Welcome to HalPhillips.net, where the lede headline remains the March 2026 publication of my new book. My publishers at Bloomsbury issued Sibling Rivalry: How Mexico and the US Built the Most Contentious, Co-Dependent Feud in World Soccer on March 5, 2026. Get your very own copy here, or click that handsome book cover. We recommend two or three copies per person… Now, look up: Observe the Sibling Rivalry tab right there in the nav bar. That’s where you’ll find the book’s new companion site, always freshly stocked with timely World Cup news, book-related features and excerpts, my recently posted Soccer America essays, reviews and more. In the blog there, one can also read the official press release from Bloomsbury.
Do feel free to root around the more general offerings here at halphillips.net. Or visit my Instagram feed: a pretty cool, rivalry-centric digital museum & gallery dedicated to relevant, North America soccer ephemera. There’s another tab up there in the nav bar that links to my Threads page. That’s where I tend to micro-blog a lot these days on issues of the day, soccer-related and otherwise.
Dedicated futbol folk might also wish to check out my first book, Generation Zero: Founding Fathers, Hidden Histories & The Making of Soccer in America. This best-selling 2022 release is available via print, eBook or audio editions (the latter is read by a charming, disembodied A.I. simulacrum of Rebecca Lowe). Click the graphic below to find GZ’s companion site, replete with published, GenZero-centric soccer features, commentary and podcasts.
Suffice to say, all these channels represent a must-visit for soccer news and views ahead of the 2026 World Cup. That’s an event our two Siblings will co-host, along with Kid Brother Canada, which is coached by an American now. So it’s all very much on brand.
While I’m a “Masshole” born, bred and proud (the word’s now ensconced in the Oxford English Dictionary), I’ve made my home in Maine since 1992, and never has there been a bigger soccer story to hit the Pine Tree State than Hearts of Pine, our first-year entry in USL One.
The club’s fairytale run finally ran out of pixie dust in Spokane, Washington. I was there, along with 50 hardcore supporters who watched their Sons of Maine surrender a tying goal in OT stoppage time, then miss a deciding penalty that, if converted, would have sent them to the final. Oof.
A brutal way to lose. But the club brain trust, the fans and coach Bobby Murphy are to be commended, along with the players naturally, for putting together such a remarkably competitive campaign. Assembling a pro roster on the fly, with limited funds and zero relationships with other clubs, at any level of the American soccer pyramid, is difficult. But Hearts quickly identified a dependable, flinty rotation of 14-15 players by mid-summer and, with just enough flair to entertain in the nation’s professional third division, caught bloody fire.
The club went 10-4-4 from July 6 to the close of the season in late October. That sublime stretch included a 6-1 drubbing of eventual league finalist, Spokane Velocity (last year’s rookie darlings), and the ouster of 2025 USL Championship winner Pittsburgh Riverhounds from the Jägermeister Cup, a sort of leagues-cup competition for both USL divisions.
Heart-Stopping and Brand Savvy
\That’s merely the competitive side of the ledger. Across Maine itself, Hearts have proved a cultural phenomenon, selling out every home date at 6,000-seat Fitzpatrick Stadium in Portland, and pimping more merchandize than Danish outfitter Hummel and local boy L.L. Bean, a fitting shirt-sleeve sponsor, could have imagined.
What’s more, the fan section at Fitzy Park has proved a sensation unto itself, replete with non-stop singing, chanting and flair-lighting. These are not European-style ultras or Argentinian bravas, but rather a more harmless bunch of bearded hipsters who helped transform their interstate-adjacent home ground into a fortress through non-stop, quite genial-but-insistent stomping and craft-beer swilling. Think of The Guy from HBO’s “High Maintenance”. Only crunchier. With female counterparts in knitted Carhartt hats. That is the Hearts fan section demographic.
I’ve followed Hearts of Pine closely all this inaugural season, but I’m not a season-ticket holder. I attended four matches, two at Fitzpatrick and two U.S. Open Cup dates at Lewiston High School. I point this out because, while I’ve been to more away matches in the U.K. than Hearts fans have had hot dinners, I tend not to gravitate toward these fan-section spectacles. Home or away, I cheer and sing on occasion, always in support. Mainly I’m there to watch the match.
To be honest, my big day out in Spokane owed absolutely nothing to my relatively casual Hearts support. I arrived in western Montana earlier in the week to visit my two kids, both legitimate Mainers (they were born there) who nevertheless make their homes in Missoula.
Two days after touching down, however, I did realize that Hearts were scheduled to play their USL One semifinal in Spokane, just three hours to the west. In Big Sky Country, a 3-hour drive is like running out to Cumberland Farms for a gallon of milk. So off I went to Eastern Washington, on a Sunday afternoon, to support my new local club.
LYON, France (June 27, 2019) — Ever wondered why women’s professional sports are watched and otherwise supported so meagerly by women themselves? The underlying premise here may strike one as obtuse, even churlish this week, what with thousands of women in the stands watching the 2019 Women’s World Cup in stadia all over France. But none of last week’s Round of 16 matches sold out and World Cup crowds can mislead. You’ll recall they were enormous during the 1999 Women’s World Cup, here in the U.S. That event was seen as a tipping point for the women’s game in North America, and yet three separate women’s professional leagues have been attempted in the two decades since. The first two folded and the third — the National Women’s Professional Soccer League — continues to teeter on the brink of financial collapse and cultural irrelevance.
Soccer remains a funny duck in America. More than those in other footballing nations, soccer fans here are beguiled by and pay outsized attention to their national teams — as opposed to the privately administered clubs that compete in domestic leagues. And surely there are entrenched gender biases that have worked against the serial iterations of women’s pro soccer in this country, or the WNBA, or women’s professional hockey wherein the Canadian professional league just folded. U.S. hockey international Kendall Coyne Schofield told the New York Times in April that, “People are drooling for women’s hockey. But the product we deliver isn’t being shown.”
Are they drooling for it really? And what does she mean when she says, “people”? I don’t have numbers on how many folks consume women’s hockey at the Olympics, for example, and how that audience breaks down by gender. But it might surprise you to learn that nearly 70 percent of the WNBA’s viewership is male. That surprised me.
Women’s Professional Sports have ‘a marketing problem’
The WNBA has been around since the late 1990s; it has never turned a profit, despite being financially backed and marketed by one of the most savvy organizations in world sport, the NBA — an organization that has every incentive to create a larger audience for both of its on-court products. The core of that new, larger audience would presumably be women who don’t otherwise follow the NBA. But women have responded to the WNBA with the same relative indifference they exhibit toward women’s professional soccer and hockey. Here’s Adam Silver on the subject in 2018:
“It’s interesting: Women’s basketball is largely supported — just in terms of the demographics — by older men, for whatever reason, who like fundamental basketball, and it’s something I’ve talked a lot to the players about,” he said. “We’re not connecting with almost the same demographic that our players are. Our players are roughly, let’s say, 21 to 34, in that age range. I’m saying [to the players], ‘Why do you think it is that we’re not getting your peers to want to watch women’s basketball?’
“So in a way I think it’s a good problem to have, in that I think the game looks fantastic, and it’s amazing where the league now is from over 20 years ago when it launched,” Silver added, “but we still have a marketing problem, and we gotta figure it out. We gotta figure out how we can do a better job connecting to young people and how they could become interested in women’s basketball.”
MOSCOW (July 12, 2018) — While their close neighbors and erstwhile enemies crow this morning over another anguished English exit from the World Cup, great swaths of the soccer-loving world suffer alongside the Albion faithful. Some of this cooperative hand-wringing is due to the sheer size of the cultural footprint left by the mother country, once an Empire, today a Commonwealth. Yet millions more, in places that long ago shook off that lighter cohesion (Hong Kong, Singapore, Mumbai, Capetown), follow English football fortunes because the Brits effectively invented global futbol branding, too.
Yes, close neighbors in Ireland, Scotland and Wales couldn’t be happier this morning, after England’s loss to Croatia in Wednesday’s World Cup semifinal.
But billions more pay special attention to English soccer fortunes for reasons better explained by 21st century marketing. Across Asia, the Middle East and the United States, 25 years of English Premier League broadcasts have bred spectacular ratings and merchandize sales. These ephemeral dynamics have ultimately morphed into a peculiar form of allegiance — a fandom nurtured by internet access and fed by the always entertaining, bandwagon-inclined British football media.
For 30 minutes in Moscow on Wednesday, the bandwagon was humming toward destiny. The English would appear to have produced — for the first time in 54 years — a team equal to this global glut of hope and expectation.
To the delight of Gaels everywhere, it was instead Croatia that earned a place in Sunday’s World Cup final against France, claiming a dogged 2-1 victory in extra time. This had been another pillar of English football support Wednesday — the prospect of a cross-Channel, once-more-into-the-breech final, a rematch some 1,054 years in the making! But the indefatigable Croats were deserving winners. They adjusted and persevered where England could not.
English Football: 30 minutes of Heaven
The semifinal’s opening half hour appeared to signal the next in a series of sanguine developments for the English. Kieran Trippier’s splendid free kick put them ahead 1-0 after just 7 minutes. The early goal was part of a delightful narrative: A weak group leading to a preposterously easy side of the tournament draw. A great escape vs. Colombia in the Round of 16 (on penalties of all things) was followed by a thorough bludgeoning of Sweden, a team England had beaten just twice in 16 tries. Up a goal in the semi, the ensuing 20 minutes saw Raheem Sterling, the sprightly Man City striker, run rings around the Croatian defense.
This was the key to the game: England found it so easy to get Sterling in behind Croatian centerbacks Dejan Lovren and Domagoj Vida, another goal seemed just a matter of time. Harry Kane indeed should have made it 2-0 after 15 minutes, having found himself on the doorstep with the option to shoot or slide it to Sterling for a tap-in. He went for goal, had it saved, then clanged the rebound off keeper Danijel Subasic and the post. That ball goes in and there’s no way back for the Croatians, though it seemed of little consequence at the time. The English were that good, that confident on the ball, that in control of this match.
That dominance, in a roundabout way, proved England’s undoing. Instead of continuing to patiently knock the ball around and pick the Croats apart — a side running on fumes after playing two exhausting knockout games in the previous 7 days — England were beguiled by Sterling’s ability to get in behind Lovren and Vida. The last 15 minutes of the half were squandered, as the English eschewed possession and impulsively pumped long balls over the top.
Pundits have claimed that England played an excellent half on Wednesday. They did not. They played an excellent half hour, then muddled their way to the break with a lead only half (or a third) of what it should have been.
Mid-Match Adjustments
Croatia made a vital adjustment before intermission, dropping Lovren and Vida off Kane (and his withdrawn running mate Dele Alli), in order to better cope with the speedy threat of Sterling. After halftime, they changed things up again — pressing England higher up the pitch. All of a sudden, central midfielder Jordan Henderson had no time on the ball. After 45 minutes of expert English distribution out of the back, Croatia took it away.
England made no adjustment at halftime and, much as it tried, could not make one on the fly. The long balls continued, with ever diminishing returns. Faced with this increased pressure, Henderson and the entire English defense were a study in creeping panic — launching hopeful balls forward rather than risk having it taken by the Croats who, the longer this game went (despite their travails), looked the more energetic side. In the first 30 minutes Henderson & Co. looked imperious. After 60, they no longer wanted the ball at their feet. At this level, that is a recipe for just one thing: hanging on for dear life.
All of this analysis ignores fully half the match, which would indeed require 120 minutes to decide. Ivan Perisic, leveled things on 70 minutes and England’s descent into anxiety and fatigue steepened. They were lucky to make it to extra time, where Mario Mandzukic struck the winner some 7 minutes before the onset of penalty kicks.
England made the maximum four substitutions over the last hour, desperately looking to change the game, to change its own footing in and approach to the match. Nothing worked.
Trippier injured his groin after the Mandzukic goal; having exhausted their allotment of subs, England finished meekly, playing 10 v. 11. In the end, the Croats proved more canny, more flexible, more skilled, more confident, more dogged, more fit. They were deserving winners.
This ball was deemed out of play. Clearly, it was not…
MOSCOW (July 5, 2018) — We’ve reached the first 48-hour break in what has been a delightful frenzy of World Cup matches. The round of 16, our first knock-out stage, concluded Tuesday. Quarterfinals start Friday. Through the magic of YouTubeTV and its DVR function (we cut the cable cord in June), I’ve managed to see most every game. A few observations, starting with why the marginal touch line in/out decision is called wrongly more often than anything else in top-class football.
This may strike one as extremely small bore but possession is, you know, important. And linesmen don’t appear to know the rule. The statute is clear: FIFA’s Rule 9 reads, “The ball is out of play when it has wholly crossed the goal line or touch line whether in the ground or in the air.” The advent of goal-line technology has given us a new, better perspective on this rule. A birds’-eye view of the ball is what matters; the ball is in play until it’s entirely over the line, until there can be seen (from above) a sliver of green grass between the ball and touchline.
Technology, now in the hands of a Video Assistant Referees (VAR), has brought new accuracy to goal-line decisions, but touch-line decisions remain in the hands of linesmen and the man in the middle. Sadly, they get it wrong way too often. I’ve noticed this for years now but VAR has brought in into clearer focus.
Touch-line decisions are called differently and I think I know why: Linesmen, or referee’s assistant, as they’r now called, aren’t looking at it from above. From a ground level view, if an assistant sees any sort of green between ball and line, he or she will judge the ball to be out of play. Even if the entire ball, according to Rule 9, has clearly not passed wholly over the line — something that would be obvious with a birds-eye view. The lead image atop this post (a screen grab; thanks again, YouTubeTV) provides a perfect example. This ball was called out for a corner.
One can sorta tell the players are increasingly peeved by this double standard and why shouldn’t they be? Players on the ball do have a bird’s-eye view. There appears to be one standard for the goal line and another for every other boundary on the field. I’ve not seen nor heard nor read of VAR ever being used to mete out a touchline decision. I’m not advocating for that. But possession is important and in/out should better hew to the standard spelled out in Rule 9.
World Cup 2018: PKs and SABs
The short-handed Colombians were put out of the tournament by England Tuesday in a Round of 16 affair that was at once pedestrian and completely riveting. That’s what an otherwise punchless World Cup match that goes to penalty kicks can do, especially where England are involved. Just the idea that some 60 million Brits were watching the game — increasingly pissed, in the fetal position, waiting for something catastrophic to happen — imbues all of their knock-out fixtures with that certain, extra-special something. Their boys didn’t disappoint — blowing the game, then rescuing it — and the rest of us duly lapped up the many layers of shadenfreude. The English did indeed have it won before conceding a 94th minute equalizer and sleep-walking through extra time toward penalties, the tie-breaking mechanism that, to date, has put them out of three World Cups and three European Championships. It’s a tragically accurate running joke in England that the national team cannot cope with, much less win, a penalty shoot-out at a major tournament (Tuesday’s win makes them 2-6 overall). It’s harped upon nearly as often as the fact that, “We invented this game.” But they won this shootout, celebrated accordingly, and they’re off to face plucky Sweden in a Saturday quarterfinal where the stakes, the alcohol intake, the national anxiety will be that much higher…
Golden Boy James Rodriquez was the reason Colombia played short-handed Tuesday, having pulled up lame in the last group game. James (pronounced hah-mez) bears a fairly striking resemblance to a young John Harkes, US midfielder from the ‘80s and ‘90s. The Colombian and his coiffure cut a more metrosexual pose than Harkes and his period mullet ever could. But close enough to meet the ‘Separated at Birth’ threshold, eh? Or maybe first cousins? This is the sort of thing an American soccer fan is reduced to when we fail to qualify…
I’ve now watched and participated in hundreds of these penalty shootouts (the Round of 16 produced three in eight matches). I’m surprised goalkeepers, at this elite level, don’t hold their ground at least once in the first couple kicks, if not to account for a Panenka or blast down the middle, then to plant in the heads of subsequent shooters the possibility that he might not be guessing/diving one way or the other as the shootout progresses. For keepers, this guessing has been the long-standing strategy: Shooters are so close that goalies must guess which way a shooter is going with the ball — and hope for the best. Yet so many elite players today basically trust their ability to see the keeper’s movement and, at the very last second, go the opposite way with the ball. A goalie who doesn’t move would completely freak the shooter out – and give every succeeding shooter uneasy food for thought.
Japanese are Snake Bit
More observations from the first two weeks: Poor Japan. They deserved better than a 3-2 Round of 16 loss to Belgium on the last kick of the game. But honestly, WTF were they thinking — committing so many men to a corner kick (tiny team vs. big team) in the 94th minute tied at 2? It was a bold decision, I’ll grant you. But I’d have put a few token dudes in the box, stayed behind the ball essentially, and taken my chances in extra time…
Sweden has played 50 World Cup matches in its history. Only Mexico has played more without winning a Cup. Yet Sweden’s international record is far more decorated. Indeed, Sverige is perhaps the globe’s most underrated soccer nation. This country of just 7 million souls, where one cannot play outside all year round, has produced a World Cup finalist (1958), three semifinalists (1938, 1950, 1994) and two quarterfinalists (1934, 2018). It may well better a last-8 finish this year — all without Zlatan Ibrahimovich, the finest Swedish player of his generation (perhaps of all time) who, though still active (in MLS), petulantly retired from international play two years ago. Sweden’s example is something for American soccer boosters to ponder when reckoning grandiose future goals. The US has reached a single quarterfinal, full stop…
FIFA is as corrupt as they come, but it’s important to recognize the root and nature of that corruption. Since the late 1980s, FIFA’s particular corruption is born of the fact that each and every participating nation (all 211 of them) have a vote in where the World Cup will be held every four years. And make no mistake: Those votes do in fact get bought. But let’s also be real: Without this sort of arrangement (which leads to both coalition-building and corruption), there would never have been World Cups in Africa, or Russia, or the Middle East. Yes, it’s conventional wisdom that Qatar paid through the nose, to literally hundreds of national football federations, order to secure the 2022 event. And yes, repressive regimes benefit from buying such events — but so do the soccer-loving masses in those countries and regions. Ask an African soccer fan if it was worth it to have the 2010 event in South Africa. Ask a Saudi if they’re happy the World Cup is coming to Qatar. Moving the Cup around is good for the world game. Without its particular brand of corruption, the event would be held somewhere in Europe or North/South America every four years, forever…
Mark Geiger, the only American referee participating in this World Cup, drew a very tough assignment in the England-Colombia match. It’s hard to imagine how a more experienced, skilled ref would’ve handled things without killing the game: Colombia deserved to have 2-3 guys sent off for dissent alone following the quite-right penalty kick decision that put England a goal up. Radamel Falcao has complained publicly about Geiger’s performance, claiming he favored the English. But any neutral observer could plainly see the Colombians, down a goal, ratcheted up the physicality in hopes of turning the match back in their favor. Unfortunately, Geiger didn’t want to decide said match by sending anyone off — something the savvy Colombians sensed immediately. In bending over backward to preserve Colombia’s chance of ultimately getting a result, Geiger may have torpedoed his own career at this level.
Ed. — Almost 20 years ago, I ventured to the SW6 section of London to report on the Yank-laden Fulham FC phenomenon for espn.com, which posted the piece in two lengthy parts. It lived a good long life online but sadly, now it’s gone. So it’s preserved here. For posterity.
LONDON (March 26, 2007) — There are moments, sublime moments, when spectators sitting in the Johnny Haynes Stand at Craven Cottage can look to the far corner of the ground — where the perpendicular, geometric grandstands fail to meet — and see straight through to the Thames. The river fairly well glistens on sunny spring afternoons like the one we spent late in March, watching Fulham F.C. and its sizable American contingent salvage a 1-1 draw with visiting Portsmouth. Through these gaps in the stadium seating, one spies Putney on the far bank before yet another eight sculls in and out of the V-shaped frame — a window, however small and diversionary, on why FulhAmerica has grown into the Premiership’s most compelling storylines across the pond.
American soccer fans might not know Fulham Football Club from Scunthorpe United if the two shared the same lower division, or and the same critical mass of Yanks on their rosters. But Fulham does play in the Premiership — for now — and the club has made a habit of buying up U.S. talent on the cheap, to the point where Craven Cottage has become ground zero for U.S. futbol fans heading to London to check on our boys.
That was exactly our charge in late March: To stop merely scouring the Internet for the odd mention of Brian McBride, Carlos Bocanegra and Clint Dempsey. To “just go” and see them in person, while sampling those venues where would-be Fulham fans might eat, drink and be merry on either side of Putney Bridge.
We didn’t arrive in South London expecting to watch the club fight for its Premiership life. As it turned out, our late-March visit would prove the club’s last carefree weekend of the season. Having won only twice since Dec. 18, the Cottagers followed their home draw vs. Portsmouth with two successive defeats. The club would sack manager Chris Coleman on April 11, replacing him with Lawrie Sanchez. Fulham’s precarious position — just four points above the drop zone — set the stage for a harrowing three weeks of relegation-avoidance.
FulhAmerica on Thames
None of this appeared at all probable just two weeks prior, when we alighted our District Line train into the spring sunshine. A quick, intuitive look at the London Underground map might lead one to exit The Tube at Fulham Broadway, but that’s miles away — and serves the other Premiership club in SW6, dread Chelsea. Putney Bridge Station is your best point of departure, your gateway to the ground itself, to a fine bunch of pubs and the folks who comprise Fulham Nation.
This tidy neighborhood on the north bank of the Thames has everything you need for pre-match entertainment. The closest pub to the Tube stop, however, the Eight Bells, is one designated for away fans. So don’t show up there in your Brian McBride replica shirt. The day we happened by, still some two hours before kick-off, Portsmouth fans had spilled out onto the surrounding sidewalk eight deep and there were dozens of policemen about, mounted and otherwise, to keep the peace.
We didn’t venture into the Bells. Too crowded. But we did, as clear Fulham backers, enjoy a pint and some pleasant chat with several Pompey fans in the Temperance, formerly known as the Pharaoh & Firkin, another de facto “visitors” pub serving Craven Cottage. Just that day, rumors were swirling that Michael Dell, of Dell Computer fame, was angling to buy Fulham F.C. (word of Wal-Mart billionaire Stan Kroenke’s new 9.9 percent stake in Arsenal emerged a week later). One Portsmouth supporter, Paul, politely bemoaned the fact that Americans George Gillett and Tom Hicks had already purchased Liverpool, Randy Lerner had snapped up Aston Villa, and Malcolm Glazer had assumed control of Manchester United, against the club’s will.
“We didn’t think you Americans even liked proper football,” Paul said with a wry smile.
The best Fulham pub in this village is The Golden Lion, directly across Fulham High Street from the Temperance and teeming with locals. Game-day spreads are often served up gratis. The big screen beckons for those without tickets; there’s always someone at the bar ready, willing and able to talk Fulham footy. If you don’t fancy the menu’s standard meat and potatoes, you’ll find a great little curry house (India Cottage) right next door. What’s more, there’s an official Fulham supporters shop just around the corner.
Best Pubs? Over Putney Bridge
The Larrick represents another solid, pint option here but, truth be told, the best Fulham pubs are found across the river, on the south bank. Just over Putney Bridge — the very span featured as a shotgun-dump in the Guy Ritchie film “Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels” — and up a quiet side street sits The Bricklayer’s Arms, an old-fashioned, off-the-high-street, football-supporting, still-proper-pint-pulling public house if there ever was one. Another sign of its legitimacy? No TV. If you’re a purist, they reckon, you’re at the game and the other fixtures don’t much matter.
One Fulham supporter, John from Reading, explained to us that several “football” pubs on both sides have actually gone away of late, and not necessarily for lack of support: “What they’ve done with a lot of these pubs — The Cottage is a good example — is they’ll rip out the insides and turn them into nice, gentrified dining pubs. All the clientele disappear, of course, all the football fans. A good British business model that. Get a load of Ikea furniture and there you go, you’ve got an empty pub. Well done.”
Rest assured, plenty remain. The Whistle & Flute, Half Moon and Coat & Badge — each another block or so south of the Thames — are all cracking venues where, if you show up wearing FFC scarves, you’ll be among friends. But The Brick is the choice here for atmosphere, beer selection (pulled pints of Taylor’s; try the Landlord) and camaraderie.
There is no tailgate scene here. All that social energy funnels straight into these local pubs, where the home club and its fortunes are dissected, lauded and bemoaned en masse, by turn and according to a predictable fixture list. One Fulham supporter at The Brick summed it up quite neatly: “It’s a social life that I don’t have to organize.”
Stadium Approach thru Bishops Park
It doesn’t much matter whether the pre-game pint comes north or south of the Thames. If one’s ultimate destination is Craven Cottage, one is pretty much obliged to approach the ground from the east — directly through Bishops Park, a stretch of riverside green space that surely stands as the most comely stadium walk-up in the Premiership, if not all Christendom.
It’s late Marc, the sun is shining and life is good. Over the coming 10 days, these Cottagers will fail to secure a single point from three games. In two weeks, manager Chris Coleman will lose his job. Of course, as we traipse through Bishop’s Park on our way to face visiting Pompey, no one knows any of this. The mood is buoyant as we join thousands of Fulham supporters for a long journey that nevertheless passes quickly, as befits a walk in the park.
Craven Cottage was built in 1896 and hasn’t been significantly modernized since. Yes, the club has added seating on the Thames side, but the original Johnny Haynes Stand opposite — named for the man who played a club-record 658 games for Fulham and scored 158 goals between 1952-70 — looks all of its 110-plus years. Which is to say, well kept but truly ancient, right down to its original brick masonry, its lattice of exposed ductwork under the stands, and its wooden fold-down seats buffed smooth and dark by eons of intimate backside contact.
Imagine Fenway Park, built for soccer and sitting right on the Charles River — with no plastic and better beer (at two-thirds the price). That’s Craven Cottage, the perfect venue for London’s oldest professional football club.
At halftime, with Fulham scoreless and trailing by a goal, we amble back down under the stand for the traditional beer and cottage pie — like shepherd’s pie, only with beef in place of lamb. We retrieve this sustenance at our leisure, unmolested by great masses of people. Craven Cottage is so small (capacity: 24,600) and, one could argue, so well designed, it never feels crowded. Even if the place is crawling with Yanks.
‘And they do spend’
“Starting in the summer and throughout the season we’ve got loads of Americans coming over,” Graham James tells me. He’s the retail manager at Craven Cottage. “We have a big American fan base now. [Brian] McBride kicked it off really, being the most well known at the moment. Now with [Clint] Dempsey just kicking off his career, we have a younger element coming in. There’s been good progress for American players here, so it’s no surprise they’ve become supporters. And they do spend a lot of money.”
Despite the exchange rate. With banks trading nearly two U.S. dollars for every British pound, it’s ironic (if not surprising) that Americans spend so freely in the Craven Cottage Stadium Shop, where James chats amiably before touching finger to ear and excusing himself. Fulham has stockpiled U.S. players precisely because they are a cheap source of talent. In happier times, Coleman had said of McBride, “For the amount of money we spent and the service he has given us, it has got to be the best £700,000 that anyone has ever spent.”
A cynic would point out that American players provide great value these days while the American consumer, traveling to see them, gets precious little. A small price to pay, however, for nowhere else have U.S. players made such a positive impression on a foreign club, beginning with the 1999 arrival of keeper Marcus Hahnemann (now of fellow Premiership side Reading). Eddie Lewis came aboard in 2000 and while he didn’t exactly set SW6 on fire, his performance didn’t prevent the subsequent acquisition of Carlos Bocanegra, Dempsey and McBride, who, at 34, recently signed on for another season at the Cottage.
Nearly everywhere else Americans play British soccer, they are still seen as something of an oddity. Only at Fulham can supporters view their Yanks with an eye unjaundiced by anomaly.
“With the Premiership these days, it’s almost unusual to see a lot of English players in a side,” jokes John from Reading, whom we met walking back through Bishops Park after the match. “But I think the American players have made their mark now. There have always been good [U.S.] goalkeepers, but now you find them making their mark in the lower reaches of the Premier League. It’ll be interesting to see what happens in the next five or 10 years. If they make the next step in quality.”
“You take a player like Brian McBride,” interjects Ferret, another Fulham lifer now ensconced with us at The Bricklayers Arms, the Fulham pub across the river in Putney, “and I think people see him for what he is: an English-style forward, in the Teddy Sheringham mold. Teddy had skills, wasn’t completely full of flair but he looked after himself, worked very hard, put his head in, and thinks about it.”
Demps Not Yet Come of Age
Even before Coleman’s departure there had been grumbling, from some quarters, that while he was a shrewd judge of young talent, the coach didn’t necessarily develop said talent. John from Reading, for one, fears for Dempsey’s future with the club. “I’m a bit worried about him because I think he’s got a lot of promise. He’s certainly not playing much now, through no fault of his own.”
Indeed, Dempsey did not feature in the 1-1 draw with Pompey. He sat out a subsequent loss at Everton, and only came on for the final 20 minutes in another defeat, home to Manchester City. John from Reading’s mate Tristan reckons Deuce may end up signing next season at a newly relegated Premiership team, or another Championship side, where he’ll get plenty of playing time.
Today, Cottager fans on both sides of the Atlantic are hoping that newly relegated Premier League side isn’t Fulham itself. The April 9 loss to Man City put the club within four points of the relegation zone with five to play. Fulham has 35 points and while no top-flight team with that many has ever gone down, the club’s two remaining home fixtures are no bargain and the team hasn’t won on the road in 13 attempts.
It would be crying shame for Fulham to be relegated. Here’s an underdog club that has gallantly and cleverly carved out a credible spot in today’s top flight; a mere 10 years ago they were a third division side, four levels down. Fulham has earned everything it’s got — unlike the blue-shirted, free-spending bunch who also reside in SW6. If one can get past the fact that Hugh Grant and Daniel “Harry Potter” Radcliffe are counted among FFC’s celebrity supporters, and the club is owned by arch media hound Mohamed Al-Fayed (owner of Harrods, father of ill-fated Dodi), this is a club anyone could get behind.
But the reality isn’t nearly so sentimental. If Fulham does go down, its Americans go down with it. How long will we wait before another Premiership club fields three Yanks? Hard to say, but this much is clear: You can still see them all, in Fulham jerseys, at Craven Cottage on April 21 (v. Blackburn) and May 5 (v. Liverpool). Catch them playing Premiership football while you can.
USMNT manager Bruce Arena in lighter times — with former L.A. Galaxy charge, David Beckham.
SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (March 22, 2017) — Sixty minutes into what remained of the March 15 match here in the Costa Rican capital, BeIN color commentator Thomas Rongen festered aloud at the visiting Americans’ inability to go forward. He rightly identified the problem in the center of midfield, where 29-year-old Michael Bradley dropped ever deeper and 35-year-old Jermaine Jones drifted even further into irrelevance. Rongen suggested that 2017 USMNT coach Jurgen Klinsmann needed to make a change — that inserting Sacha Kljestan was the best option to link up, in attacking fashion, with the troika of Bobby Wood, Jozy Altidore and Christian Pulisic.
Right then, I recognized the U.S. was doomed this night and Klinsi would soon be looking for work.
The USMNT went on to lose the match, 1-0. Rongen’s analysis had been spot on. But if Sacha Kljestan is your best midfield attacking option off the bench, one can reasonably argue the cupboard is more or less bare.
As it happened, the Federation relieved Klinsmann of his U.S Men‘s National Team duties the following Tuesday morning. L.A. Galaxy skipper Bruce Arena took his place.And so, pointless and facing a win-at-all-costs game at home vs. Honduras this Friday night, March 24, U.S. Soccer finds itself at an unfamiliar crossroads.
Yeah, sure: the U.S. has once or twice stumbled or started slowly in Hexagonals past. But the U.S. finds itself in an altogether different situation in 2017.
Prior to 1990, the U.S. had never qualified for a modern World Cup. That signal success, after 40 years of utter failure, ushered in a new era of American soccer, one where qualification was a given. The challenge lay in determining a) how U.S. teams would inevitably ascend to the next echelon, to truly compete toe-to-toe with the best 12-15 teams on the planet; and b) who would lead them to this new place of relevance.
USMNT 2017: Fork in the Road
Well, a funny thing happened on the way to relevance.
For the first time ever, the USMNT lost the first two games of a Hexagonal qualifier. Not since 1990 — when another Euro, Lothar Osiander, gave way to another Yank, Bob Gansler — had the U.S. changed coaches in the middle of a qualification campaign. Yes, FIFA has pretty much guaranteed the U.S a spot at the World Cup Finals every four years, thanks to FIFA’s awarding 3.5 spots to just six Hex participants (thanks, Sepp!).
Today we’ll need every last one of those 3.5 spots. In the meantime, we pick over the entrails of Klinsmann’s tenure. The German was in charge of the U-23s, too. Their failure to qualify for the last two Olympic tournaments is another blot on his resume. However, in looking for clues, explanations, blame and hope, let us not be coy.
The nations comprising The Hex have never been stronger. More important and relevant, this crop of senior U.S. players Klinsmann had to work with was neither young nor particularly talented. As such, we can’t honestly call their performance the last two summers and during the nascent 2018 CONCACAF Qualification Hexagonal “under achievement”.
I haven’t heard anyone suggest, in retrospect, that Klinsmann had, in pushing for European club experience or courting Euro talent with American bloodlines, ignored or failed to develop a pool of talented, USMNT-worthy domestic players. Frankly, I don’t think those players exist. That’s what makes this qualification such an anomalous throwback.
Since Arena’s hire, his familiarity with the domestic league has been mentioned with metronomic frequency. But I watch Major League Soccer. You watch MLS. We can agree there are no glaring omissions for which Klinsi must answer — or rather, which Arena can now run out as remedy… You think Dax McCarty was the answer and Klinsi just ignored him? You would perhaps prefer to have seen Darlington Nagby running the show in Costa Rica?
Klinsmann Was Never the Problem
The German may have “lost the locker room” in wake of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, but I don’t think we should go forward under any illusion that Klinsmann was the problem here. I have a stronger feeling that he was merely doing the best he could with a pool of players whose core is aging, whose younger options are largely not up to snuff, and whose successors — that oft-invoked golden generation of 20 year olds poised to assert themselves — simply isn’t in the offing.
That is the crossroads at which American soccer finds itself today.
And here’s another sobering point on the eve of these two crucial Hex matches (a loss in either one would make outright qualification a tall order indeed): The Americans Klinsmann fielded, and Arena will field, are only as good as they are on account of half the starting XI being wooed away from Germany by Klinsmann himself, which begs the question of whether that clearly rich Teutonic vein can be tapped going forward by just anyone.
Klinsi’ perfectly reasonable expectation that U.S. players seek regular gigs in the world’s best leagues has also come under major scrutiny since his firing, which is unfortunate because it’s a big, red, bulbous herring. Look around and scrutinize the attitudes of national team coaches serving all but the elite soccer nations. Klinsmann’s was not and is not a controversial position. Players become world class only by competing with the elite, day in and day out. We know this. Every national team coach outside Europe knows this.
And I’ve got news for you: Bradley, Jones, Clint Dempsey, Tim Howard and Altidore aren’t playing in MLS today because they want to be closer to their families, or they have some romantic responsibility to bolster the fortunes of our domestic league. Klinsmann had the misfortune of steering the U.S. ship at a time when all five of these core figures lost their value in Europe — because they were no longer good enough to command dollars or playing time there. If they could make the same money playing in France or the Netherlands, they’d be doing it.
What we saw in Costa Rica (and, to a lesser extent, in Columbus vs. Mexico in the Hexagonal opener) is demonstrable evidence that the old guard needs changing. I’m still fairly sanguine re. Arena’s ability to get this team to Russia, by hook or by crook. FIF has done all it can to make this happen. But that does not mitigate the larger issue — that the pool of international caliber U.S. players does not seem to be growing, here or abroad, in the manner we might expect from a world-top-15 footballing nation.
Hell, the current choices, save Mr. Pulisic, point to a discernable, troubling regression.
Few Birthrights in International Futbol
Bruce Arena was a far younger man in 2002, when he led the U.S. to its only World Cup quarterfinal, a 1-0 loss to Germany where only the unseen hand of Thorsten Frings separated our boys from overtime, penalty kicks and perhaps a place in the semifinal. Arena was 51 in 2002, just 6 years removed from the head coaching position at the University of Virginia (where he started out as a lacrosse assistant). Thereafter, on the strength of this idiosyncratic coaching background, his D.C. United teams proved the class of Major League Soccer — indeed, that’s why this former lax long-stick and soccer goalkeeper at Cornell came to be tapped as U.S. Men’s National Team coach, succeeding Steve Sampson after the debacle at France ’98.
Though it was a crushing quarterfinal defeat in South Korea, a mighty opportunity lost, 2002 made us forget about 1998. The showing in South Korea was surely yet another in a succession of high-water marks we had come to expect from American soccer. The Yanks had qualified for its first World Cup only 12 years before — a moment that surely marked the slow and steady brightening of American fortunes in the decades to come.
Today, the U.S. performance in 2002 is looking more and more like an anomaly, not another step forward non an inexorable rise.
U.S. soccer fans should perhaps start coming to grips with this — with what most of the footballing world has already come to know and accept: There are very few birthrights at the international level.
Look at Sweden. Every 20 years or so, the Swedes produce a generation that can compete for a place at the title-seeking table. In between they are also-rans and struggle to qualify for big tournaments.Here is a country that has produced semifinalists and finalists, several world-class players by any measure, even coaches who are hired to lead the teams of other nations.
Can any of this be said of U.S. Soccer, 14 years after South Korea?
Generation Zero: One Cohort in a Long Game
I’m now researching/writing a book called Generation Zero: The Class of 1990 and the Birth of Modern American Soccer. It was indeed this cohort of young players — Harkes, Balboa, Meola, Ramos and Vermes, to name just a few — whose qualification for Italia ’90 changed the game here in America, forever. It paved the way for this new era of U.S. soccer we now enjoy, one where participation in the World Cup is routine, where the domestic league not only exists but builds new soccer-specific stadia to keep up with demand, where, in theory, our best young players are courted, vetted and bettered by clubs in top European leagues, where American plutocrats own iconic clubs like Liverpool FC and Manchester United, where three major networks fight over the rights to televise European, South American and major tournament games to a U.S. soccer audience.
I’m a member of Generation Zero myself. Bruce Murray once billeted in my house, and I in his. Take it from someone who remembers the wasteland that was American soccer in the post-NASL ‘80s: None of the above existed prior to 1990. It wasn’t even a part of our wildest dreams, frankly. The players who first qualified America for the World Cup made all this possible, then formed the core of the team that hosted the 1994 World Cup (something else, I’ve learned, that might not have taken place were it not for the Class of 1990).
But this cohort of pioneering U.S. players in Generation Zero created something else, something that does appear to be rising inexorably: a foundational fan base, upon which all of American soccer support now rests.
Again, with the 3.5 World Cup allotted to CONCACAF each quadrennial, FIFA has done its best to more or less guaranteed the U.S. will compete in every World Cup going forward. It’s highly likely that Arena will indeed get the job done. That is my most fervent hope, in fact.
But it’s high time we American soccer fans, in our every expanding numbers, get real about where we truly are as a footballing nation and what sort of exercise we’re engaged in here. It’s high time we dispensed with this “Will America win a World Cup by 2022, 2026 or 2030?” banter.Competing on the world stage is what we call “the long game”. Settle in, America. In world football, national team programs don’t compete for world titles merely because they set their minds to this goal and/or throw resources at it.
Only the Germans, Italians, Spanish and Argentinians can honestly enter each World Cup cycle believing they have a legitimate shot to win the whole ball of wax. Brazil, currently in crisis following the disaster of 2014, would make it five. France and the Netherlands are capable of winning a big tournament. Apparently Portugal is, too… Everyone else, the U.S. included, is hoping to build and/or luck into a golden generation of talent — then catch lightening in a bottle.
Generation Zero produced the first American cohort of talent good enough to qualify for a World Cup. It took 40 years to get that done, and it was “golden” only relative to all those previous generations of Americans who’d tried and failed. Right now, the 2002 USMNT roster may be closest thing to a truly Golden Generation this country has yet produced.
Klinsmann had promised to change all that, and we wanted to believe him. He offered grand plans to transform the way Americans played soccer on the international stage — by the sheer force of belief, and by influencing the way Americans played at all the various developmental levels. The plan was ambitious and almost credible. He did, after all, have a hand in transforming an entrenched system in no less a world soccer power than Germany, from 2002-2006. And yet for all his efforts, we remain essentially the same soccer nation we were before he took the wheel, albeit with a few more German-Americans in the fold. We even have the same coach we had in 2006, one who knows how difficult it is to coach two consecutive World Cup cycles).Welcome to the big leagues, America. Adjust your sights as events warrant. Football on the world stage is hard.
This comment was published in 2014 during the World Cup in Brazil. Still waiting for this proposal to take the futbol world by storm..
This comment was published in 2014 during the World Cup in Brazil. It’s been updated in spots to better reflect today’s footballing realities.
RIO DE JANEIRO (July 7, 2014) — FIFA should conduct an under-20 World Cup where, as a trial, penalties are taken not from the so-called “spot” but rather from where in the box the foul occurred. Judging from the World Cup now ongoing — from tournament and league play all over the world, for decades now — methinks this first-step in penalty kick reform would eventually improve the standard and style of play close to goal. What’s more, the resulting kicks themselves would produce decidedly intriguing and skill-based free kicks compared to desultory PKs.
In the interest of such progress, allow me to advance this proposal as a thought experiment: Suppose spot kicks in the penalty area were taken from the spot of infraction…
In response, the first thing to say: Just think of the magnificent, mano-a-mano strikes and saves these new-fangled free kicks would immediately produce, without a wall in the way.
As remains the case, all but the shooter and keeper would vacate the box. Yet the resulting action would prove far better entertainment, according to skills we associate with open play. Such scenarios also better align with every other spot kick awarded in the course of 90 minutes. In this way, such a rule adjustment would not represent radical change. How could it? Fouls in the box would be treated like fouls called anywhere else on the field.
Shoulda foul be whistled inside the 6-yard box, it’s logical and practical to place the ball on the traditional spot, 12 yards from goal. Everywhere else in the box, fouls will result in a panoply of fascinating, entertaining, strategic responses.
Penalty Kick Reform: But why?
We undertake these conceptualizations because, as it stands now, the impacts of PKs are sadly outsized and reflective of so little we associate with the logic and joys of open play. Matches routinely hinge on the award of penalties, which are converted at a rate of 75-80 precent. They have always unduly impacted match results — and player behaviors. More to the point, as we’ve seen in this and every World Cup, attacking players have increasingly adopted a perverse preference for going down in the box, trying to draw the ultimate foul — rather than trying to stay on their feet to consummate a legitimate scoring chance.
Again, this trend is so mature as to be unremarkable. Naturally, the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil now ongoing has witnessed its fair share of such episodes: Fred’s questionable tumble during the tournament opener, which drew a deciding penalty kick for the host nation. More notably: Rafa Marquez’ borderline, last-minute foul on Holland’s Arjen Robben, which resulted in a game-winning penalty kick and sent Mexico packing after the Round of 16, again. The Marquez Affair inspired all sorts of back (there was contact; he stepped on Robben’s foot) and forth (the Dutchman clearly “embellished” in contravention of the rules).
However, this much is clear and straightforward: Robben was far more interested in drawing that foul than prosecuting his attempt on goal, despite being so close to goal — despite the presence of a teammates in the box who, upon receiving a pass, might well have scored. That’s a footballing perversity, and this rule change would help address it.
For the record, Marquez did not surgically remove Robben’s spleen, the Dutchman facial contortions, shouts of agony, and collapse to the turf notwithstanding. Reactions like these are another affront to the game. Mitigating the potential reward of penalties in the box would address these con jobs, too.
New Strategies & Demonstrations of Skill
PKs are awarded because an attacking player has presumably been denied a clear goal-scoring opportunity, i.e. the chance to shoot on goal. But how dangerous a position did Robben, for example, actually occupy when Marquez took him down? The foul occurred on the goal line extended, the end line. This rule change suggested here would award Robben his free kick, place the ball at the spot of the foul — close to goal but at a poor angle — and clear the box of everyone but the keeper.
It says here that placing the ball on the spot is no way reflects the opportunity denied to Robben. Placing the ball at the spot of infraction better reflects the opportunity denied. Removing all outfield defenders is the bonus for having been taken down close to goal.
What’s more, Robben’s end-line penalty remains a potent goal-scoring chance. The angle might be poor but the keeper must remain on the line, as per usual; he may not cut down the angle. Clearing the box still gives defenders a strong disincentive to foul in the area. However, that opportunity for conversion, for scoring, would be more in keeping with the actual scoring chance — the one snuffed out by the foul.
The Marquez example is particularly instructive. Imagine the strategy for PKs awarded there on the end line, under this proposed system. Robben can’t reasonably score from the touch line, from such an acute angle — though he might try. Roofing such an attempt, or battering one off the keeper himself might net results. Otherwise, he would be obliged to seek out Dutchmen scattered about the edge of the box, creating chances for these onrushing teammates — much like a penalty corner in field hockey. I realize this movement has been set back some 15 years with that unlikely comparison, but it’s apt.
Most important, these free kicks would be strategic but still flowing, soccer-centric scenarios — unlike penalty kicks which, in fact, are the most static, contrived thing in the game. Typical PK situations — guys standing alone on the spot with no one around him, just shooter and the goalie — almost never happen in the run of play.
The Robben/Marquez example is somewhat extreme. Far more fouls happen at angles where the shooter would have a legitimate go, from reasonable angles, where skillful keepers would nevertheless have the chance to save. Just as they would have, had the attack not been fouled at that same spot.
Far more frequently, “new-generation” penalties would underline actual footballing skills, bravado and drama. With no wall to take away the short-side post, goalies would be sorely tested from many spots and angles, all over the box. These penalties would result in acrobatic saves. There would be brilliant, net-bulging strikes. Yet all of these chances (and half-chances) would be more in keeping and proportion with the scoring chance the foul prevented.
As indicated above, traditional PKs would be awarded only for fouls that take place in the six-yard box. That makes sense, too: Trying to keep a goalie on the line, when the ball is placed 3 yards in front of him, would prove impractical. Further, a hand ball or foul that denies possession or a shot so close to goal should rightly result in a goal 80 percent of the time. Indeed, we may, through this rule change, have finally figured out why that mini-box exists! Purportedly, goal kicks can be taken anywhere inside of that box. But surely this is a waste of space and paint. There must be a more practical, intrinsic purpose, and this might well be it.
Effects on Overall Play
Most interesting and perhaps most important would be the new ruling’s effect on overall play in the box. Right now, each offensive/defensive encounter in the box is all or nothing: Any sort of foul is a PK, almost surely a goal. Defenders are determined to avoid that foul and strikers routinely cheat/simulate in order to draw it.
Under the new system, each offensive/defensive encounter would take on but a gradation of such risk. Defenders would be more aggressive on the goal line and out on the bad-angle peripheries of the penalty area, one imagines. What’s more, referees will certainly call more fouls at the corners of the box more frequently — because the stakes out there would prove lower, and far more entertaining. Traditional PKs are boring faits d’accomplit. I, for one, would like to see more mano-a-mano encounters between keepers and strikers who can really strike a 16-yard bullet — from an assortment of angles against keepers rooted to the goal line.
By the same token, it follows that less aggression would be manifest in the center or the box, in front of goal, where committing a foul would still result a traditional point-blank penalty, or a great angle from 16-18 yards. Imagine the typical corner kick fracas, typically where exactly that contact takes place: between six and 12 yards from goal. Penalties award there would prove even more automatic than traditional PKs.
My argument is this: If this gradation of risk were realized, other aspects of the game would be positively affected. Currently, the amount of clutching and grabbing that takes place on any corner kick is absurd. At least one penalty kick could be called on most every corner, if the referee so chose. However, if referees feel more at liberty to call clutching and grabbing at sharp, shallow angles to goal — because said referee would not be handing one team an 80 percent chance at goal — clutching and grabbing generally, anywhere in front of goal, might subside.
Of course, referees muste be brave enough to call such point-blank penalties. Only then would the deterrent, the appreciation of risk be activated in the minds of defenders.
The Scourge of Embellishment
The other component of today’s penalty equation is the widespread incentive toward diving, or, as FIFA calls it, “embellishment”. We already have the means to snuff this out: Referees calling fouls on attacking players, the divers, and awarding them yellow cards.
For whatever reason, refs have been loath to turn this screw. There is understandable squeamishness on his/her part: getting that call wrong might decide a game unfairly. But games are being unfairly decided right now, and FIFA, in a surprising bit of wisdom, was clever to call it “embellishment,” because, in a way, the foul is irrelevant. The overriding infraction is the attempt to unduly influence and/or fool the referee into calling a penalty kick — and perhaps getting your opponent thrown out of the game.
Trying to deceive the referee is clearly unsportsmanlike conduct. If one has embellished, it doesn’t matter whether he or she was fouled. Name go in book. No penalty. VAR makes this judgment far more practical, it must be said.
The other issue with this proposal is its provenance. I’m a American, and while some portion of the soccer world may be gratified to see us finally taking to world’s game, many international observers do worry the U.S. will eventually use its outsized cultural sway to exert undo, ill-considered influence on it. In another perverse reality, U.S. fans and observers have, through the years, shown a great eagerness to “improve” futbol through assorted rule chnges. I think we’ve all been in bars with some soccer-watching American yahoo who confidently proclaims, “Here’s how they could make this sport a lot better…”
While I have spent the last 30 years patiently defending/explaining soccer’s status quo to small-minded folks like these, I have also been witness some quite radical, quite literal game-changers that had nothing to do with mouthy Yanks. “Even” used to be offside; today even is onside. Goalkeepers used to be able to handle any back pass from a teammate; now they cannot (unless it’s headed); extra time was never sudden death, then it was; now it isn’t anymore. At the Brazilian World Cup in 2014, we said hello to goal-line technology. Today, love it or hate it, VAR has radically changed the way games are officiated, everywhere on the pitch.
Change, we can agree, can be good. This idea of mine has merit. Should it eventually be adopted and fly? Well, understand that I don’t require a statue. But you’re welcome.
RIO DE JANEIRO (June 28, 2014) — I was just listening to the excellent Guardian Football Podcast, posted daily during this World Cup, and someone described Costa Rica’s performance against Italy — a 1-0 group-stage victory for Los Ticos — as having proved particularly brave.
These podders are UK -based, mainly, and describing a soccer performance as brave is a particular British way of phrasing it. But as with many things English — the game, our language, Rosamund Pike’s jeans — it fits remarkably well.
What does brave really mean? There are so many contexts that inform, but futbol outfits like Costa Rican — lightly regarded based on WC Qualifyingperformance, history of producing players and teams of quality, their domestic league, number of players playing abroad in good leagues — would typically approach with trepidation a match with four-times world champions Italy.
What does that mean? It means the opposite of bravery: defend like the dickens, in great numbers — say, 9 “behind the ball,” always between that ball and their own goal. The hope? To lure enough Italians away from their defensive positions into goal-scoring positions, whereby the Costa Ricans can win possession and quickly counter-attack against relatively few defenders.
Brave Futbol vs. Practical Futbol
That’s a legit strategy, a common one for soccer teams playing a “superior” opponent. It’s a time-tested option — the strategy Jurgen Klinsmann looks to deploy with this American team, for example. Those tactics aren’t brave. They’re practical. Choosing praticality over bravery, or vice versa, is part of what makes international football so interesting to watch, because it can work to great effect: An inferior-but-disciplined team can beat a superior undisciplined one.
Costa Rica took no account of the fact that the Italians — and the Uruguayans, and the English — are considered superior in all the ways listed above. They simply went at them, all over the field, contesting every inch of it, and ultimately scored way more goals than their opponents.
They were brave and they were richly rewarded.
Chile were brave yesterday vs. Brazil, a team that has now knocked them out of the last three World Cups. The strategic thing to do against the five-times world champions (who just happen to be playing at home, where they’ve not lost a competitive match since 1975) would be the practical, counter-attacking route. But Chile played their fellow South Americans toe-to-toe.
A Brave World Cup
In general, this has been a particularly brave World Cup. The evidence is simple and straightforward: There have been lots of goals — the most in a group stage since 1958 — and a remarkable predominance of open play.
In part, it’s the Brazilian ethos that has made the World Cup field so brave. That’s my opinion, but how can you got to Brazil — the soccer nation that invented “flair”, that pissed away additional World Cups because they insisted on playing open, brave football — and not play open, attacking, “Samba” soccer? Forget the fact that this particular Brazil team is among the most “practical” the country has sent to a World Cup; it was chosen to grind out results rather than simply outscore its opponents. Indeed, apart from Neymar, they appear to have a real striker problem; Fred and Jo have been next to useless.
But the Samba Ethos was formed decades before and will outlive this current Brazil squad. More than in any World Cup I can remember, teams came to this World Cup to win and look good doing it. Italy refused and couldn’t get out of the group. England flirted with the idea, gave it up and went home.
There are dangers to playing bravely, of course. Portugal is going home because it continued to go forward after falling behind Germany — then going down to 10 men. If they had hunkered down and kept that game 2-0, the Portuguese might ultimately have gone through. Instead, disinclined to damage control, they absorbed a costly 4-0 defeat. That goal difference sent the US to the round of 16 in their place.
Quarterfinals don’t invite Adventurism
Which is why today’s Sunday’s slate of knockout games is going to be so interesting. The Mexicans play like Chile, i.e. almost incapable of throttling back their pressure game all over the field. Surely the Mexican coaching brain trust, and the players themselves, understand the Netherlands can utterly shred that sort of adventurism. Witness their plucking of Chile, 2-0, in the group stage. Later, the Dutch embarrassed reigning World Cup champion Spain, 5-1.
And then we have brave Costa Rica taking on the most practical, disciplined side left in the tournament, Greece, who never play bravely but have a knack for eking out results against better teams. Indeed, they won a European Championship doing this, in 2004. This was perhaps the most remarkable underdog performance in the history of major tournament football. Just 10 years removed from that experience, the Greeks are loath to switch strategies.
Will Costa Rica just fly at them and let the chips fall where they may? Here is a side brimming with confidence — but here is a side that is poised to produce the greatest sporting result, perhaps the greatest geo-political result — a spot in the World Cup quarterfinals! — in its national history. Perhaps they temper the bravery and try to beat their opponents another way, lest they risk conceding an early goal and playing into the Greeks’ hands.
The choice is the Costa Ricans’ to make. This afternoon we will test the conventional wisdom, that fortune favors the brave.
Ed. For those who may not remember, Los Ticos defeated Greece 5–3 on penalties after a 1–1 draw, before falling to the Netherlands on penalties in the quarterfinals.
RIO DE JANEIRO (July 25 2014) — What the preternaturally peckish Luis Suarez did to Italy’s Giorgio Chiellini on Tuesday was certainly a red-card offense. And yeah, it was weird — even more disturbing when you consider the man’s track record. The Uruguayan has now chomped on three guys in his illustrious and notorious career. There have also been charges of racist taunts, for the record.
But this most recent biting episode went unnoticed by the referee, Marco Rodriguez of Mexico, and banning Suarez post facto is not the answer.
The ref missed Mamadou Sakho’s no less deliberate but ultimately more painful offense the next day. In the first 20 minutes of France’s mind-numbing but practical nil-nil draw, Les Bleus central defender Sakho delivered an elbow to the face of Oswaldo Minda during a corner-kick skirmish in front of the Ecuadorian goal. It was deliberate and on target. It went unnoticed by the referee and so, the game went on. No one is calling for a ban today.
This not to excuse an of these acts, but shit happen. When referees observe such infractions, off the players should go. The red card issued Wednesday to Antonio Valencia, Ecuador captain, was not exactly swift. The referee took almost 2 minutes to brandish it. But ultimately the punishment was sure, because it was seen.
There’s a great Monty Python sketch that begins with a pan of some uninhabited, heathland meadow. The viewer is informed that, in fact, there are 40-odd people in this shot, including Mr. E.R. Bradshaw of Napier Court, Black Lion Road, London SE 14. The film’s narrator invites Mr. Bradshaw to show himself, which he does. At which point, he is shot dead.
“This demonstrates the value of not being seen,” the narrator points out.
Suarez Track Record Complicates the Matter
Here’s the thing: You can’t ban a guy for being a nut case. This last bite was no worse, in a soccer sense, than Sakho’s elbow to Minda’s kisser (which wasn’t seen, nor called by the ref) or Daniele De Rossi’s elbow to Brian McBride’s face at World Cup 2006, which was observed. The Italian was sent off.
Slapping Suarez with an after-the-fact ban —covering subsequent World Cup matches presumably — seems arbitrary, though FIFA seems determined to do something; on Wednesday it “charged” Suarez with biting.
The fact that Suarez has bitten guys twice before, and was allowed to play in this competition —and all competitions for club and country in the buildup to Brazil 2014 — argues further against a ban. Biting an opponent is bizarre, but no more a rules infraction than elbows to the face or, in Valencia’s case, studs-up tackles over the ball.
One final word and let’s reserve it for Italy’s own King of Capers, Chiellini. Thick was the irony that he played the foil here. The Italians are futbol’s champion practitioners of win-at-all-costs gamesmanship — a mantle they share with Argentina, which, of course, was settled largely by Italian emigres. Chiellini pushes the limits of this dark genius further than any of the current Azzurri. I wish FIFA kept records for the number of times players are whacked in the chest, inadvertently or otherwise, and fall to the ground clutching their faces. Chiellini would lead the category.
So yeah: Suarez bit another guy. The ref didn’t see it. It was Chiellini, which seems fitting. Next game, please.
