A Glimpse of the Future
It’s not every day you can attend a soccer symposium and hear the words “elephant” and “e-mail” used in the same sentence.
Danny Jordaan, the man who won South Africa the right to stage the World Cup in 2010, managed that feat Monday in Beverly Hills while explaining why the tournament six years away would be different from all others.
“You can watch Colombia versus Guatemala, and a half-hour later you can walk among the lions and the elephants and then go back to your hotel room and send your e-mails,” Jordaan said.
His audience at the seventh annual Honda Symposium got the point. There will be soccer, there will be some very interesting African scenery, and, contrary to fears or misapprehensions, the infrastructure and technology will be every bit as First World as anything produced by Korea-Japan 2002 or even Germany 2006.
“By 2010, FIFA wants moving pictures on your mobile phone,” Jordaan added, explaining that world soccer’s governing body wants fans to be able to call up World Cup matches on their video cellphones.
Far-fetched?
No more far-fetched than the dreams of the second of Monday’s featured speakers, Mexican businessman Jorge Vergara, whose soccer empire now extends to three countries -- Guadalajara in Mexico, Saprissa in Costa Rica and Chivas USA in Los Angeles.
It is the potential of Chivas USA once it begins play in Major League Soccer next season that has Vergara speaking in superlatives.
“We are convinced we are in a market with the greatest soccer future in the world,” he said. “We are going to be an example to MLS of what can be done with soccer in the USA.”
Vergara, who spent millions of dollars acquiring the rights to operate a team in MLS and then fought long and hard -- and paid dearly -- to put it in Los Angeles with the Galaxy, said he wanted to “start a rivalry and a passion” in a league that all too often lacks that edge.
“We’re not going to come and invent the wheel,” he said, adding that he believed the team could break even financially in its first season and then begin “to recoup the investment” in the following years.
“I know the Galaxy are concerned and worried about Chivas USA, and they should be worried,” he said as Galaxy officials in the audience bristled.
“Money is not the objective, it’s a consequence,” Vergara said, voicing a notion that Jordaan, sitting nearby, might have found foreign.
According to Jordaan, South Africa “needs to generate $3 billion out of the event” to satisfy FIFA and replenish its coffers, as the World Cup does every four years.
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On the field, South Africa has six years in which to put together a national team that can be competitive in 2010, and that work has to begin now on the younger levels, Jordaan said, because the average age of World Cup players is 28.
“We must qualify for the World Cup in 2006,” he said. “Our Olympic team must qualify for the Beijing Games in 2008, and our under-20 team must qualify for the next FIFA World Youth Championship” in the Netherlands in 2005.
Since South Africa’s 2010 prospects rest with players now 16 to 24 years old, Jordaan listened attentively to two other speakers, Jairo Quintero Trujillo, president of South American champion Once Caldas of Colombia, and Jesus Martinez Patino, president of Pachuca, Mexico’s oldest club, founded in 1901.
Both men were honored by Futbol de Primera, which put on the symposium, for the extensive work their clubs have done in building youth soccer academies -- Pachuca has 127 soccer schools, five of them in the U.S. -- and using the sport to improve their respective communities.
Once Caldas will do even more for its hometown, the Colombian city of Manizales, if it defeats European champion FC Porto of Portugal on Dec. 12 in Yokohama, Japan, in the annual Intercontinental Cup between the winners of the European Cup and the Copa Libertadores.
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San Jose Earthquake midfielder Landon Donovan, PSV Eindhoven winger DaMarcus Beasley and Fulham and former UCLA defender Carlos Bocanegra were named finalists for Futbol de Primera’s Honda Player of the Year award.
Donovan has won the award each of the last two years, picking up a new car each time. His future with the Earthquakes and, indeed, in MLS, is once again the subject of intense speculation.
In a halftime segment during ESPN2’s coverage of the San Jose-Kansas City playoff game, former U.S. striker Eric Wynalda questioned Donovan about reports that he might be returning to Bayer Leverkusen, the German Bundesliga club that owns his rights.
“Absolutely, I’d be ready for Europe,” Donovan replied. “It would be a challenge. People that know me know that I want to be happy, and whether that means being here or there, it doesn’t matter to me, really.
“I’ll kind of go with the flow and whatever comes about. If it is that I go to Germany, then I’ll make the most of it. If I stay here, then I’ll be happy as well.”
Meanwhile, according to Wynalda’s ears-to-the-ground sidekick, play-by-play announcer Rob Stone, it appears two other U.S. internationals will be heading in the opposite direction -- back to the U.S. from Europe.
Stone reported that Real Salt Lake is very interested in acquiring goalkeeper Kasey Keller from Tottenham Hotspur in England, where he has become the backup to England’s Paul Robinson after starting for two years, and former Galaxy striker Clint Mathis from Hannover 96 in Germany, where he also has been banished to the bench after a run-in with Coach Ewald Lienen.
