Söccer Röcker

            Taylor Twellman, Kenny Mansally, and a bunch of guys you’ve never heard of but play for our team managed to brave the monsoon conditions down in New Britain last week, handing the Richmond Kickers a 3-0 caning in front just under 4,000 folks. The offense was provided by reserve team young’uns like Joe Germanese (24) and Sam Brill (22) with one for good luck knocked in by Twellman, while Chris Tierney (22) notched two assists on the night.

The rain was apparently a serious mess according to the, oh, 10 or 15 text messages about it your faithful scribe received. Hopefully the sun will be kinder this coming Tuesday when the Revs’ return to the southernmost part of their kingdom this time to face the tournament’s Cinderella side, Crystal Palace Baltimore. Oh you read that right. The team is also known as Crystal Palace F.C. USA. They’re the American affiliate of 103 year old (and 1991 Full Members Cup champion) English team Crystal Palace. The American team was formed in 2006 by Crystal Palace and a local consortium headed by horse trainer Randall Medd.

Palace booked their first-ever trip into the Open Cup quarterfinals with an absolutely stunning 2-0 victory over the New York Red Bulls last week at Broadneck High School in Annapolis, MD. New York’s team featured regulars like Mike Magee, Sinisa Ubiparipovic, Carlos Mendes, and Jeff Parke. Although starting Zach Thornton in net might have been a mistake. Palace started the scoring in the 17^th minute with an Andrew Marshall header and Gary Brooks finished it off in the 75^th. Amazingly Palace played the last 56 minutes of the game down to ten men after Ibrahim Kante was shown the door for a two-footed tackle on New York’s Puerto Rican starlet Chris Megaloudis.

Prior to beating New York Palace had defeated L.A. Legends F.C. (Premier Deveolpment League) and the Harrisburg City Islanders (Division 2), respectively, in the previous rounds. They’re the lowest ranked team still in the tournament, although they’re not the only USL team left. Charleston Battery (Division 1) again knocked out the Houston Dynamo in penalty kicks after the match ended 1-all in extra frames, despite the Battery being down to just 9 men towards the end. They’ll next face FC Dallas in Dallas. In the other deja-vu result, the Seattle Sounders (also Division 1) bounced Chivas USA out of things after a 2-0 win. The first player signed to Seattle’s 2009 MLS roster, Sebastien Le Toux, and Puerto Rican international Taylor Graham provided the goals as the Goats were sent packing for the second year running by Seattle.

Palace are currently in 3^rd place in Division 2 and are coming off a 2-1 victory over in-state rivals Real Maryland F.C. Their leading scorer is the aforementioned Gary Brooks (6 goals) a lower league veteran who has also turned out for the Virginia Beach Mariners, Atlanta Silverbacks, and Vancouver Whitecaps in his 6 years in the USL. Palace’s makeup is an interesting mix of older players like Brooks, former Yokohama F. Marinos midfielder Shintaro Harada, and player/co-manager Jim Cherneski alongside younger prospects. They play their home games at UMBC Stadium on the campus of the University Of Maryland, Baltimore County. Despite never having faced each other there are two New England connections between the clubs. Older (uhm, I mean, fans with more experience) might remember Ibrahim Kante from his time with the Revs in 2003. Palace midfielder Bryan Harkin played his college soccer at Fairfield University in Connecticut and was part of the Cape Cod Crusaders’ 2002 run to the PDL  title.

END HITS: Sebastien Le Toux, despite being born in France, told the Prost Amerika website (www.prostamerika.com) on July 2^nd that he would be “honored” to represent the United States on the international level and it is his “only international ambition”…the winner of the regular season series between Crystal Palace Baltimore and Real Maryland takes home the DeOrsey Maryland Cup (named after Medd family friend and Maryland soccer stalwart Matt DeOrsey who passed away this year at age 31)…despite a comment to the contrary last time the Revs logo is STILL above the mayor of New Britain’s picture on the city’s website (www.new-britain.net) …nothing’s been announced yet so I’m not sure if the Revs website will again be doing an internet radio broadcast of the match…

The U.S. Open Cup is a rarity in the soccer scene in this country. It’s a tournament with rich history (something we’re short on with soccer here) that goes all the way back to 1912 when Sir Thomas Dewar bequeathed a trophy to spur interest in the sport on this side of The Pond. The tournament has survived leagues coming and going. It is one of the oldest knock-out domestic cups in all of world soccer. New England, in particular, has a big role in the history of the Cup with legendary teams like the Fall River Rovers, Fall River Marksmen (what a name, huh?), New Bedford Whalers, and Pawtucket FC having lifted it and the current defending champions being our very own Revs.

Major League Soccer, eager to not repeat the mistakes of the North American Soccer League, has always fielded its members in the competition. The NASL never took part in the tournament leading to rise of amateur powers in the Seventies and Eighties like Greek American AA, New York Pancyprian-Freedoms, and Maccabee SC of Los Angeles. However since MLS’s involvement only the 1999 Rochester Raging Rhinos have managed the wrest Sir Thomas’s trophy away from MLS’s grip. The main battles lay between Division One clubs of the United Soccer Leagues and MLS squads.

This isn’t to say English FA Cup or NCAA March Madness-style “giant-killings” don’t still occur. Lower-level teams like Dallas Roma and the Harrisburg City Islanders have pulled off some pretty impressive upsets over MLS teams in recent history. Of course, MLS teams haven’t always fielded “A” squads over the years until recently, with a few exceptions, although now that winning grants you a slot in the new CONCACAF Champions League that is likely to change.

So with all this great tradition and history, why haven’t more people heard of this thing? It seems tailor-made for American sports fans. It’s the ultimate David vs. Goliath set-up and alone in American professional sports in that regard. You’re not going to see the Long Island Ducks throwing down against the Arizona Diamondbacks anytime soon. The short answer is: nobody, not at US Soccer and not at MLS, is stepping up.

The USL, for what it’s worth, does a pretty good job of getting the Cup out there. As best it can with its limited resources, that is. There is no Nike or Adidas money behind USL or the teams that play within it. The onus here is on US Soccer and MLS. So what’s going on? Finger pointing. Major League Soccer claims the responsibility is that of US Soccer and you guessed it…US Soccer says the reverse.

However even that isn’t the whole story. MLS has no interest in really putting its weight behind the tournament for the simple reason that it doesn’t control it. This illustrates a sad fact in American soccer and shows the difference between the US Open Cup and what it is modeled on, the English FA Cup. MLS views USL as competition (which is kind of like Domino’s viewing your local pizza joint as competition) and sits back until the last teams standing are theirs. Then Don Garber shows up and throws his arms around the winner and says nice things about how great the US Open Cup is. US Soccer just doesn’t do anything unless someone confronts our friend Sunil Gulati, who directs you to Don Garber.

This criminally low profile has a ripple effect. The sports media, by and large, doesn’t understand what’s going on and generally ignores the whole thing. In discussions with long-time Riders I’ve heard stories of Cup games being described as friendlies. In turn, fans don’t really know what’s going, especially the casual fan and the all-important AYSO/youth market. So attendance isn’t going to be great which leads MLS teams to view the whole thing as competition to lose money. Teams like DC United and the Revs play their “home” matches at places like the Maryland Soccerplex and Lusitania Field, respectively. Last year’s match between the Revs and City Islanders at Gillette drew fewer people than “Ishtar” did in its second week.

In last season’s run to eventual triumph the Revs booked their “home match” against USL Division 1’s Carolina RailHawks at Veteran’s Stadium in New Britain, CT. The event drew better it would have at Gillette (around 5,000) and allowed the Revs’ to claim they were simply bringing the Revs to a different part of the region they represent. Which was cute, to be sure, and in a way sort of true but the real reason is of course economic. Opening up Gillette is expensive and the Revs aren’t exactly box office gold for regular season matches, let alone obscure cup ties against lower-league opposition.

For the second year running the team will again return to what the locals refer to as “hard hittin’ New Britain” and its Vet for a matchup against either the Richmond Kickers or Western Mass Pioneers on July 1^st. This year, like every year, MLS and its teams’ haven’t done a whole hell of a lot to promote the tournament. Economic necessity dictates Gillette remain closed and the Revs take their show on the road. Everybody knows why.

Or so I thought until I read the June 25^th issue of the Hartford Courant and it’s write up about the Revs (I’m sorry, “the Revolution soccer team”) return to the Nutmeg State. According to the Courant’s story, here’s why those wild and crazy Polish New Britain fans get to walk home after the tailgate. You might want to get seated.

“The major league soccer team [sic] plays home games at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass., but the team will compete in New Britain to avoid over-saturating fans at Gillette, where the Revolution has several games lined up in a short time period, said Craig Tornberg, the team’s general manager.”

As my late Nana Mason would say, that is a whoppin’ whopper. Over-saturating? How can you over-saturate fans if you haven’t really done any sort of promotion? Has there been some big-time SuperLiga advertising I’ve missed? Is there an Open Cup radio ad pumping away on WEEI between Ernie Boch, Jr. spots? Have fans complained to the team that we’re playing too many games? Oh no, not MORE Revs’ soccer at Gillette. Big Frank and William Sunsing deliver us from such evil and let not Daniel Hernandez trepass against us!

In the end I don’t know what’s worse. The Lords & Masters of American soccer mistreating what should be their crown jewel or our team’s management telling big fat ones about why they’re playing in a glorified high school stadium in their very first championship defense campaign. Ugh.

Oh and before I go, here’s one more winner from the Courant article, “The game will give the Revolution the home-field advantage, drawing fans from New England, New York and New Jersey, and give New Britain international television coverage.”

There’s too much in that single line to address it all, so I’ll just say I hope the team told the promoter that this game won’t be on television. Oh what a tangled web we weave and all that…

author’s note: This piece originally appeared as part of Mr. Fran Harrington’s final for his art school degree and is reprinted here with his kind permission. Also because I wanted more people than just his professors to read it.

In the middle of the seventh decade of the 20th century, those vaunted Seventies, young people in the Western World rose up against the established cocaine-and-caviar cruise control rock and roll was set on and began a movement later known worldwide as punk rock. In it’s heyday “punks” were scoffed at, attacked in the street, their records banned, their singles and albums not played on commercial radio. They were basically rejected by the mainstream media as a fad. Who could possibly ever think bands like the Sex Pistols and Ramones could ever replace things like the Bee Gees and The Eagles?

Nearly 30 years later punk rock is one the basic DNA strands of contemporary rock and roll and I highly doubt anyone under the age of 40 or so could name you a Bee Gees song beyond “Stayin’ Alive.” It took a while, but eventually the outcasts and rejects took over, or at leastgot some respect. Also in the Seventies, the sport of association football (known more popularly on these shores as soccer) began to elbow its way into the American sports mainstream. The North American Soccer League, with its leading light the New York Cosmos and their superstar Pele, began to make inroads into the notoriously anti-soccer American sports landscape before it burnt out under the weight of its own excess. Despite that failure, some 30 years later that struggle is ongoing.

I’ve been saying for a long time now that American soccer fans are the punk rockers of world sports. Nobody likes us and there are powerful forces aligned against our eventual move into respectability. First I must clarify some terms. When I say “American soccer fan” I am talking about Americans who follow a Major League Soccer team, for the most part. “Soccer fan” does not yet equate in this nation to “MLS team fan.” There are millions of Americans (or at least those who live in the United States) who follow the sport and are not fans of an MLS team. They concentrate on teams in Europe or in Central and/or South America. A good portion of them also actively dislike and insult MLS.

This is one force aligned against us, the American-based non-MLS fans. The catch-all term is “Eurosnob” but like I said, some are fans of teams from Latin American nations. To them MLS isn’t “real” soccer. Our teams have names they don’t like. Our teams (New England Revolution, Chicago Fire, San Jose Earthquakes, et al) have nicknames as part of the official name unlike “real” soccer teams where the nickname is unofficial. Manchester United Football Club is the official name of the team, and their unofficial (but widely used) nickname is the Red Devils.

Eurosnobs also feel indignant that the sport is not an American sport. We don’t understand it, not really. We don’t “live the game.” We don’t live and die by it. We are passionless, obese, short-attention-spanned Cro-Magnons who’d rather be watching giant men in pads slam each other to pulps in a sport we dare call football. We are interlopers and fakers.

On the other side you have the home-grown haters, the American sports media and its functionaries. To them we American soccer fans are almost akin to traitors. Soccer is for foreigners, immigrants, and girls. It’s not a “man’s sport.” There’s no contact. It’s boring. Nobody ever scores. The game is too long. The field is too big. The teams have stupid names. This attitude filters down to your average “Joe Sixpack” American fan. They can’t see our counter-arguments like, “Hey, a NASCAR race is three hours long and nobody scores.” They reject our claims that no sport that lacks time-outs (especially NFL-style TV time-outs)and where the ball as well the clock is constantly moving can possibly be boring.

Like the punks of the Seventies and Eighties we American soccer fans have set up our own counterculture outside the main-stream. We read our own magazines, we read our own websites, subscribe to Fox Soccer Channel and GolTV, and congregate in our own bars. I watched the opening match of the 2007 MLS season between Colorado and DC at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park at a party I managed to finagle control of the remote and flipped to ESPN’s coverage. During the pre-game show a partygoer remarked (as the camera panned the stadium, which has “COLORADO RAPIDS” spelled out in its seats), “What in the hell did they do to Mile High Field?”

When I told this person that this game was not in the home of the Denver Broncos it was in fact the Rapids’ very own stadium, his surprise was written all over his face. “Wait, you mean soccer teams have their own stadiums now? Whoah.”

I don’t expect MLS to reach the heights of baseball or the NFL, at least not in my lifetime. However I have the faith of those original music fans standing around watching oddly-dressed people bash away at their guitars in bars in London and New York in 1976 that I (and we) will eventually be proven correct.

Recommended Listening:

01.) Real McKenzies- “Raise The Banner”

02.) Beerzone- “Alcoholic Heroes”

03.) The Fall- “Kicker Conspiracy”

04.) The Bouncing Souls- “Ole!”

05.) Vif Klanen- “Fotballsangen”