MLS

[Deuce]

Rumours of NYC FC signing David Villa on a 3-year contract...

 

Given they don't begin playing until next season, you'd have to assume it would be a contract starting in 2015.

 

David Villa is currently 32.

 

I'd have him just because he's one of my favorite players in world football.

[BillClinton]

Anyone see any of the Revolution this season? Haven't been able to watch since I've moved, but they seem to be doing very well. Haven't made as many signings as other clubs, but they have a nice core of younger players coming through.

[Deuce]

Anyone see any of the Revolution this season? Haven't been able to watch since I've moved, but they seem to be doing very well. Haven't made as many signings as other clubs, but they have a nice core of younger players coming through.

 

They started out slow, but they've been crushing it lately. Won 5 straight, including 5-0 against Seattle. Nguyen has been on fire and Mullins is an early favorite for ROY.

[BillClinton]

Anyone see any of the Revolution this season? Haven't been able to watch since I've moved, but they seem to be doing very well. Haven't made as many signings as other clubs, but they have a nice core of younger players coming through.

 

They started out slow, but they've been crushing it lately. Won 5 straight, including 5-0 against Seattle. Nguyen has been on fire and Mullins is an early favorite for ROY.

Thought Mullins had the look of a good pick, but it's so hard to tell with the draft these days.

 

What a weird league. Out of this current wave of younger coaches, I wouldn't have thought Heaps would be the most successful.

[Miercoles]

Anyone see any of the Revolution this season? Haven't been able to watch since I've moved, but they seem to be doing very well. Haven't made as many signings as other clubs, but they have a nice core of younger players coming through.

including 5-0 against Seattle.

 

whoa

[LucaAltieri]

Anyone see any of the Revolution this season? Haven't been able to watch since I've moved, but they seem to be doing very well. Haven't made as many signings as other clubs, but they have a nice core of younger players coming through.

including 5-0 against Seattle.

 

whoa

 

We had a bad day.

[Village Idiot]

Rumours of NYC FC signing David Villa on a 3-year contract...

 

Given they don't begin playing until next season, you'd have to assume it would be a contract starting in 2015.

 

David Villa is currently 32.

 

I'd have him just because he's one of my favorite players in world football.

 

It's been confirmed today, and that he'll train with ManCity until then.

 

Dunno, he seems to be throwing in the towel if he just intends to train for a year and then go to the MLS.

[cubaricho]

No bump for the Lampard news?

[LucaAltieri]

Kevin Molino is currently USL Pro top scorer with 9, and joint top in assists with 5. He's been in the team of the week every week since the season kicked off.  Watch him turn to shit next season.

[cubaricho]

I'm just afraid they'll try and replace him with someone who has more experience in MLS.  Kind of like the clubs that come up from the Championship and sign a Carlton Cole-type instead of letting their player that scored the most goals in the league have a chance.

[LucaAltieri]

I'm just afraid they'll try and replace him with someone who has more experience in MLS.  Kind of like the clubs that come up from the Championship and sign a Carlton Cole-type instead of letting their player that scored the most goals in the league have a chance.

 

Aye, straight swap for Chad Barrett in the off-season 

[cubaricho]

http://www.orlandocitysc.com/news/?article_id=1890

 

Didn't even know this was a thing, but apparently we have sold our franchise rights to Louisville City.  A bunch of Orlando City backroom staff heading over.  Very interesting.

[LucaAltieri]

Mate of mine (an American) was crying about this on facebook earlier:

 

http://online.wsj.com/articles/why-i-hate-american-soccer-fans-1402012291

 

The Problem With American Soccer Fans

It All Feels Like An Elaborate Affectation

 

Growing up as a soccer fan in England, I've witnessed my fair share of horrors. I've seen shocking acts of violence, overheard hundreds of abusive chants and watched Pelé retire to sell erectile dysfunction pills.

 

Over the years, I've been angered, saddened and ashamed by these things. But through it all, my love for soccer remained undimmed.

 

But lately, I've discovered there's a new scourge on my beloved game that I simply cannot tolerate: Americans.

 

Understand that I'm not talking about the vast majority of you, who still regard soccer as a distinctly European product of dubious worth, like espadrilles or universal health care.

 

I don't begrudge fans here who have only recently awakened to the charms of what the rest of the world has long known as the beautiful game. Welcome to the party!

 

The problem is your soccer obsessives. By my reckoning, they may be the most derivative, excessive and utterly ridiculous collection of sports fans on the planet.

 

If you've ever stumbled across this tribe as they spill out of a bar on Saturday mornings after 90 minutes spent watching a game contested by two teams based thousands of miles away, you'll know the sort of fans I'm talking about.

 

They refer to the sport as "fútbol," hold long conversations about the finer points of the 4-4-2 formation and proudly drape team scarves around their necks even when the temperature outside is touching 90 degrees.

 

It is this band of soccer junkies who have turned the simple pleasure I used to derive from heading to a bar to watch a game into something more akin to undergoing root canal surgery.

 

It's not that they all have the same stories about study-abroad trips to Europe, or that they get wildly excited about the simplest saves, or even, for inexplicable reasons, that 90% of soccer fans in the U.S. seem to root for Arsenal.

 

My biggest gripe is that all of this feels like an elaborate affectation.

 

Instead of watching the game in the time-honored way of American sports fans—by thrusting a giant foam finger in the air, say, or devouring a large plate of Buffalo wings—your soccer fanatics have taken to aping the behavior of our fans from across the pond.

 

The scarves thing is an obvious example, but it's far from the only one. There's the self-conscious use of terms like "pitch," "match" and "kit," the songs lifted directly from English soccer stadiums, and even the appropriation of terrace couture.

 

On a recent weekend, I went to a bar to watch the UEFA Champions League final and found myself stationed next to a soccer fan wearing a replica Arsenal jersey, a team scarf around his neck and a pair of Dr. Martens lace-ups. He looked like he he'd been born and raised along the Holloway Road. In fact, he was from Virginia.

 

The whole thing seemed to be less an expression of genuine fandom and more like an elaborate piece of performance art. Didn't we fight a war so you guys wouldn't have to take cues on how to behave from London?

 

It should come as no surprise that the situation is particularly heinous in New York City. This is a town where artisanal toast is now a thing. So of course there's a peculiar species of fan here whose passion for soccer seems to be less about 22 men chasing a ball up and down a field and more about its intellectual and cosmopolitan qualities.

 

Never mind that no other sport is so linked to the working class. For these fans, rooting for an English soccer team is a highbrow pursuit and a mark of sophistication, like going to a Wes Anderson movie or owning a New Yorker subscription.

 

It's not just English soccer that's been fetishized in this way, of course. Your soccer snobs have pilfered elements of fan culture from Spain, Italy and Latin America. These days, half of your national team has been imported from Germany.

 

There's the curious obsession with 'tifo'—those enormous banners that are unfurled in stadiums before kickoff. They work at Lazio, Bayern Munich or Boca Juniors. At Real Salt Lake, not so much.

 

These soccer snobs are so intent on maintaining an aura of authenticity that when they make a slip-up or use an incorrect or ill-advised term, I feel compelled to pounce on them with all the force of a Roy Keane challenge.

 

There's no such position as outside back! (It is fullback.) The rest of the world doesn't call them PKs! (It is penalties. Just penalties.)

 

Not to mention the fact that your fans happily refer to Team USA captain Clint Dempsey by the nickname "Deuce." Deuce?! This is international soccer, not "Top Gun."

 

Ever since a ball was first kicked into a net, it has been an inviolable law of the game that Dempsey should be shortened to Demps. Just like Michael Bradley gets cut to Bradders, John Brooks to Brooksy and Jermaine Jones to Jonesy, or perhaps JJ, at a push. (For the record, Mix Diskerud can still be known as Mix Diskerud.)

 

The great regret about all this is that mimicking the customs of fans from everywhere else could hinder the development of your own American soccer identity.

 

One of the joys of soccer is seeing how different cultures view, interpret and celebrate the game in their own distinct ways.

 

I find it fascinating, for example, that while we see soccer as a broad narrative that unfolds over 90 minutes, your fans tend to think about the sport as a series of discrete events.

 

Or that I view the coming World Cup and England's inevitable failure with a mixture of trepidation and dread, while your fans seem positively excited about the tournament.

 

Mind you, with Team USA facing a potentially decisive matchup with Germany, there's a strong chance that your upbeat disposition won't last long. That is one lesson you can take from an Englishman.

 

I made him feel a little better with my response but it's hard not to agree with some of it.

[Flip]

The guy comes across as an asshole in my opinion. He seems unaware that football is a universal language and that most of the good things has originated somewhere and then spread. What's wrong with US fans wearing scarves and mimicking what others have done before? Didn't TIFO's start in Italy or such and now we see them all over the world? There's no balance in opinion, I mean what Portland Timbers does is absolutely pathetic, but I guess he appreciates the fact that they're doing it in their distinct way? In Brazil we have so many names for positions that I completely get lost at times, what's the problem with fullback or outside back? Who cares if Dempsey is given the nickname Deuce? In Brazil we have Hulk, Kaka etc.

 

That whole article is cringeworthy at best and his calling of some fans as snob is basically what he is. If we all want our distinct ways to support we'd still have only women watching rich white people play while twisting their white tissue as some sort of support for the player in Brazil.

 

 

*many of his points I don't know about since I don't live in the US.

[LucaAltieri]

Of course he's being an ass. He's trying to be funny - and some of it is. I can relate to some of it, particularly the part about none of it seeming authentic. Coming from British culture to American culture has that affect. When we go to support our team, the game has 100+ years of history behind it. It's just different in the US. It's like I replied to my mate:

 

His overall tone is a bit harsh but I can sympathize with some of it. One of the points he seems to miss completely is when he's complaining about how American soccer culture doesn't seem authentic. It extends beyond soccer culture and into everything. American culture in general is very malleable. The Tea Party political movement came out of nowhere and was instantly a phenomenon.That doesn't happen in England. Our recent big shake up of political parties that "came from nowhere" took 16 years to develop.

 

Back to soccer, the Sacramento Republic just appeared this season and draw gates of 20k people. When we have teams pop up in the UK start at the bottom of the pyramid (not in MLS like NYC FC) with a tiny fanbase and grow up into big teams with their own organic culture. It takes years. We're a nation rooted in tradition whereas America is a nation that manufactures its own sentiment very quickly.

 

You look at the difference between how the US and the UK memorialize terrorist attacks and such. 9/11 is cause for show, flag waving, expressions of emotion. Our 7/7 bombings are marked quietly and subdued and will take time to become part of our identity.

 

So when he's arguing about how American soccer fans are stealing other cultures instead of developing their own, he's dead wrong. American soccer fans know very well what they want their soccer culture to be and instead of just waiting for it to happen organically and becoming a tradition, like the British do, they take a very pro-active approach in creating the culture that they want. There's nothing more American than that.

 

It's not at the detriment to how you guys feel about the game, either. The vast majority of the soccer fans I know here are completely genuine. I coach the kids, I've been to professional games, I play local league and the occasional pick-up games. Of all the people I've met I can probably count the number of posers on one hand.

 

However, from the point of view of an Englishman there is always going to be a certain amount of snobbery towards American soccer culture because you guys have been awful at it for so long. But the tide is turning, the number of kids over here playing soccer is growing while in the UK it's falling. Before we die the USMNT is going to outrank England, easily. We may even see an American world cup win. We English find that a little annoying and will continue to tease you yanks for the remaining time we can.

[Flip]

Well put, like I said since I don't live there I don't understand most of it, but he just comes across as if the Englishmen invented everything with football. It was the sport and it's rules that was invented but not everything that comes with it. Rest of the world perfected it. Remember that while it's a working class sport nowadays, it started out in many countries, one of them being Brazil, as a sport for only the rich elite.

[B-more Mag]

I know the type of fan he's written about. They certainly exist but also aren't representative. I also know immigrants who patronize Americans about soccer. They also aren't representative.

[Deuce]

It's an interesting article, and I don't necessarily disagree. However, it's a bit contradictory. American fans shouldn't use European traditions, such as the tifo...but they should adopt traditional British nicknames for players? Dempsey is Deuce because he's Deuce, in the same way that Edgerrin James was "Edge" and Dwight Gooden was "Doc."

 

Personally I can't stand the MLS "ultras" and the culture surrounding them. It's entirely inorganic. Fucking Capo Robby and that shit, it's all a pathetic attempt to "fit in" with European football, when MLS doesn't need to. And it just comes across as laughable.

 

But as B-More said, there's also not one type of "American soccer fan."

[SEMTEX]

Copy & paste my facebook comment on this from Toon Army NYC....

 

Impressive that the article mocks Americans for using our British terminology and then follows that with a complaint that Americans use silly words for penalties. Nonsense article with no purpose other than to rile people.

 

[Flip]

Copy & paste my facebook comment on this from Toon Army NYC....

 

Impressive that the article mocks Americans for using our British terminology and then follows that with a complaint that Americans use silly words for penalties. Nonsense article with no purpose other than to rile people.

 

 

[Ameritoon]

Just saw Shipp's goals from last night. I like the cut of his jib.

 

[Deuce]

[LucaAltieri]

Played a pickup game against a Div 2 college player yesterday. More than held our own against him and his mates. I think that says more about the level of college soccer in the US than it does about our particular football ability.

[Flip]

Played a pickup game against a Div 2 college player yesterday. More than held our own against him and his mates. I think that says more about the level of college soccer in the US than it does about our particular football ability.

 

College level is absolute a joke if it's not the top 30 or so Universities. Was offered a chance to play in the US in college despite being like 15kg overweight since they lack a complete technical ability.

[Kanj]

Copy & paste my facebook comment on this from Toon Army NYC....

 

Impressive that the article mocks Americans for using our British terminology and then follows that with a complaint that Americans use silly words for penalties. Nonsense article with no purpose other than to rile people.

 

 

 

Garbage article by a garbage writer. Support your club the way you want. Just because a team starts up in 2014, doesn't mean you can't say on day 1 "this is how we will march into the stadium" or "this is the song we will sing" -- that's what people did in 1910 and it just happened to carry through the test of time or fall through - like every other sporting tradition or forgotten song - the good funny or exciting  stuff sticks and the crap stuff falls along the way.

 

What I love is the fact that this sport is getting FULL air-time on the likes of NBC (Premier League), BeIN, ESPN, Fox, etc. What I like is my little cousins are soccer players versus being mediocre basketball or terrible American football players. What I enjoy is seeing the madness that was my favorite bar for the World Cup in 2010 be even more crazy about this upcoming week.  Some jackass from NYT doesn't like the "culture", well respect my 100% American middle-finger and head back to the slow engrained 100 year tradition of the mighty club you support.