Photo: Daniel Gajdamowicz
Philadelphia Union
Some highlights from Jim Curtin’s weekly press conference on Wednesday (full transcript here at PSP):
- Both Tranquillo Barnetta and Vincent Nogueira will be available for selection for Saturday’s game in Chicago.
- Curtin said Andre Blake will start on Saturday.
- Curtin said of the growing confidence in the team: “[T]hat’s growing now, for sure, it’s growing in training each day. It doesn’t guarantee when you go out on the weekend that you’re going to win, but I think we’re becoming a team that has a clear identity and, win, lose, or draw, our fans will at least know we’ll roll up our sleeves and not be scared to go to battle with anybody.”
- Curtin explained how valuable Bethlehem Steel will be for the Union: “Our guys will get valuable minutes there each and every week…anyone of our players can go down. Obviously, there’s international restrictions but we have that very well managed and it’s something that’s monitored day in and day out. Conversely, it’s not as fluid for, say, if we have three injuries at center back to bring Mickey Daly up to us, for example. It’s not as fluid, we would have to have cap space, the roster space, you’d have to juggle things like that.”
More from the press conference at Philly.com, Delco Times, and Philly Voice,
Chicagoland Soccer has an update on the Fire ahead of Saturday’s game against the Union. The report notes, “David Accam is recovering from his knee sprain, but is questionable for this weekend’s game.”
The Union has announced a Fan Advisory Board that will meet to discuss “items such as ticket programs, in-stadium experience, gamedays, community initiatives, concessions, merchandising and much more.” Team CBO Tim McDermott says, “Our fans are at the heart of what we do and we want them to play an integral role in helping shape the future of our club. This group will be an extension of our strategy and marketing department and will help accelerate the growth of our brand and amazing fan base.”
The advisory board will be made up of 15-20 members, selected by the front office, who must commit to a 12-month term and attend 6-8 meetings at Talen Energy Stadium throughout the year. Click here to apply. The deadline for applications is Wednesday, April 13.
At Philly Soccer News, Andy Jasner talks to Keegan Rosenberry about the impressive start to his rookie year. Rosenberry says,
I have to keep reminding myself that this is just the beginning for me. The opener at (FC) Dallas was a challenge and I got the nerves out of the way. I’m getting more comfortable all the time now. Getting time on the field helps so much. I feel much stronger now. It’s been three games and I feel like I’ve already learned so much…I’m confident in my ability but of course I know there are so many talented players here. I had to prove myself. I still have to prove myself. I take that attitude into training every day…I am thrilled with everything and being here with the Union is everything I could ask for. Being in front of the home fans has been amazing. It has been exciting. I know it’s only the beginning. I’m very, very excited for everything that’s coming down the line. But I won’t get satisfied or complacent.
Brotherly Game looks at different Union lineup possibilities.
Section 215 wonders if it is time to move on from Maurice Edu.
Also at Section 215 a consideration of which Union players may be next to receive national team callups.
The Sons of Ben are included in an utterly ridiculous article at English tabloid The Sun on how “America’s new generation of ‘soccer’ fans have been trying to bring British-style hooliganism and banter to the MLS.”
Bethlehem Steel FC
At Philly Voice, Brendan Burke talks about Union players playing with the team: “”Some of that came from first team needs. These guys need games…I think that will be a week-to-week thing. You may see a handful of guys this weekend, but I think it will be more of a mixture, in terms of the front four. But again, it’s going to be sort of a 48-hour window where we decide who’s going where, each week, or, more importantly, where the first team technical staff decides who’s going where.”
Local
The AP has a report on the Philadelphia International Unity Cup, the tournament being organized by the City of Philadelphia that will be played this fall.
Penn Live talks to former USMNT player Josh Wolff, former PA Classics teammate Colton Storm, and PA Classics director Steve Klein about Christian Pulisic following his USMNT debut on Tuesday.
Jim Curtin talked about Pulisic in his press conference on Wednesday:
Yeah, I mean, Christian played for Union in the Generation adidas Cup. So, when I was there as a U-18 coach he played for our younger group. Yeah, very familiar with him, very familiar with his father. Good guy, former professional player himself, a very good indoor player. So, yeah, know the family well…Our academy was not fully up and running at that stage. If you remember, we were getting things going and we were at a stage where we were club neutral and we would call the guys in for the major competitions to play against MLS teams, and Christian was a part of that group. But, yeah, a guy who trained with us a great deal and is off to a heck of a career. Obviously, Dortmund is as high a level as it goes, so I don’t have to speak to that. And for him to get his debut last night on the national team put a smile on my face, too. It’s good to see.
Stars and Stripes FC considers what’s next for Pulisic at the national team.
At the City Islanders website, a preview of Saturday’s game against Charlotte Independence.
MLS
Sportsnet.ca has a profile piece on former Union man Jordan Harvey, who’s start last Saturday for Vancouver, his 117th, made him the Whitecaps’ all-time leader.
Kaka says he has urged Iker Casillas to join MLS but says the goalkeeper, while interested, wants to remain in Europe for the time being.
MPR has an update on the campaign for stadium-related legislation in Minnesota, which has begun with the stadium’s liquor licence.
An architectural firm in St. Louis is looking for fan input on what they think an MLS stadium in that city should look like.
The NASL has announced a partnership with BeIN Sports that will see 34 games broadcast throughout 2016 (looks like if you want to see New York Cosmos you’ll have to subscribe to One World Sports). The games will also be available through beIN Sports Connect.
The NASL also announced 12 games in the league’s fall season will be carried on CBS Sports Network, the digital cable and satellite television network owned by CBS. In Philadelphia, CBS Sports Network is available on Comcast at channels 732 and 854, on FiOS on channels 94 and 594, on channel 158 on Dish Network, and channel 221 on DirecTV.
US
Five members of the USWNT — Carli Lloyd, Alex Morgan, Megan Rapinoe, Becky Sauerbrunn, and Hope Solo — have filed a wage-discrimination action against the U.S. Soccer Federation with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of the entire team. ESPNW reports, “The filing, citing figures from the USSF’s 2015 financial report, says that despite the women’s team generating nearly $20 million more revenue last year than the U.S. men’s team, the women are paid almost four times less.”
US Soccer issued a statement saying it is “disappointed” with the action: “We have been a world leader in women’s soccer and are proud of the commitment we have made to building the women’s game in the United States over the past 30 years.”
Asked if the US women could go on strike ahead of the Olympics this summer, attorney Jeffrey Kessler said, “I’m not going to make any comment about those issues right now.”
More from The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, SI, Time, Newsweek, People, CNN, Deadspin, Pro Soccer Talk, The Guardian, and the AP. On Wednesday, the New York Daily News posted a long form piece that details how the federation discriminates against the women’s team.
At the Washington Post, Steven Goff reports, “The U.S. Soccer Federation will reconsider staging matches or conducting other events in North Carolina in the wake of state legislation that critics have called discriminatory against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, federation president Sunil Gulati told the Insider on Wednesday.”
At ESPN, Jeff Carlisle details some of the issues facing the USMNT. Pro Soccer Talk does the same.
More fallout from the US-Guatemala series of World Cup qualifiers. Slate says Jurgen Klinsmann is delusional: “By all measures, it’s been a terrible year. If you’ve been listening to Klinsmann, though, you’d think the U.S. national team has never been better.” The Guardian says, “Klinsmann looks more and more like a lame duck.” USA Today says Klinsmann may have saved his job with Tuesday’s win “but he’s still a big problem for the USMNT.” The New York Daily News says firing Klinsmann may be the only solution to the team’s problems.
At Howler, Will Parchman on what’s wrong with youth soccer development in the US. Deadspin says of the U-23’s loss to Colombia on Tuesday,”There’s no clearer distillation of what America’s soccer problem really is than that match.” More on the U-23’s failure and what it means for the senior team at SI.
Soccer America reports, “Tuesday’s USA-Guatemala match averaged 954,000 viewers on ESPN2, more than the combined viewers for the first three U.S. World Cup 2018 qualifiers on English-language television.” The number is dwarfed by the 2,388,000 who tuned in for the Mexico-Canada that was simulcast on UniMas and UDN.
Abby Wambach and Megan Rapinoe have announced they will donate their brains for concussion research.
Elsewhere
Amnesty International has issued a new report detailing abuse of migrant workers in Qatar. The Guardian reports, “For the first time, Amnesty said it had definitively identified mistreatment and abuses on a World Cup stadium site rather than on infrastructure projects that underpin Qatar’s ambitious 2030 Vision, of which the football tournament has become an integral part.” More at Goal.com (1, 2).
Reuters reports, “Greece moved a step closer to a ban by soccer’s governing bodies FIFA and UEFA on Wednesday as talks between the two organizations and the government over state involvement in the sport ended with no agreement.”
ESPN looks at the challenges FIFA faces regarding Third Party Ownership (TPO) of players. FIFA sanctioned four clubs for breaching TPO regulations on Tuesday.
I’d be interested in how/if the MLS handles moving players up from USL teams.
Of course, I understand we need the rules in place and I am not asking for unlimited up/down movement.
But to require a contract + roster spot and all that just to see a player from your USL team for a game or two is overkill. I’d argue it kills the chance of finding that diamond in the rough and kills progression. Not to mention issues arising from injury crisis’.
I’d like to see something like in the case of X injuries in your first team, you are allowed to call up a USL player on a trial contract for Y amount of games. Something like that.
MLS needs to loosen the reins a little here.
Just need one of the big teams to want to bring someone up and the rules will magically be written.
This is YOUR professional closed system model. Enjoy.
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signed and with love,
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ennui.
Like the NBA ten day contract with the added provision of a MLB-like short term disabled list.
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Owneership will see that as the Camel’s nose of roster expansion under the edge of the financial responsibility (read “profit creation”) tent. Recall that in the last CBA ownership received a reduction in roster size of two players in return for the minimum salary gains made by the players association. Ownership will further argue that they are facing the costs of Academy developments and USL affiliations or ownerships.
MLB and NBA have similar terms. Not positive about the NHL but I believe it’s the same basic principles. Teams can’t just call a player up from AAA unless they open up a roster spot via the DL or sending someone down, and teams can only send down a player with a major league contract 3 times. So by comparison MLS is slightly less restrictive, but I do agree that there should be a mechanism in place. Maybe along the lines of the 25 and 40-man rosters in MLB. Have a 25 or 28-man MLS-only roster, but a 35-man developmental roster where the other 7-10 players can move up freely if a player goes down to injury or is out for a red card.
I’m pretty sure there is a rule for an emergency call up type of situation. I’m too busy to go digging around for a reference link, though…
To all the other criticisms of US Soccer that have been lobbed lately, I’m going to add ‘patronizing sexist jerkwings’. That was about as insulting a response as you can get to the USWNT’s lawsuit — basically ‘just be happy for all we’ve done for you.’ Come on, Sunil, just *pay* the athletes (and staff) that are providing your only success, public recognition and ROI.
Seems to me the women should be making roughly $20 million more. Although I would agree that stat is probably inflated as it has the world cup bump on it. Would be interesting to see how much each made over a 4 year period. Equal pay should be the minimum though.
At Howler, Will Parchman on what’s wrong with youth soccer development in the US. Deadspin says of the U-23’s loss to Colombia on Tuesday,”There’s no clearer distillation of what America’s soccer problem really is than that match.” More on the U-23’s failure and what it means for the senior team at SI.
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Wiser minds than my own taking up their musket and pulling back the covers trying their hardest to open your eyes…. Think the Deadspin article was written by a young 20 something… and generally Will Parchman annoys me but not this time.
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BOOM!! – like that.
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And I’m silly for wondering what an MLS coach thinks about Will Trapp getting his ass kicked and Jordan Morris dual major of ‘professional soccer/Philanthropy studies at Stanford.’
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—- must be nuts.
YES THANK YOU.
MLSAnalyst was laying osme heat on JK (As he always does. And not that JK doesn’t deserve any) and was building up WILL TRAPP as an option for the NT despite the fact Trapp was one of the WORST players on the field for that U23 game.
His thinking was so abjectly slow… I was slackjawed.
We’re in a rough spot. A lot of people LOVE that is a HG player, is getting starts and is playing “a lot” now.
But, now we are seeing that in some cases, that means nothing. What is the quality of his coaching? What was the quality of his development? Did he respond to training as much as he could have?
A lot of people pointed to “Getting HG kids signed and playing them a lot”as the end game. But in reality thats just another rung necessary on the development ladder. Cause as we see, a young HG player starting for his MLS team can still be crap and can still end up crap.
Did you see passes or decisions that Trapp should have made and didn’t? Sometimes a player gets caught in possession or gives the ball away because a teammate isn’t in the correct spot. The player in possession is unfairly blamed in that instance.
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I didn’t see the match so I’m asking for my own curiousity and knowledge rather than challenging your point above. Thanks.
The movement was slow by his teammates but his reactions on the ball were the most concerning…receiving, trying to turn and having know idea his was about to get closed down… multiple times.
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The game was too big for him in all honesty… which speaks directly to the point of the Deadspin article.
I just listened to the Howler’s podcast on the Parchman story. Good stuff. I get the hand wringing about the issues with youth development in the U.S., but I don’t see how you get so many independent clubs and concerns to get on the same page in a faster way. You can’t simply get it done by fiat. You need more carrots.
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When I think about how when I was in high school (20 years ago) and there were no soccer coaches who played (except one season my Freshman year in which the my rec league coach was a Columbian who I thought was amazing — he was) and you couldn’t even watch soccer on TV…. We’ve come a long way.
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As for the failures of the U23 team, it’s difficult for me to come to a conclusion on the quality of U.S. layers when I don’t have any faith in the coaching or technical staffs. Are these guys really capable of identifying the best talent available? I don’t know.
Wil Trapp getting “his ass kicked”………
Hmmm……think I’ll now refer to it as “Creavalleed”.
Love it! WEll Done! “Creavalled.” I love to see his face when he hears it.
Follow up on the NASL link…they had announced that games on One World Sports would be available for streaming even to those who do not subscribe to OWS at OWS’s website. They also reupped their ESPN3 streaming deal for the non-televised games.
I love NASL… just charting a course plodding along and being patient… waiting to build a grassroots league that will kick the MLS teams asses. Someday. Tell ya.
Unlikely as long as the single entity legal fiction continues, I think. That single entity provides monopoly-like cost control benefits that are entirely “in restraint of trade” (Sherman Anti-Trust Act 1890) in the labor market place.
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MLS becoming – please forgive me! – the elephant in the room in USL will probably drive NASL either to merge with USL or die away. I have never heard of any of the NASL money men having the resources to compete with the MLS big five (Toronto, LA, NYCFC, Seattle, Orlando). Neither do they have comparable TV revenue.
I infer my big money five MLS “offices” from deducing who spent what of their own money on designated players above and beyond the league maximums for designated players. Those five account for 72.25% of such spending by my calculations; the other fifteen, 27.75%.
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As tempting as it is, I refrain from nicknaming MLS the Big Five and the Little Fifteen because I have no way of judging how much “offices” like Dallas and the Union spend on their academies and wholly-owned affiliates. “Big 5 & Little 15” refers only to discretionary spending on DPs.
“Abby Wambach and Megan Rapinoe have announced they will donate their brains for concussion research.”
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Aren’t they still using their brains?
John Cleese leans in the doorway…”May we have your liver please?
Ha, great scene.
Jurgen Klinsman’s not. They can have his now.
That Sun article is such garbage. I bet the author never even stepped foot in the States much less attend an MLS match.
Indeed a half-fast article (“lowly Seattle Sounders”?). At least it mentions the source of the “Noone Likes Us” chant, which I’m surprised hasn’t caught on more in Philly. I mean, it’s perfect for the Flyers.
Looks like Blake came in 2nd to Plata for Player of the Month.
Blimey! The bloke who wrote that Sun article must be off his bloody trolley.. Cheeky little bugger.
Sorry if I’m being a bit shirty.
Cheerio!