer tribunal that would decide how much compensation a club should receive for loosing out of contract player.

The doomsayers said that this was the end of he smaller clubs that rely on transfer fees generated by their selling promising players to the bigger clubs to stay in business.

A second effect was ending quotas set by leagues for a certain number of home players to start games. In European competition for example only three foreign players were allowed to play. After Bosman the rule was changed to three non-EU players and the big clubs took full advantage of this.

In the 2003-2004 season Chelsea fielded a team with not a single British born player in it.

The economics of the game has shifted, a few clubs have gone under and many more have altered their structure to live with in their means, but the wholesale carnage never happened.

Today the FIFA and UEFA are trying to get a quota of a sort set up, requiring six players eligible to play for the national side of the home country. They want this (known as 6+5) to apply to all clubs worldwide, not just within UEFA.

Fairness, reducing cost, developing youth players and national identity are all given as reasons this needs to happen. The EU has said it’s illegal and violates the Bosman ruling, other NGOs have said maybe it can be implemented.

Chelsea and Real Madrid have both made it clear they are willing to take it to the European Courts if needed to keep any type of quota system from happening.

Nice article in When Saturday Comes (a long running monthly British football dead tree magazine), I tried to find an online reference, but with no luck.

It talked about Steve Zakuani and examined his choice to play collegiate football and take part in the Generation Adidas program rather than try to learn the trade in the lower divisions in Europe. It’s certainly more lucrative, the magazine claims and income of around $160,000 (both MLS salary and Generation Adidas “retainer”). Zakuani had significant interest last year from a few lover division British clubs, however had he taken that option he would be earning a fraction of that.

A number of specifically British younger players are going to colleges in the US for a year or two before trying their luck in MLS. Stuart Holden (Houston), Andy Iro (Crew) and John Culliffe (Chivas and San Jose) all took the same route to professional football.

Zakuani, like Montero is probably good enough to make a very nice living in Europe, a couple of years in a lower pressure environment with quality coaching under Sigi Schmidt will prepare him very well for that future.

Nice piece with a picture of the Sounders post goal.

I know it’s only week two and a little early to book the open top bus for the championship celebration, but it’s been a while since Coventry fans have had anything to cheer about. Look who is top of the table and the only team to have won both games!

It’s nice to be sitting on top looking down at West Brom.

The US national team has had a busy couple of months, 13 games spread across World Cup Qualifying, Gold Cup and Confederations Cup. They ended up winning 7 (1 in extra time), loosing 5 and drawing one. Not bad, but hardly world class when you look at the opposition.

On the plus side there was the obvious highlight of beating Spain, making it to the Confederation Cup final and being 2-0 up against Brazil at half time. However the same tournament had big losses against Brazil and Italy in the group stage in what is ultimately a fairly meaningless tournament.

Where it counts is World Cup qualifying it’s not been so bright. There have been two games this summer, an unconvincing draw against Honduras and a big loss in Costa Rica. The next qualifying game is in Mexico, if the US loose in the Azteca, the away game against Honduras in October may have a huge say in who goes to South Africa.

Ultimately the US are good enough that they should qualify for South Africa next summer, but it’s not an easy path at this point.

The 5-0 loss to Mexico in the Gold Cup final really showed up some ongoing problems with the current set up. Finishing in the red-zone is woeful, the defence seems to lack discipline with players consistently being caught out of position and not able to pick up the runs in the box. Yes this was not the US “A” team, but nor was Mexico.

I feel that the coaches have a far bigger influence over the B team players than the first team. A lot of these players play in the MLS and don’t necessarily have access to top level coaching and opposition week-in-week out the way the European based players that make up a bulk of the first team do.

It’s not a bash on the MLS, just reality that a player that goes against top level defenders every week in training and games is going to be better than a player that goes against defenders earning $40K in the MLS.

This lack of exposure to top level football places more of a burden on the US coaches to provide tactics that work for the players they have, and I don’t think the current coaches have done this very well.

Bob Bradley inherited a team from Bruce Arena that was well drilled with players that understand their role. It was a team that knew where they had to be during set plays, especially on defence but also in the red zone. When playing internationally, not giving away cheap goals to teams that have the ability to close a game down is absolutely paramount.

Looking back over the last couple of months the Spain win looks like something of a lucky win (granted, to a certain extent you make your own luck at that level) and constantly changing line ups don’t help, but during the two games that really meant something they did not play well.

This summer I don’t think the US team has played with the same level of discipline, knowledge and confort, and I think in large part that’s down to the coaching staff.

Nice peace in a British blog about the Sounders.

http://europeanfootballweekends.blogspot.com/2009/07/seattle-sounders-fc.html

Football (the round ball version) seems to have a couple of major hurdles left to overcome to really become a mainstream sport in the US.

First, attract the top level athletes early and have them stick with the game.

From limited my experience the US youth development system seems to be aimed at preparing players for college. By the time a player has a couple of years of college it’s too late, very few clubs will invest the effort to develop 20 year old players.

There are a few good players that come out the college system, but generally they look unprepared for the professional leagues. I think the key is to create a real academy system tied to the club sides, identify the really talented players at 14 to 16 years old and give them the intense quality training that only a professional setup can.

The US has a few potentially world class players, Howard, Adu, Altidore and Johnson come to mind. I believe Altidore, who is only 19, may have the potential to be the best player yet to come through the US youth system.

Howard was spectacular against Spain the Confederation Cup semi, probably the best performance in a team that overall had a great game. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the four players I names all play in Europe, and maybe more importantly most moved there early in their professional career.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, promote the game and create more of a demand for the game from the public.
While there are some MLS success stories (Sounders rather spectacularly leading the way, Toronto FC, LA and one or two others), there are some other teams playing some good football but drawing less than 7 or 8,000.

A win in the Confederation cup could have helped in really establishing the beautiful game in the minds of US sports fans. A win over one of the strongest football nations (and probably the biggest “name” in the game) would have increased the momentum from the stunning win over Spain.

Don Garber (MLS commissioner) Said “We’ve always believed we deserved more respect than we receive, in sports you’ve got to earn respect, you can’t just ask for it, and the US (and by extension the MLS) earned some respect this past week.

Europe has always looked down a little on US football, despite being 14th in the current FIFA ranking and consistent qualification for the World Cup (something my England can’t always claim) drawing the US is always thought of as a relatively easy game by European fans. I think the win over Spain and taking the game to Brazil will cause more people to take the US national team, and by association the MLS a little more seriously in the future.

Garber followed up by adding “Today we proved that we can compete at the highest level, for 45 minutes, we had one of the best teams in the world shocked and on their heels.”

That’s true, but the question to Mr Garber needs to be what are you going to do with that success and growing respect to make a difference to the game in the US?

In Italy Serie A is referred to as ‘il campionato piu bello del mondo’, this translates as “the most beautiful championship in the world”. I lived and worked for a while and went to a few Inter games, this was the league to watch in the mid 90′s. The atmosphere was electric and the product on the pitch was a beautiful, possession orientated game with the best players in the world.

The league does not seem healthy right now. There have been chairmen and owners convicted of influencing referees, the Italian game is full of rumours claiming bribery, influenced games and clubs using politicians to get their way.

The biggest scandal resulted in Juventus having two championships stripped and dropped to Serie B. Point deductions, fines and competition bans were levelled against Fiorentina, A.C. Milan, Lazio and Reggina.

During the 06 closed season big names players moved from the affected clubs. Patrick Viera and Zlatan Ibrahimovic went to Inter, the newly crowed champions and the club that gained most from the scandal. Many other players, including Zambrotta, Cannavaro, Stam and Rui Costa left Serie A for other European leagues.

The trend continues, the leagues biggest name, Kaka signed for Real Madrid, A.C.’s manager Carlo Ancelotti moved to Chelsea and rumours abound of players following him to the Premier League.

Unquestionably Serie A was the league in which all the top players in world football wanted to play. It started with Michel Platini at Juventus, Trevor Frances at Sampdoria and Maradona leading Napoli to two titles. Lothar Matthaeus was the man who led Inter to the championship. Most memorable of all were A.C Milans trio of Frank Rijkaard, Ruud Gullit and Marco van Basten that gave the storied club perhaps their most successful era ever.

After the World Cup in 1990 the success kept coming for Serie A with a new group of names making it the strongest (and wealthiest) league in the world. Ronaldo, Shevchenko, Batistuta, Crespo, Thuram and Zinedine Zidane could have played at any league in the world, and they all chose to play in Italy.

So what happened?

It seems to come down to finances. The TV contract and revenue generated by the Premier League and the privileged few in La Liga clearly allowed these clubs to compete with, and then overtake Italy financially.

To make matters worse Italian clubs generally don’t own their grounds and the last major expansion was for Italia 90. Currently the Spanish and English grounds are far ahead in both facilities and more importantly today, revenue generation. While Juve are getting a new stadium built with mostly public money, other clubs have found getting local authories to pay for upgrades in the current climate is all but impossible.

The big 5 or 6 European clubs have created incredible brands that move huge amounts of merchandise and add significantly to the bottom line, and none of those are Italian.

Additionally Italian captain Fabio Cannavaro has called for a rethinking of the Italian youth system, he proposes the clubs adopt something closer to the academies in England. The top youth players in Italy are finding homes abroad where the technical training is just as good and the facilities are far better.

The early exit from the Confederations Cup in South Africa may be exactly what the World champions needed to take a look at the fundamentals of the Italian game and look at what Serie A needs to do to allow them to compete with the big British and Spanish clubs.

A Champions League that has German and Italian sides consistently competing where it matters, along with the English and Spanish clubs can only be good for the game in Europe.