Bruce Arena's contract was not renewed by U.S. Soccer this morning; he will remain as coach through the end of the year but an immediate search will begin. Rumor has it he will coach the RBNY team.
A good question. We wrapped up the Cup officially here last night, with a look at 2010 and that brewing controversy.
But from here, we're not really sure. The blogs have been a huge success; I have to wait for the p.r. folks, but as I have let slip already, enormous numbers of people joined us here on Fox, and particularly at this blog for which we are all very grateful. Now, usually we'd go back to our normal Wednesday slot and start writing columns again. We also have that small matter of a book to finish up and deliver next month. And, after being away from home since mid-May, we would like to see the inside of our house again.
That said, a case is being made to keep these blogs open and going. So, if Fox decides to do that, we'll keep on going. If not, we'll likely move this forum over to our website, which is (sort of) up at www.jamietrecker.com. Li will actually be administrating that with our partners at Lakonic and within the month, we should be live full-time there as well.
In the meantime, keep checking back here for updates, which we shall try and post daily as time time permits.
On that note: Some of you have sent in suggestions on what topics you'd like to see addressed. Some of them we were able to get to while others (such as: if Munich and Germany was clearing out during the second round; and other topics we'll actually be writing about in our book) we weren't. That noted, keep them coming, and we'll try to get to as many as we can.
Once again, thanks for all your support. I don't think we've ever received several hundred emails thanking us for writing about something, and we're all very flattered and appreciative. We genuinely could not have done it without you. Thank you again for all your support.
Berlin last night was a split city again, divided this time not by concrete, but by football.
On the one side were the French fans, who rightly felt they had been let down by their hero and captain, Zinedine Zidane. On the other were the Italian fans, still in shock at having finally overcome history to win the Cup on penalty kicks. The sides sat uneasily across from each other as the subway pulled out of Zoo station just after the game. No one seemed sure what to make of the match, and those who spoke talked in low, hushed tones about “Zizou.”
Trouble flared when an Italian fan bumped into a young woman, who was dressed up like a classic French mime. The mime’s hot drink splashed onto the back of the young woman’s leg, and despite it being her fault, she turned around and began yelling at the mime, whereupon the Frenchwoman tossed the full cup of tea into her face. A large crowd gathered and police struggled to break up the chaos.
As the night wore on, however, the mood shifted. When we were finally able to leave the Olympiastadion, we were joined by a rambunctious group of Italian fans who cheerfully taunted their French counterparts with shouts of: “Chi sono i campioni del mondo? Italia!” They then followed that up with a cheer for Zidane, who was clearly already being remembered as the villain of the night. The French fans along the train took this in good stride, however, joining in cheers with the fans for both Italy and France
As we finally left Berlin’s main train station at 2 am, stepping around the fans sleeping on the floor waiting for the next train to anywhere that wasn’t Berlin, we watched a sad young French fan make her way down the platform. Dressed in Gaulish horns and a flowing white skirt — sort of Asterix meets Marianne— her red and white face paint had run down, staining her blue French jersey. She was still crying as she drank her coffee.
You read us right folks. Tune in HERE tomorrow, because the Cup may be over, but we're not done yet. Or, at least, we don't know when to quit?
For those of you signing off here: Thanks so much for your emails, comments and, yes, even those disjointed rants. We sincerely appreciate it. You made this blog and the Fox website, one of the best read on the planet during the Cup. (And yes, you read that right.) For Li, Jerry and our occasional contributors Chris and Steve: I thank you all very, very much.
One million German fans gathered this afternoon in steamy central Berlin to cheer on their team one last time. Or did they? Was this just a large group of people out for a nice day in the sun?
One of the paradoxes of this World Cup has been the excitement of German fans and people, yet an atmosphere that seems almost scrubbed of fandom. Sure, there have been some passionate folks that have traveled from around the world to see the Cup. But the vibe given off my this Cup — one we admit we can’t quite put our finger on yet — is different than those of years’ past.
In 1998, France went from willfully ignoring the tournament to embracing it in a genuine, and overnight rush that culminated in true joy on the streets of Paris, Lyon and Marseille. In Korea in 2002, the people — who couldn’t even be called “fans” per se since they had virtually no experience with the sport — defied the marketers and reacted with innocent, childlike abandon to the performance of their team to the point that it swept the entire nation into the streets. To be there was to witness exponential mathematics at work: first 100,000 cheered, then 1 million, then the streets were filled with tens of millions.
This year, as we’ve written, feels more like a big college party. It’s kind of like Glastonbury without the mud, and a lot of this has to do with the people actually attending the games.
Entering the Olympiastadion this afternoon (a positively creepy experience) we saw some Italian fans, some French fans… and then a whole lot of people wearing red “prestige” badges and expensive clothing. This final is the culmination of a trend at this Cup which has seen more and more seats taken up by people up for a day out rather than actual soccer fans.
Where are these people coming from? Well, they’re the same people that the World Cup marketers are shilling to. They buy expensive Toyotas and Hyundais, can plop down $6,000 for one of those swanky Philips plasma TVs, and generally seem less interested in the sport than the merch. There’s nothing wrong with these folks, but they don’t seem to really care about the game itself… just about whether their seat is prestigious enough.
This is a pattern making its way through soccer — the reduction of fan groups to entertainment for the upper-middle class by penning them into corners is nothing new, after all — and where once it was viewed as a way to “clean up the stands” and make them “safe for families,” it’s clear that what it has actually done is rob the game of something else.
“Welcome to the World Cup in Germany,” said the conductor en route to Berlin yesterday. “You know, the one we lost.” It’s been one of those tournaments: dryly absurd at its height and, at its nadir, having all the charm of a American football tailgate.
Last night, at the Brandenburg gate we watched the fans stream past us after the hosts toppled Portugal (a team that we are still trying to figure out just how it got to the third place game in the first place — this is a side that netted just six goals heading into Saturday evening) and it struck us as oddly meaningless. It didn’t feel like a World Cup; it felt more like a college weekend out. As Wrigley Field has been transformed from a place where the Cubs play into a place where you go and hang out, so was Germany, in many places we visited, for the Cup. The commercialization and santization of the Cup as a whole reached a new height we hadn’t thought possible after Japan; we were wrong. Lost, in all of this, was the feeling of the fan.
The most meaningful moments for us in this Cup, so far, have been the ones informed by history. While it’s dangerous to make generalizations, there’s no question that the organizers of World Cup 06 had hoped to showcase a “new Germany,” at the centre of a new Europe. Germany is clearly a very different place than it was even ten years ago, but the question of whether it is today any different then it was back in December when the Cup unofficially kicked off in Leipzig is an open question.
We’ve been charmed by some of our hosts, yet repelled by many of the undercurrents we still feel. (Being a mixed-race couple, we may both be more attuned and vulnerable to such things; we hasten to note that it was no different in Sicily a few years back… or, for that matter, home in Chicago.) We have been struck by the openness and generosity of some and puzzled by the general dourness of others. Most of the happiest folks we’ve met this trip aren’t from Germany, oddly enough — they moved here from the Eastern bloc states or other European countries.
And, last night, as we walked along the river Spree among the thousands of fans — a shocking number of whom seemed like they were there on a corporate junket — we got the sense that there was a lot of passion but no substance. We felt that this was a celebration, sure… but for what?
We had an entirely different sense when we came to the Reichstag and then walked on to the Holocaust Memorial. At night, after passing the German constitution in glass at Parliament, the people sitting quietly on the steps of the Reichstag seemed to have a great deal more resonance to us. True, Adidas had set up its own fan fest just a few hundred yards away, but the people weren’t looking at that or at the big screens.
They were looking at each other as they passed, waving and smiling. And then they were looking up, on a nearly full moon.
Correspondent Steve Gans, a Boston-area lawyer who has worked in pro soccer for a number of years writes:
"Missing from all of the analysis regarding why the U.S. performed so poorly at this year’s World Cup has been the most important reality: that soccer is by far the most difficult team sport to master from both an intelligence and skills perspective, and that the American wealthy and diverse culture thus does not lend itself to producing top flight soccer players. Since the issue is one of inherent culture, it suggests that the U.S. will not for many years if ever produce a World Cup championship team.
Though hitting a baseball may be the single most difficult feat in sports, soccer is hands down the most demanding team sport to master. Soccer players must contemplate a seemingly endless number of possibilities regarding what to do when the ball comes. In motion on a field that is up to 120 yards long and 75 yards wide, with 9 other field teammates to consider, the possibilities are many, and relatively complex. It is like a chess game, but the board is gigantic, and the pieces are moving quickly. From an intelligence perspective, the only other somewhat analogous sports are basketball and hockey, which also demand quick thinking within a free-flowing game. Yet, given that players in those sports must consider merely 4 other teammates over a smaller field (i.e., court, rink), mastering the intelligence of soccer is a far more intricate and demanding feat.
I am a great believer in the American player and soccer in America. But I have long believed we will not for many years become a world power. Given the hype surrounding the U.S. National Team over the last few years, I began to wonder whether my assessment was wrong, and that perhaps I was not recognizing the extent of progress because of my own insecurities and inadequacies as a player. But the U.S. performance at this year’s World Cup seemed to validate my observations.
American kids have athletic, cultural, educational and recreational choices unmatched by the rest of the world. This diversity of options is of course good for developing well-rounded human beings. But it happens to be a bad thing for developing soccer stars. Soccer is truly the world’s game. Ironically, what makes us the envy of the rest of the world is precisely what makes us a weak soccer nation. Most American kids enjoy a standard of living and lifestyle options which make the prospect of the single-minded pursuit of a soccer playing career neither necessary nor interesting.
The fact that we have never produced a world class playmaker, dribbler or goal scorer says less about the American athlete and more about our culture. Surely we have native intelligence and physical attributes necessary to the make-up of a top soccer player. But we lack the soccer specific intelligence and skills, which are based on experience. Why no playmaker of the caliber of Riquelme or Rosicky, whose through balls bespeak a great read of the game, and are beautiful to behold? Because the American player does not see the play develop quite as fast, and spends a fraction of a second longer than optimum settling the ball.
In football, you can take an adult sprinter with little experience and turn him into an All-Pro receiver (as the Dallas Cowboys did with Bob Hayes). Baseball, basketball and hockey are filled with examples of players who concentrated on two or three sports growing up, yet who still reached the top echelon in their ultimate chosen sport. Is soccer is simply too difficult to allow for this?"
I am the senior soccer writer here at Fox Sports as well a regular contributor to many, many newspapers and magazines.
If you like what I write, then please buy my book "Love And Blood" from Harcourt, now available.
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