American Soccer is finally doing it right!
August 12, 2010
Theirry Henry will not say American soccer fans sing better than English fans. But they do sing well.
And maybe that is the missing link, the natural order of soccer progression. First the fans learn to sing together in a cappella support of their lads, then a great homegrown striker emerges from the mists.
Henry, once a great star in the Premier League with Arsenal, says he has heard home fans in Houston, Chicago and now the New York metropolitan area keep their teams in the game with musical accompaniment for the entire 90 minutes.
Without blaring vuvuzelas marring the sound, Henry made his home debut Wednesday evening, playing the first half and assisting on the goal as the Red Bulls defeated Toronto, 1-0.
But this musical talent breaking out all over Major League Soccer does not mean the sport is in for a golden age. In fact, this part of the continent might have had its golden age in the 1970s, when the late, lamented Cosmos were filling the late and perhaps soon-to-be-lamented Giants Stadium and other places.
Something is stirring in the United States in the wake of the recent World Cup in South Africa. Apparently a few stirring rallies as the Yanks were eliminated in the Round of 16 went over better with fans back home than they did with the hard-to-please American players, officials and even reporters who witnessed the sluggish starts and lapses up close.
“I never say we are turning the corner because it seems to me that if you turn the corner four times, you are back where you started,” Sunil Gulati, the president of the United States Soccer Federation, said the other night, when 77,223 fans nearly filled New Meadowlands Stadium for a rather unimpressive 2-0 loss to Brazil by the national team.
Something is definitely happening, Gulati added, “when you can’t get into a pub to watch a World Cup match at 10 o’clock in the morning.”
Landon Donovan’s stirring goal in the 91st minute against Algeria, to allow the Yanks to advance to the next round, seems to have been a magic moment back home — so much so that Donovan was on David Letterman shortly after the Yanks were knocked out by Ghana.
All 25,000 seats in the lovely if modest-sized Red Bull Arena are sold out for Donovan’s appearance with the Los Angeles Galaxy on Saturday night. Perhaps some of those tickets were sold before what’s-his-name blew out his Achilles’ tendon last spring, but Donovan, not any of the elderly stars from the top leagues in Europe, is now the glamour boy of M.L.S.
“You guys should be proud of Landon Donovan, he’s a great player,” Henry told reporters Wednesday after his first league home game enticed only 19,035 fans on a weekday night. Henry is working through a tight groin muscle and cannot guarantee he will be up for 90 minutes Saturday, but he made a few silky moves and alert passes, enough to give promise of more.
This franchise has been down this road. The MetroStars, now in witness-protection identity as the Red Bulls, have trotted out one Donadoni after another Djorkaeff, without much impact. They were cool guys, but they were essentially taking a pay cut to live in New York in their athletic old age.
So is Henry, for that matter, taking the PATH train out to the stadium on occasion. He came by car for Wednesday’s match, he said, because his mother is visiting from France. C’est un bon fils.
This influx of so-called designated players is a departure for the league, which has tried to avoid lavishing huge sums of money on aged glamour. But maybe in the 15th season, it is time to spend.
“Our goals are different,” said Erik Stover, the managing director of the Red Bulls, who are owned by the Austria-based highly caffeinated energy-drink maker, which advances its brand with soccer.
“We need to be the flagship club of the M.L.S.,” Stover said. “Our owners are not going to accept anything less.”
Stover does not think the World Cup has any “magic bullet” on the gate; otherwise there might have been a sellout Wednesday. But the crowd raised the season average for nine matches to 16,583, which would be the best season average for the club since 2004. In this economy, that’s not bad.
Still, the crowds — and the salaries — are nothing like the giddy blitz of the ’70s, when Pelé and Beckenbauer walked the land.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see them replicate the Cosmos, but I would say it’s nearly impossible,” said Shep Messing, the goalkeeper for part of the ’70s and now a broadcaster with the Red Bulls, who said he was “cautiously optimistic” about the progress.
Investors recently bought the name Cosmos, which had been languishing under legal lock and key for a few decades, and are talking about building a New York rival to the Red Bulls. Stover is all for it, but says it will not be easy.
Anybody who saw the Yanks stumble around against Brazil the other night may worry if this country is ever going to have a golden age in the World Cup. But Thierry Henry says American fans sing well. Maybe there will be Welsh-style choral competitions in 2014 to go along with the World Cup in Brazil. Maybe M.L.S. fans can advance further than the Round of 16.
