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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Mid-Week Fixture: Sour Grapes

So, Hope Solo is pissed, and “The Greatest Team You’ve Never Heard Of” is playing in the consolation game after, for lack of a better or more accurate phrase, getting its ass handed to them by Brazil Thursday.

In a week where Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy has received quite a bit of attention for absolutely melting down in anger at a post-game press conference, it’s only fair that ESPN would enjoy Solo’s post-game rant on head coach Greg Ryan’s decision to pull her for the semifinals in favor of the more experienced Brianna Scurry. I thought Solo’s comments were refreshing in the sense that all we get today is heavily-guarded comments from athletes, but I really would have enjoyed this more if it had been about a team I dislike - like if James Laurinaitis laid into old sweater-vest instead.

I’m not here to talk about Ryan’s decision to bench the goalkeeper who had a, no pun intended, large hand in the US women’s 50-plus game winning streak - it was certainly bizarre but there are more qualified people to handle that (oh, who am I kidding? It’s women’s soccer, of course there aren’t). Solo’s post-game comments, in addition to Julie Foudy’s in-game commentary, further proves the fact that, while they are all warm and cuddly when they are winning, they are off-putting and whiny when they aren’t. Competitiveness is an essential trait needed to compete at the highest level; cattiness is something this team could certainly do more without.

First, Foudy was going on and on about how, back in her days with the national team, they would stand united and not give up if they went through a rough patch. It didn’t seem like that when they got destroyed by Germany in the 2003 World Cup semis, all we can ever remember(or are ever reminded about) is the team gutting out ugly victories over China in 1999 and Brazil in 2004 that won them championships. I like Foudy, but sometimes her comments, on the women’s and men’s side, cross the line between objective analysis and abject homerism. Quite frankly, I don’t care how the Golden Generation did things; the US isn’t even the second-best team in the world and hasn’t been for years, let alone the best. During her average men’s World Cup studio analysis, Foudy often trumpets the accomplishment of the women’s team and belittles the men, despite the fact that the two are on nowhere near equal playing fields. Saying things like “this is where so-and-so would bail us out” is her way of bailing out of giving thoughtful analysis. Like Solo said, it’s not 2004 anymore, or even 1999.

I feel sorry for Solo more than I feel embarrassed for her. She’s been the team’s undisputed No. 1 and has played like it for years, and under no circumstance, barring injury, should she be pulled in the World Cup semifinals. So she was pissed going in, and a folly-filled 4-0 loss to Brazil couldn’t have made things better. Aside from the World Cup and Olympics, women’s soccer players have little else to play for, so the pressure and expectations for an event like this must be immense. So Ryan’s taking the rug out from under her on the eve of her biggest game must have been difficult to handle, no matter what. That said, throwing the coach and Brianna Scurry under the bus after the game was uncalled for. Refreshingly candid, yes, but immature and in the heat of the moment too. Scurry didn’t make the decision and sure as hell as more hardware sitting on her mantle than Solo does, so to rub it in by saying she knew “for a fact” she would have made all those saves is criminal. The US failed to score, so all those magical Brazilians would have had to do was make sure she couldn’t save just one of those shots.

In the meantime, we should be hailing Brazil for their Joga Bonita. The men certainly don’t play like this, and I suspect Nike misfired with that campaign a year ago and the one they laid on the US this time. Enjoy:

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Mid-Week Fixture: Champions League Predictions

Today’s 3-0 Champions League wins for Barcelona and Arsenal over their top group rivals, Lyon and Sevilla, respectively, demonstrate the collective power of these two teams. In fact, it’s not a stretch to say that these two could be the last two standings next May when the championship game is contested in Moscow.

What you might not be expecting me to say is that I think Arsenal has a better chance of winning, and will win, the Champions League, than their Spanish rivals.

We all know about Barcelona’s star-power, but Arsenal’s more of an unknown quantity, despite currently sitting at the top of the Premier League standings. Facing an unknown is a dangerous proposition in the Champions League, a collection of teams that know everybody else inside-out. One just has to look at the Porto-Monaco final from 2004 or Liverpool’s triumph a year later to see that the Champions League, despite its glamorous façade, is still a competition that isn’t always kind to the teams you'd expect to win — just ask Roman Abramovich.

Arsene Wenger recently signed a contract extension that settles his situation and keeps him at Arsenal until 2011. He mentioned that he did it for the young players at the club, but his intentions weren’t entirely out of sympathy – those young players are very good. So good, in fact, they are surprising even the most optimistic Gunners fan by looking like they will contend this season, not in two or three years. I’ll take it one step further, and I’m not the only one, and say they can win this year’s Champions League.

By selling Thierry Henry to Barcelona, it appeared as if Arsenal was giving up on their claim of being one of Europe’s great clubs and starting from scratch. Instead, they gave Barça a spectacular, but injury-prone, attacking player to a team that already has three of them. The results so far haven’t been spectacular, as Barça’s high-powered offense has two 0-0 draws on the road against middling teams, the kind of results that gifted the title to Real Madrid last season. The team’s best and most in-form player, Lionel Messi, is also the least egotistical of its attacking quartet, and often makes way for the clubs more ornery players, Henry, Ronaldinho and Samuel Eto’o. Neither of those three have hit their stride yet this season, and their video-game offense is known to backfire.

Its most consistent player up front last year and the guy that does the small stuff for his better-known teammates, Eidur Gudjohnsen, is practically on vacation on the Barça bench until he’s sold somewhere else. Worse yet, their defending last season was abysmal in all competitions; the addition of Gabriel Milito and Éric Abidal will help, but this is still a team that has the mistake-prone Rafa Marquez and Carlos Puyol and the aging Lilian Thuram at the back, not to mention a shaky keeper in Victor Valdés. For all their attacking prowess, the rearguard was the reason why they lost to Liverpool in last year’s second round.

Arsenal, meanwhile, ridded itself of its dependence on Henry, which they got a taste of for most of last season. While the club will certainly be asking a lot of its forwards, the talented but relatively untested Robin Van Persie, Emmanuel Adebayor, Eduardo da Silva and Theo Walcott, they will get support from everywhere in Arsene Wenger’s system. The midfield, in particular, has pound-for-pound the best balance of bite and skill in Europe, led by the incomparable Cesc Fabregas. Had Barcelona been paying better attention a few years back, Cesc would be exactly the player they need now – a box-to-box player with great instincts and a nose for goal.

Defensively, Arsenal could do better than have the error-prone Jens Lehmann in goal, but the backbone of Kolo Toure and William Gallas, with Gilberto Silva protecting them from midfield, is athletic and aware enough to handle anybody. Perhaps Arsenal’s biggest weakness is themselves — too often, they are criticized for searching for the perfect goal instead of being selfish. The draw here can help them if they avoid an Italian team that could easily stifle their free-flowing style of football, but with that human highlight-reel Thierry Henry gone, I think the current crop of Gunners will be less likely to play to the fans and instead go for the victory.

Final Four Predictions: Arsenal (winners), Barcelona (runners-up), Liverpool, Milan

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Mid-Week Fixture: Cold-Hard Ka(ka)sh

For all its unquantifiable factors such as useful statistics to compare players, one thing is clear when it comes to success in the soccer — the more you spend, generally the better you do.

The Gazzetta della Sport, the daily bible for sport in the country, recently published a list of all player salaries in Serie A. AC Milan's Kaka is the highest-paid player, pulling in 6 million Euros (roughly US$8.34 million) a season, and Milan is the biggest spender out of all clubs, totalling 120 million Euros (US$168.8 million) in player salaries.

It shouldn't be much of a surprise that Milan, Inter Milan and Juventus are far and away the biggest spenders, at 120m, 110m and 97m total, respectively, but three things struck me from this report:

1. Italian soccer players don't make nearly as much money as I thought they did.
2. The gulf between the 3rd- and 4th-highest spenders is massive - Juventus spends nearly 40 million more than Roma.
3. Lazio wins the 2006-07 award for Biggest Bang for Their Euro, although the asterisk for that is about as big as the gulf between the spending of Juventus and Roma.

Historically, Italian soccer has been the land of the rich. The prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, used his TV ownership money to fund the great Milan teams of the last 20 years, while Fiat has been the financial muscle behind Juventus for decades. It clearly isn't widespread - most Italian clubs are barely fiscally solvent, even those in Serie A - but clubs like Inter Milan, Roma and Lazio have somehow found a way to keep up with the Big Two without being run into the ground by (too much) corrupt bookkeeping.

Despite being the destination for global footballers during the 1990s, Italian soccer started to decline, in money spent in the transfer market and the overall success of its clubs in Europe. This trend coincided with the rise of the English Premier League, whose NFL-like business model created a shift in worldwide popularity and television revenue. In 2007, the Premier League was the biggest spender in the transfer market and on player salaries, followed by Spain, Italy, Germany and France. All leagues have a giant gulf between the haves and have-nots, but in England, the television revenue is at least distributed evenly, giving everybody at least a reasonable shot; Clint Dempsey's winning goal for Fulham last year against Liverpool not only kept Fulham in the Premier League, it earned them tens of millions of pounds they wouldn't have gotten this year in the Coca-Cola Championship (England's second-tier). Clubs in Spain and Italy negotiate their own TV deals, meaning some clubs (Barcelona, Real Madrid) earn more than others.

Which is more important to club owners, pride and prestige or dollars and cents? Based on the influx of foreign owners in the Premier League, most of whom have or had little rooting interest in the teams themselves, it's clearly the latter. When owning an EPL team can create as much revenue as your typical American sports franchise, that trend surely won't go out of vogue anytime soon.

Back to Italy, I was surprised at how little, relatively, money the players made. Kaka probably makes less money than LA Dodger Luis Gonzalez, but he surely is the better player and more marketable throughout the world; the money Milan must make off him is staggering. Being a star in Europe, South America and Asia must have its financial rewards - I'm sure Kaka makes plenty of money from his Adidas contract - but he's still making a smaller salary than if he played for Real Madrid or Chelsea. No wonder both teams figured they could have signed him this summer.

Finally, the Lazio conundrum. They look to have made out like gangbusters in 2007, spending just 18 million Euros for a team that reached the lucrative Champions League group stages and being the flagship for more overt fascist propoganda. They certainly did; however, you must remember that the 2006 match-fixing scandal in Italy sent perennial powerhouse Juventus down to Serie B for a season and docked Milan eight points in Serie A. Lazio, meanwhile, were also punished in the scandal, but their original punishment of relegation was changed to an 11-point docking in Serie A to just a three-point one. They had a great season, finishing third, but you can't expect the team to match that result this time around, or for as long as they keep the purse strings tightened.

I (nearly) told you so

Last week, I had an (unfinished) post about how France's likelihood of securing a good result in Italy had heightened exponentially, simply because its coach, Raymond Domenach, was suspended for it.

My reasoning for the prediction was based on him making numerous dubious decisions during the World Cup and his inability to put together a strong team, despite a ridiculous amount of talent. And, as an avid astrologist, he distrusted Scorpios so much that he didn't include any of them in his team. It made sense that I didn't trust him, either.

This prediction proved fairly prophetic: France tied Italy in Milan 0-0 in what Diesel described as a "horrible" game (I was too busy going to another "horrible game, Michigan-Oregon, to watch). Five days later, Domenach returned to the sidelines and France promptly lost. At home. To Scotland.

As a Scorpio, I was well vindicated.

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Mid-Week Fixture: "I'm having a party... it's gonna be very... colorful"

While watching Liverpool-Chelsea recently, a friend of mine questioned, with almost sheer shock, the lack of soccer teams wearing white, particularly while playing at home. This wasn't the first time he had brought it up, but there was little I could say in response other than "Umm, because neither team is known for wearing white" and "because it looks cooler this way." Ironically, he's a Padres fan, so who is he to question why soccer teams never wear white?!



While there are a few notable exceptions, white doesn’t play too prominent of a role on the club level with regard to primary uniforms. A few teams have occasionally used white as their alternate (ie Road) jersey, generally used only when there would be a clash. Mostly these jerseys are designed simply to sell more of them, as they usually only last a year and provide a unique souvenir for that particular season. Even Arsenal wore yellow in the 2006 Champions League final, a color jersey they'd worn as their alternate kit for years.

Internationally, really only England and Germany’s primary jersey colors are white. (Of course, there are more examples, but these are the ones that spring to mind of important, trend-setting teams – closer to home, one could argue that, by recently changing their gear to coincide with David Beckham’s arrival, the L.A. Galaxy have opted for a clean look that resembles Real Madrid, home and away) Most countries have stuck to an established color scheme that reflects their obvious color scheme, although that's not always set in stone, a point I will get to later.

I’m not sure exactly why teams have, in general, stayed away from white. I can only surmise that white materials were more common a century ago, so teams began to distinguish themselves by using new (and now traditional) colors. As a former equipment manager myself, I can appreciate the fact that white is also more difficult to wash, making colors a more attractive and logical option. Furthermore, we live in a colored world, rendering extreme cases of contrast (dark and white) pointless, hence we can watch a game with one team wearing all blue and the other all red. In some cases, white is a painful reminder of the past. Brazil lost the 1950 World Cup final at home to Uruguay, the most painful and unexpected loss in that country's rich soccer history. Four years later, the team ditched white in favor of yellow, won the next World Cup four years later and haven't looked back since.

It’s long been established that Italy and the Netherlands wear blue and orange, respectively, as tributes to the monarchy and founding fathers, to little objection. Both normally wore white shorts with the look, and for a period, Holland wore black, but both seem to be going for the monochromatic look a lot lately. Not only are there looks cool, it’s provided a unique identity and comical looks amongst the fans. When I think of the Italian flag, azzuri springs to mind before I have to correct myself that it's red, white and green; it's the same with the Dutchies. It's safe to say soccer's worldwide popularity has helped create a distinguishable identity for countries that wouldn't exist without the game. They couldn't have done it in white.

The U.S. will trot out at next month’s Women’s World Cup wearing gold, which was argued by Nike as being "the color of premium, the color of victory. The U.S. women have won two World Cups. They've won two Olympic gold medals. If any team on the planet deserves to wear this color, it's them.” Surely, this isn't based presumptuously on the fact that our girls are the best in the world - they aren't even the defending champ, and are no locks this time, either - yet it also doesn't mesh well with Nike's slogan for the team this go-around, "The Best Team You've Never Heard Of." Then why wear gold? Few players remain from the days when they achieved cult status eight years ago, so why establish this golden legacy? It'd be like the Bulls issuing commemorative gold jerseys years after Jordan and Pippen left. Perhaps, as San Diego Union-Tribune writer Mark Ziegler wrote, the US should try to establish a standard uniform across the board to adopt a consistent look. God forbid the United States establishes a soccer tradition. Or, while we're looking to grab people's attention, and color is apparently not an issue, may I suggest something like this instead. FIFA president Sepp Blatter has ideas he'd rather see.


Of course, uniform tinkering is evident worldwide, namely when my favorite four-letter word, FIFA, is involved. World Cup rules state, briefly, that all items on the two teams’ uniforms must have clear contrast, leading to odd-ball uniform matchups like this take place when color like this is so much better.

FIFA most notably screws up Brazil’s classic look at least once a World Cup - ugh - choosing complete contrast over tradition and aesthetics. In some cases, intended uniform combinations are often rendered meaningless, as I can personally attest: when the US faced Paraguay in the Under-20 World Cup opener in Abu Dhabi in 2003, we had to wear white socks with the navy jerseys and white shorts, a combination I had successfully avoided in two years because that combo was never intended to ever happen, and it was cheap-looking. An aside, I also forgot to pack black goalkeeper socks for that trip, and didn’t notice until gameday. I was stuck with this goalkeeping combo, with red socks, for that first game – my uniform nightmare game, apparently. We won the game 3-1. Finding a pair of black Nike soccer socks in Abu Dhabi proved easier than convincing the goalkeeper, Steve Cronin (now of the Galaxy), to change the luck, so he wore the same combo for the next game, a 3-1 loss to Germany (a game in which we were back to normal). Most of the oddball things you might read here can mostly be chalked up to human error and superstition, just like this one.

Of course, some teams just don't have the white uniform option. Barcelona has had its fair share of weird uniform colors (including the aforementioned orange ones), but have not and will never wear white - it's Real Madrid's color. Perhaps Barca could extend that policy to its players' feet, as seemingly everybody wears white boots for them. And others, such as anytime Liverpool and Manchester United play, somebody can't wear red.

Sadly, I still don't have a better answer than "it looks cooler" to give to my friend, but dammit, it just looks cooler! I suppose I can file yet another question like this under the expanding "who knows, it just is" category in soccer discussions, but at least I can give a professional opinion on this argument, rather than just saying "I like this better." Why be stuck wearing white, the least distinguishable, most universal and most bland uniform color, when the options just look better?

Wouldn't we all want to see more of this anyway?

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