Off and Running for World Cup 2002
A long and tortuous journey began Saturday, one that will not end until June 30, 2002.
It began in Port of Spain, Trinidad, and will conclude in front of what is sure to be a sellout crowd of 70,718 at Yokohama International Stadium in the Japanese port city.
World Cup 2002 is underway.
Saturday was the first day of qualifying play, which will take 632 days and consist of as many as 809 matches involving 195 countries.
Only the co-hosts, Japan and South Korea, and the defending champion, France, automatically qualify. Twenty-nine other places are up for grabs.
Trinidad and Tobago got the ball rolling by shutting out the Netherlands Antilles, 5-0, in the opening match.
The first goal of the 2002 qualifying tournament was scored by Marvin Andrews, whose 19th-minute strike at Haseley Crawford Stadium in Port of Spain put the home team on course for victory in its first game under new Coach Ian Porterfield.
In Saturday’s only other game, Honduras beat visiting Nicaragua, 3-0, in San Pedro Sula.
The United States enters the fray in early September.
HAIR TODAY, GONE TOMORROW
Bermuda’s World Cup 2002 campaign begins today with a game against the British Virgin Islands in Tortola.
That caused the first spat in qualifying play. It seems dreadlocked foreigners are not welcome in the British Virgin Islands, so Clyde Best, the Bermuda federation’s technical director, had to take action.
“We don’t have any players with dreadlocks, but there are a couple with pony tails,” said Best, who long ago played for the Portland Timbers in the North American Soccer League.
“They will just have to get them cut off.”
Ah, the perils of Cup play.
CLUB VERSUS COUNTRY
One of the most vexing issues facing international soccer is its lack of a unified calendar. There is an almost constant tug of war between clubs and national teams over the availability of players.
The clubs, especially the rich and powerful ones, argue that they are paying the players’ hefty salaries and therefore should have first call on their services.
The national teams argue that it should be an honor to represent one’s country and that being called up to the national team raises a player’s profile and therefore helps the clubs.
In years such as this, with the twin demands of World Cup 2002 qualifying and the Sydney Olympic Games, the issue comes to a full boil.
It affects every league, even Major League Soccer, where Washington D.C. United, for example, will lose more than half its roster to various World Cup and Olympic commitments during parts of the MLS season, which begins March 18.
D.C. United features Marco Etcheverry and Jaime Moreno, who will be called up by Bolivia for World Cup duty. It also features U.S. national team players Jeff Agoos, Carlos Llamosa, Eddie Pope, Tom Presthus, Ben Olsen and Richie Williams, who will be called up for U.S. Cup and World Cup qualifying games, not to mention so-called “friendlies.”
D.C. United also has Chris Albright, Antonio Otero and Bobby Convey, prospective U.S. Olympic players.
United Coach Thomas Rongen is going to have to perform roster-juggling miracles to keep his team competitive in 2000.
A FIFA committee that included such former playing greats as Pele, Franz Beckenbauer, Sir Bobby Charlton and Michel Platini has been working for months to devise a harmonized international calendar that is acceptable to all countries, as well as their clubs, also taking into account varying seasons in the different hemispheres. The task is Herculean.
As Pele said: “A calendar can be done, but it’s not too easy.”
Last week, FIFA’s blueprint, which wouldn’t be enacted before 2004, was outlined at Football Expo 2000 in Cannes, France.
It calls for all domestic leagues’ seasons to run from February to November, with a two-month break in July and August. Those two months would be reserved for international competition, such as the World Cup and continental championships.
December and January would be reserved for vacations and preseason training. In all, each calendar year would feature from 62 to 76 playing dates.
To work, the plan requires that all top leagues consist of no more than 18 teams, which immediately puts it in conflict with England’s Premier League and Spain’s top league, which have 20 each.
More troubling is the insistence by UEFA, European soccer’s governing body, that it wants to retain its current August-to-May season.
UEFA speaks for Europe, but an increasingly powerful group known as G14 also is making itself heard. G14 represents the continent’s 14 richest and most powerful clubs such as Manchester United, Real Madrid, AC Milan and Bayern Munich.
Official club games must take priority over international friendly matches, G14 insists. It also argues that clubs should be financially compensated whenever their players are required for national team duty, with 50% of the revenue made by national federations going to the clubs.
The latter proposal has split Europe.
In an interview with Kicker magazine in Germany, Gerhard Aigner, UEFA’s general secretary, called it “mad and absolutely unacceptable.”
“All this is irresponsible and purely egotistical,” he said. “It is typical of an attitude in which private interest prevails over the interest of football as a whole. The only motivation behind it is money.”
Soon after Aigner’s statement, Michel Zen-Ruffinen, FIFA’s general secretary, unexpectedly said national federations are free to compensate clubs for the absences of their players on international duty.
FIFA never had expressed such a view, and it opens a new set of problems, especially for federations with limited financial resources.
Will MLS clubs, for example, suddenly start demanding payment whenever their players don a U.S. jersey?
“The fact everyone has been going in different directions has always created a problem,” Charlton said last month. “At the end of the day, everyone has to give a little.”
There seems little likelihood of that happening any time soon, however, and the squabbles will continue.
FIFA VERSUS IOC
The battle is waged every four years, and there will be no respite this year, apparently.
The International Olympic Committee wants the men’s Olympic soccer tournament to be open to all players. FIFA says that would take away from its quadrennial World Cup and refuses to do so.
The opening shots in the renewed skirmish took place last week.
IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch said he wants FIFA to increase the number of “overage” players it will allow to compete in the Sydney 2000 Games.
Currently, the Olympics feature under-23 teams, with each country allowed to field three overage players. Samaranch wants the limit raised to five or even seven.
Joseph “Sepp” Blatter, FIFA’s president, said there is no chance that such change would take place.
GOLD CUP TOLL
Failure to win the Gold Cup cost two of the 12 competing coaches their jobs.
Rene Simoes, the Brazilian coach under whom Jamaica qualified for the 1998 World Cup--where his players achieved worldwide recognition as the “Reggae Boyz”--stepped down to become technical director with the Brazilian club Flamengo.
Known as “the professor,” Simoes had coached Jamaica since 1994. Under his direction, it became the first team from the English-speaking Caribbean to qualify for the World Cup.
Lately, however, results had not gone Jamaica’s way and Simoes’ decision to leave, one year into a four-year contract, was reaffirmed by a 1-0 loss to Colombia and a 2-1 loss to Honduras in the Gold Cup.
Bertille St Clair, the coach of Trinidad and Tobago, was fired even though he had taken the team to the Gold Cup semifinals, where it lost to eventual champion Canada.
One of those responsible for his firing is Jack Warner, president of CONCACAF. Warner is from Trinidad and Tobago but is supposed to represent all 38 CONCACAF countries. His impartiality wasn’t evident in the ill-considered remark he made about why St Clair was fired.
“Canada was by far one of the weakest teams in the tournament,” Warner said.
