Archive: November, 2010
UPDATE: If you did not get to watch the U.S. World Cup bid committee's presentation live, there is video of the entire thing on FIFA's website here. the committee sent out a press release last night containing quotes and photos from Zurich, Switzerland.
Last night, the committee sent out a press release with quotes and photos from committee members. A few of the photos are above, along with some that ran on the Associated Press wire. The quotes at the bottom of the post.
Here's a look around the latest reporting in the American and international media on the bids and the upcoming vote.
First of all, there are stories in both the Inquirer and Daily News today. The Inquirer's Marc Narducci and the Daily News' Kerith Gabriel take a look at the U.S. bid and its competition for 2022, while the Daily News' Frank Bertucci surveys the 2018 candidates with a focus on England.
Reporting from Zurich, Sports Illustrated's Grant Wahl's latest column is headlined "U.S.' bid appears favored for 2022." Wahl writes: "Anyone who tells you he knows with certainty who will get these bids is lying." Nonetheless, he handicaps the U.S. bid as a 4/5 favorite, with Qatar second at 9/4 and Australia at 5/2.
Wahl's column includes this noteworthy quote from U.S. bid chief Sunil Gulati:
And is it possible for the U.S. to win the '22 bid while playing by the rules? "Yes," Gulati maintains. "I certainly hope so, or we wouldn't have gotten into the game. We also made clear we had every intention of winning and clearly thought we could play by the rules and win."
On this side of the Atlantic, the Washington Post's Steven Goff has put together a nice explanation of how the voting process will work. He then sums up the state of affairs this way:
And when the presentations by the U.S. group and its competitors are complete, FIFA's executive committee will culminate years of maneuvering, lobbying and dreaming by awarding the 2022 World Cup to ... Qatar. Or Australia. Maybe Japan or South Korea.
Logic says that the United States will win out, but FIFA is hardly a logical organization. In a tumultuous climate fueled by allegations of corruption and deal-brokering that made the International Olympic Committee's Salt Lake City scandal a decade ago seem tame, predicting the results of the 2018 and 2022 World Cup votes is hopeless.
New York Times columnist George Vescey is even more succinct:
The United States is overwhelmingly the best candidate to hold the 2022 World Cup of soccer.
Which may not matter.
Included in Goff's explanation of the voting process are the latest odds on the vote from British bookmaker William Hill. Qatar is the favorite at 1-2, followed by Australia at 5-2 and the United States at 9-2.
You might be interested to know that when I tried to search for the latest odds on William Hill's website, I got the error message "Sorry, betting no longer available on this event" for both the 2018 and 2022 decisions.
However, I was able to find a quality rundown of odds on the website oddschecker.com. You can view the 2018 odds here and the 2022 odds here.
Regarding the 2018 decision, the English newspaper The Guardian finds reason for English optimism. David Beckham, Prime Minister David Cameron and Prince William are mounting a last-minute charm offensive, and Russia's once-favored bid could be hurt by news that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will not travel to Zurich.
Cameron was met by the horde of traveling British media upon his arrival in Switzerland, and deflected questions about the BBC's investigation into corruption among members of FIFA's executive committee.
This morning, Putin criticized the bidding process in remarks to reporters in Moscow:
Jonathan Tannenwald, Philly.com
I'm one of the first people you'll meet who will defend MLS against people in the United States who think it's worthless compared to the powerhouse leagues in the rest of the world.
I would almost always rather watch a game in person than on television, especially when I can go to a stadium with the kind of atmosphere PPL Park produces.
Still, it's hard to resist the lure of a really big European game when it's right nearby on the TV set. And there are few bigger games anywhere on the continent than the Spanish clásico between Barcelona and Real Madrid.
It is soccer's equivalent of Yankees-Red Sox, especially in the modern era. The teams in both rivalries spend millions of dollars to acquire their respective sports' top superstars, and the resulting clashes draw millions of television viewers around the world.
But the appeal of Barça and Real does not just come from the big names on their rosters. Both clubs insist on playing attractive soccer, with creative passers and strikers who score lots of goals.
So it was only natural that the soccer world came to a halt today to watch these two giants face off at Barcelona's famed Camp Nou stadium. The listed attendance in Europe's largest sporting arena was 98,255, and it's a fair bet that a few more fans snuck in other nooks and crannies to watch the action.
I watched the game at a bar in Center City. Even though it was the middle of the afternoon, there were still a decent number of people in the place. Some wore the white jersey of Real, others the red-and-blue stripes of Barcelona.
No matter where in the world fans watched from, everyone was treated to one of the great displays of soccer artistry in recent times. Even the Madrid fans had to admit that Barcelona's 5-0 rout showed why soccer is referred to as "the beautiful game" by so many people.
Barcelona's ability to pass the ball and keep possession is exquisite. In Xavi, Andres Iniesta and superstar Lionel Messi, the club has a midfield core that is simply dominant. Up front, David Villa is one of the world's best strikers, and he is made even better by the quality of service he receives from the aforementioned trio.
Obviously, not every team and not every player in the world can play that way. But you don't have to be an international superstar to at least give it a fair try.
If you watched the Colorado Rapids' run through the Major League Soccer playoffs, you saw that they play a style that emphasizes defense much more than it does attack.
Contrast that not just with Barcelona, but with the Union. Peter Nowak's club often produced creative, attacking soccer, and that's one of the major reasons why Philadelphia won praise from observers across MLS in its inaugural season.
Of course Roger Torres is not as good as Lionel Messi, nor is Sebastien Le Toux as good as David Villa. But you can tell that they understand that philosophy of how to play soccer in a certain way.
The sport should entertain us, right? Yes, winning is important, but if every soccer game ended 1-0, it would be really boring. No matter what team you root for, it is always a good thing when soccer is creative and flowing instead of rough and defensive.
Barcelona definitely entertained us today. Whether as fans, players or journalists, we should appreciate the show that was put on today - and we should hope for more of it from teams around the world.
If you didn't get to watch the game, you can see highlights below. The fourth goal, scored by Villa and set up by Messi, was especially pretty.
Jonathan Tannenwald, Philly.com
The United States has been drawn with North Korea, Colombia and Sweden for the group stage of the 2011 Women's World Cup, which will take place next summer in Germany.
The U.S. qualified for the World Cup by winning a two-leg playoff over Italy, 2-0 on aggregate. Philadelphia Independence forward Amy Rodriguez scored the winning goal in the second leg, a 1-0 win this past Saturday at Toyota Park in Bridgeview, Ill. You can watch a video of Rodriguez's goal at the bottom of the post.
Despite having had to play the playoff, the U.S. was one of the four seeded teams in the draw because of its high place in the FIFA world rankings. But the high seed did not prevent the U.S. from getting a tough group that includes longtime rivals North Korea and Sweden.
Both teams were in the U.S.' group in 2007 and 2003, and North Korea was in the U.S.' group in 1999. Sweden was in the U.S.' group at the first ever Women's World Cup in 1991.
Here is the draw in full. The seeded teams are listed first:
Group A: Germany, Canada, Nigeria, France
Group B: Japan, New Zealand, Mexico, England
Group C: United States, North Korea, Colombia, Sweden
Group D: Brazil, Australia, Norway, Equatorial Guinea
Germany vs. Canada will be the opening match of the tournament, which will run from June 26 to July 17. The United States' first match will be against North Korea, which will be interesting for all the reasons you can think of.
The venues are Augsburg, Berlin, Bochm, Dresden, Frankfurt, Leverkusen, Moenchengladbach, Sinsheim and Wolfsburg. Berlin's famed Olympic Stadium will host the opening game, and the Commerzbank-Arena in Frankfurt will host the championship game.
Jonathan Tannenwald, Philly.com
Next Monday's big game between Barcelona and Real Madrid has rightly been billed as a clash of soccer heavyweights. But it has nothing on the showdown that will take place in Zurich, Switzerland a few days later.
The latter contest was the subject of a story that ran on the Associated Press wire a few days ago. It flew under the radar because of all the attention we paid to the MLS Expansion Draft, but I didn't want to let it go without discussion here.
FIFA executive Mohamed Bin Hammam has questioned suggestions by American counterpart Chuck Blazer that Qatar is too hot to host the 2022 World Cup.
Blazer said last week that while Bin Hammam's Qatar can air-condition its stadiums, "I don't see how you can air-condition an entire country."
But Bin Hammam of Qatar has pointed out to Blazer that extreme temperatures are also an issue in parts of the United States, which hosted the tournament in 1994.
[...]
Bin Hammam claimed that "American fans forgot about the heat, and yet, (organizers) applied for another World Cup posting in less than 16 years from the time they last hosted."
In the world of soccer politics, that is the equivalent of two navy frigates exchanging cannon fire across the high seas. Bin Hammam and Blazer are more than just members of FIFA's executive committee. If you were to rank the sport's elite power-brokers, Bin Hammam and Blazer would probably both be in the top six.
Bin Hammam is the head of the Asian Football Confederation, and is a native of Qatar. Blazer is a top executive at CONCACAF (run by the notoriously corrupt Jack Warner), and is a native of the United States.
You can guess where I'm going with this.
Six days from now, we will find out whether Qatar, the United States or another country will host the World Cup. It is a clash of many things: geography, tradition within the sport, forms of government, sources of revenue.
But above all, at least in my opinion, it will be a clash of will power. On one side stands Bin Hammam, with as many as eight of the 22 executive committee members pledged to vote for him as part of a quid pro quo with the Spain/Portugal 2018 bid. On the other side stand Blazer, Warner and potentially some of FIFA's American-based commercial sponsors.
A great many people in the Western world, fans and media types alike, are of the opinion that it makes the most sense for the 2018 World Cup to go to England and the 2022 edition to go to the United States. But FIFA does not necessarily make decisions on the basis of what makes sense. Indeed, sometimes they don't even make decisions on the basis of what makes money.
This was always going to be one of the biggest dangers of awarding the hosting rights to both tournaments at the same time. Such a system clearly invites collusion and quid-pro-quos. FIFA can say anything it wants about vote-trading being illegal, but they have already demonstrated an unwillingness to enforce the rules.
Despite no small amount of reporting of evidence in the international media, FIFA's ethics committee ruled that there were not "sufficient grounds" to prove guilt in the Spain/Portugal-Qatar vote-trading affair.
Jonathan Tannenwald, Philly.com
The Philadelphia Union lost dynamic midfielder Shea Salinas and veteran forward Alejandro Moreno to the Vancouver Whitecaps in today's MLS Expansion Draft. After Salinas was taken, the Union pulled Chris Seitz out of the pool of available players.
Moreno was later dealt to Chivas USA as both the Whitecaps and Portland Timbers unleashed a flurry of trades. Details are below.
Losing Salinas and Moreno are important, but the headline is removing Seitz from the pool of available players. It is a huge endorsement of a player who struggled mightily in his first full season as a starter.
Jonathan Tannenwald, Philly.com
Ahead of the Philadelphia Union's announcement of which players it has left unprotected for the upcoming Expansion Draft, the club announced that it has acquired Columbus Crew midfielder Brian Carroll.
The Union gave up allocation money and a second-round pick in the 2011 SuperDraft in return.
"I think we all know Brian Carroll's qualities from the past seasons with D.C. United and Columbus," Union coach Peter Nowak said this evening. "This is another piece to our team that we felt to be important for the future, with his experience being with championship teams."
Jonathan Tannenwald, Philly.com
This post is rather long, and a bit dense. But I hope you'll read all the way through it, because there's a lot of information here.
You may have heard by now that FIFA released all of its evaluation documents for the cities bidding to host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups yesterday. It took me a little while to get through everything, but here is something of a Cliffs Notes version of what's in the documents.
All of the evaluation documents are posted here. They run between 40 and 50 pages each, and are worth reading if you have the time.
Jonathan Tannenwald, Philly.com
In case you haven't seen them yet, there were some great goals scored today around the wide world of international soccer.
One came in the United States' win over South Africa in Cape Town, an impressive performance by a young and experimental American squad. It was a lively game, but it took until the 85th minute for a goal to be scored. Mikkel Diskerud played a nifty chip to 17-year-old Juan Agudelo, who controlled the ball and shot it into the net off the crossbar.
Jonathan Tannenwald, Philly.com
It is a rare moment in American soccer when a person or event captures attention on a truly national stage. But Ian Darke has done that twice in this calendar year.
The first occasion came during the World Cup, when Darke was at the microphone for Landon Donovan's historic game-winning goal in the U.S.-Algeria game. The second came a few months later, when ESPN announced that it had hired Darke to be the network's signature voice on its soccer telecasts.
Since then, though, we haven't heard much from Darke. There have been a few English Premier League broadcasts on Saturday morning, but no involvement with the American game. ESPN had initially planned for him to call the U.S.-Colombia friendly at PPL Park last month, but Darke's busy schedule in England prevented him from coming across the Atlantic.
Jonathan Tannenwald, Philly.com
Sebastien Le Toux finally got a decent honor today, as he was named to Major League Soccer's Best XI for the 2010 season.
The Best XI is basically an all-league team. It is voted on by members of the media, players, coaches and general managers in MLS.
Le Toux scored 14 goals and dished out 11 assists, contributing to an MLS record 71.4 percent of his team's goals in the season.
The full Best XI is a 3-5-2:
Goalkeeper: Donovan Ricketts, Los Angeles Galaxy
Defenders: Jamison Olave, Real Salt Lake; Nat Borchers, Real Salt Lake; Omar Gonzalez, Los Angeles Galaxy
Midfielders: Landon Donovan, Los Angeles Galaxy; David Ferreira, FC Dallas; Javier Morales, Real Salt Lake; Sebastien Le Toux, Philadelphia Union; Dwayne De Rosario, Toronto FC
Forwards: Chris Wondolowski, San Jose Earthquakes; Edson Buddle, Los Angeles Galaxy
Landon Donovan was originally listed on the ballot as a forward, but the league moved him to midfield for the final XI because it was clear that he (and other forwards) deserved to be there.
In other soccer news...
- MLS commissioner Don Garber gave his state-of-the-league address today. Among the news items from his remarks were the creation of a reserve league; the elimination of the cap on homegrown players on a team's senior roster; the expansion of rosters from 26 players to 30; and the possibility that the MLS Cup final will be played at the home of the highest seed instead of at a neutral site.
The Washington Post's Steven Goff, the Seattle Times' Joshua Mayers and AOL FanHouse's Brian Straus have the details, as well as many more interesting tidbits from what was apparently a very long conference call with reporters.
- The Kansas City Wizards will have a new name next year. An official announcement will be made tomorrow that the club is changing its name Sporting Kansas City. The change coincides with the opening of the Wizards' new stadium in Kansas City, Kansas. SoccerByIves.net has the details of the name change, including the new logo, here.
- Women's Professional Soccer will play on in 2011. The Washington Freedom and Boston Breakers found investors to remain afloat at the last minute. The league will have six teams next season: Philadelphia, Washington, Boston, Atlanta, Sky Blue FC (New Jersey) and the new Buffalo/Rochester franchise. FC Gold Pride, the league's reigning champions, have folded.
Independence owner David Halstead wrote a letter to fans earlier this month regarding his team's financial situation. In it, he noted that the Independence hopes to get on a sound enough financial footing to be able to "accept the Union's offer" to play at PPL Park in 2012 or 2013.
- Ian Darke will call the U.S. national team's game at South Africa on Wednesday for ESPN. The game will be broadcast on ESPN2 starting at 2 p.m. Darke will be joined in Cape Town by John Harkes, wtih Bob Ley, Alexi Lalas and Steve McMannaman in the studio.
Prior to the U.S.-South Africa game, ESPN2 will air the Brazil-Argentina game being played in Doha, Qatar. Adrian Healey and Robbie Mustoe will be on the mic, with the broadcast starting at 11:55 a.m.
Darke and Harkes will then head to Toronto to call the MLS Cup Final on Sunday night between FC Dallas and Colorado. They will be joined by Max Bretos, Alexi Lalas and McMannaman in an on-site studio at BMO Field.
The U.S women's national team's two-leg World Cup playoff against Italy will air exclusively on ESPN3.com. The first game will be this Saturday in Italy at 10:30 a.m., and the second game will be at Toyota Park in Bridgeview, Ill., on November 27.
ESPN held a conference call with Darke, Harkes and Lalas this afternoon. I'll have a writeup on here tomorrow morning.
Reach Jonathan at jtannenwald@phillynews.com or 215-854-2330.
