What I’m Reading: May 13, 2007

I thank Adam Spangler at This is American Soccer for the heads-up on two interesting articles that Soccer America ran this week on the connections between Latin America and soccer and the United States.

First came SA’s piece on SUM (Soccer United Marketing), a company set up by MLS, to promote all types of games being played in the United States. The article details the work that SUM has done to coordinate the many games being played on American soil, many of which do not involve American teams (in 2005, for example, the US beat Colombia in front of 7,000 fans while close by Mexico played Argentina before 52,000). Because SUM is run by MLS, it has the fledgling league’s interests in mind. It promotes MLS at international friendlies and other games, hoping to attract these fans to the American league.

While SUM appears to be doing a good job of bringing interest and money into American soccer, a second Soccer America article details the disturbing trend of Mexican-American players leaving this country. Mike Woitola writes about several youngsters who have returned to their parents’ homeland to play professionally. One, Sonny Guadarrama of Santos Laguna, has even been called up to the Mexican U-20s. Why are players like Guadarrama going to Mexico to start their careers? Woitola writes that “more Latino players from the USA are looking to Mexico, whose clubs may have a better appreciation for their style of play.” He quotes an American college coach who concurs, saying that MLS ignores smaller, more technical players.

Sonny Guadarrama played at Campbell University before heading to Mexico

While running the risk of sounding like Paul Gardner, I have to agree with the assertion that American soccer in general values size and strength over technical ability. Growing up as a fairly technical but not huge player myself, I was often kicked around by larger and less skilled opponents. I know I’m not alone. Look at the American national team today and who can we claim as truly technically skilled. Landon Donovan, perhaps, but put next to nearly any Brazilian, his skills would pale by comparison. And has America ever produced a true #10? It’s not that we don’t have the talent to produce technical players, it’s that our coaching generally ignores such players. Hopefully, this exodus of Mexican-American players, albeit small at this point, will be a wake-up call.

Another interesting point that this articles raises, albeit indirectly, is the increasing number of players with more than one nationality. As the pace of globalization has continued to increase, the number of people moving across borders has also skyrocketed. The number of people with more than one nationality is also increasingly substantially. Professional soccer players in such a predicament often have a difficult choice to make in terms of the country they represent internationally. Take these few examples: Kevin Kuranyi (eligible for Panama, Brazil, and Germany), Owen Hargreaves (Canada, Wales, and England), and Nery Castillo (Uruguay, Greece, and Mexico). It will be interesting to see in the future how the issue of players with more than one nationality will choose which country they represent.

Nery Castillo (in red) playing for his club team, Olympiakos

Latin America may produce some of the most technically skilled players in the world, but their organization of the game often leaves something to be desired. Those in charge of the game in many countries are inept at best, corrupt at worst. Take, for example, the “Byzantine system” of promotion and relegation that exists in many countries in the region, which Brian Homewood wrote about for Reuters this week. The details vary in leagues across the region, but the point in all of these systems is to protect the big teams from being relegated. By deciding who goes down based on results over several seasons, big clubs experiencing one difficult campaign are often spared from the drop. Homewood gives an example from Brazil, which has historically been one of the worst offenders in this regard:

In 1999, Gama went to court after being relegated and forced the 2000 championship to be scrapped altogether. A massive 108-team tournament called the Copa Joao Havelange was created in its place.

Fortunately, however, Brazil appears to have turned a corner, with a logical system that is enforced. The result, writes Homewood, is that big clubs are going down when they deserve to and “the Brazilian second division, until recently a twilight zone shunned by the public and media, is flourishing with televised matches and attendances often bettering the top flight.”

Joan Laporta, president of Barcelona, visited Stanford this past week (thanks to my brother, who’s a student there and told me about it). Laporta gave a speech in which he extolled the virtues of the Catalan club. He talked about Barca’s “pioneering global alliance with UNICEF” as part of the club’s goal of “positioning the social identity of the club.” Laporta continued: “Football makes an incredible amount of money these days, and it is only right that part of the money goes to less fortunate people.” Such statements are a far cry from most professional clubs, concerned only with results and profits.

Joan Laporta speaking at Stanford on May 7

While Laporta clearly has more of a social conscience than most club presidents, I can’t help but wonder if some of these policies are less altruistic than they appear. Barcelona’s decision to wear UNICEF logos on their uniforms will likely win them sympathizers, thus increasing their support, which will probably increase jersey sales, and in the end make them more money. It reminds me of socially responsible policies that some businesses have adopted. While sponsoring charity events is a great thing to do, it’s not like the company is not benefiting from having their name plastered all over the place. That said, it’s better that companies and soccer clubs at least think about social issues, rather than simply focus on their own narrow interests.

Moving to Europe, the Scottish National Party (SNP) won the largest bloc in the Scottish assembly in last week’s election. That victory is notable because the SNP advocates Scottish independence. But it’s notable to this blog because the SNP victory came in spite of some high-profile soccer people’s call for Scots to keep the UK united. This is slightly ironic, of course, because soccer is one of the few areas where an independent Scotland exists. In any case, Sir Alex Ferguson and Alex McLeish’s appeals “urg[ing] every patriotic Scot to help maintain Scotland’s place in the United Kingdom which has served Scotland well” failed.

Jonathan Wilson continued his excellent series of pieces on soccer in Eastern Europe, this week taking us to Hungary. There, a Hungarian-American named Geroge Hemingway has bought Ferenc Puskas’s former club, Honved, and is looking bring back their glory days. Hemingway is not doing it completely for nostalgia; he also wants Honved to turn a profit. And as Wilson points out, with “for a gamble of £5m – two years’ worth of investment – there was the possibility of reaping the riches of the Champions League group stage: £40m or so directly, plus the knock-on benefits of increased exposure.” American owners in England are big news, but their dollars are affecting soccer across Europe.

Some quick hits to finish off:

• Bill Redlin, the morning announcer on my local public radio station, WAMU, said last Monday that DC United had beaten Chivas 2-1. That was all correct, except that he pronounced Chivas like “shivas,” as in sitting shiva.
• An article in the Christian Science Monitor on Tony Blair’s legacy use this example to describe how long the British PM has been in office: “Few foreigners played soccer for the top clubs (now few Englishmen do).”
• In another indication of how far football in England has come in recent times, a post the blog Two Hundred Percent discussed the Forgotten Football Disaster that was the Bradford Fire of 1985. In contrast to the luxurious surroundings of many stadiums today, the folks at Two Hundred Percent say that “You have to think very hard about it, but the simple fact of the matter is that the majority of English football stadia were unsafe in the early 1980s.” Ian Plenderleith said much the same thing in an April 30 interview with the podcast EPL Talk. There will also be those who talk about how great things used to be, but I think it’s important to recognize that advances in stadium safety are beneficial to all.
• Sevilla has a hilarious club anthem, sung by a neo-flamanco singer named El Arrebato.
• Check out these reviews of two soccer-related movies. Sons of Sakhnin United, about an ethnically mixed team in Israel, and The Power of the Game, were both shown recently at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York and reviewed by Adam Spanger at This is American Soccer as well as by Alan Miller at the Huffington Post.
• I recommend Tom Dunmore’s reflections on MLS. As an Englishman watching the Chicago Fire this year, Dunmore is, as one of the comments puts it, a “modern day de Tocqueville.”
• Some apostates, sorry children, in Chile are giving up soccer for baseball. Who knew?
• And for a bizarre sport to finish off, how about Irish road bowling? Basically, you have to roll a “bullet” down a road, sometimes for miles, and hit a target. It’s big in West Virginia, apparently.

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