Dispute Won’t Hurt Drive to World Cup
Bruce Arena has been put into an impossible position.
The rock to his one side is the U.S. Soccer Federation, which is demanding that Arena, the national team coach, put together a team to play Trinidad and Tobago in a World Cup qualifying match on Feb. 9 at Port of Spain, Trinidad.
The hard place to his other side are the players on the U.S. national team who have been without a contract for more than two years and are refusing to take the field without a new financial deal.
Both sides are stubborn, and fans are worried that all this will hurt the U.S. chances of qualifying for the 2006 World Cup in Germany. That is plainly nonsense.
The truth is, the U.S. could afford to lose both its Feb. 9 opener and its next match, on the road against Mexico on March 26 or 27, and it still would coast into the World Cup. That’s because of FIFA’s unnecessary generosity toward CONCACAF, under which the top three teams in the North and Central American and Caribbean region qualify and the fourth-place finisher goes into a playoff with Asia’s fifth-place finisher.
All it will take for the U.S. to advance out of the final six-nation group, therefore, is 17 points from 10 games -- gained by five victories at home -- where the Americans have lost only two World Cup qualifiers in the last 20 years -- and a couple of ties on the road.
The Trinidad game might have produced one of those ties, but they can just as easily be gained at, say, Panama and Guatemala. Mexico on the road was always likely to be a loss, so fretting now about qualifying being in jeopardy is off the mark.
The first U.S. home game is March 30 against Guatemala at Birmingham, Ala. That’s when Arena has to have a full-strength team on the field and that’s when a victory is vital.
There still is time to hammer out an agreement. The financial differences involving the two sides are not insurmountable and could easily be bridged via a trio of sold-out friendlies down the road between, say, the U.S. and Mexico in, perhaps, Los Angeles and Chicago and Houston.
So what if the U.S. loses such games?
So what if it is Mexican fans who fill the stadiums? If they provide the promise of future revenue that can end this impasse now, then agree to them and get on with it. But U.S. Soccer doesn’t like the idea, just as it doesn’t like giving up some of its television revenue or some of its stadium signboard revenue.
Disorganized at the best of times, according to insiders, U.S. Soccer would rather play hardball with the sport’s future.
Given that, the players have no choice but to do the same.
Meanwhile, Arena has been forced into the undignified position of having to scramble to locate third- and fourth-string players who don’t belong anywhere near a national team uniform let alone in one.
Those players, who know well their shortcomings, understandably want to play for their country on the one hand, but don’t wish to cross the line drawn by fellow professionals on the other.
Late Sunday, word filtered out that Arena had pulled together a makeshift team.
Today, he will begin a closed-door training camp at the Home Depot Center with a score or more of former Major League Soccer and current A-League players who’s exact number and identity was unknown. No doubt name tags will be handed out so that they can at least identify each other.
It’s a sorry situation and it should never have come to this.
Where the Real Fans Are
The year is barely two weeks old but already Los Angeles-area fans have done themselves proud and also embarrassed themselves.
Week 1: Amazingly, 41,215 fans sat in miserable cold and driving rain through two doubleheaders at the Home Depot Center to watch Mexican teams Club America and Guadalajara compete in the Interliga tournament.
Week 2: Embarrassingly, only 5,942 fans sat in perfectly fine weather through three doubleheaders at the Home Depot Center to watch the U.S. under-20 national team sweep three games and earn a place in the FIFA World Youth Championship in the Netherlands this summer.
The lesson here is plain. In Los Angeles, there are no fair-weather fans.
It’s also clear why three of Chivas USA’s four picks in last week’s MLS draft were Latino players, compared to none of the Galaxy’s five selections.
Freddy Dollars
One of the things fans missed by not coming out to support the under-20s was Freddy Adu, who grows in stature with every game he plays.
He also grows in wealth, earning a Major League Soccer-high $500,000 a year while playing for MLS champion D.C. United.
So what did 15-year-old Adu buy for himself in his first year as a pro?
“To be honest, I don’t know,” Adu said. “I bought stuff for my mom, you know. I got her a car, I got her a Lexus SUV, and I got her a house. But for myself, nothing really.”
Nothing but goodwill wherever he goes, and that’s something money can’t buy.
Drafting a Winner
If a draft can be said to produce a winner, who won last week’s MLS draft?
Not Real Salt Lake, which used the first pick to get Nikolas Besagno. There’s no way a 16-year-old can start and hold his own as a defensive midfielder in this league. He is a project for the future.
Not Chivas USA, which made South Carolina goalkeeper Brad Guzan the second choice so that he can sit on the bench and watch Mexican veteran Martin Zuniga all season.
Certainly not the Galaxy, which had two first-round picks and used them to get defenders Ugo Ihemelu and Troy Roberts, neither of whom is in the same league as Danny Califf or Tyrone Marshall and won’t be for years, if ever.
No, the winner was the Chicago Fire, which got UCLA and U.S. under-20 forward Chad Barrett and Notre Dame defender Jack Stewart of Torrance in the first round and also snapped up U.S. under-20 midfielder Will John of St. Louis University in the second round.
Kansas City Coach Bob Gansler also gets credit for stealing midfielder Sasha Victorine from the Galaxy and getting Trinidad international forward Scott Sealy of Wake Forest. San Jose Earthquake Coach Dominick Kinnear did well trading up and landing Indiana midfielder Danny O’Rourke.
