MLS Thinks Better of It on Houston Name Issue
Major League Soccer, not so much bowing to criticism as recognizing an error and correcting it, this week is expected to give its Houston 1836 team a new name.
It could be Houston Lone Star. It could be something else.
It was less than a month ago that the league unveiled the team’s name and logo, explaining that the choice of 1836 as a nickname was in honor of the year the city was founded.
However, 1836 is also the year that Texas broke away from Mexico after a bloody war of secession, and fans of Mexican heritage in Houston -- fans MLS is counting on to support the team -- expressed everything from bemusement to outrage over the choice.
The league’s willingness to respond is another indication of its growing maturity. It will no doubt come in for criticism from those claiming MLS has caved in to a minority sentiment, but it is that very minority that will spell the difference between success and failure for the Houston team.
Changing the name is a smart move.
Whether changing it to Lone Star is a good option, however, is another matter. Already, there is friction over the possible moniker.
“That’s the name we operate under, and we have for a number of years,” Jamey Rootes, the president of a soccer promotion company, Lone Star Sports and Entertainment, told the Houston Chronicle. “We would prefer that they choose another name.”
*
The Dutch know all about conflict, and their entrepreneurial spirit and their delight at needling neighboring Germans have combined once again in a World Cup year.
It seems a Dutch company, Free Time Products, has sold about 100,000 orange helmets shaped like those worn by Nazi troops during World War II. The idea is for the normally orange-clad Dutch fans to wear them in Germany during the June 9-July 9 tournament.
“We ought to be able to poke a bit of fun at our arch-rivals,” Weno Geerts of Free Time told Holland’s De Telegraaf newspaper.
The company also is making similarly shaped helmets in white with the cross of St. George and the words “No One Likes Us” for England’s fans to wear.
The Dutch soccer federation has denounced the company, and the Germans, not surprisingly, are not amused.
“The helmets are a potential provocation,” said police superintendent Andreas Morbach. “It is not nice to have a sports event compared to war, and to wear this helmet in such a way is not to cause a joke, it is to cause offense.”
Germany is asking FIFA to ban the wearing or display of anything relating to the war.
*
The Germans are not above having a little fun themselves, and this time it is Iran that can’t fathom the humor.
After Franz Josef Jung, Germany’s defense minister, announced that German troops would not be used as security at the World Cup, a Berlin newspaper, Der Tagesspiegel, printed a cartoon showing four Iranian soccer players decked out as suicide bombers standing alongside four German soldiers inside a soccer stadium.
The cartoon’s caption explained the drawing showed “why the German army should definitely be used” during the World Cup.
The Iranian Embassy protested and said the newspaper had employed an “irresponsible and immoral way” to make a political point.
*
It will be interesting to see how FIFA, which for decades has turned a blind eye to corruption within its ranks, will deal with the case of Jack Warner now that it has admitted there was conflict of interest involved in Warner’s sale of World Cup tickets.
Warner, a FIFA vice president and president of CONCACAF, soccer’s North and Central American and Caribbean region, owns a travel company that bought Trinidad and Tobago’s entire allotment of World Cup tickets, then offered them domestically and overseas at vastly inflated prices.
Warner said a FIFA audit had cleared him of any wrongdoing, but FIFA’s committee on ethics and fair play said last week that Warner had violated FIFA’s code of ethics.
Warner could face expulsion when the matter is brought before FIFA’s executive committee March 16 and 17.
More likely, however, is that he will be given nothing more than a wrist-slap, the fear being that any harsher punishment might lead Warner to expose other questionable FIFA actions over the years.
*
A quick look around the World Cup world ...
England has lost forward/midfielder Alan Smith for the World Cup after the Manchester United player broke his leg and dislocated his ankle when he fell awkwardly after trying to block a shot Saturday during United’s 1-0 loss to Liverpool in the FA Cup. Smith underwent surgery Sunday and will be out for at least a year.
AS Roma and Italy playmaker Francesco Totti will be sidelined for two to three months after fracturing a bone in his left leg and also suffering possible ankle ligament damage Sunday when he was tackled by Empoli’s Richard Vanigli. Italy plays the U.S. in the first round of the World Cup.
Ghana, another U.S. opponent, has included $47-million midfielder Michael Essien in its squad for a March 1 game against Mexico at Frisco, Texas. Essien missed the recent African Nations Cup in Egypt because of an injury.
Zico, Japan’s Brazilian coach, said his team’s 3-2 loss to the U.S. in San Francisco had exposed Japan to “the most sustained pressure we have been under since I became coach” in 2002.... When it travels to Germany for a March 1 game against Poland in Kaiserslautern, the U.S. team will be housed at the nearby Ramstein Air Base.
A poll of French fans by France Football magazine revealed that they would prefer to see Lyon goalkeeper Gregory Coupet in the nets this summer rather than 1998 World Cup winner Fabien Barthez of Olympique Marseille.
After finishing second to Egypt in the African Nations Cup, Ivory Coast players were given such a rapturous welcome home when they arrived in Abidjan that their motorcade from airport to stadium took four hours to get through the tens of thousands of fans.... Togo, also World Cup-bound, fired Nigerian Stephen Keshi as coach after losing all three games at the African Nations Cup.... Cesar Luis Menotti, who coached Argentina to victory in the 1978 World Cup, has been named coach of Veracruz in the Mexican league.
