Ed. Note: I don’t normally dabble in “news of the day” type articles so this is a bit of a departure. I wrote this MLS preview and submitted it to the Guardian for consideration, but since I didn’t hear back, I figured I might as well publish it here. A couple of notes on this piece: 1) It was, clearly, written before the England vs. France friendly so keep that in mind, and 2) It was written for a British audience less familiar with MLS. As such, it’s really more of an attempt to put it in context in the US sporting and cultural scene. I suspect that it will be of more interest to readers abroad interested in the place of soccer in the US, but I hope my American readers might find something of value in it as well.

Major League Soccer officials have just one hope for England’s friendly against France on Wednesday: that David Beckham does not get hurt. They are less concerned with Beckham earning his 100th cap than they are with ensuring that he return for Saturday’s LA Galaxy season opener injury-free.

The bubble of hype that Beckham’s arrival in LA inflated was popped by the injuries that kept him out of most of last season. Some fans who had purchased tickets to see Beckham complained - many teams forced them to buy multi-game packages to see the Galaxy come to town - and MLS officials were forced to explain that his injuries were genuine and there was nothing they could do. The off-season has given Beckham time to recover fully, leading to his England recall and a nervous few days for MLS officials.

David Beckham, the face of MLS? (photo: The Offside)

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The case of Chivas’ Jesus Padilla is not the only example of a soccer team in Mexico struggling to define who is, in fact, Mexican. The national team has been embroiled in controversy for much the same reason. The previous national team boss, Argentine Ricardo Lavolpe, angered some in Mexico by using naturalized players for El Tricolor. In particular, former Mexican international and then-Pumas boss Hugo Sanchez harangued Lavolpe for using foreigners such as Brazilian-born Antonio Naelson and Argentine-born Guillermo Franco. Sanchez claimed that if he were in charge of the national team, he would never commit such a sin.

After the 2006 World Cup, Sanchez got his wish and was named national team boss. He stuck with his promise not to select naturalized players until earlier this year when he called up one of Lavolpe’s favorites, Antonio Naelson. Sanchez retreated from his previous statements and relied on the same constitutional rationale that Chivas officials recently employed to justify Jesus Padilla’s spot on their team. “The doors are open for all Mexicans, and the constitution says that they are Mexican,” said Sanchez.

Hugo Sanchez has not been as revolutionary as he promised to be (Photo: FMSite.net)

Hugo Sanchez has a completely different set of problems today. As boss of the Olympic team, he recently failed to get out of a qualifying group that also included world heavyweights such as Canada, Guatemala, and Haiti. The cases of Chivas and the Mexican national team indicate that Mexico is a country currently working to define what it means to be Mexican.

Halfway across the globe, Qatar’s oil wealth has, for years, allowed its clubs to bring in talented foreign players (admittedly, slightly past the peaks of their careers). Gabriel Batistuta, Frank Leboeuf, Jay-Jay Okocha, and Romario have all spent at least some time in the Q-League. Despite these big names playing in the domestic league, the Qatari national team has achieved very little.

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When Tim Vickery went to Brazil in 1994 he was, like many people traveling to a new land, overwhelmed by a sense of “straight off the boat surprise.” Everything was new, and he loved the feeling of being immersed in it. Vickery, who had never left England until he was 23, quickly came to realize that “discovery is the best thing in life.”

Since 1994, Vickery has been discovering more and more about South American soccer and writing about it for the BBC, The World Game, Sports Illustrated, and World Soccer magazine. He was kind enough to take the time to speak with me recently about soccer in Brazil, the country where he is based.

Tim Vickery (photo: Tim Vickery)

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Note: This is an idea I’ve been kicking around in my head for a while. It’s something I believe to be true, but am not 100% sure of it, especially being as far away from England as I am. I would love to hear readers’ thoughts on this post, especially those of my English readers.

Perhaps it’s the Marx I’ve been reading, but I’ve been thinking about the class identity of soccer recently. Is soccer a sport of the working class, the middle class, or the wealthy? Of course, the answer is yes. It is everyone’s sport. But I believe that throughout time, and especially in England, the sport has shifted in terms of the class of people it is primarily identified with.

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For years, businesses have tested new products in the city of Columbus, Ohio. The capital city is known as a good test market because its population largely resembles that of the United States as a whole. So perhaps it’s not surprising that in the past few years, like many places that did not traditionally have much of a Hispanic population, Columbus has been an ever more popular destination for immigrants from Latin America (the city’s Festival Latino last year drew 300,000 people).

The local MLS team, the Columbus Crew, has taken note of the growing Hispanic population in the area. This year, they appointed Eddie Carvacho, the team’s former goalkeeper coach, as their Director of Hispanic Development. Upon his appointment, Carvacho said, “My objective is very simple. I am the connector within our organization between the growing Hispanic community…” While his objective may be simple, achieving it is anything but. Carvacho spoke with me recently about the challenges of attracting Hispanic fans to the Crew.

Eddie Carvacho (photo: Columbus Crew)

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The Spanish Federation’s announcement last week that Africans would no longer count as non-EU players passed with little notice (but I thank Joseph for bringing it to my attention). The decision was made to keep La Liga in line with the Cotonou agreement, ratified last year by the Spanish parliament, which treats workers from 77 African, Caribbean, and Pacific nations as EU workers. Thus, players already playing in Spain from such countries – the most notable being Barcelona’s Samuel Eto’o and Real Madrid’s Mahmadou Diarra – will no longer take up one of the three non-EU roster spots per match that teams are permitted, nor will future signings.

This agreement is the latest example of labor policies having a particularly marked effect in the world of soccer. Soccer often seems disconnected from the real world; the effect of labor policies on the sport is one of the ways in which we are reminded that soccer is very much a part of the world we have created.

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