No Holding Back at This Forum
As society in general and sports in particular sink deeper into a cesspool of marketing gimmicks and public relations lies, one man is taking a stand.
Alex Gutman, a 38-year-old Argentine journalist from Buenos Aires and founder of the immensely popular “Futbol de Primera” radio show, hasn’t resorted to screaming “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore” from the rooftops, a la the Peter Finch character in “Network,” but he feels much the same way.
As a result, he has done something about it.
Gutman has created a soccer symposium, to be held Dec. 14 at the Beverly Hilton hotel, where honesty and forthrightness will be the bywords. A symposium from which the twin devils of political correctness and spin doctoring will be banished.
At the event, which will precede the annual Honda U.S. player-of-the-year awards luncheon, two former U.S. national team coaches, Bora Milutinovic and Steve Sampson, will be expected to speak their minds and damn the consequences.
Similarly, Bert Mandelbaum, the U.S. national team doctor, is supposed to offer some insight into health and safety concerns in the game, and Roberto Armas, president of Guatemala’s national team committee, is to talk about the competition gap within CONCACAF.
“I wanted to give the personalities in soccer a forum [in which] to say something with content, something with substance,” Gutman said. “As a journalist for the last 10 or 12 years, I know that most of the time the best things are said off the record.
“I wanted to create an ambience, an atmosphere, where soccer personalities can show not only how much they know but what they really think.
“This is more or less the opposite of what they [soccer’s powers that be] are trying to sell us most of the time. I want them [the four panelists] to say what they really think.”
Gutman, whose radio show, with co-host Andres Cantor, is carried by more than 40 stations in the United States, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Costa Rica, as well as on the Internet, has spent hours on the telephone with all four speakers, who will be given half an hour each to make whatever points they wish.
“I don’t care if it’s controversial or not,” Gutman said, “as long as it’s something that they really believe. They are free to say whatever they want, as long as it’s honest. This is not a public relations situation.”
Nor is it inexpensive to stage. Gutman, who purposely avoided having the event sponsored this year although that might be a possibility in future years, is believed to have sunk more than $50,000 into the venture.
“It’s a lot of money, a lot of money,” he said. “But this is a way, like the Americans say, of putting your money where your mouth is. I really believe that.”
The symposium is not open to the public but has attracted soccer journalists, players, coaches and officials from throughout North and Central America. FIFA is sending a crew from its London-based television show to cover the event.
“The main thing I want from this is to create an ambience where people feel that it’s an honest situation, that this is a contribution for soccer,” Gutman said. “This is a way of showing that there are other ways to improve soccer in this country.”
Gutman believes that soccer’s leaders in this country are doing everything they can to win over sponsors and television executives and other such folk while ignoring the sport’s real constituency, those he calls “the soccer people.”
“I want them to embrace everybody in the soccer community, instead of always trying to reach the stupid people or the people who don’t know soccer,” he said. “The rest of the world has no confidence in U.S. soccer [because style has been placed before substance].”
Sampson’s topic is “U.S. soccer: perception vs. reality,” which gives him the opportunity to explode some myths, if he so chooses. Sampson, in retrospect unfairly, took the brunt of the blame for the U.S. World Cup failure in France. He has the chance in this symposium to show how it should have been doled out differently.
Milutinovic, whose wealth of soccer knowledge is often obscured by the word and personality games he delights in playing, has the opportunity to show that there is more to him than smoke and mirrors. National team preparation is his topic, and since he is the only person to have coached four countries to the second round of the World Cup, his insights could be invaluable if he shares them.
Gutman might be optimistic in believing that the symposium should be “like having a coffee with friends.” The presence of journalists is likely to restrain the four speakers from completely baring their soccer souls and secrets.
But the former Fulbright scholar is smart enough to know that if his symposium can start people talking about the issues that matter in soccer--for instance, why the U.S. is not producing better players--as opposed to making broad promises that cannot possibly be kept about winning the World Cup by 2010, he will have made an invaluable contribution to the sport’s growth in this country.
And for that, he should be applauded.
PLAYER OF THE YEAR
The three candidates for Honda’s U.S. player-of-the-year award are Galaxy winger Cobi Jones, Leicester City goalkeeper Kasey Keller and Washington D.C. United defender Eddie Pope.
Keller, based solely on his astonishing performance in shutting out Brazil in the CONCACAF Gold Cup in February, should emerge the winner. He is a finalist for the third year in a row.
Pope won in 1997 and is unlikely to make it two in a row. Jones is a first-time finalist and local favorite. But voting is done nationally by more than 200 soccer writers and broadcasters.
Jones could walk away with the new car, but even he would agree that Keller is a more deserving winner.
