MLS Schedule Has Obstacle in Qualifying
There are two dates on the soccer calendar in the next week that should be of more than passing interest to U.S. fans.
The first is Wednesday, when the U.S. national team plays Barbados in a World Cup 2002 qualifying game that, in theory, is a mere formality.
Coach Bruce Arena’s team needs a victory--or a loss at home by Guatemala to Costa Rica that same day--to assure itself a place in the next round. Considering that the Americans beat Barbados, 7-0, in August, anything less than a victory is unlikely. Not impossible, just unlikely.
That would bring into play the second date, Sunday. That’s when the actual matchups for the final qualifying round will be determined.
So far, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico and Trinidad and Tobago are through to the final six. They are expected to be joined by the U.S. and Costa Rica, with three of the six qualifying for the Japan/South Korea World Cup in 2002.
It is not only Arena and his players who are anxious to know who they will play when and where next year, it’s also Major League Soccer.
MLS cannot fashion its 2001 schedule until the national team’s program is finalized. As it is, the league has all sorts of scheduling problems to overcome.
Assuming Barbados is safely disposed of, the U.S. will play 10 qualifying games next year, five at home and five away. The series begins in February and runs until November.
The first and last games will not impact MLS, but the intervening eight certainly will. The league’s task will be to arrange its schedule so that the impact on clubs losing players--not only Americans but foreign players--to national team commitments will be minimized.
Helping in that task will be the fact that MLS has decided to shorten its season, cutting the number of games played by each team from 32 to 28. That is still not going to be enough to prevent what happened this year from happening again.
The MLS playoffs still are likely to collide with the baseball playoffs and start of the NFL season. At least there won’t be an Olympic Games competing for attention, as in 2000, but MLS Commissioner Don Garber has made it plain that he expects to see attendance rise after falling this season to an average of 13,756 from 1999’s average of 14,282.
NO DECISIONS YET
It has been almost a month since the Tampa Bay Mutiny and Dallas Burn fired coaches Tim Hankinson and Dave Dir, but neither club has yet replaced them.
So far, Bill Manning, Tampa Bay’s general manager, has interviewed former New York/New Jersey MetroStar coach Alfonso Mondelo, U.S. under-17 national team Coach John Ellinger, former University of Tampa and University of South Florida coach Jay Miller and D.C. United assistant Frank Yallop.
Manning said he has about half a dozen other candidates to talk to before he narrows the field to two or three.
Mondelo also is a candidate in Dallas, where former San Jose Earthquake assistant Jorge Espinoza, Mexico women’s national team Coach Leonardo Cuellar, former Mexico national team striker Hugo Sanchez, Chicago Fire assistant Mike Jeffries, Colorado Rapids assistant Rene Miramontes and Southern Methodist Coach Schellas Hyndman also are in the running.
Both teams want their new coach on board before the NCAA finals Dec. 8-10.
THE FINAL THREE
No matter how much MLS will try to spin the tale, the decision to cut the number of foreign players per team from four to three was not made solely to help American players.
It was done to save a dollar, the same reason cutting the schedule to 28 games was decided upon and the same reason that rosters have been trimmed from 20 to 19 players.
The move could backfire quite easily if the quality of play dips a notch too. And if MLS contests that point, it must admit that the fourth foreign player on each team was a bad acquisition by the league, which signs all players under its single-entity format.
If the quality of play falls, attendance will fall. It is clear that if U.S. fans wanted to see only U.S. players, collegiate soccer would draw more fans and attract more media attention than it does.
MLS is going down the wrong road here. In 1996, the league’s inaugural season, most of the excitement was generated by the arrival of such legitimate foreign stars as Marco Etcheverry, Carlos Valderrama and Jorge Campos.
The only way MLS can salvage anything out of this is to make sure that the three international players on each team are of better quality overall than the four who were there before. That means dipping into its pocket and signing some new talent.
Locally, the Galaxy finds itself in an enviable situation. Its four foreigners are Simon Elliott (New Zealand), Mauricio Cienfuegos (El Salvador), Luis Hernandez (Mexico) and Ezra Hendrickson (St. Vincent and the Grenadines).
But because Cienfuegos now holds a green card as a resident alien, he is exempt from the MLS ruling. Hence, the Galaxy does not have to cut any of the four.
AROUND THE CORNER
The Galaxy is on vacation until Dec. 5, after which the club will start training again--not only for the 2001 season but for a significant competition before then.
The eight-team CONCACAF Champions Cup will be played “in the greater Los Angeles area” Jan. 16-21, according to CONCACAF, which controls soccer in North and Central America and the Caribbean.
In addition to the Galaxy, the tournament will feature D.C. United; Olimpia and Real Espana, both of Honduras; Alajuelense of Costa Rica; Toluca and Pachuca, both of Mexico, and a to-be-determined Caribbean club.
The top two finishers in the tournament will qualify for the second FIFA World Club Championship, to be played in Spain from July 30-Aug. 12 next year.
If both MLS teams make it through, that will really cause the league’s schedule-makers a problem.
