AJC.com > Sports > Soccer blog > Archives > 2006 > September > 01
Friday, September 1, 2006
Season on the brink
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Silverbacks have little choice to realize their playoff hopes Saturday: Beat Rochester in the home finale or possibly stay home for the fifth straight season. Wouldn’t be surprised if the house is close to being full, or possibly overflowing.
If nothing else, the move to new digs has been a success, yet there’s no guarantee of such a following next season once the novelty wears off. The bottom line is people will go to watch a winning team. The product on the field is paramount to any significant progress American soccer must make in the spectator realm.
The challenge across the land is building a physical infrastructure and realistic business model while raising the competitive standard with extremely tight spending limits. Just when you think Major League Soccer takes a few steps forward — beautiful new facilities in Chicago and Dallas, groundbreaking in New York and soon to be in D.C. — there are several stubs along the way.
The Kansas City Wizards have been sold by Lamar Hunt interests to a group pledged to keep them in that small and troublesome fly-over market, but without a new stadium in place. Arrowhead’s undergoing renovations and won’t be available next season. So a top-shelf club team will have to compete in second- or third-rate facilities.
This is laughable. This is among the reasons why Stone Mountain’s Josh Wolff tried again to land a spot on a European club team, but the British government denied him a work permit to move to Derby County. For the meantime, he’ll continue to pair up with the mercurial Eddie Johnson for a franchise in flux, on the field and off.
Another alarming matter is home attendance for the New England Revolution, once one of MLS’ big draws, but now last averaging around 10K at the too-big Gillette Stadium. The league is urging a move to soccer-specific confines, but that won’t happen overnight.
One Yank who is hopping over to England is DaMarcus Beasley, Wolff’s ex-Chicago Fire teammate, who’s moving from PSV Eindhoven to Manchester City. That’s where budding careers usually go to die, or those on the down side, such as Claudio Reyna, attempt to age gracefully. City’s taking a sizable chance on Beasley, who hasn’t done much lately for club or country.
Across the pond, the domestic leagues got revved up only to step aside for the weekend with the start of Euro 2008 qualifiers. Good heavens. The World Cup has been over for less than eight weeks, and now this?
The highlights on Saturday’s schedule are few, but Germany vs. Republic of Ireland could be interesting as the post-Juergen Klinsmann period begins for the World Cup third place finishers. Otherwise, about as exciting as the first full day of college football.
Among the cupcake matchups: England-Andorra (red-carded Wayne Rooney sits), Holland-Luxembourg, France-Georgia and Spain-Liechtenstein. World Cup winners Italy will have the privilege of playing host to Lithuania. Only 644 days away from the opener in Basle.
