With Andrew Hush currently enjoying a vacation, and David Mosse snowed under while covering for several absentee co-workers, I actually have to forsake the life of a slacker and blog twice this week. So here's what I'm thinking about this Friday, before I get back to watching "Entourage" seasons 1-5 (OK, so I'm just a tad bit late on the scene with this show, but better late than never):
1. MLS silly season is under way. Let's face it, the transfer window is always a riveting time of year for soccer fans, and especially for U.S. soccer fans, as they wait to see which European teams will snap up American players. A couple of moves have already been made (
New England's Michael Parkhurst to Denmark's
FC Nordsjaelland and Boston College's
Alejandro Bedoya with Swedish club
Orebro), with more to come. Bigger names such as Reading's
Marcus Hahnemann (linked with Spurs) and Standard Liege's
Oguchi Onyewu (linked with
Marseille) are also likely to move.
Greg Seltzer at Soccer365 also reports that MLS Defender of the Year
Chad Marshall has just completed a trial with
Mainz and is awaiting an offer from the second division of the Bundesliga. From my standpoint, I always find it particularly galling when a star MLS player leaves for a league that isn't much better than MLS (e.g., the Scandinavian leagues). You can't really fault the players themselves, since the salary on offer is far superior (a situation that won't be changing any time soon), but what does it say when the reigning defender of the year is willing to move to a second-division German team to be ostensibly a backup? In Marshall's case, I'm amazed he hasn't gotten a better offer, or at least held out for one. As for MLS, it's one thing to lose players to top leagues, but losing top players to second-tier or low-caliber European leagues without even garnering a transfer fee is just poor management.
2. The Sigi Schmid situation. A lot of fuss is being made about the tampering charges the Crew have filed against Seattle for allegedly speaking to Schmid about its coaching job while he was still under contract with Columbus. While the Crew are justifiably trying to get compensation in the form of a draft pick or allocation, I personally don't see what the big deal is. This stuff goes on all the time, everywhere. It's the height of naiveté to think it doesn't. Having said that, a rule is a rule, so if you're dumb enough, in Seattle's case, to get caught doing it, then you need to pay the price. As for the Crew, I think they'll be just fine without Schmid. Re-signing Guillermo Barros Schelotto was far more key than retaining Schmid, and Andy Iro is more than capable of filling in for Marshall. Schmid deserves a lot of credit for what he did with Columbus, but let's not forget he also made quite a few poor personnel decisions (blowing first-round picks on Kei Kamara and Jason Garey, and signing a clearly-past-it Sebastian Rozental, for a start) and that the biggest impact players on his team practically fell into his lap (Schelotto and Robbie Rogers). The logical step is to promote assistant Robert Warzycha to ensure the Crew keeps ticking.
3. FIFA Club World Cup. The
international competition has kicked off, and the CONCACAF representative for this year's edition is
Pachuca. Now, while the seriousness with which each participating team takes the tourney varies, there's no question that MLS needs to qualify a team into this competition sooner as opposed to later. If MLS wants to raise its prestige and reputation abroad, as well as at home to the Eurosnob TV viewership (defined here as those who love soccer but won't watch MLS) that it's still trying to court, this is where MLS continues to fall short. It's all very well playing European teams in preseason friendlies, but no one outside the U.S. pays any attention or gives any credibility to those results. The same can be said of the SuperLiga, where Mexican fans will always dismiss poor results as being down to the fact that their teams are still in preseason mode.
What MLS needs to do is excel in the CONCACAF Champions League and qualify for the Club World Cup and put up a good showing (wrangling entry into the Copa Libertadores and/or Copa Sudamericana would be ideal, too).
Houston versus an in-season
Manchester United in a game that actually has meaning would have been a match that every soccer fan in the U.S. would tune in to. That's why it was ridiculous to see MLS teams treat this year's inaugural CONCACAF Champions League as more of a nuisance than the prestige event it should be. MLS needs to put the onus on teams to field their best lineups, and also needs to give them the roster flexibility in order to do so, whether that means a slight increase in roster salary caps, rescheduling league games or otherwise.
Jen Chang
