Interview with Andrea Canales

This past weekend, I had the opportunity to head up to Los Angeles to speak with a couple of prominent soccer writers there. Andrea Canales and Luis Bueno are the duo behind the Sideline Views blog, and they also write individually for various publications. Both interviews were done as part of a joint project with Adam Spangler of This is American Soccer (TIAS) and will be published there.

My interview with Luis focused on about ways in which US Soccer and MLS are reaching out (or not) to Hispanic players, fans, coaches, etc. The write-up of that interview with him will be up on TIAS in the near future.

The transcript of the full 50-minute Q&A with Andrea is up now on TIAS. Here are a few quotes to whet your appetite before you head over to TIAS to read the entire thing.

Andrea was born in Michigan (although she says people in LA constantly think she’s saying she’s from the Mexican state of Michoacan), but lived in Argentina for a couple of years growing up:

In Argentina I learned to play a little soccer. When you’re that young you don’t know that girls don’t usually play soccer because I had always grown up doing whatever my brother did (he’s 2 years older). And so, it was a small town we lived in and they wanted to have enough players to have a team so I was allowed to play with the boys. I didn’t know that was unusual.

Talking about some of the places her career has allowed her to travel to:

I feel really lucky, by and large, to have had the opportunities I’ve had. I could go to the [2006] World Cup, I went to Peru for the [2005] Youth World Cup. That was actually kind of fun because there are a bunch of players who have transitioned to other things, like Jozy [Altidore].

On the stories she’s written that she’s most proud of:

I guess I’m proudest of the stories I’ve gotten a lot of flack for, but I feel like were valid points. I wrote one about Bruce Arena and that I thought he should move on after the 2006 World Cup, but I wrote that before the World Cup happened. There were so many people that were like, “Oh, Arena’s great, maybe he should just be coach for life.” … And of course, after the 2006 World Cup … I got exactly one email saying, “You know what? I remember you wrote about Arena needing to move on and I think you were right and I just wanted to tell you because I remember I wrote you a negative email.” I was proud of having a little foresight there.

On being one of the few female soccer reporters:

I have had a couple of other reporters say, “Okay, I’m standing next to you in the mixed zone because I know the players will stop to talk to you.” I’m not sure that’s true because I’ve gotten blown off plenty of times by players who don’t want to talk to anybody. That’s [the other reporters’] viewpoint anyway, but maybe they were just teasing me. I’m kind of gullible that way.

I did put on the blog an incident I had with a player. It’s kind of depressing to think about. … but I do think it’s part of the reality of being a female soccer reporter. The simple fact is that you get people who come from different cultures and that means they’re not used to the US style of doing things. … To me, it was just being fair. I have no problem with a mixed zone. It’s not like I want to be in a locker room, but that’s just the way things are done in American sports. If other reporters want to give up locker room access and do a mixed zone, then that’s fine. But that’s not the way professional sports want to build an audience. … [Players] can’t try to order me out of the locker room so I can’t talk to anybody else.

On whether soccer is the sport of the Internet:

I’d have to say a qualified sort of yes. What I think is that soccer, more than other sports, creates a dividing line experience here in the US. I think if you follow basketball, no matter who you are, you’re watching the Lakers. If you follow soccer, if you’re an expat in Santa Monica, you’re watching the EPL early in the morning at the King’s Head Pub. If you are Hispanic, you’re reading La Opinión and other papers that focus on teams back in Mexico. They provide very good coverage of the Mexican league, more so than MLS by far. If you’re an American soccer fan, then your experience once again is unique and the media you go to is also unique. For the American soccer fan, and when I say American I mean of the domestic sport, the MLS fan, I would say it’s very Internet-based.

On what she sees for the future for her and soccer journalism in the US:

I don’t know. I wish I did because then I could plan better. I could give up on it and just do teaching (she teaches part-time in addition to soccer writing) but I keep thinking, “Hey, maybe something’s coming around the corner.” I think a lot of us were hoping that the arrival of Beckham would [help]. It sort of did, I mean, Luis and I have a book on the way. I’m not going to say that it didn’t open up doors. But did it open up enough doors for us to do this full-time? Not yet.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 19th, 2008 at 2:49 pm and is filed under Announcements, Interviews, Latin America, North America. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.