Archive for December 2011
Happy New Year!!! Predictions for 2012
Before breaking out the bubbly and singing the night away I think it’s a good time to reflect on the successes of American soccer from the last year. Not only did our Americans make it through “difficult”* qualifiers to face Mexico in the CONCACAF Finals we managed to score two goals on them. Don’t worry about the score or what language the trophy was presented with as that will only be a dissappointment.** Also for 2011 we saw the L.A. Galaxy defeat the Houston Dynamo in a game that brought in almost the same ratings as last year. Don’t worry about Beckham having any thoughts about transfering to Paris next year because I’m sure MLS will sign someone of his high calibur if not now then fifteen years down the line.
In other side stories from 2011 Dempsey is becoming one of Fulham’s best players. It’s a shame more Americans can’t appreciate what the Texas native is doing for American soccer as he continues to score enough goals to keep his team away from the axe of relegation. One could argue that Dempsey’s goals in English professional play are more important than the fluke miracle that happened in the World Cup where the goalkeeper couldn’t keep two hands wrapped around the ball. Not one to be counted out Landon Donovan is parlaying his MLS championship for a chance to be successful with Everton (a well known English team that’s not even close to the top of league play).
Before going into my predictions I’ll give you this link of some players I think would be perfect for MLS play in 2012:
I think Tevez would be a great addition to any American team even if he would talk about transfering to another team after two weeks here. I haven’t watched much of his play but he strikes me as someone who doesn’t focus on things like passing and finesse as much as barreling over players and edging out goalies with close shots. Out here he’d be a welcome addition to any MLS team and should injure at least three weak MLS players after five months. To further confuse Tevez maybe we can send him to Vancouver for a spell?
So without further ado ….. My Predicitions for 2012 and the chances of them happening!!!
1. Donovan gets at least four goals for Everton in his remaining play … the chances of this happening I put at 15%. It would’ve been great if he stuck around for April’s Everton vs Fulham game to go against Clint Dempsey in English league play, but Landon has to fulfill his obligations to the Galaxy and play against teams like D.C. United and the New England Revolution.
2. The Americans don’t even sniff Bronze in Olympic soccer play. I’m expecting a huge advertising build up and American soccer being pushed as a new sport to watch. No longer will it be a cast off like Olympic Ping Pong or Olympic Badminton. You’re going to hear about the Women’s and Men’s Team having a fighting chance in this tournament because NBC also has a new deal with MLS to broadcast further games. The only downside of this newfound Olympic soccer hype will be that the Men’s team is still mediocre and can’t do well against Mexico right now. I expect them to beat a team or two in the Olympics but finish weak overall (but scoring big with marketing agencies). I think the chances of our Men’s team not winning any medal is 90%.
3. Beckham’s gone. 93%.
4. An MLS Team wins the CONCACAF club Final and plays well against a European team in the Champions League tournament. If this goes down then the Mayans were right and the end of the world is imminent. ZERO PERCENT
5. This blog draws in more than five readers a day and a post of mine surges in twitter’s veins bringing me hundreds and hundreds of more devoted readers. I think this delusion waits a year or two and has about a 18% chance of happening.
6. The MLS Final will get more viewers than last year and the NBC deal prods the league forward. Last year’s Final was a bit of a letdown (even with Beckham) but I’m willing to go out on a limb and support the league’s future for next year. The chances of the MLS Final drawing in even more viewers is a solid 60-70%. There’s just too much money being thrown at American soccer now that I don’t think it’ll regress any.
And now, for the coup de grace, a prediction from my girlfriend (someone who has had her family invested in soccer her entire life):
American soccer will still be sucky and nobody will care!!! 100 percent !!!
*America edged out Canada, Guadaloupe and Panama for the right to face Mexico. The qualifying games were close.
*The trophy presentation was spoken in Spanish, not English, although the tournament and its final was held in America (causing our national team goalie to blow a gasket). The Mexican fans in Los Angeles wouldn’t have minded if the presentation was in English though, their team had beaten the Americans with a solid performance and they were happy, but they flipped when the Spanish speaking commenced.
Is MLS waiting for a turning point that never comes?
Let’s start in 1978. That was the year Larry Bird was drafted into the NBA after finishing a successful college run and going deep in the NCAA Finals. In 1979 Magic Johnson was drafted into the NBA as well and sent on his way towards multiple NBA Finals series pitted against Bird (who had even played against Magic in the NCAA Final that was mentioned before). Many historians considered these Magic/Bird NBA Finals essential to the birth of the modern NBA. These series paved the way for players like Jordan, Lebron and Kobe to become the world celebrities (ahem, global icons, as Lebron said) they are today. Without Magic and Bird drawing in high television ratings the NBA could’ve stagnated and been left off television all together (at the time there were only three or four channels TOTAL so it’s not crazy to imagine some executives ignoring NBA games).
So there were Johnson and Bird, giants among dwarves. Both of them were 6’9 and had been playing basketball their entire lives. You’d think that two men this tall couldn’t play with any agility but the opposite was true: Magic was known for his smooth passing and Bird played inside the paint almost as well as Steve Nash could. To any casual fan in 1984 these two players would give you an entertaining game and keep you watching until the very end. If Michael Jordan was the NBA’s script for a global success story than Bird and Magic were the early rough drafts. These two turned a corner in NBA history together and moved it forward … which brings me to ……..
Major League Soccer?
The phrase ‘turning point’ is more than a cable T.V. football show I don’t watch. It means there was a point where a league or a sport was not only big business, they became big news. No matter where you live in America you will always have to hear about 32 NFL teams and the Superbowl even if you try as hard as you can to ignore that hype. The same is true to a certain extent with basketball and baseball. But MLS isn’t as big yet and depending on who you ask it’s not even be considered ‘news’. No matter how many times MLS executives congratulate themselves for an 4% ratings increase they are up against hockey, NASCAR, UFC and even college football for the #4 spot on America’s list of favorite sports. Even this year the Beckham led Final pulled almost the same ratings as last year’s MLS Final did. Can they make it better? I think if we look at the background on the top three leagues we’ll see a pattern develop that can point to an answer.
Baseball’s turning point:
Baseball developed well before most Americans had television sets and the sport began some time in the late 1800s. So when Babe Ruth started obliterating baseballs the commentary came from radio announcers en masse well before television announcers. Ruth’s first championship came in 1921. This was a time when Americans were learning about crazy things called ‘cars’ and ‘movies’ so we can’t point to any media influence as a reason baseball was so successful. What it came down to was a twenty or thirty year period where Americans took baseball as their de facto national game (compared to England’s football and cricket). If baseball had any turning point it might have been when Ruth and the Yankees steamrolled competition in that early period in the 20th century (but even then, if it wasn’t Ruth then some other Yankee would’ve been celebrated as a baseball Messiah). To put the frame back even further baseball didn’t need a turning point to begin with due to the deep saturation of baseball at all levels in America. So ingrained was baseball as the national game by 1930, that by 1950 when American households began to latch onto television sets high-level baseball executives didn’t feel any need to convince the networks to air games. Why would they? ABC must’ve invited baseball with open arms.
Basketball’s turning point:
See the above paragraph. Basketball had been gaining ground since the late 1950s and was positioned to become very successful based on at least one point: you just need one basketball and your hands to play. That’s it. You don’t need a bat, a glove, a catcher’s glove or catcher’s mask if you’re a kid practicing on the street. Ditto for a new fan watching on television and trying to understand the game. How easy is it to explain basketball? You bounce the ball and get it into the basket. Done.
Basketball’s only hinderence was that it couldn’t draw in the viewers the way baseball did and needed ‘super heroes’ to market (those were David Stern’s words and not mine). Enter Bird, Johnson, Barkley, Jordan, etc. These players became sensations and edged out names like Ruth, Cobb, DiMaggio and Mantle in the minds of Americans. It wasn’t that the NBA was peddling inferior products though because the players not only played well but were genetic freaks. If you look at Bird and Johnson (and Wilt Chamberlain) you would see towering figures that were built to play amazing basketball built for successful television ratings. During the early eighties the NBA started connecting the dots, milked Jordan’s success for everything it was worth and started elbowing baseball out of the way.
The NFL’s turning point:
There was a point in time, decades ago, where NFL players were underpaid and considered mental. A lot of them had side jobs to make ends meet and played the game for the love of it (or maybe just the joy of being violent). Back in the 30s college football, not the NFL, was the prestigious game for well heeled young men. But after that you were supposed to quit and get a real job, not risk brain damage traveling miles away from home for a weak payout. Those that stuck around for life after college were either gifted star athletes or semi-competent grifters opposed to selling out into adult hood. Indeed, many NFL teams scraped together paychecks and lived lean just to get from point A to point B.
So what changed for the NFL? Most would point towards the Giants/Colts Championship game in 1958 but in my opinion it wasn’t a true turning point. That game may have changed the direction of the NFL but it did nothing to gain ground on baseball. In my opinion the creation of the AFL/NFL merger and later Superbowl loaded so much possible future cash into the new NFL. It would be like if Verizon and AT&T (and Sprint) merged into the only cellphone provider you could use. It was an obvious monopoly and the Superbowl finale was positioned to deliver the highest quality football in America for premium dollars. If you were a college kid supporting your local school then you had to think twice about which game you would rather see, your decent college team or your favorite NFL team in a playoff game. When Green Bay started eeking out those early Superbowl wins (followed by the Jets and Chiefs and triumphs) the seeds were planted for an NFL tree of life (or suffocating, ever expanding ivy depending on who you ask).
Which brings us back to MLS:
The league’s been running for a decade and the fans are hell bent on getting everyone and their mom to know about it. Someone had mentioned an interesting point on twitter: In no league but the MLS are the fans so hyper focused on league growth and attendance numbers as opposed to their actual team. MLS fans get more bent out of shape about about T.V. ratings and team marketing than they do when their team blows a possible playoff spot. I consider this a good trend in the long run. It reminds me of what they say about mormon’s attempts to convert others to their faith. After knocking on so many doors and trying so hard to convince others about your views, you can’t help but convert yourself. So goes with MLS.
But in the short run it doesn’t look good. For one, the MLS’s biggest splash signing might leave the league soon (to France of all places). The MLS had been counting on Beckham to drive up attendance numbers in non-soccer cities and with him gone it’s another uphill climb. Who can you sign after David Beckham? The MLS can’t even convince Clint Dempsey to stay here for a good price and he’s just as American as Texas Hold ‘Em. And if they signed Javier Hernandez a lot of Americans would think he was a Mexican club soccer player, not an international highlight reel.
What would it take for Americans to watch soccer just as much as basketball or the NFL? Hmmm ……… here’s one crazy idea: a merger with a second league, similar to what the NFL did with the AFL. In soccer there exists a 2nd, much smaller American league called the NASL that’s home to about eight or nine different soccer teams. The NASL teams might not be as good as the MLS, but if ran the right way they could be competitive. Would MLS ever decide about integrating them into their league? If not, would they consider a promotion/relegation system and dump two bad MLS teams for a couple better NASL ones? That would open up about eight or nine extra cities in America that would follow soccer and might even lead to a couple breakout stars to fuel television ratings. It could be like the NBA/ABA merger where 9 years of ABA play benefited the NBA with more cities involved and better players coming through the system. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand why the numbers worked. If a 20 team league is sustainable and profitable, then it should have better teams than a 10 team league fighting to stay alive. The MLS would benefit from having that second league around to get more people watching soccer in out of the way places (For example, the NASL has teams in Atlanta, South Carolina and Minnesota – Places where MLS would like to get a toehold).
Wait, that would mean MLS owners might have to lose money if their team gets dumped to NASL/Level 2 ………… well, best of luck MLS! I’m sure the turning point you’ve been waiting for is just around the corner!!
Soccer (Not) in Film
Let’s begin last weekend as I sauntered around Vegas on my Christmas vacation. I went to the Aria sportsbook where I decided to investigate if the Vegas casinos actually cared about soccer betting. The employee (Aria) was kind enough and printed up a list of the Premiere League games for Saturday. After further review I realized they were just being needy because I was maybe one of five people the entire night who had asked about soccer. To emphasize my point when I was asking about the lines (ie +350, -700, +200) one of the casinos just told me point blank “Take a zero off and think of betting in tens of dollars”. And I would’ve bet the HUGE amount of ten dollars but it turned out that the only game I would’ve bet on was Manchester United and their odds of “-800” meant that I had to bet 80 dollars to receive a 10 dollar gain. Every other game also had options for draws (compared to just W’s and L’s for the NFL) and I had better things to do like gaining 35lbs at a random buffet.
At the Wynn sportsbook the employee ignored me and pointed to an area with games pre-printed out. I didn’t know whether she ignored me because I was asking about soccer or if she ignored everybody. The good news for soccer gamblers is that the Wynn’s lines were better bets than at Aria: The odds were 1 to 5 of Manchester United winning, better than the 1 to 8 option.
My point is that when I asked for soccer match information the casinos still considered the request strange (College football and the NFL dominated the big screens, although Barca vs Real Madrid did make a couple of appearances). It seems to me that American soccer fans obsess over soccers imminent growth, your humble author included, but are years (decades?) away from having soccer as popular as the NBA or the NFL. A friend of mine from Los Angeles expressed this state of being:
Me: The Galaxy just won the title, did anyone care?
Him: No. No one cares.
Me: Do you even watch soccer?
Him: No (awkward laughter).
The girl he was with: Sorry, nobody cares about soccer (more laughter).
Me: Oh, okay, I watch it every once in a while (friendly laughter as a part of my soul was taken away).
On that note let’s look at an area that glorifies sports as well as marketing them: Film. If you’re a die hard fan of a certain sport then if you watch a film about it your feelings of attachment are intensified. The following list is simple: these are sports films that millions of Americans enjoyed and talked about.
Boxing: Rocky (there were a lot of them), Ali (it had a couple of Oscar Nominations), Million Dollar Baby (I didn’t see it, though it did win an Oscar) and Raging Bull. It’s interesting to note that in researching this there were a boatload of boxing films before 1960, then they trickle down going into the 90s. Right now not a lot of people follow boxing enough for Hollywood to put out more films.
Basketball: Hoop Dreams (Required watching for any college basketball fan), White Men Can’t Jump (One of Wesley Snipe’s best roles), Hoosiers (Before my time but everyone calls it a classic) … a few others …. and Teen Wolf (I figured no one cared about this mid-80s classic but ESPN.com included it too, and I DID think it was cool when I was six).
Baseball: I just googled “best baseball movies” and a ton popped up like Major League, The Natural, The Bad News Bears, Field of Dreams, The Sand Lot.
Football: Rudy, Any Given Sunday, Jerry Maguire, Friday Night Lights. I thought there’d be more NFL related films, perhaps the league discourages Hollywood from making them.
And without further ado ……….. I present …………. GREAT SOCCER FILMS:
Bend It Like Beckham (I didn’t see it.)
Shaolin Soccer (Maybe Steven Chow’s best film, and I only watched it because I had a free DVD.)
Green Street Hooligans (Elijah Wood turns into a violent soccer hooligan and American viewers were oblivious to the film.)
The Cup (Why did I only read about this film five seconds ago? It’s about a group of Himilayan monks who become obsessed with watching the World Cup despite being forbidden by their teacher. And it’s a true story).
What do all of these films have in common? Foreign directors, foreign locations and foreign actors. Although these films have high ratings across the board not a lot of Americans know they exist. Americans might even know more about kid films like Ladybugs or Kicking and Screaming then they do with actual competent soccer films like the ones above. When will Americans have a soccer film that can deliver a Hollywood endling like this one?
MLS Offseason: Beckham Out, Drogba In.
As always, here’s a link to get you updated on the recent story:
http://sports.yahoo.com/soccer/news?slug=ro-rogers_mls_drogba_financial_health_galaxy_113011
It seems that there’s a giant void left in American soccer after David Beckham expressed doubts about returning to the Galaxy. Since the league has no idea if Beckham will return or not they are now scouring Europe and Spain for a talented player that is willing and able to give up high standards of play and national fame in exchange for American paychecks in a less grueling league. Enter Didier Drogba, a player I barely know about and a player 90% of America will see for the first time.
For a primer watch this video:
WARNING: THE ABOVE VIDEO’S MUSIC WILL MAKE YOU WANT TO PLAY DANCE DANCE REVOLUTION.
In the previous Yahoo article the author kept trying to state that the MLS will be a better league with the Chelsea forward, but it’s tough trying to generate excitement after MLS’s flagship player voyages to France. Let’s look at the article from Martin Rogers (who I think is a fine journalist) a bit closer:
“Snagging Drogba would be a real coup for MLS, as the league continues to ride a recent wave of positive vibes. The Galaxy’s title win in the final year of Beckham’s contract created plenty of headlines and came just weeks after the release of figures that revealed MLS is now the third-best attended sports league in North America.”
Lies, lies, lies. Whenever you read about ‘MLS beating other leagues in attendance’ keep in mind that the numbers are for AVERAGE attendance. The MLS will have less games (with more people in the stands) and then compare numbers against the baseball and the NBA seasons which have LONGER SEASONS. I give credit for MLS for bringing more crowds but go ahead and compare their championship to the coverage of the NBA Finals when Lebron and Wade battled Dirk.
Drogba, if you’re reading this blog about bad American soccer from a hotel room in England you need to listen to me! The MLS isn’t close to the NBA or the NFL!
“Ten years from now we need to have at least 50 Landon Donovan-caliber American players in the league,” MLS executive vice president Dan Courtemanche said. “We also need to have multiple players better than Donovan competing in MLS. With a country of 300 million-plus people, you would hope that could happen. – MLS executive vice president Dan Courtemanche”
Another twist in logic, because about 40% of MLS players aren’t even Americans!!! Why bring up 300 million people when you’re shipping in Brazilians and Swedes to fill up roster spots? And in my opinion you already have players better than Donovan in the league now, they’re just not being over-hyped to death by AEG and Gatorade in marketing campaigns. I think he means ‘We need more players that generate revenue and American media coverage than this guy does’.
I give Dan credit for saying we need better players though, a lot of MLS executives swear that our MLS teams are good enough to beat Barcelona AND the entire 2006 Italian World Cup team.
” More arrivals like that of Drogba would only help shift the needle further, and even with Beckham’s departure likely, MLS can be said to be enjoying a surge of health.”
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Oh, I apologize. I fell asleep and hit my head on the keyboard after hearing another line about MLS’s surging health and optimism.
So let’s talk about Drogba himself. In the interest of fairness I’ve decided to state some positives and negatives about the impending trade (that might not even happen).
Positives:
– He plays for Chelsea, which is a blue-chip (pun intended) club in England. Chelsea’s known for trying to stock their squads with elite players and Drogba is liked better than Fernando Torres (whom would be PERFECT for MLS, more on that later). He also scored more goals than Rooney one year.
– If Drogba plays for the Galaxy then hardcore soccer fans will embrace the change because of his international experience. Maybe he can teach the younger Galaxy players the same way Henry is teaching the young Red Bulls.
– He scored ten interesting goals in a Youtube video watched by 19,000 people? I’m drawing a blank.
Negatives:
– He’s another top level player in his mid-30s who won’t get very much compensation on his next contract, therefore he’s going to MLS. American’s won’t have a high level 25 year old signing anytime soon and have to keep scouring youth programs and other soccer countries for diamonds in the rough. The greatest players in the world won’t go to MLS. Even Pele went to America AFTER he won the Brazilian world cups and decided that the money New York offered was just too much to turn away from at his age.
– The last MLS Final generated luke warm ratings with the added benefit of Beckham playing for maybe the last time in America. If Drogba wins two championships in a row will the ratings really improve? If THIERRY HENRY wins an MLS Championship will more people notice?
…….. if you’re still reading you must really enjoy soccer. Although I do hope that Dieder becomes a relevant part of MLS his arrival isn’t earth shattering and a game changer for MLS. It seems more of the slow and steady growth that fans are accustomed to. Just one day it’d be great to hear a major news story about a European super star, in his prime, getting bought out by MLS for hundreds of millions of dollars. But right now those super teams doing major trades are across a very large pond dividing great soccer players from developing ones.
Suckyball 