Why Olympic Soccer Matters * Or March Madness for Futbol Geeks

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In the long shadow of the 2012 UEFA European Football Championship this summer, that nuisance of an association football tournament – the Olympics – will buzz around soccer clubs’ ears begging for them to release their players for the competition. Just another age-specific tournament that FIFA can’t stand because it threatens their monopoly by daring to stand up against that monolith of global commerce – the World Cup.

How dare the International Olympic Committee compete with that juggernaut of sporting wisdom and gentility – FIFA. How dare the IOC pretend that football belongs in a global tournament such as theirs – a tournament that should remain the sole bastion of ancient sport like pole-vaulting and synchronized swimming. How dare they be so presumptuous as to challenge FIFA’s sovereignty in all matters soccer.

How dare they.

Of course, for heathens like me, I love the Olympic tournament. If basketball can have its NCAA March Madness, where new and exciting talent gets its first real run across the stage, then soccer can certainly have the Olympics.

The Olympic tournament for soccer, which restricts its roster to U-23 players (save three senior players that can be added to the roster to augment the squad), often offers us a glimpse into what the future of the talent pool could look like in the coming years.

The Olympics is where I first discovered a young Argentinian named Lionel Messi. He seems to have promise. If you haven’t heard of him, please Google him. I think he’s got a bright future ahead.

The thing I love most about the competition is the unpredictability of it. The World Cup consistently has its favorites. Brazil’s national squad won the World Cup five times. The number of gold medals Brazil has won: zero.

One senses that this competition is anyone’s to take. Africa, a continent that has yet to win the World Cup, has won two gold medals at the Olympics. Cameroon, hardly a world-beater in the top echelon of the international game, beat Spain in 2000. Nigeria bested Argentina four years earlier.

Oh, the drama.

The CONCACAF region’s qualifying tournament kicks off tonight with Canada battling El Salvador, followed by the United States taking on Cuba. The US is favored to top the group. However, history has shown us that there are no givens in this qualifying contest. The US was booted out of the 2004 Olympics by long-standing rival Mexico.

The worldwide profile of US Soccer has arguably never been better than it is at the moment. If the US is not quite the powerhouse that Brazil or Spain or Germany are, it is certainly the most competitive it has ever been. Beating Italy in Genoa for the first time last month was no small feat, despite how some have minimized this victory due to the fact that the match-up was only a scrimmage. Beating Italy in any competition is a good stride forward for the US National Team.

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As the sport continues to flourish domestically, a deep and successful run in the Olympics could be monumental for the program. At the center of the campaign is head-coach Caleb Porter. Personally for this writer, he is proving to be the most interesting story to watch in US Soccer for 2012. A successful college coach at Akron, he now has an opportunity to prove his mettle at an international level. Global perception of the US program is that college players and coaches cannot compete with club academies that thrive throughout the rest of the world. Porter has the opportunity to prove all the naysayers wrong and take his squad of young, fiery, attacking players to London for this summer’s Olympic dogfight.

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Is this long-time American hopeful Freddy Adu’s chance to finally step up to the proverbial plate and prove he’s the world-class player the media built him up to be. Can he finally become the American Pele? Can Adu finally give US soccer fans their superstar?

Or, does that mantle belong to the likes of Brek Shea and Juan Agudelo? Is the future of American soccer a crazed mixture of Texan grit, South American flair, and God-awful Mohawks?

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It all kicks off tonight against Cuba. If these narrative morsels don’t get your March-Madness juices flowing, I don’t what will.

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MLS and Red Bull are failing New York

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They stare at me most every morning.

Sitting on the Manhattan-bound express F-Train, coffee in hand as I try to drag myself into the land of the conscious, I read the MSG Network print ads posted across the car from me.

An action photo of a hockey player is superimposed with copy such as the following: “MSG Network is the home of the Rangers the way Katz’s is the home of corned beef.”

It’s a great ad. It’s fun. It’s a little irreverent. It’s chock full of local flavor.

There are a few variations of this ad for every New York-based team that is broadcast regularly on the MSG and MSG+ networks. There’s one for the Knicks. There’s one for the Islanders.

I have yet to see one for the New York Red Bulls.

For the uninitiated New Yorkers reading this, Red Bull New York has its local broadcasting contract with MSG Networks. Having said that, I wouldn’t at all be surprised if you didn’t know that. Beyond the occasional commercial on MSG, there’s not much out there to tell you where to catch their games on television.

I wouldn’t be surprised at all if you didn’t know New York City had a local association football club. The local MLS team is practically ignored by the print media of this city. It’s rare that I find weekly coverage of this team in any print copies of the New York Post or the Daily News (although the online editions will sometimes garner the occasional news hit). Getting inches in the New York Times seems a lost cause. There is some presence online through various blogs and podcasts. However, a team that is supposedly representing the New York area’s soccer community on a professional level seems conspicuously non-present in the city it’s supposed to belong to.

Full disclosure: they actually play in Harrison, New Jersey. Naturally, the New York City elite could never embrace them as their own team. Their hallowed ground is in a neighboring state. They don’t even play in New York proper.

Full disclosure: the New York Giants and New York Jets actually play in New Jersey as well.

Somebody is failing the New York Red Bulls.

As MLS seems to be moving along an upward trajectory in terms of attendance, domestic profile, and international respect, one senses the Red Bulls have stalled. They have a new, stunning stadium that would be the envy of any American soccer club. They rarely sell it out. They have veteran Thierry Henry on their starting lineup, fresh off a successful loan stint at Arsenal. Season tickets are down this year from last year.

Somebody is failing the Red Bulls.

For local news agents to start caring about this club west of the Hudson, New York needs to start caring about them first.

Why is New York – full of soccer-loving folk such as myself – not embracing this team as their own local side?

Is Major League Soccer failing the Red Bulls? Commissioner Don Garber waxes eloquent time and again about a second New York team (the Cosmos perhaps?) somewhere in the five boroughs. He wants to create a Hudson Derby. Hasn’t the soccer-universe shown us over the ages that rivalries can never be manufactured. They have to be grown organically. Portland and Seattle are a proper rivalry. They’ve hated each other for years. Even New York and D.C. have a far more home-grown rivalry. That’s a proper derby.

Garber explains that he has a team working overtime to find space in the New York area for a stadium and owners that can effectively usher in this new team. All this while D.C. United, a charter team for the league, languishes in a sub-par stadium that should have been replaced ages ago. MLS wants to get the fervor of a new-team atmosphere in New York while disregarding the team that’s already here.

Some say that bringing in an expansion team into the New York area would benefit the Red Bulls. It would create a competitive atmosphere where Red Bull would have to work harder to pull in fans who might defect to the metropolitan team. The flaw in that argument is that the Red Bulls already exist in a competitive atmosphere. However, Red Bull is not just competing against another soccer club. It’s competing against everything else there is to do in the New York area.

And, that includes every other sport team you could follow passionately in the New York area. It’s not just one soccer team versus another soccer team. It’s a soccer team versus two basketball teams, three hockey teams, two baseball teams, and two football teams.

Red Bull is the obvious culprit. Is the corporate entity – an Austrian-based energy drink company that sponsors the team – simply to detached geographically from the local market to care what the area thinks (or doesn’t think) of the club? The team’s flagrant disregard of the long-standing US Open Cup tournament last year (coach Backe didn’t event travel to a number of those games) smacked of a club that only seemed focused on brand awareness (Emirate Cup, anyone?) and not winning a meaningful domestic trophy. Perhaps advancing deep into the competition wouldn’t have won immediate ovations from the New York curious, but it would have certainly established a culture of winning for the organization.

Red Bull cannot remain complacent until the New York Cosmos come back. They need to get a presence in New York City now!

I want copy that reads: “Come and see THIERRY FUC*ING HENRY in your own backyard. It’s only off the PATH Train.” I want stickers to put on lamp posts that show a Red Bull gorging the SH*T out of the Cosmos logo. Red Bull New York has its hard-core supporters who will suffer through with this team. They need the casual fan to care. To make it to a game or two. To at least crawl to a bar and watch the damn thing on television.

On MSG or MSG+.

I want to look up bleary-eyed during one of my morning commutes and see an ad that reads: “MSG Network is the home of the New York Red Bulls the way Queens is the home to the bodega.”

And then…then…bring on the Cosmos.

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#PrayForMuamba * or Futbol in the 21st Century

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The moment the Twitter-verse began reporting that Bolton midfielder Fabrice Muamba was breathing again in a hospital-bound ambulance after his horrific collapse at White Hart Lane was the same moment Davy Arnaud scored the Montreal Impact’s first MLS goal – an entire continent away.

I had to fight back tears.

If there was ever a singular moment that summed up how the global game of soccer/football is experienced by many of us in the 21st Century, it was this handful of seconds.

While watching the Chicago Fire take on the Impact at their home opener in Quebec via a subscription-based online stream, the adjacent chat-room suddenly lit up furiously.

“Is anyone watching Fox Soccer? Fabrice Muamba just collapsed.”

To be honest, I had completely forgotten about the FA Cup tie between Tottenham and Bolton. I quickly toggled over to my twitter account, displayed in another browser window, and saw FOX Soccer Trax spitting out updates:

“45: We are halted. Again, we have been told Bolton’s Muamba may have suffered a heart attack.”

Resisting any voyeuristic impulses (and not being near a television), I chose not to scramble and find an online feed of the game. I kept an eye on Fox Soccer’s twitter account as I continued to watch the Chicago/Fire game.

Desperate tweet after desperate tweet began to emerge, hoping that the fallen player would recover. Tweets described how medics were out on the field trying to resuscitate Muamba for ages, to no avail. Virtual notes of 140 characters or less detailed how Spurs fans chanted Muamba’s name as he was stretchered off the field, still not breathing.

It was US National team player Stuart Holden from whom I first saw a tweet tagged with “#PrayForMuamba.”

I was genuinely moved by the hashtag’s simplicity. Twitter is a strange beast often used to trend banal frivolity. The most ridiculous things get featured on this curio of a social network (a glance at a few trends across the US revealed “#NumbTongue” as one of the more inane topics that had seemingly created a zeitgeist). I clicked through #PrayForMuamba and was met with a bevy of well-wishes from soccer fans worldwide, tweeting time and time again for Muamba’s recovery.

Countless people were, in a single moment, unified by a hashtag. They tweeted as if their digital notes might will this fallen player back to health.

Long minutes went by. Tweets told a narrative. Muamba was rushed to the hospital. He wasn’t breathing as they carried him out of the stadium. His heart stopped four times. His Wikipedia page was already listing him as deceased. And then his Wikipedia page was listing him in critical condition.

He still wasn’t breathing.

And then a long period with no new updates. Just tweet after tweet of support.

“#PrayForMuamba.”

“#PrayForMuamba.”

“#PrayForMuamba.”

“#PrayForMuamba.”

The silence slowly abated as a scant few twitter reports came through that Muamba had been revived in the ambulance by the team who had been aiding him.

“#PrayForMuamba.”

“#PrayForMuamba.”

And then a steady stream of tweets came through that Muamba was breathing again.

“#PrayForMuamba.”

And, as I read cautious hope streaming through the twitter feed displayed on one browser window, I watched the other browser window as Davy Arnaud – understandably oblivious to the drama happening an ocean away – chipped a lovely goal over the opposition’s keeper and netted this expansion franchise its first scoring euphoria of the new season – its first season in the league.

The synchronicity of the moment moved me. A world of people were putting the whole football world into perspective. It’s only a game. It’s only a bit of fun. And yet, it was the passionate love of the sport that had all these people watching the same game at the same time in the first place.

If it’s only a game, why are we all praying?

It’s not only a game. It’s a common language. Even in the 21st Century, where technology allowed me to watch Montreal’s fight against Chicago and Muamba’s fight for his life simultaneously, it was the community that mattered.

A world of people united by a rather simple game of kickball.

As one man was fighting for his life, another man was fighting to finish the flow of play.

Both men were playing the same exquisite sport.

Yes. There are more important things in life than football. But, for these singular moments this afternoon, it was football that had us all on the same page, pulling for man most of us had never met.

Tonight, my thoughts and prayers go out to Fabrice Muamba and his family. His friends. His teammates.

My thoughts also go out to all the fans of the sport worldwide who are sad, scared, hoping, loving…

and praying.

#PrayForMuamba

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Beautiful Lunacy – Embracing MLS First Kick

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It’s beautiful lunacy.

A huge collective of adult men (and a spattering of adult women) throw on scarves, jerseys and t-shirts; or they throw on worn ball caps and jackets. They dress for battle. They head down to their neighborhood bars, donning their tribal colors, and they begin to drink with their fellow tribesmen. And watch a couple dozen men kick a ball across a green field, hoping the warriors fighting for their tribe get lucky enough to plug the ball into the opposition’s net. And scream with joy. And scream with agony. Near misses. Near chances. Glorious plays. Glorious defeats.

In pro sport, grown men (an a few women) in bars do not put in minutes for the team. They do not train with the team. They do not travel with the team. They do not play for the team.

So they shout. And they drink. And they argue. Because sport is combat where – if all goes to plan – nobody dies.

It’s beautiful lunacy.

Growing up as a kid in Texas, soccer was a brilliant, riveting endeavor – a thrilling game – that belonged to someone else. It was Mexico’s game. It was Spain’s game. It was South America and Europe’s game. It was Univision and Telemundo’s game.

It wasn’t my game. I truly adored this game called futbol. But I loved it as an outsider. I was peering at this wondrous world of free-kicks and offsides through a slim keyhole. The rules and analysis were sputtering at me en Espanol. It took me ages to decipher what the offside rule was; a wiry man on the side on the field would raise a yellow flag and, suddenly, the Spanish commentators would groan in frustration.

The passion was infectious. The spirited, feral cry of “GOOOOOAAAALLLL” was a staple in the soundtrack of my soccer-viewing youth.

Yet, at a professional level, the sport wasn’t mine. It belonged to someone else.

So, it was with childish thrill that I made my way to a local Brooklyn bar, settled in with the locals, and watched RED BULL NEW YORK take on FC DALLAS on NBC Sport‘s inaugural MLS broadcast.

And, what if only an average of 82,000 viewers watched the game domestically for NBC’s first Major League Soccer outing?

This First Kick was mine.

The passion was still infectious. The play was wild and fun. The field was green and beautiful. There were wonderfully sublime goals by Dallas’ Ricardo Villar and New York’s Kenny Cooper.

And it was mine.

Perhaps RED BULL NEW YORK or FC DALLAS aren’t FC BARCELONA or CHELSEA. But they’re mine. I’m the kid who finally gets to pass through the keyhole and bathe in the whole experience of futbol.

The magic and the agony and the pain and the drama.

It’s finally mine.

And, to any Yanks reading this who were one of the “average” 82,000 who were watching NY vs Dallas this past Sunday, keep watching!

Because this damn thing is ours. This league is ours in a way that the Premiership or Serie A or La Liga (the league I watched as a child, even) will never be.

Sport is so much more than the play on the field. It’s the culture we’re soaked in. Can a Manchester derby ever mean the same to those of us who never grew up with it? What does it mean to live in Manchester? The sweat and toil of that industrial town is burned into the minds of those who grew up with it. How can any of us understand what that means after a two-week vacation to London for spring-break? Thus, can any of us truly understand the war being waged between United and City as we peer through the keyhole at that league across the pond? (I will give you this. When I was a kid, the keyhole was not in High Definition.)

However, New York vs Los Angeles? Seattle vs Portland? Houston vs Dallas? These are rivalries I understand. These are rivalries I grew up with. They may not have always been soccer-centric rivalries, but they’re palpable rivalries nonetheless.

The only thing Major League Soccer doesn’t have at this point is history. The league began its seventeenth season this last weekend. It’s a youthful league with all the problems that accompany an adolescent. It can be arrogant and naive and insecure and brash and undisciplined.

And it’s positively fantastic to be a part of developing that culture. MLS fans are a part of something that is still finding its identity. Watching games this last weekend, I was struck at how the atmosphere often felt a volatile mixture of Latin and European. Streamers, for god sakes. Smoke bombs. It was the unruly soccer atmosphere of many a South American game I watched as a kid through that keyhole. The chants. Echoes from European stadia caught on-the-fly during highlight shows on Galavision.

The US soccer culture is emerging and MLS fans are right in the middle of it – guiding it. Sometimes, we’re guiding it skillfully. Sometimes, we’re steering it as if we can’t even figure out how to get the car out of the driveway.

But the damn thing’s ours.

So, come this next Sunday, I’ll be making my way down to the local bar again and taking in Second Kick. And I’ll drink. And I’ll shout. And I’ll argue.

And I’ll embrace the beautiful lunacy of it. Because – finally – the lunacy belongs to me.

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A Little Love for La Liga ( or Why I Just Can’t Stop Loving Spanish Futbol

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La Liga is a hot mess. I have to accept that.

As a child growing up in Texas, it was the game in Spanish. It was a strange, curious, and compelling sport shown on Univision or Telemundo. It was a game where every goal didn’t count. It was a game where 22 men made a ball dance for 90 minutes, sometimes without a result. Often, the dance was enough. The players were expressive and wild. The field was wide and green. And it was all gloriously, enthusiastically called in Spanish.

For me, it was futbol before it was soccer. Or calcio. Or association football.

Sometimes, it was the Mexican Premier Division.

More often, it was La Liga. Same-day game delays and highlight reels ushered me into this wondrously fascinating, slightly alien world long before MLS finally came along and gave me a domestic league I could embrace.

That was some time ago.

La Liga has now become that troubled lover constantly oscillating between exquisite bliss and infuriating dysfunction. La Liga will one night provide the most thrilling, passionate tryst imaginable – and then spin around and turn a painfully cold shoulder as you stand in the rain waiting for that returned phone call. The title race has consistently become a tedious affair played out between Real Madrid and Barcelona. If you are a fan of a team not part of that Old Firm (as I am), this becomes an uncomfortable exercise in futility. Television revenue distribution between the smaller clubs is practically non-existent. Some teams are in such dire straits that they are unable to pay their players (this recently resulted in a players’ strike that delayed the beginning of the 2011/2012 season).

My fellow soccer geeks keep clamoring that the English Premiership is the most exciting league on the planet. The English league is certainly the most successful association football league in the world. That cannot be denied. It’s culture and history are so rich. It’s tempo and demeanor are furious. And it’s ferociously competitive.

At least between its big clubs.

And yet, I just can’t surrender and walk away from La Liga’s contradictory charms.

Yes, the league’s finances are a mess that unfairly benefit the top two organizations. However, if you take the top two teams out of the mix, La Liga’s remaining 18 clubs provide highly competitive campaigns. Champions League and Europa League spots are highly unpredictable. The relegation dogfight is always nail-biting.

Yes, the Spanish game is played at a slower tempo than its English – or even its North and Central American – counterpart. But the Spanish game is often unfairly maligned as a less physical style. Many a La Liga match has shown players to be quite combative in their attack of the ball while NOT falling into the ridiculous histrionics found all too often in El Clasicos. While many neutral fans will only watch Real Madrid or Barcelona games, I find myself drifting to watch games against teams further down the table. The lack of hysterical hype allows the game to be about the soccer and not the soap operatic shenanigans surrounding the game.

But listing practical merits for why I love the Spanish game now only masks what any sport aficionado knows to be a basic truth of fandom.

You ultimately love what you grew up with.

La Liga was the game I knew when I first discovered professional soccer – even before the US National Team. That beautiful, tactical style of play. The absurd hair. The jerseys that were louder, more colorful versions of American football referee shirts. The tribal fans in the stands with smoke and fire. This was futbol to me.

And – more than likely – always will be.

So, I’m giving a bit of love to that hot mess of a girl called La Liga. You’re still the most successful league in European competitions. You still have some of the most passionate fans. You still draw me in with your technical flourish. You still keep me enthralled with your attacking flair. You even keep me riveted by the melodrama of your national Football Association.

You will always have a place in my heart…
even if you keep breaking it.

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U23 Coach Caleb Porter has the US soccer story to watch in 2012

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“Am I saying I want to see them to bring a medal home? I think that would be asking too much if you look at all the teams.”
       - Jurgen Klinsmann, US Soccer Senior Team Coach

Am I simply too American? Am I too jingoistic? Or am I simply too romantic?

Klinsmann’s aforementioned statements about what chances he thought US Soccer’s U23 squad had at going deep into this summer’s London Olympics left me a bit bemused. I understand the desire to maintain a cautionary temperament. The United States is not Brazil. The United States is not Spain. The United States is an emerging soccer country. It is not yet an elite association footballing culture. No need to engender expectations that would be difficult to meet on the international stage.

And yet, in this strange, enigmatic thing called sport, don’t we want that same elusive thing from our great coaches that we want from our great politicians: someone who will convince us that we can triumph against adversity – even when they know we don’t have a snowball’s chance in Hell even making it out of the trenches?

Or the group stage?

Klinsmann has brought a certain Eurocentric-cool to the US Senior Squad. His extensive experience abroad as a player and a coach has lent this nation a bold soccer cachet that it hasn’t had in the past.

But will he get the US to the 2014 World Cup? And if he gets the US to the 2014 World Cup, will he instill the kind fervor and confidence needed to go deep into an international tournament? The odds be damned.

Zambia didn’t seem to care that it wasn’t supposed to win the African Cup of Nations. The odds be damned.

2012 promises to be a thrilling year in US Soccer. Its ongoing growth and development domestically is proving the US to be an emerging soccer country. The past two summers have laid solid groundwork. Two major international tournaments had great exposure stateside (thank you ESPN and ESPN3 for some fantastic World Cup coverage). US Soccer hasn’t been this relevant since the Women’s World Cup in 1999.

While most seem to be looking forward to World Cup qualifying with the ongoing saga of Jurgen Klinsmann and his senior men’s side later in the year, the more intriguing saga may be the U23 team’s Olympic qualifying campaign.

Many a fan at many a sport bar I’ve frequented over the last few months have been dismissive of soccer at the Olympics. A squad that doesn’t involve the senior players holds little interest for them.

For my money, the Olympic Tournament has something that the World Cup doesn’t: it’s far more competitive and far more unpredictable. Seventeen countries have won gold medals since soccer first appeared in the Olympics. Nine countries have won the World Cup. The nature of the Olympic Tournament equalizes squads to a great extent because of the age restrictions. Some argue that the inexperience of players that age makes the tournament second-tier. I wouldn’t begin to argue that. But doesn’t the raw energy and passion of these junior players compensate for any technical imperfections in their game.

Why do we intently follow college football or basketball when we have far superior pro-leagues to take in? It’s the fire of the atmosphere. It’s the glory of the win. It’s the those fantastic intangibles that won us over to sport in the first place.

If the US tumbles ignobly out of the CONCACAF Qualifying Tournament, it will prove Klinsmann’s cautionary tone correct.

But when do we as a soccer culture finally start believing that we can get take this international game by storm?

Caleb Porter seems a fantastic choice as the U23 coach. His experience with the collegiate game in the country – something remarkably unique to the US – will prove valuable. More importantly, his experience with that strange, delicate age level will prove invaluable. Coaching athletes who are both physically maturing and emotionally maturing is not an enviable task. Porter’s work at Akron has proven that he can consistently lead at a top level.

His ascension to the international level will be just as compelling a narrative as how this collection of young players perform next month against Canada and El Salvador.

Porter is set to prove whether or not he has the will, tenacity, skill, and heart to take his squad further into the summer games than his bosses think is possible.

Game on!

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Thierry Henry’s Loan to Arsenal Helps No One

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The Daily Mail is alleging that English futbol club Arsenal have finally offered former star Thierry Henry a two-month loan with the hopes that the French legend can inject some much needed firepower into their 2011/2012 Premier League campaign.

The question is this: Does a loan of this sort really help anybody?

Thierry Henry is still in fine form, but he’s becoming more elder statesman as opposed to the lightening-quick juggernaut that Arsenal needs if they intend to “gun” (pun intended) for a top-four spot in the English standings.

Why would Red Bull New York have any interest in letting this happen? Perhaps they have little choice. Similar to the bind the L.A. Galaxy found themselves in time and time again with David Beckham, the weight that Henry carries on the international scene may just be too heavy for the MLS side to command without concession.

If Henry wants to go, he’ll find a way to go.

But should he want to?

Henry has already accomplished so much with Arsenal. His legendary status is cemented at the Emirates (he has a statue erected near the stadium, for God sakes). Returning to the team in this fashion would only read as a hollow sequel.

In addition to that, he’s been carrying injuries that could easily find him losing speed once he returns to Harrison, New Jersey for MLS regular season.

Henry has always struck me as someone who greatly respects his new domestic league. He does his homework. He knows the league, the teams, the players. Whatever his tactics on and off the field (I’ll be the first to admit he can be a dirty player), he seems genuinely determined to win an MLS Cup during his tenure in the States.

I think a loan to Arsenal would compromise that. He’s too ingrained in the history – the very DNA – of that club to simply check in for a short fling and then check back out.

His focus needs to be here stateside. He’s becoming a true playmaker for the New York team and should focus his energies there.

Henry came to the States with bold declarations that he wanted to conquer the MLS with a championship for his newly adopted Red Bull New York. Does a loan stint to Arsenal aid this in any way? Following a season that had the second most expensive team (in what is becoming a very competitive league) finish 10th in the standings, Henry’s focus should be on his American club if he wants to make good on those declarations.

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National Squad as Hometown Team?

A hastily scribbled thought in response to @PZimmerman88 and his Twitter rant…Jurgen-Klinsmann-001

The furry from Preston Zimmerman’s Twitter rant was profound.

“I thought it would be cool getting Klinsmann as US National team coach, but I think it’s actually worse than when Bradley was coach….”,

Zimmerman blasted from his account. This was succeeded by a series of tweets revealing his distaste for recently appointed USMNT coach Jurgen Klinsmann’s calling in of several German-born players for the upcoming camp. Zimmerman felt frustrated that many of the players called in to represent the United States allegedly couldn’t even speak English as they negotiated their commutes from the airport to the training grounds. These players had not grown up in the States and didn’t embrace the Red, White, and Blue – they merely chose to play for the US because they weren’t good enough for the German National Team (solid piece by Brian Straus here).

It begs the question: what is the responsibility of the National Squad in this day and age?

Growing up in the final days of the now-defunct NASL, I didn’t have a club to cheer on in my childhood. MLS wouldn’t form until I was in college. As a soccer-lover, the only thing I had to root for at that level was the US National Team.

I have always felt that the national team is the closest entity we have left in international futbol to a hometown club. As professional teams grown in stature and revenue, international contracts become more and more prominent. If you root for Red Bull New York, it’s highly likely most of the players on the roster won’t be native New Yorkers or New Jersyites. They’ll be French-born Thierry Henry, Jamaican-born Dane Richards, or Estonian-born Joel Lindpere. Wonderful players, but far from local heroes.

Thus, the national team gives us something to cheer for on the sporting front that feels like a local club. We can celebrate native Texan Clint Dempsey’s brilliant nose for goal or Jersey-born Juan Agudelo’s gazelle-like agility and clearly chant that they are ours. They belong to us. They’re our hometown heroes.

I want the US National Team to win the major competitions just as much as anyone.

Zimmerman’s rant begs an interesting question. Perhaps it’s the same question that our soccer-identity is asking right now.

What does it mean to be American? In a young country built by recent immigrants, do we yet have a clear sense of identity? Who are we? What do we resonate to the rest of the world?

It’s this very lack of concrete identity that makes it difficult for many transplanted immigrants now living in the States to completely embrace the American team. If the American identity is all about accepting the differences of others and allowing easy cultural exchange without denigrating any belief, how do you quickly construct a national sporting identity that – on some level – says “we are right, you are wrong?”

If the American identity is so flexible, then perhaps it makes perfect sense that many of our hometown heroes might never have grown up in the hometown.

I will say this: all debate becomes academic once World Cup qualifying comes around in mid-2012.

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