MLS Goes Backward, All the Way to 1800s
One step forward, one step sideways, one step back. And so on and so forth.
It’s a slow waltz, this business of growing Major League Soccer into a sport that will be embraced in the U.S. rather than simply being tolerated. At times, in fact, it almost seems as if MLS is intent on standing still.
The one step forward in recent seasons has been the building of stadiums. No one can fault the league on that front. If Commissioner Don Garber’s theory follows the movie script -- if you build it they will come -- he might be on the right track.
But they would arrive a darn sight sooner if MLS, whose 11th season opens April 1, started listening to those who have only its best interests at heart.
Bruce Arena is one of those people.
The U.S. men’s national team coach recently told Soccer America magazine that “MLS games are not competitive enough. Not meaningful enough. I’d like to see a mechanism in place that requires that each and every game mean something.”
The league has heard similar complaints before -- from coaches, from players, from the media. But it has failed to respond.
Meanwhile, MLS has taken a sizable step backward by moving the two-time champion San Jose Earthquakes to Houston and then, compounding an already grievous error, giving the team a name that is a slap in the face to every Latino fan in Texas.
Houston 1836?
Por favor.
But first, Arena.
The U.S. coach believes that regular-season games should carry larger financial incentives, that the MLS champion should be the team that compiles the best record in the regular season, and that that champion should be the team that qualifies for the CONCACAF Champions Cup.
The playoffs, he argued, should include all 12 teams, with the top four finishers getting a bye in the first round.
To modify the idea a little, add the nation’s top amateur and semipro teams to the postseason mix and call it the U.S. Open Cup. Advance the top four teams from that event to a restructured Interliga tournament, also involving Mexico’s best, and suddenly there is shape, symmetry and, yes, meaning, to the MLS calendar.
It makes so much sense that the league will almost certainly ignore it.
Just as it ignored -- or, more likely, failed to fully consider -- what effect naming its Houston team after the date of the city’s founding would have on Latino fans, especially those of Mexican heritage.
The idea was sound enough -- to follow the German example and include a date in the team’s name. Hence such Bundesliga clubs as FC Schalke 04, TSV 1860 Munich, Hannover 96, and so on.
But MLS forgot two things. First, the German clubs were named for the year of the team’s founding, not the year of their city’s founding.
Second, Texans of Latin origin do not recall 1836 with any particular fondness, it being the year of Texas’ secession from Mexico. And there are nearly 1.7 million Latinos in Houston, the very people that MLS is hoping will support the team.
As one of those residents told the New York Times: “Do they think we’re going to wear a T-shirt with the year 1836 on it?”
The Houston Chronicle pointed out that the team’s logo is equally insensitive, including, as it does, Sam Houston on horseback leading the charge against Mexican troops.
The league, Raul A. Ramos wrote in the Chronicle, “has chosen to identify with a year that may divide the city rather than unite it.”
Perhaps Oliver Luck, the former Houston Oiler quarterback and NFL Europe executive who is president of Houston 1836, could be forgiven for flunking history.
But MLS and AEG, the team’s owner-operator, cannot be excused for not doing their homework properly. Did they even talk to Latino leaders in Houston? If they did, did they listen? Apparently not.
The league believes the controversy over the name will blow over.
Perhaps it will, but that’s not the point.
The league should be fixing its error, and there’s another relatively simple solution at hand. Have Garber and Luck apologize for the gaffe, a slight that clearly was not intentional, and then modify the team’s name with a couple of strokes of the pen.
Turning Houston 1836 into Houston 2006 right now will be a lot less painful than opening the gates at Robertson Stadium on the University of Houston campus in April and finding no one waiting to enter.
If you name it badly, they won’t come.
As for that logo, well, Houston, you’ve got a problem.
