Open Wide For Some Soccer podcast

Thanks to David McKenzie and former Diplomats and Cosmos defender Bob Iarusci for having me on the latest episode of their excellent NASL podcast, Open Wide For Some Soccer. You can hear the episode here. Among the topics discussed were:

* What inspired me to write a book about the NASL

Celeb meets star

* How I came up with the title for the book

* Why the MLS is disrespectful to the history of the NASL * Indications that people are still interested in the league * The US’ involvement in bidding for the 1986 FIFA World Cup * Decisions to market Pelé while perhaps forgetting some other deserving players * Other mistakes made when trying to promote the league * Celebrity appearances and their help (or not) in growing the game in the US * Gimmicks used to promote the NASL and why I was a fan of them * The corruption of FIFA * Why Bob used to have to spray paint his shoes white before every game * Improvements that MLS has made in marketing the sport * Why Geoff Barnett decided not to play for the Cosmos * The merging together of playing styles throughout the world * Where the NASL has had its most influence on American soccer 

* The increased interest of international scouts towards North America 

Being Mistaken For Rodney Marsh

There are at least two reviews out on the internet whose authors are under the impression that 'Rock n Roll Soccer' was written by Rodney Marsh. Marsh, of course, wrote the foreword, and his name appears on the cover beneath my own. I don't have a problem with this. If people read the book and enjoyed it and thought it was written by one of the most prominent and colourful English footballers of the 1970s, who am I to complain?

When I first received proof copies of 'RnRS' a year ago, my father-in-law happened to be visiting and was keen to read the book. As the foreword was not attributed to Marsh on the first page, at first he thought it was written by me. "It seemed a bit strange that you were making out you'd played in the NASL," he said, "and I was somewhat worried about your mental state." For the final print edition, we made it clear from the first page that the foreword consisted of Marsh's account of playing in the league, and not some flight of my imagination.

And God knows, I've spent enough time in my life imagining myself as a paid footballer. From around my fifth birthday onwards, to varying degrees, until my tender hamstrings forced me into retirement last year at the age of 49.

Me with some cheerleaders during the 1970s.

I once wrote a piece for the now defunct Major League Soccer magazine about players who'd only made a single appearance in MLS. While most of those players probably regarded themselves as failures, it's obvious from re-reading my introduction to the piece that all I felt towards them was a profound existential envy:

"If dreams, as Shakespeare wrote, are nothing but 'the children of an idle brain, begot of nothing but vain fantasy', then I plead guilty. In sleep, I've often scored great goals in front of huge crowds. In waking hours, I've longed to play in a professional game, even for five minutes. Just to see what it's like. Just to say I've been there."

Around a decade ago, when MLS started up its reserve league, I dreamt that I got called up to play for DC United's second string due to an injury crisis. I told my dream to Doug Hicks, who was the team's head of media relations at the time. "That's not gonna happen," he responded drily, as though just by telling him the dream, I'd been hinting that maybe it would, or at least that it could. Which of course was exactly why I'd told him. He was on to me.

Hicks and his colleagues are, however, very switched on to the needs of writers and journalists in this respect. They know we're only carping from the press box because we're either too fat, slow, useless or old (or all four) to be out there ourselves. So during MLS Cup and the MLS All-Star Game they indulge us by taking the trouble to organise media games or tournaments. I've still got my lovely trophy from being on the winning team at the 2011 All-Star Media Challenge in New York. I played against Greg Lalas, who once played half a dozen games in MLS (albeit over a decade earlier). He didn't seem to be noticeably better or worse than the rest of us. See, man, I coulda been a contender.

But that passage in Rock n Roll Soccer that goes: "In one game he [Pele] went ballistic at me for what he thought was showboating. In another game he scythed me down and provoked a 15-man brawl. Most painful of all, after I nutmegged him once he came up to me and ruffled my hair - a sporting gesture by the revered icon. Except that no one could see that he'd gouged my ear with his fingernail and opened up a bleeding wound..." - that was not written by me. I did not nutmeg Pele. That was Rodney Marsh. But if you want to confuse the two, be my guest.

Over-rated, Overpaid and Over There - Gerrard and Lampard in MLS

When European players come to Major League Soccer on European wages, we fondly remember the North American Soccer League and the dash for green-backed cash that followed Pele's 1975 signing for the New York Cosmos. Suddenly, every club wanted its own superstar, and the strain which this trend put on owners' finances was one of the chief reasons that many clubs went under, dragging the league down with them.

Paul Gardner: "You know that
the English over-rate their players."

MLS initially eschewed such profligate policies, just as it rejected everything else in the NASL's boom-bust methodology. Then in response to pressure from the LA Galaxy, who were being whispered to by the David Beckham Industry, it relaxed its rules in 2006 to allow clubs the option of signing a handful of big name players on fat wages. It seemed a timely move, but opened up the league to the morose old criticism that America would again attract ageing stars on the hunt for a lucrative final payoff. True, Beckham would ensure that MLS became internationally known overnight. But if he played well, that just proved how poor the league was. And if he failed, that just proved that he was over the hill.

It might unkindly be suggested that Steven Gerrard's move to MLS finally means he won't be the most over-rated player in his chosen league. Reading the eulogies in the UK press these past few days, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the Galaxy has signed a meta-star with the combined skills of Messi, Maradona and Mohammed Ali, rather than an above average club player who is sporadically inspired to the spectacular, but has never lifted a League trophy or a World Cup. 

It's no coincidence that the other player in the transatlantic soccer news this week has been Gerrard's former England team-mate Frank Lampard, for reneging on his commitment to debut for New York City FC at the start of its first MLS season. Again, another solid club player. Yet he and Gerrard, touted as the supposedly shining nuggets of England's golden generation, were a repeated disappointment on the international stage. After several mediocre tournaments, Gerrard was England's best player at Euro 2012, but his team-mates didn't offer much competition, and they went out on penalties after playing dire football in the 0-0 quarter-final against Italy. The England team has been tellingly revitalised since the pair retired from the international game.

Their two big-name predecessors in MLS, Beckham and Thierry Henry, did enough to justify selection for their respective teams, LA and New York, but were they were worth their extravagant wages? It's impossible to quantify, though the league's marketing arm will argue they lead to the exposure that has lured the New York Yankees and petro-dollar backed Manchester City to invest in Lampard's New York team. 

On the other hand, it takes a leap of the imagination to see the millions reportedly being spent on the wages of Gerrard and Lampard as anything other then the enrichment of two already very wealthy Englishmen. It may be facile to say those millions could be better spent on inner-city turf fields and a fund to support talented but impoverished young American players. And indeed, if it wasn't being spent on England's decreasingly pacey ex-central midfielders, it would probably be staying in the owners' pockets. Nonetheless, I'm calling these signings out for what they are - a waste of money in the name of jacking up the league's profile.

"Those guys, the theory is, just show up and the crowds come flocking in," says sceptical journalist Paul Gardner in chapter three of Rock n Roll Soccer. Gardner, who has covered the US game for 50 years, was drawing a parallel between the NASL's marquee signings, and the arrival of Beckham in MLS 30 years later. "You know that the English over-rate their players anyway, and if they [Americans] don’t know that by now then there’s not much hope. The reason the Brits of course were imported [to the NASL] and became popular was simply the language. You want to sell the sport, you want to have players with personality who can go on TV and mix with the local populace, you’ve got to have them speak the language. There was a logic involved to the whole thing, but it was unfortunate because it meant bringing in a certain brand of soccer and that meant certain attitudes that came along with it. Just take a look at British soccer… the sad thing was [that even in 1975] they were playing dull, out-dated soccer."

Gardner wasn't referring to the players who came to the nascent NASL in the late 60s and early 70s looking to make a little extra summer cash. Many of those players ended up falling in love with North America and stayed around to coach and run soccer schools. Gerrard and Lampard, in contrast, are not in the US to 'grow the game', to use that Beckham-flogged cliché. They are here in a mutual pact with their clubs to exploit their reputations in upping the hype. Check out Gerrard's press-released, wooden words this week on his reasons for coming to LA:
    "I'm very excited to begin the next chapter of my career in the United States. The Galaxy are the most successful club in MLS history and I'm looking forward to competing for more championships in the years to come. I want to add some medals and trophies to my collection."

Finally, a League winner's medal for Steven. That's the script which he, his club, the league, and the more invested sections of the media will be reading off until it eventually happens. There's no doubt that Gerrard and Lampard will perform well in MLS. In the long term, however, they will give the US game as much as  they gave England's midfield - publicity-inspired expectations, but nothing of much substance.

Sunday Mirror review: three errors in 47 words

The Sunday Mirror did me the immense favour of reviewing Rock n Roll Soccer this past weekend. It was an astonishing achievement. Not to sound ungrateful or anything, but in the space of just 47 words, the review not only failed to even remotely convey what the book is about, but also managed to make three gross factual errors (or five, if you take into account that one of the errors is tripartite). It also made a grammatical error and a terminology error. That’s an impressive rate of around one mistake every seven words.

Here’s the review in full:

“A nostalgic trip through the early years of the North American Soccer League, the harbinger for what we now know as the lucrative MLS. Its struggle to stay afloat and be accepted by FIFA is fascinatingly explained, with cameos from legends Pele, George Best and Bobby Moore.”  

Mirror, Mirror, on the ball...

Error one: it’s not a trip through “the early years” of the NASL. In fact “the early years” only make up about one tenth of the book. It’s an account of all 17 years of the NASL.

Error two (discounting the following grammatical error - you can only be “a harbinger of” something, not “a harbinger for”; and Major League Soccer is known as “MLS”, not “the MLS”): MLS is not “lucrative”, it is a league that prides itself on its attempts to be financially stable, having learned from the mistakes of the NASL. It has been lucrative for David Beckham, and it may well one day become lucrative for its current owners, but that’s all a long way off – many of its teams have only just started making modest profits, many others still run at a loss.

Error three (and errors four and five): Pele, George Best and Bobby Moore played “cameos” in the NASL? You mean, they showed up, played one game and then left again? Or does the writer (and his sub-editor, and his editor) not actually have a flying clue what a cameo is? Best played for seven seasons in the NASL, Pele for three (bringing it instant world coverage and prompting hundreds more players to follow), and Bobby Moore for two.  

Apart from that, the review’s spot on. Indeed, I am absolutely convinced that the reviewer read the book from cover to cover. Thank you, Sunday Mirror – your review is a journalistic triumph. I have no doubt at all that the rest of the paper is as scrupulously accurate as this towering two-sentence book review.