Warner Still Can’t Find the Right Words
What an odious little man Jack Warner is.
One would have thought that the years he has spent as a FIFA vice president and as president of CONCACAF would have seen him rise in stature to the level of the positions he occupies.
Unfortunately, he has not.
On Friday night, at a gala dinner celebrating the opening of the Galaxy’s new stadium in Carson -- a happy occasion, in other words -- Warner distinguished himself by suggesting that he really did not want to be there, was unhappy at not getting enough recognition, voiced some tasteless remarks and made a pitch for a handout.
All that in the space of a few minutes.
As usual with Warner -- and with FIFA, for that matter -- it was a case of “what’s in it for me?” Let his words speak for themselves:
Explaining how he had been in Nairobi, Kenya, a few days earlier with Trinidad and Tobago’s national team, Warner, who is from Trinidad, told the 1,200 guests that FIFA President Joseph “Sepp” Blatter was unable to attend and had contacted him and told him to come to Carson for the debut of the Home Depot Center.
“He said to me, ‘You have to go. This is your region. You have done this for me several times before. You are the carbon copy of me, Jack.’
“I said to him, ‘President Blatter, I may be the carbon, but not the copy.’ ”
“And as I sat here this evening and I saw person after person being recognized, even my friend from Mexico (Alberto de la Torre, president of the Mexican soccer federation), and not president Blatter’s representative, I said, ‘Jesus Christ, what a carbon I am.’ ”
Unlike other speakers who had only praise for the new complex and for Phil Anschutz, the man whose $150 million financed it, Warner chose the moment to ask that it be made available not only to American athletes but to everyone in the North and Central American and Caribbean (CONCACAF) region.
“To me, this dream of yours will only be a dream for America if you don’t find the way to make this facility affordable for other users in CONCACAF and the FIFA family,” he said. “There is no sense in you being at this level and the others at that level. Because what happens is that the others try to bring you down to their level. What you have to do is bring them up to yours.”
That’s a new twist: If you build it, they will want it. For free.
It is long past the time that CONCACAF rid itself of Warner and his ilk. If the confederation wants respect, it has to begin at the top.
Klinsmann Scores
Pele, understandably, got the most attention among the many soccer celebrities attending Friday night’s bash and did an on-field encore before Saturday’s 2-0 Galaxy victory over the Colorado Rapids. Almost 60, Pele looked in good enough shape to have given either team’s defenders a difficult time.
It was another World Cup winner, Germany’s Juergen Klinsmann, however, who voiced the words Warner should have voiced.
“It’s a real gorgeous facility,” said Klinsmann, who lives in Newport Beach. “A real soccer-specific stadium is what this area has needed for a long time. I think it gives the entire Southern California area a big soccer boost. People now can experience real exciting games in a real soccer atmosphere. It will make them understand what this game is about.”
Lee Stern, who owned the Chicago Sting in the days of the North American Soccer League, was awed by the Home Depot Center.
“This is unbelievable,” he said. “It’s really incredible. I was talking to Lamar Hunt before, and he is absolutely stunned over this. Phil Anschutz has really got to be complimented on what he’s accomplished here.”
Alan Rothenberg, the founder of Major League Soccer, was similarly impressed.
“When we started to create the league, we talked about having to have soccer-specific stadiums,” he said. “But I must say I never imagined it would be as elaborate and fantastic as what Phil has done.”
It was Denver billionaire Anschutz who had the last word Friday night, explaining the persuasive qualities of Tim Leiweke, president of the Anschutz Entertainment Group.
“He’s even convinced me not to carry a wallet anymore,” Anschutz said. “It took me a while to figure out why. Finally it came to me: I have nothing left to carry around in a wallet.”
McBerti’s Moment
Germany, which last won the European Championship in 1996 when Klinsmann was its captain and Berti Vogts was its coach, was tripped up Saturday in its efforts to reach for the next championship, in Portugal in 2004.
Oddly enough, it was Vogts who did the tripping.
Now the coach of struggling Scotland, “McBerti,” as he is known, inspired his team to a 1-1 come-from-behind tie against Germany in Glasgow. Fredi Bobic gave the Germans the lead, but Kenny Miller pulled the Scots level 20 minutes from the end.
“It was a great performance from my team,” Vogts said. “I told the players, ‘Please make history.’ ”
Unheralded Greece certainly did. It upset Spain, 1-0, in Zaragoza, Spain, on a goal just before halftime by Stelios Yiannacopoulos to throw its qualifying group wide open. The main beneficiary of Spain’s loss was Ukraine, which got two goals from AC Milan’s Andriy Shevchenko as it twice came from behind to edge Armenia, 4-3, in Lviv, Ukraine.
In other games involving leading teams, the Netherlands blanked Belarus, 2-0, with Marc Overmars and Patrick Kluivert scoring the goals; Denmark shut out Norway, 1-0, in Copenhagen on a goal by Jesper Groenkjaer, and Turkey took its group lead from England by beating Slovakia, 1-0, in Bratislava, courtesy of a Kahveci Nihat goal.
Elsewhere, Ireland edged Albania, 2-1, in Dublin on a late own goal by Adrian Aliaj, who volleyed the ball into his own net, a la Jeff Agoos, while trying to clear it; Bulgaria managed only a 2-2 home tie with Belgium in Sofia, and Switzerland, playing at home in Basel, squandered a two-goal lead given to it in the first 16 minutes by Alexander Frei and had to settle for a 2-2 tie with Russia, which got two goals from Sergei Ignashevitch.
USA vs. Kiwis
Defender Danny Califf and midfielder Simon Elliott, who helped the defending champion Galaxy to its first victory of the MLS season on Saturday, will hop on a plane this morning and head for Richmond, Va., to join their respective national teams.
Neither Califf nor Elliott are expected to play today, however, when the United States takes on New Zealand in a game (10 a.m. Pacific on ESPN2) pitting the respective champions of CONCACAF and Oceania.
Both players will be on their countries’ FIFA Confederations Cup rosters for the eight-nation event that begins June 18 in France. Today’s match is the final warmup for both teams before they head for Europe.
The Confederations Cup, of course, is another of FIFA’s more dismal ideas and is being treated as such by its host, defending champion France, and by world champion Brazil, neither of which are fielding full-strength teams.
The European attitude to the tournament was expressed by Didier Deschamps, captain of France’s 1998 World Cup-winning team, who, in an interview with L’Equipe, called the tournament “an aberration.”
“The excuse that it’s a big tournament being held in France [and that’s why every player should be available] does not work,” Deschamps said. “It will impair players’ physical health, as they will not have time to recuperate properly [from the season just ended].”
