Heinrichs to Take Over U.S. Women
April Heinrichs, the inspirational captain who led the United States to its first world soccer championship in China in 1991, will be named the next coach of the U.S. women’s national team, sources said.
The formal announcement that Heinrichs, 35, will replace Tony DiCicco and take charge of the reigning world and Olympic champions will be made Tuesday in New York.
The first female player to be inducted into the U.S. National Soccer Hall of Fame, Heinrichs was not among the original four candidates for the position.
U.S. Soccer officials Saturday would not confirm that she had been selected, saying only that a decision would be announced soon.
Originally, Lauren Gregg and Jay Hoffman, assistant coaches under DiCicco, as well as Clive Charles, the University of Portland and U.S. men’s Olympic team coach, and Bobby Howe, U.S. Soccer’s director of coaching, had sought the post.
DiCicco, who stepped aside on Nov. 3 after compiling a 103-8-8 record, recommended Gregg for the job.
But the federation broadened its search to include Heinrichs and John Ellinger, the coach who took the U.S. men’s Under-17 national team to the semifinals of the FIFA Under-17 World Championship in New Zealand in November.
Charles and Gregg had been considered the front-runners for the position, but Charles eventually elected to stay with the Olympic team and not give up his Portland job.
“I’m very happy with what I’m doing here [with the men’s Olympic team],” Charles said Saturday at the Rose Bowl, where his team plays Armenia today at
4 p.m., after the U.S. national team plays Iran.
“Unless I’m told otherwise, I’m the men’s Olympic team coach and quite happy to be the men’s Olympic team coach and to coach the University of Portland men and women.”
Gregg was the most qualified of the candidates, having been assistant coach for a decade and having coached the U.S. Under-21 team to victory in the prestigious Nordic Cup tournaments in 1997 in Denmark and 1999 in Iceland.
When the women’s team this month refused to go to the Australia Cup while embroiled in a salary dispute with U.S. Soccer, Gregg and Hoffman took what was essentially a youth team--average age 19.9 years--and won the tournament over the Czech Republic, Sweden and the host nation.
But they returned Friday to find that neither would be DiCicco’s replacement. Whether either will stay a part of the national team program is problematic.
Heinrichs’ credentials for the post cannot be questioned.
As a player under Coach Anson Dorrance at North Carolina, she led the Tar Heels to three NCAA titles and an 85-3-2 record.
In China in 1991, she was part of what the Chinese media dubbed the “triple-edged sword” that led the U.S. to its first world crown. Michelle Akers was the goal-scorer, Carin Jennings was the creator and Heinrichs was the motivator.
Heinrichs retired from the national team after winning the world championship in 1991, having scored 38 goals in 47 appearances for the U.S.
Since then, she has coached Maryland and Virginia and was an assistant under DiCicco on the 1995 Women’s World Cup team and the 1996 gold medal-winning Olympic team. She has coached the U.S. Under-16 national team since 1997.
Heinrichs, who turns 36 next month, will be coaching players she played alongside in the 1991 tournament in China. Even more daunting, her first assignment will be a match against Norway, the beaten finalist in 1991 and world champion in ‘95, on Feb. 6 at Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
SEE YA, LOTHAR
Major League Soccer in general and the New York/New Jersey MetroStars in particular could do a great deal for their faltering image by telling Lothar Matthaeus to take a hike.
Otherwise, the German national team defender and 1990 World Cup winner will be telling the league and club to do so, further damaging the paper-thin credibility of both.
It is clear that Matthaeus, who turns 39 in March, has no real interest in coming to the United States, despite having signed a lucrative contract with the MetroStars.
The outspoken--not to mention obnoxious-- Bayern Munich player sees it as almost his birthright that he will be Germany’s next national team coach. He’s probably right. But his MLS escapade has nothing to do with helping the game grow in the U.S. and is merely a way to pick up some easy money while vacationing with his girlfriend in New York.
Matthaeus on Friday lambasted the MetroStars for firing coach Bora Milutinovic and then bouncing Charlie Stillitano, the general manager, upstairs to a league position.
“That’s not the way,” Matthaeus said in Munich. “I won’t put up with that. Under these conditions, I have no motivation at all. They can’t take me to New York in handcuffs.
“I’ve been deceived and misled. They can do [that] with others, but not with me. If it’s true what the MetroStars did to Charlie, then the New York chapter is definitely closed for me. But first I have to double-check.”
Matthaeus has trouble written all over him.
Nick Sakiewicz, the MetroStars’ new vice president and general manager, issued a wishy-washy statement on Friday, saying in part: “Once Lothar has a chance to hear the plans that [Coach] Octavio [Zambrano] and I have for the MetroStars and meets us face to face, he will be more motivated than ever to join us on March 10 and be a major part of our upcoming season and its future success.”
Instead, Sakiewicz and team owner Stuart Subotnick should have sent Matthaeus a simple telegram:
Auf Wiedersehen, Lothar.
A few headlines around the world along the lines of “MLS Rejects Matthaeus’ Demands” would signal that the league is serious and not simply a pawn to a player whose ego long ago outstripped his talent.
IT’S CHINESE TO HIM
Reports from Beijing on Saturday indicated that Milutinovic has signed a two-year contract to become China’s national team coach. It will be the fifth country he has coached after Mexico, Costa Rica, the United States and Nigeria.
Galaxy Coach Sigi Schmid, an assistant under Milutinovic on the 1994 U.S. World Cup team, wonders what the Chinese will make of Bora’s curious mixture of six languages.
“Bora and China would be interesting,” Schmid said. “They’d probably understand everything. They probably think he speaks Chinese already.”
The logic behind the move is clear.
With Japan and South Korea co-hosting the 2002 World Cup, they are automatic qualifiers. That leaves it open for China to qualify for the first time, meaning another feather in Milutinovic’s already well-plumed cap.
It might also remove the stigma of his disastrous 7-25 season as coach of the MetroStars.
“National teams is, I think, what he’s strong at at this stage,” Schmid said. “When you get out of the day-to-day club coaching and you go into coaching national teams for as many years as he has, sometimes it’s not the easiest thing to get back into the day-to-day stuff.
“I think Bora, with the rules of the league and everything else, felt handcuffed. And you are handcuffed oftentimes as a coach, so it’s a very difficult situation. But I still think he’s an excellent coach and I think he’ll do an excellent job as a national team coach. It’s just a matter of him finding the right situation.”
KUDOS TO U.S. SOCCER
The legitimate target of criticism for its bumbling ways, U.S. Soccer sometimes does manage to get things right.
There were two recent instances in which praise was deserved.
First, the federation promoted the Mexico-Iran match at Oakland that drew 34,289. Rather than turn such games over to independent promoters, who are clueless, indifferent or both about how to organize such games, U.S. Soccer should continue to stage them itself. Emilio Pozzi and Thom Meredith of the federation’s events staff are more than capable of doing so.
Second, U.S. Soccer correctly rejected the demands of a trouble-seeking fringe group that had sought to get the billboards of a brewery and federation sponsor removed from the sidelines of today’s U.S.-Iran game at the Rose Bowl.
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FIRST HAVANA, THEN MOSCOW
Coach Bruce Arena will be taking the U.S. men’s national team on some intriguing trips in the next 18 months.
Besides a game against Tunisia at Legion Field in Birmingham, Ala., on March 12, the U.S. squad has games against Cuba at Havana in mid-summer, and against Russia at Moscow and South Africa at Johannesburg within the next year.
Throw in next month’s CONCACAF Gold Cup, the U.S. Cup in June, the spate of World Cup 2002 qualifying matches this fall and in the spring of 2001, and the players are going to be racking up the frequent-flyer miles.
QUICK PASSES
Akers and Kasey Keller are the deserving winners of U.S. Soccer’s Chevrolet athlete-of-the-year awards, announced Saturday in Pasadena.
Akers, the inspiration behind the U.S. women’s World Cup victory last summer, also won the honor in 1990 and 1991. Keller, who also won in 1997, led the U.S. to third place in the FIFA Confederations Cup in Mexico, now plays for Rayo Vallecano in Spain and is widely regarded as one of the top goalkeepers in the world.
The youth-player-of-the-year awards were won by women’s world champion Lorrie Fair, 21, of North Carolina, and MLS champion Ben Olsen, 22, of Washington D.C. United, respectively.
Corinthians of Brazil won the inaugural FIFA World Club Championship, defeating fellow Brazilian club Vasco da Gama, 4-3 on penalty kicks after a scoreless tie at Rio de Janeiro. Necaxa of Mexico finished third and Real Madrid of Spain fourth.
Mia Hamm was named the top women’s player of the century by the International Federation of Football History and Statistics, edging out Akers, Heidi Mohr of Germany, Carolina Morace of Italy, Sissi of Brazil and Linda Medalen of Norway. The men’s award was won by Pele, followed by Johan Cryuff of the Netherlands and Franz Beckenbauer of Germany.
D.C. United named former Canadian national team player Frank Yallop, 35, as assistant coach under Thomas Rongen. He replaces Dave Sarachan, now a U.S. national team assistant. . . . Zambrano, the former Galaxy coach, named Juan Carlos Osorio, 38, of Colombia and Ken Pollard, 34, of Wales as his assistant coaches with the MetroStars. Both are Southern Connecticut State graduates.
U.S. world champions Hamm and Brandi Chastain will be assistant coaches on opposite sides of the field at the women’s college all-star game at Fort Lauderdale on Feb. 5. North Carolina and former U.S. national team coach Anson Dorrance will coach the East squad, with Hamm as his assistant. The West team will be coached by Santa Clara’s Jerry Smith, with Chastain, his wife, as his assistant. . . . The West team includes defender Kylie Bivens of Upland, midfielder Nikki Serlenga of San Diego and forwards Mandy Clemens of San Diego and Janine Harispe of La Canada.
Dr. Michel D’Hooghe, vice president of FIFA and chairman of FIFA’s Sports Medical Committee; Keith Cooper, FIFA’s director of communications; and Marcelo Bielsa, Argentina’s national team coach, will be panelists at a Futbol de Primera sports symposium in Miami as part of the ninth annual Honda player-of-the-year awards ceremony Feb. 13.
