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| Why Should St. Louis Be A World Cup Venue? Why Not? - Saturday, August 22, 2009 St. Louis has hosted some huge sporting events over the years. There is no doubt that our town is a sports town with a sporting culture unparalleled anywhere here in the United States or perhaps even the world. Milan has the opera, London has the theatre, Paris has art, Los Angeles has movies, New York has fashion, and St. Louis has sports. Sports is our opera, theatre, art, movies, and even fashion rolled into one.
Our city has hosted every type of major sporting event there is. 17 World Series have been played here, Stanley Cup Finals, the NCAA Final Four, the Major League Baseball All-Star Game, NFL Playoff Games, and more. The resume of this city for big sporting events is amazing given its relative small size.There is only one thing missing from that resume for a city such as ours and in 2018 or 2022 that blank could be filled in.
Our town has long been considered the soccer capitol of the United States. Lets face it soccer in America is not soccer in America without St. Louis. One could even argue there would be no soccer in this country like we have today if it weren’t for our city.
If you are a firm believer like I am that the United States will be hosting the 2018 or 2022 World Cup than you know what needs to happen. St. Louis must be one of the host venues the next time our country hosts the World Cup. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it.
The good news is that St. Louis continues to make the cut each time the list is whittled down some. The list now stands at 27 other cities and 32 different stadiums. Seeing as there might be 12 or more host cities the odds are now approaching 50/50 that we would have a chance.
How good a chance? Who knows? What we do know is this, St. Louis can host such an event. The infrastructure exists, the hotels exist, the airport required exists, the space for press-meeting rooms-dignitary entertainment-any any other FIFA mandated functions exist. The only question is the stadium. Is the currently named Edwards Jones Dome sufficient?
That is a hard question to answer. The bar on stadium in the United States has been raised by such a degree that a building that opened in 1995 now seems a little quaint compared to the new Cowboys Stadium in Dallas or Mark Lamping’s latest build out in the Meadowlands for the Giants and Jets. The question is what does FIFA really want.
What FIFA and U.S. Soccer should really want is a city that has soccer in its culture like none other. Forgive the stadiums drawbacks if they still exist come another 10 years. Forgive the market size for it matters not. Concentrate of what you would have by coming here. The World Cup would have a city that would sell out even a meaningless group stage matchup between an Asian country and a European afterthought. The World Cup would have a city that would bend over backwards to welcome foreign tourists following their national teams.
Remember the sites in Paris of the thousands watching on the video screens at the Arc de Triomphe or of the throngs in Berlin in front of the Brandenburg Gates? Imagine what the seen could look like under the Arch here and throughout downtown. The World Cup would only succeed here and succeed well beyond the gate at the stadium.
Yes the competition will be tough but after you get past New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and one or two other obvious venue selections do any of the remaining cities offer anything that St. Louis doesn’t? Is soccer better served with a World Cup venue in Florida than here, or worse yet Atlanta or Philadelphia? We know the answer is no.
I think it is imperative to make this happen. Whatever needs to get done should get done. The leadership in our community needs to value this. Plus keep this in mind, remember how many times you were told how great it was for St. Louis to get national exposure during the Final Four or All-Star Game? Well this is world wide exposure we are talking about here.
One of the best things that could happen for this city in the 21st century would be an introduction to a global television audience of our town and of the people here. There is a reason we actually live where we live, we like it. Why not show the world that? Why not St. Louis?
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| United States Soccer is Evolving. What’s Next? - Friday, July 03, 2009 It was the best of times and it was the worst of times for United States Soccer during the Confederations Cup in South Africa this past month. U.S. fans were treated to everything during the tournament from bottom of the barrel play, to the improbable, to the euphoria of unexpected victory, and in the end to near loss of bodily function, a probable coma, delusions of grandeur, and finally a reality check. A much needed reality check.
What can you say about the performance of the U.S. men during this warm up tournament to next year’s World Cup other than “Wow! Did that just really happen?” Yes…that just happened.
And with it almost really happening comes the good and the bad. The good is that soccer in the United States is back on the radar of the non-soccer public. And when I say non-soccer public I mean the American sports media who otherwise couldn’t give a collective tinker’s damn about the sport. This was news and it was stop the presses, hold the phone, and re-write the lead news. This was news that led off sportscasts. This was news that managed to seep through 24-hour a day coverage of the death of Michael Jackson. Now that is big news!
The bad? The bad is the United States is no longer going to be looked past by anyone. The United States has earned some respect around the globe and with that respect will come tougher matches and teams that are better prepared to handle what the U.S. has to offer. And you know what? That’s fine. It is all part of the evolutionary process of soccer in this country.
How did this all happen? No one really has an answer. Fans, experts, pundits, former players, naysayers, they all only have theories. I am not bold enough to put forward a theory of what tactically happened here because I don’t have one. I have an idea of what happened though.
Eventually good athleticism will pay a good dividend. That’s all I got. I can’t explain how a team goes from looking so bad to scoring seven goals, SEVEN, on the trot through three games. I know you cannot do that without some degree of talent.
So rather than recap the tournament, which we all saw and all have different theories and ideas on, let me pose a question. What does this all mean? What does it mean for the sport, for the sport in our country, and for you and I the soccer fan-player-parent?
It means that the evolutionary process is reaching a stage where that which is evolving is ready to take flight, or at least get up out of the muck and run some.
Malcolm Gladwell, one of our culture’s more dynamic thinkers, says anything that evolves has a tipping point,a point that the subject reaches and then surpasses into an area of its defined success. In his new book, Outliers, Gladwell also observes that people who are truly the best –at whatever the discipline may be, athlete, heart surgeon, concert pianist, mathematician- have one thing in common. That one thing in common is 10,000 hours of practice/work/experience in their field.
I wonder if Mr. Gladwell would consider U.S. Men’s Soccer to be at a tipping point or to be reaching one of the outlier markers of experience that then allows for greatness?
A win against Spain, no matter how accomplished, and a 2-0 halftime lead over Brazil before succumbing and losing to them means the United States Men’s Team are now walking right up to the brink of greatness and having a look in. It is as simple as that. We are getting there. Getting there slowly put getting there.
If you want to piss on it you can. You can probably even make a good case as to why the U.S. Men’s Team will never amount to a real contender. I even invite you to do so in the response section to this column.
The success of the Confederations Cup means U.S. Men’s Soccer is aimed in the right direction. The path to the end destination will surely have set backs and bumps in the road. It will have coaching changes and new players. It may take more time than we would like but it is coming.
The success in Africa will help the sport grow more in our country. Soccer will be treated with more respect in the media. Don’t worry about the Jim Rome’s or other talking heads. They mock what they don’t understand and they barely understand the sports they speak about anyway. Pay no attention to them their opinion is of no consequence.
The success in Africa means we will see more soccer on television here as the media outlets realize there is an audience for it, a huge audience. This was something that was coming anyway, now it may get hastened forward. All of which is good for you and I the soccer fan-player-parent.
The day before the game on our radio show, the Saturday Soccer Report, Joe Pelusi and I posed the question of ‘define success for the U.S. in the championship game against Brazil?’ A caller responded by saying success is seeing a game in which the last 20 minutes of the game are still meaningful. And the last 20 minutes against Brazil were meaningful.
The U.S. forced the best soccer-playing nation on earth to play their absolute best to beat them. Rarely has the U.S. forced anyone into that situation.
The U.S. Men have reached the stage where on any given day they just might beat one of the world’s best nations. The next step is to make any given day into several given days and then most given days until one day you wake up and realize any given day is now not the expectation. The expectation will be that our national team will have a chance to win regardless of opponent.
We all keep waiting for the one seminal event to occur to tell us that that moment has arrived. It won’t happen like that. There never will be that moment of Eureka,gold at last! Some day in the future though soccer fans will look back and see a series of stepping stones and we’ll point to the 2009 Confederations Cup as one small step forward. But it was a big small step for now.
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| Tony Hubert Talks Salary Caps.... - Saturday, February 21, 2009 The audacious 100 million pound bid Manchester City made for Kaka, whether you believe the price tag or not, has spawned calls for a salary cap in European soccer and generated news articles that start like this…
“Europe’s top soccer clubs and the game’s European governing body UEFA have started preliminary discussions on curbing the amount of money that can be spent on player transfers or wages, sources familiar with the talks said.”
That was the lead paragraph in a Reuter’s news story recently. The story was of course written because of the sensational bid price and salary being offered to Kaka.
Whenever I hear calls for a salary cap I shutter because I don’t think most administrators understand exactly what they are getting into. In the case of European soccer I assure you most don’t. At best UEFA is being naïve about what a true cap entails at worst they might destroy club soccer entirely.
The first thing that must be recognized about any salary cap is what its specific purpose is for. Is it to ensure cost certainty or is it a hope for on the field parity?
If the purpose is for coast certainty than that is a fine motive in theory but in practice it may have an altogether different effect. Has anyone from UEFA stopped to think that a spending cap, which always entails a spending minimum, might raise the cost of doing business for a lot of top flight teams? For instance is Wigan or Blackburn really prepared to spend more money if the established minimum is above what they are already paying in wages?
Has anyone from UEFA stopped to think if Manchester United, Real Madrid, Barcelona, or AC Milan would be willing to curtail there spending and weaken their product? These are the clubs that give value to their leagues. Sky Sports doesn’t pay a rights fee to air Bolton’s games, they pay a rights fee to air Bolton vs. Manchester United, or Arsenal, or Liverpool. There are only a handful of clubs that make soccer worthwhile. Weakening those clubs product is not the answer.
Now if the purpose of all this is to establish some on field parity then the folks at UEFA and any club considering a salary and transfer cap are just kidding themselves or they might just be delusional. One thing is for sure, if they think a cap will bring on field parity then they simply haven’t done their homework.
UEFA needs to look no further than the three biggest American sporting leagues to see that salary caps do not work when it comes to on field performance.
In the NFL their salary cap took effect in 1994 and is a hard cap (teams cannot exceed the established limit for that year). Meanwhile Major League Baseball has operated without a cap and the NBA has employed a soft cap (a team can exceed the limit for the year if resigning a player already with their club).
So starting with the results of the 1995 championships lets take a look at what has happened in each sport. Here are the winners of each league for the past 14 seasons.
NFL:
1995 San Francisco 49’ers
1996 Dallas Cowboys
1997 Green Bay Packers
1998 Denver Broncos
1999 Denver Broncos
2000 St. Louis Rams
2001 Baltimore Ravens
2002 New England Patriots
2003 Tampa Bay Buccaneers
2004 New England Patriots
2005 New England Patriots
2006 Pittsburgh Steelers
2007 Indianapolis Colts
2008 New York Giants
MLB:
1995 Atlanta Braves
1996 New York Yankees
1997 Florida Marlins
1998 New York Yankees
1999 New York Yankees
2000 New York Yankees
2001 Arizona Diamondbacks
2002 Anaheim Angels
2003 Florida Marlins
2004 Boston Red Sox
2005 Chicago White Sox
2006 St. Louis Cardinals
2007 Boston Red Sox
2008 Philadelphia Phillies
NBA:
1995 Houston Rockets
1996 Chicago Bulls
1997 Chicago Bulls
1998 Chicago Bulls
1999 San Antonio Spurs
2000 Los Angeles Lakers
2001 Los Angeles Lakers
2002 Los Angeles Lakers
2003 San Antonio Spurs
2004 Detroit Pistons
2005 San Antonio Spurs
2006 Miami Heat
2007 San Antonio Spurs
2008 Boston Celtics
I for one think the numbers are pretty striking. The league with no cap whatsoever, Major League Baseball, has had 9 different franchises win their championship. Meanwhile in that same time period the league employing a soft cap, the NBA, has had 7 different franchises win the championship. And the league with the hard cap, the NFL, has had a total of 11 different winners of the Superbowl.
In my mind the reason the hard salary cap league has 11 championships and the non-salary cap league has 9 has more to do with the way the ball bounces than with economic factors. And oh by the way, the soft cap NBA is the worst in terms of parity with just 7 different teams winning a championship. At this time there is simply no conclusive evidence that one method produces more championships (the desired end result) than the other.
So if and when you hear talk of a soccer salary cap for the big leagues of Europe being for parity purposes you’ll know there is no statistical data to support that thinking. It is rubbish.
Furthermore if you are an American sports fan ask yourself this, ‘Have we had many great teams win championships over the past 14 years that had a salary cap?’ I don’t think we have.
Some of the Superbowl winners might be considered great but many have just been good. The 2002 New England Patriots, the 2001 Baltimore Ravens, the 2006 Pittsburgh Steelers will probably not be remembered as great champions. They were simply good teams that won the Superbowl tournament. My point is that any cap introduced in soccer might kill what we are witnessing now, which are some truly great teams slugging it out.
The talent that is coalesced into some of the bigger clubs is spellbinding. Frankly this kind of collective talent is what the world wants to see from a consumer standpoint. Fans in the United States and Asia don’t watch Manchester United, Chelsea, or Barcelona because the teams are good. They watch because the teams are awesome, they watch because of the star power of those rosters. It’s the same reason people like ensemble casts in big Hollywood movies. Talent sells.
Of course soccer in Europe would like to be like the NFL. Who wouldn’t? The NFL has figured it out, everyone makes money and everyone shares nearly everything. I don’t know that the major clubs in Europe are ready to be so charitable to their lower table mates.
And in closing keep this in mind. The NFL produced a 16-0 team a year ago and a 0-16 team this year, if that kind of polarity is possible in a hard capped league than soccer should beware. 16-0 is great but 0-16 means relegation, unless they want to change that as well.
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