HexagonalBlog

Look for the Union label

Philadelphia's MLS team has decided upon their name, and it is...Philadelphia Union.  The team said that the name is representative of the nation's colonial past and the city's central role in the nation's founding.  And all this time I was thinking that the name had selected in honor of the city's role in the labor movement.  Either way, the team motto "Jungite aut Perite" -- Join or Die -- is just too perfect. 

The team directors put a lot of work into the meaning of all elements of the logo and the colors and ended up with something that was truly symbolic of the city and its history.  Very well done.

(Thanks to Kristen Wise at adidas for the logo)

Another one of these strategic alliances

The Chicago Fire announced today a "strategic alliance" with Club América of Mexico.  Didn't the Fire have a similar partnership with Morelia some years back?  What became of it? 

The partnership will involve reciprocal friendly matches, marketing, and player development.  The first is confirmed for Wednesday and a future date in Azteca; the rest is all in the planning stages. 

I wish the partnership well, whatever it might mean.

An interview with Bob Lenarduzzi

It's not often that I have two posts back-to-back on Canadian soccer, but here they are.

CBC Sports conducted an interview with Bob Lenarduzzi, former player of the NASL's Vancouver Whitecaps, former Canadian national team coach, and current president of the USL Whitecaps, who will make the jump to MLS in 2011.  Lenarduzzi touches on several points in the Q&A session, including the challenges of professional sport in Vancouver, the possible use of the Whitecaps name in MLS (which still hasn't been confirmed), and the importance of BC Place renovations in securing the MLS bid.  It's a good read.

Red Bull Arena continuing to come along

Significant progress continues to be made on Red Bull Arena.  Two weeks ago Tom Bergeron and Frank Ciase of the New Jersey Star-Ledger went on a tour of the construction site.  Below is their video.  I love how the roof is coming together, and you can close your eyes and almost imagine what the arena will look like when completed.  It will be like no other soccer venue in the USA.

Construction continues at Red Bull Arena

As close to promotion as we're going to get

MLS' decision to award the 17th and 18th franchises to Vancouver and Portland is a sensible move given the economic climate.  As Ridge Mahoney at Soccer America's MLS Confidential blog argues, MLS is embarking on a risky strategy with their rapid expansion, so it seems that the best approach is to award MLS status to clubs that already exist.  Then all that needs to be done is secure additional investors to meet league requirements (stadium, league fees).  This doesn't mean that they will immediately be successful on the field -- most likely, these two sides will have to recruit additional players to be competitive -- but they can start from a core of players who can make the move to MLS.  (Seattle Sounders' squad has six players who played for the USL Sounders.  Less than a truly promoted side, but more than a team that had to be created from scratch.)

It is positive that MLS appears to be embracing the NASL past with the revival of the Whitecaps and Timbers.  There are parts of the NASL that don't need to repeated, like the unrealistic wage structure and the lack of American players, but that doesn't mean that there weren't positives about the league, and the regional rivalries were part of that.  MLS appeared to be running from that past when it was getting started, but it seems to have figured out which parts of US soccer history to embrace and done so.  Soccer would have progressed a lot further in the USA if we didn't have to reinvent the wheel every 20 years.

We in the USA aren't likely to see a promotion/relegation scheme between the various soccer leagues in this country, so the recent expansion selections by MLS are likely to be as close to a "promotion" as we're going to get.

Gimme some sugar, MLS

The 14th season of MLS starts tomorrow night with the league's newest entrant facing the losing MLS Cup finalist.  It will be the start of an exciting weekend before everyone settles down for the long march through a very big year for the MLS sides and the US national team.  There will be some intriguing storylines to follow during the season -- how will Drew Carey's dreams for the Sounders club work in practice? Will the college draftees make an immediate impact (or any impact at all!)?  Is this the year we see Academy graduates break into the first teams of MLS clubs?  Will there be more meaningful games now that almost half the league will not make the playoffs?  Will David Beckham be booed?  And I'm sure you can think of some others.

What I want to know if whether MLS, through its clubs and their players, can give me some sugar.  Something sweet.  A beautiful pirouette, an improvised feint and pass, a moment of audacity and daring, something to break through the tedium of hard charging runs to the end line and centering passes to some center forward's head.  Someone who can perform with the ball, or a team that loves the ball and can do something with it as well.  MLS is a physical league, and a hard-working league.  As I've said before, it's harder than it looks -- that would make a great promo line, by the way.  There are a few performers in the league, but not nearly enough.  My desire for this season is to see more performers and a few more teams that set out to play the kind of soccer that fans and supporters long to watch.

Give me some moments to savor in 2009, MLS.  Come on, gimme some sugar.

The Beckham affair ends, for now

So in the end, David Beckham will stay at Milan until the end of the Serie A season, spend a summer with the Galaxy on June 30 through the end of the year, and then who knows what will happen.  Oh, and Milan will come to the States to play a friendly in LA. 

Frankly, I think the whole deal is pathetic, and MLS have been shown to be a bunch of big-talking fools who are out of their depth on the international scene.  I'm tired of talking about it David Beckham; what I wrote last month on this blog still reads well to me. 

What's good and what's bad about David Beckham

I haven't written anything about David Beckham's loan move (and possible permanent transfer) to AC Milan, mostly because it sparked a flood of disparate emotions that I needed to sort through in order to write a coherent post.   I still haven't worked through all of them completely, but this post needs to be written, so here it is.

Red Bull Arena: 2009 was too good to be true

Red Bull Arena continues to make progress, which you can see on the construction site webcam, but today comes word that it won't be able to host matches until the start of the 2010 MLS season.  I had thought that the global credit crunch would have an effect on the completion date, but it wasn't that at all.  Instead, the culprits are construction delays and government red tape.

Government red tape in New Jersey?  You could have knocked me over with a feather on that one.

One party that must be disappointed at the news is CONCACAF, who would have loved to have been able to host a CONCACAF Champions League event at a state-of-the-art venue close to Federation headquarters.

HT to Ives Galarcep.

Third time around for Donovan

Landon Donovan's loan deal to Bayern Munich was formalized today.  He is currently with the team in Dubai and will have the opportunity to play in a maximum of six league matches for the German champions once the Bundesliga resumes from its winter break.  Juergen Klinsmann is sold on him, and wouldn't mind being able to purchase his services on a permanent basis.

At the age of 26, Donovan is several years removed from his previous stint in Europe, and he's not going to get a fourth opportunity if this European adventure doesn't work out.  Will he come back to MLS?  Will he stay in Europe?  And if he stays in Europe, would David Beckham -- who would shoulder even more of the burden at the Galaxy -- leave for Europe, too?