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US roster finally deserving of Best 11 Debate

US roster finally deserving of Best 11 Debate

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments

If you’re searching for a meaningful measure of the progress American soccer has shown to date, look no further than the Best 11 Debate. This is the time-honored parlor game enjoyed by the denizens of actual soccer nations, whereby headstrong fans and observers argue as to exactly who should start, and where. You got Satellite Radio? Tune in to Sirius 126 and listen to 606, from the BBC’s Radio 5: hundreds of fans calling in from all over the U.K., gabbing on, mostly intelligently, about how Gerrard and Lampard must learn to play together, or not.

America has now qualified for six straight World Cups, but I’d argue that this year’s tournament — beginning Friday, June 11 in South Africa (Saturday’s the day for the U.S. opener, vs. England) — is the first one that allows American fans to indulge in such banter. Why? Because until this particular quadrennial, the Yanks simply didn’t have the options necessary for debate.

We were lucky to have 11 international-standard players for each position.

In 2010, we do. We have more than that, actually, which is requisite for arguments re. who should play and who should sit. For long-time observers of the national team, this is something of a revelation. Coach Bob Bradley even left some quite serviceable players at home, as WC rosters can only number 23.

You’ll not hear any idle banter from this quarter. The U.S. can and should get out of its group. It might get lucky and win a Round-of-16 match and earn its second Quarterfinal in 8 years. That, in itself, would be an extraordinary achievement.

But I’ll say now that American progress is already clear, to me. The choices at Bob Bradley’s disposal speak eloquently to this point.

Okay, so here is my Best 11, and how I’d line them up — from the strikers back to keeper:

Jozy Altidore                                    Clint Dempsey

Michael Bradley

Jose Francisco Torres                                                            Landon Donovan

Ricardo Clark

Carlos Bocanegra                                                                        Steve Cherundolo

Clarence Goodson                            Jay Demerit

Tim Howard

Torres, whose parentage gave him the opportunity to play for either Mexico or the United States (and he did play some under-23 matches for El Tri), is the late-emerging wild card here. Bradley didn’t feature him in many qualifiers, not at all in games that mattered actually. But he plays in the Mexican first division for Puebla (he’ll move to Pachuca in the fall) and he was the best player on the pitch, for my money, during the Yanks’ 2-1 win over Turkey in Philadelphia on May 29, the day before the U.S. left for South Africa. He held the ball with real cool and tackled with surety and fierceness. Some would like to see him at defensive midfielder, in place of Clark, and even though stature shouldn’t matter at this position (think Claude Makelele for Chelsea, and France), at 5’5” and 136 pounds, I do wonder about Torres holding his own in the middle of the pitch against a team like England.

Jose Francisco Torres, born in Longview, Texas

That’s why I like him on the left. He can play more centrally and defensively, as his opposite, Donovan, is sure to be roaming forward much of the time. Indeed, with Torres cheating in a bit more centrally to support the midfield — and hold the ball, something we need more of — Clark can cheat a bit right. All this frees Bradley to go forward, as well.

Is this the team that will start vs. England June 11. Doubtful. Bradley seems content to play Dempsey and Donovan as wing midfielders. Edson Buddle scored twice vs. Australia in the final WC tune-up on Saturday; if Dempsey’s at midfield, Buddle should start (Altidore has turned an ankle but reports indicate he’ll be ready for the English). I’d rather get Torres on the field and sacrifice Buddle, but I’m not in charge… One gets the impression that Onyewu will start vs. England, and he is our best central defender when healthy. But I don’t think he’s healthy. How could he be? He wasn’t fit enough to play a single game for AC Milan this spring. I’d leave him out vs. England, a game we can afford to lose, in hopes that he is fit for Slovenia and Algeria.

But the presence of Buddle and Goodson and Torres is a luxury we’ve not had before. It’s a luxury for Coach Bradley, and a luxury for us fans. Without choices, the Best 11 gambit is a non-starter, so to speak.

We’ve not even discussed Stu Holden, who could just as easily claim a spot at right midfield, push Landon to the left and Dempsey up front; or Maurice Edu, a starter in defensive midfield for Rangers (one of the two elite teams in Scotland), who may well be better than Clark but isn’t as quick, and Bradley seems to sense, rightly in my view, that our defensive four (other than Cherundolo) is a bit plodding; or Jonathan Spector, a starting defender for West Ham United in the English top flight.

To me, Spector’s case speaks volumes: In World Cups past, if there was an American starting for a Premiership side, he was in the Best 11. Full-stop, no questions asked. As it happens, Spector might be our sixth-choice defender out of seven on the WC 2010 roster.

That, my friends, is progress.

Soccer’s own Encinitas Man to contribute WC 2010 reports

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments

 

The curious, inspirational story of Dieter “Dee” Schmidt first came to the soccer world’s attention some four ago when his frozen but otherwise well preserved body — clad in nothing but a vintage Paul Breitner Bayern Munich jersey, impossibly bell-bottomed jeans and a pair of antique adidas Sambas — was recovered, thanks to a freakish January thaw, from a towering ice and garbage heap on the outskirts of Churchill, Manitoba, Canada.

Still encased in a sarcophagus of blue ice, Schmidt’s corpus crystalline was quickly air-lifted by provincial authorities to St. Anne’s Medical Center in Winnipeg, where doctors discovered his heart still functioning at some 3 beats per minute — less than half that of a black bear in hibernation. Incrementally, over course of two weeks, Schmidt’s body temperature was increased. Intravenous nourishment was introduced on Day 10, and for another week thereafter he was placed in a medically induced coma to avoid further metabolic complications.

Schmidt awoke from his coma Feb. 6, 2006, and later that day was chatting amiably with doctors — about his admiration for Johann Neeskens, his plans to attend the upcoming World Cup in Germany, and his regret that England had not qualified. When told by a soccer-informed orderly at St. Anne’s that England had indeed qualified for that summer’s World Cup, besting Poland to win its group, Schmidt pointedly differed. “Dude, you’ve got it backwards,” he was reported as saying. “Poland qualified at England’s expense. I listened to the BBC broadcast myself, on my bud’s ham radio.”

Of course, Poland had qualified instead of England for the World Cup — the 1974 World Cup.

The tale Schmidt eventually told of his postponed demise continues, some four years on, to stun the North American medical community while fascinating hardcore football fans worldwide. Schmidt claims to have traveled to northern Manitoba from his native San Diego in December 1973, via Toronto, to attend the Inuit Futsal Invitational, an obscure event on Canada’s indoor soccer calendar during the mid-1970s; the event was last held in 1978.

According to reports in the Winnipeg Star-Journal, Schmidt recalls venturing out of doors one evening to “smoke some grass” with members of a visiting club from Vancouver following Burnaby FC’s win in the tournament semifinal. That’s the last thing he remembers, though Schmidt claims the cannabis to have been “wicked potent” — potent enough, he surmises, to have put him to sleep in a nearby snow bank.

Star-Journal research on the Inuit Futsal Invitation shows the ‘73 final to have been postponed 24 hours due to a heavy winter storm that dropped more than two meters of snow on Churchill in less than 18 hours.

Schmidt would be reported missing in January 1974; archival records kept at the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office show a series of inquiries and all-points bulletins related to Dieter’s disappearance — including a formal provincial inquest conducted in Toronto, his last known whereabouts — but the case was officially abandoned, unsolved, on July 11, 1982, the same day Paolo Rossi scored the last of his Golden Boot-winning six goals in a 3-1 win over West Germany, earning the Italians their first World Cup.

•••

Schmidt asserts (and Star-Journal investigations have confirmed) that he was born on July 12, 1952 in Long Beach, Calif., the only child of Franz Schmidt (an Austrian national and president of the Hubert Vogelsinger Fan Club/Encinitas Chapter, 1972-81) and Helen Fahey Schmidt, a novelist and native of Long Beach.

Mr. Schmidt died of a heart attack following Austria’s elimination from World Cup qualifying, 0-3 to Hungary, on April 17, 1985. Mrs. Schmidt passed away in 1992, of natural causes.

By his telling, the first 21 years of Dee’s life reveal him to be his father’s son, a middling player but an enormously committed fan who, despite the underdeveloped state of American soccer in the 1960s and ‘70s, lived and breathed the beautiful game and traveled the breadth of North America to see it. He claims:

• to have attended, with his dad, the 1967 United Soccer Association final at L.A.’s Memorial Coliseum (“A classico, man. Wolves [Los Angeles] beat the Whips [Washington] in OT, 6-5, on Ally Shewan’s own goal”);

• to have witnessed Pele’s U.S. soccer debut (a 1-0 Santos victory over A.C. Milan, in Boston, part the Rossinieri’s four-match tour of the U.S. in June 1970 — “Milan lost all four games of that tour, dude. It was sad.”);

• to have traveled to St. Louis in May 1972 to watch the U.S. Olympic team beat Jamaica, 2-1, earning the Yanks’ first Olympic berth since 1960.

Then a sophomore at San Diego State University and completely tapped out, Dieter couldn’t swing a trip to Munich for the 1972 Olympic finals — a fact that made him all the more determined to attend the World Cup finals, in West Germany, two years later.

In the end, Dee’s grand plans were foiled by a perfect storm of ill-fated events:

• his trip to Toronto in December 1973, where he failed to convince Metros striker Bruno Pilas to sign the no. 9 jersey Schmidt had nicked the previous July from a visitors’ locker room in Rochester (“Total waste of time. He was back in Croatia.”);

• his spontaneous decision to attend the Inuit tournament with a group of indigenous Canadians he befriended in a Bloor Street pub;

• his longstanding weakness for the kind bud;

• and his Southern Californian ignorance of just how dangerous it can be to nap outdoors so close to the Arctic Circle.

Still, it’s difficult not applaud and marvel at Dee Schmidt’s extraordinary metabolism, his love of football and his time-capsule knowledge of the soccer world leading up to the German’s first turn as World Cup host.

Four years ago, when doctors indicated a full recovery was expected, I resolved to confirm his extraordinary story and get to know this real-life, football-loving Encinitas Man. That began in 2007, and I’ve spent the last three years in fairly regular contact with Dee, helping him interpret the modern world as best I can and marveling at his singular outlook on and impressions of modern soccer.

Dee is now a friend, but this chummy association does not hide the fact that his is a keen, bristling soccer mind by any measure. He’s not a bad writer either. Accordingly, I’ve asked our own Miles Monroe to blog on this year’s World Cup from his singular perspective, and I will share his musings, alongside my own, in this space going forward.

Stay tuned to this space for Dee’s introductory effort, and please excuse his Ricky Henderson-like habit of referring to himself in the third person. Trust me, it’s not any sort of megalomania. After all he’s been through, we can hardly blame him for stepping back and observing his own life with a genuine and quite wondrous sense of detachment. Welcome back, Dee.

Hal Phillips, 26 May 2010