It’s All Fun, No Games -- Yet
Within sight of Athens, Joy Fawcett took her three daughters, along with teammate Shannon MacMillan, on an aerial tram ride through the tropical rain forest.
Only four victories shy of a place in the Olympic Games, Aly Wagner and most of the rest of the U.S. women’s national team went white-water rafting down the Rio Reventazon.
With crucial qualifying games only days away, Shannon Boxx and Christie Rampone set off on a three-hour trek to see just how active Arenal, Costa Rica’s most active volcano, actually is.
Ignoring for the moment the chance to turn the silver of Sydney, Australia, into the gold of Greece, Mia Hamm, Catherine Reddick and Lindsay Tarpley did an “Olympic Goddesses” fashion shoot for Glamour magazine.
What is going on here?
Are the U.S. women on vacation in Central America or are they focused on the task at hand?
A little of both, as it turns out.
No one seriously expects the Americans not to reach the Olympics. The 10-day CONCACAF qualifying tournament that begins in Costa Rica this week is a formality, a tune-up, not a test.
The U.S. plays first-round games against Trinidad and Tobago on Wednesday, Haiti on Friday and Mexico on Sunday. After that is a semifinal March 3, when a victory would secure a place in Athens.
The only team in the eight-nation event that could pose a problem is Canada, but the Canadians are expected to sweep through their first-round group that includes Costa Rica, Jamaica and Panama.
As a result, the two North American powers are unlikely to play each other until the March 5 final, when both already will have qualified.
The lack of competition within CONCACAF will not help the U.S. prepare for the likes of world champion Germany or runner-up Sweden when August arrives.
On the plus side, however, once having put qualifying behind her, U.S. Coach April Heinrichs can take her team to the Algarve Cup in Portugal in March knowing that the only hurdle ahead of her is roster selection.
Heinrichs has 20 players in Costa Rica but will be allowed to take only 18 to Greece.
Intriguingly, neither of the players who scored the gold-medal-winning goals at the 1999 Women’s World Cup and the 1996 Atlanta Olympics -- Brandi Chastain and Tiffeny Milbrett, respectively -- are with the squad.
Whether either or both will be back for the Olympics, and, if so, just whose place they will take, will be one of the stories of the coming months.
If You Build It ...
The 1-year-old, $150-million national training center sits empty in Carson while the U.S. women are training in Costa Rica and the Galaxy flies off to the south of France to prepare for the upcoming Major League Soccer season.
Makes one wonder, doesn’t it?
Rocks and Hard Places
Joseph “Sepp” Blatter, FIFA’s president, wants to revive the FIFA World Club Championship and has persuaded his cronies at world soccer’s governing body to go along with the plan.
Last week, FIFA announced in Zurich, Switzerland, that Japan had been selected to stage the six-team event in 2005 and 2006. It would feature the champion clubs of each of FIFA’s six continental confederations.
CONCACAF, long a FIFA lapdog, immediately eagerly praised the plan.
“This will give the winner of our own Champion’s Cup the opportunity to play against the best in the world every year, in a format that no longer overburdens the champion club of any confederation,” said American Chuck Blazer, CONCACAF’s general secretary.
But on the two continents where soccer is taken seriously, Blatter was resoundingly criticized for cluttering the calendar with yet another unnecessary tournament.
In Europe, the leading clubs said they were against the idea and wanted no part of it.
On Saturday, South America’s soccer confederation said that it did not think much of the plan, which will see the 44-year-old Intercontinental Cup scrapped.
Since 1960, the champions of Europe and South America have played each other -- initially in a two-game, home-and-home series and later in a single game in Tokyo each December -- in what was widely, albeit unofficially, regarded as a world championship.
Now, FIFA’s plan calls for the champions of Africa, Asia, CONCACAF and Oceania to get into the act, as part of an annual eight-day, seven-match tournament to be played each December.
The Copa Libertadores winner from South America and the European Champions Cup winner would get byes into the semifinals.
No, said Paraguay’s Nicolas Leoz, president of CONMEBOL, South America’s confederation.
“We are not prepared to negotiate or enlarge our European-South American Cup,” Leoz said in a letter sent to Sweden’s Lennart Johansson, president of UEFA, European soccer’s governing body.
“We have always defended it and we have been competing for it without interruption since the year 1960 with ever-increasing success.... In no way do we plan to give up what is well established and forms an important part of our history.”
Europe’s rejection of FIFA’s idea was equally unequivocal.
“The European clubs’ party line on this is unanimous,” England’s David Dein, vice chairman of English Premier League leader Arsenal, told Reuters.
“We agreed on Tuesday [at a meeting of the 102-member European Clubs Forum] in Barcelona that any such world championship for clubs is ill-conceived and detrimental to the domestic calendar.
“All the clubs ... agreed with this point of view and there was no support for any world championship whatsoever.”
FIFA’s response to this was typically arrogant and high-handed, a hallmark of Blatter’s regime.
“We have taken note of that, but it does not reflect the opinion of the UEFA executive committee who agree with the proposal,” said FIFA spokesman Marcus Siegler.
The battle lines, it seems, are drawn, and the eventual outcome is anything but a foregone conclusion.
