Mid-Week Fixture: Under Pressure

International soccer, despite the global popularity of the World Cup, is at its best, a head-scratcher. Important games, like this weekend’s latest batch of Euro 2008 qualifiers, almost always come out inopportune times. Clubs hate that their expensive investments are subject to further wear and tear, or worse, without being compensated in return. Fans, under siege from their various league, cups, European cups, Inter-Toto Cups and World Club Cups, are often in a haze and bear the brunt of paying the financial and lifestyle costs associated with following one’s favorite club. If asked if they’d rather have their favorite club would win the league or qualify for the Champions League or their country win the World Cup, most European fans would probably choose the former.

It’s reasons like these, in addition to a lack of continuity, injuries, travel and hostile environments, why I don’t envy Steve McClaren this week. The England manager is riding a high after last month’s expected wins over Estonia and Israel, but it’s more of a relief than actual progress – England should reasonably expect to defeat that pair 10 times out of 10, but usually don’t. Saturday, the Three Lions travel to Moscow to take on Russia. A win virtually assures them a spot in next summer’s European Championships, but despite their superior collection of talent, such games are often incredibly difficult.

For those aforementioned games against Estonia and Israel, McClaren turned to the thunder & lightning duo of Emile Heskey and Michael Owen up front. With Wayne Rooney out with a broken foot and Heskey finding a rebirth of sorts at Wigan, McClaren dialed the clock back to 2001, when Heskey, Owen & Co. famously thrashed Germany 5-1 in Munich on the way to the 2002 World Cup. No one should have really been surprised that England faired much better with the complimentary pair up top, including the absence of the injured Frank Lampard in midfield. McClaren didn’t have to decide between Lampard or Steven Gerrard spearheading the midfield, and was free to use dynamic wingers like Shaun Wright-Phillips and an excellent holding midfielder in Gareth Berry. Meanwhile, Rooney and Owen have rarely played well together in such infrequent opportunities due to the both of them spending so much time on the treatment table. A resurgent Heskey and a now-fit (maybe?) Owen together up top, and all the other pieces fit right into place.

McClaren’s job is no doubt much more difficult at the moment, with Rooney and Lampard now fit (enough) to play, and Heskey injured and out, in a much more difficult environment against a well-coached team in a game of major consequence. Speaking first-hand at seeing just how difficult it is for a team to gel quickly after a period of time away from each other, an international coach has even less leeway between getting things right and getting things horribly wrong. They have the most difficult job in the game because they have to hope, more than anything else, that so many things out of their control go right.

Klinsi
Speaking of international coaches, one who is still putting his feet up in Huntington Beach turned down Chelsea. Jurgen Klinsmann wants complete control with nobody to answer to, a position he’s more or less deserved to put himself in, but no way he’d ever get at Chelsea.

This article from The Times doesn’t really tell you much you don’t already know about Klinsi and rehashes how his modern approach to coaching is so far foreign to some coaches and journalists (while coaching Germany, he hired a computer specialist so he could communicate with his players via email!), but anytime he speaks, it’s interesting. I’m sure he’s not coaching the USA because he wanted too much control that US Soccer was unwilling to concede, but I can’t fault this obviously brilliant man for not conceding anything on his part. While there’s a small part of me that thinks he could be the next Matt Daugherty, he, along with Arsene Wenger, are clearly the most interesting coaches we have in the game today.

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We love you Ajax, we do...

Oh dear. Things haven’t been going well at Ajax for the last few years, but losing your head coach to become the top assistant at Chelsea is just another painful reminder that Ajax is no longer one of the top 50 clubs in Europe, let alone amongst the elite.

The writing has been on the wall for about 10 years now. Back when Ajax was sexy, ESPN2 showed a weekly Dutch soccer game every Sunday morning in the early- to mid-90s. Naturally, as Ajax was a European powerhouse at the time, they were on every almost weekend, meaning I saw a heaping serving of 5-0 wins over team names I couldn’t even pronounce. It didn’t matter. As a new fan of the game (my history dated back to Paul Caligiuri’s 1990 World Cup berth-clinching goal at Trinidad & Tobago in November 1989), I finally had a team I could follow, watch and root for.

Nevermind the fact that the Dutch lost in the second round to the hated Germans in Italia 90, I was hooked by their delightful soccer and bright orange jerseys. That fall, a public channel carried RAI Italian games, the only regular soccer I could watch back then, and AC Milan’s Dutch trio of Marco Van Basten, Frank Rijkaard and Ruud Gullit instantly gave me a team to watch. After doing my homework through reading World Soccer magazines - which, comically, were months behind in getting here, and already months behind carrying recent news to begin with – I learned that Van Basten and Rijkaard had came from Ajax. I started to read a lot about Ajax and liked what I was hearing. They were a team that didn’t have the kind of money needed to compete with bigger clubs, but they were incredibly successful by bringing young talent to the fore. During high school, Ajax was not only on TV every weekend, they were making a captivating run towards the 1995 Champions League title. They ended up beating the millionaires of Milan, of all teams, with Patrick Kluivert scoring the winning goal. He was 18.

Eventually, big money and, more devastatingly to a club like Ajax, free agency, got into the European game, and Ajax lost most of its young players who were now household names to Italy and Spain for nothing in return. This ripped the club apart over a stretch of two years, timed perfectly with the move to the new, modern, soul-less Amsterdam Arena. The club made another run in Europe in 1996, losing to Juventus on penalty kicks in the final, and a year later, when they were thrashed by Juve again in the semifinals. This was the time my interest really started to gain, mainly because of the Internet and a more reliable arrival time for World Soccer, as well as finding an obscure videotape documentary on their youth system, which I still have. I’d follow the team by going online at the local public library (!), taping Champions League games and watching them when I got home after work and generally hid the fact that, although I was really into college sports, the NBA, NHL, NFL and baseball, I was embarrassed about liking soccer.

There hasn’t been much to cheer about the last 10 years, save for the odd league and cup title and Ajax’s run to the 2003 Champions League semis, which so cruelly was ended after they outplayed AC Milan. During a few weeks spent outside the northern Holland city of Groningen (pronounced XXXXCCCCHHHHRRROOOO-ni-XXXXXCCCHHHH-en) with US Soccer in May 2002, we spent two nights in Amsterdam before heading home. Our coach, Thomas Rongen, was from Amsterdam and played for Ajax, and his buddy Ronald Koeman, then the Ajax coach, gave us a behind-the-scenes tour of Amsterdam Arena. Needless to say, it was pretty freakin’ awesome and a dream come true, right down to seeing the locker room and resisting the temptation to pee on Zlatan Ibrahimovich’s lamborghini (he was a misfit for Ajax back then).

These days I follow Ajax mostly via YouTube highlights, which is better than I have been able to do the last 10 years, but something is missing. I’ve always wanted to go see a game there, but who in their right minds would travel to Europe to watch Eredivisie voetbal, besides these guys? It’s hard being an Ajax fan these days, and there’s little hope of it getting any better. Or at least very hard to justify having a non-English team as your favorite.

I really hope Henk ten Cate’s decision to leave isn’t a sign of further things to come for the club. I’m okay with him leaving – he hasn’t been the most beloved coach at Ajax following his successful stint as the top assistant at Barcelona – and figured it would happen anyway, but not to become an assistant. I’m sure Roman’s just warming up the stove for Guus Hiddink to bring that delightful soccer that has charmed so many people to the dilapidated whorehouse that has become Chelsea, but it's yet another reason for me to dislike and distrust them.

But me? It’s obvious I’ll never be a Chelsea fan. I just wish it was cool again to follow teams who did it the right way, the non-Chelsea way. I just wish the good ol’ days, like 1995, would come around again (with the technology we have today, of course).

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And we wonder why they don't take the MLS seriously

From the otherwise pointless "Beckham returns to practice" story on ESPN.com.

Los Angeles is 7-13-6 with four games remaining in the regular season and have an outside chance of making the playoffs.

So you're saying that the Galaxy could still make the playoffs, but can't possibly finish better than 11-13-6? Yeah, that's a legitimate sports league right there. Christ.

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