1. Standing area for Orlando City stadium – a great idea
Innovation is a tricky business. The thing is, it involves risk.
The safe play is doing things as usual. There’s not much in the way of “upside” to such a practical, predictable approach. But everyone knows what they are getting into, so there’s nominal risk, too.
Orlando City has taken the less predictable path with its new stadium – and I love it.
First, I love progress, defined here as taking lessons learned from all other MLS grounds and tweaking things to create a better mouse trap. There certainly is something to be learned from every MLS stadium developed (or renovated) over the last 16 years. (Crew Stadium, the granddaddy of them all, opened in 1999.)
But in Orlando City’s case, not only have they have scanned the landscape and done their league-wide homework, they are leaning into the tricky biz of innovation.
They are doing so with a “safe-standing area.” That was the real jewel of the details late last week as the club further pulled back the curtain on its new facility.
In a way, standing terraces are a vestige of another day. A knee-jerk reaction might be to say this is soccer at its worst, and that this looks like a very bad idea. This is a wonderful piece on the history of standing terraces in soccer.
But it’s probably closer to the truth to say that “standing terraces” per se aren’t the worst part of soccer back in the day. The worst part of soccer back in the day was hooligans that sometimes made those areas such a treacherous place. That and the sometimes disastrous lack of attention paid to the critical elements of security, modern policing tactics, fire safety, safe entrance and timely egress.
Standing areas are quite common now in Germany. And even in the United States, Jerry Jones developed something close to them with “party” terraces at his colossus of an NFL stadium, where so fans, at least, have views of the action on the field.
Watch this short video on standing areas in Germany, paying attention to how different they are from the dangerous, bad old days. Seriously, once you see that, you will quickly find yourself wondering: Why hasn’t someone in our country thought of this before?
Orlando City is showing the way with its facility.
2. FCD youth story a great one … but these guys are still young
In regards to building around youth, the FC Dallas story of 2015 is already a great one. So many important pieces of Oscar Pareja’s team are still in their early 20s. And just like 2014, FCD leads the league in minutes by homegrown signings, continuing to make the club’s academy program (one that Pareja essentially built) look spectacular.
But there is another side to this good tale: young teams are going to make young-team mistakes. And that means the occasional clunker. Or perhaps you didn’t see Sunday’s loss to last-place Chicago.
Among the 10 field players, Dallas’ starting lineup Sunday averaged 24.4 years old. Take away Atiba Harris, who still has his hands full learning a new position, thereby hardly in a position to put a properly-placed boot up into a young team, and that average age among field players falls to 23.7.
So … yeah. Chicago wasn’t very good Sunday in Bridgeview, but the Fire was better than an FC Dallas team that just didn’t bring the requisite energy or intensity, and paid the price in a 2-0 loss.
A bit of a trend is emerging: FC Dallas can stand up to pretty much any MLS team – at least, they can when talented attackers Mauro Diaz and Fabian Castillo are doing their thing. But a certain, creeping young-team mentality seems to degrade the intensity when they come up against teams that don’t look as strong on paper.
Dallas has six losses this year, but only two of those teams, Portland and Sporting Kansas City, have winning records.
3. Community Shield-type game for MLS? Let’s pass on it
Never underestimate the power of a bad idea. Here’s one that we need to watch carefully, lest it begin to gain momentum: A Community Shield-like event to signal the opening of each MLS season.
The Community Shield serves as the annual lid-lifter for soccer in England. And almost as if by royal decree, it seems we Yanks are always eager to emulate whatever they do in England. Hence the conversation here over something similar for Major League Soccer.
Perhaps this works elsewhere because it’s tradition. But even in England, debate ensues annually over the importance and relevance of the Community Shield (beyond the tradition element, that is). Teams caught in moments of over-celebration of Community Shield success are setting themselves up for public mocking.
In the United States, we love our opening weeks, happily celebrating the launch of matches that actually matter, a merciful reprieve from the pre-season, empty-calorie appetizers. Opening week in NFL rocks. Opening day in baseball is practically an American holiday.
First kick in MLS isn’t quite a thing just yet. But like everything else in MLS, it’s a process, and every part of the game and the league grows a bit every year.
Besides, establishing brand awareness of some annual, pre-season event is tough stuff. The U.S. Open Cup and CONCACAF Champions League are actual, legitimate tournaments. But brand awareness is darn difficult to build here, too; even those tournaments, the real deal in terms of hardware and competitive value, have a tough time gaining larger public traction.
For the average U.S. sports fans, preseason tournaments or contests just don’t jingle our keys.
It’s not a good idea; let’s just let this one die.
4. European season starting this weekend. Yay!
A bunch of us love the Premier League, which starts anew this week. Can. Not. Wait!
And a bunch of us love the way NBC has brought the Premier League into our living rooms, delivered in great voice by a heady mix of American and British voices, all framed by an intelligent production that never dumbed down the product.
But there is yet more to flavor your foreign fix for 2015-16. This year Fox will try to turn more of us into Bundesliga devotees.
Maybe EPL is more your cup of tea (pun intended) than German soccer. And that’s fine; to each his own. But you should know a couple of things as Bundesliga becomes a bigger player on American TV:
First, there’s a Friday game to watch. Even if you can’t get home early, you’ve always got that DVR option. There will be some cold or rainy Friday night ahead where a massive pizza and a date with your DVRed Bundesliga match, featuring Bayern Munich or Dortmund or whomever, will sound like a little slice of soccer heaven.
And this too: The number of Americans in England has been on the decline. At one time four Americans (Clint Dempsey, Kasey Keller, Carlos Bocanegra and Brian McBride) all played for Fulham at the same time. Now you can barely find four playing across the entire league.
Meanwhile, you can scarcely swing a bag of practice balls around Germany without nailing a U.S. man. Currently John Brooks, Timothy Chandler, Julian Green, Fabian Johnson and David Yelldell are all on Bundesliga rosters.
Terrence Boyd, Alfredo Morales and Bobby Wood are all attached to 2.Bundesliga sides (the second division) with a few days of transfer activity ahead; they are all well-regarded young players, so there’s a chance of movement, at least.
And speaking of movement, U.S. forward Aron Johannsson, still in the Netherlands with Alkmaar, continues to be linked with a move to Werder Bremen in Germany’s top flight.
Bundesliga matches on Fox begin Aug. 14.
Note: Aron Johannsson has now signed with Werder Bremen.
5. The Little Five
5a. It has happened before that we get all the way into August without a coaching change in Major League Soccer. But not often. Heck, between Chivas USA and Toronto FC, we could usually count on one of them to fire a coach by mid-season, never mind everyone else in the league. But here we are. As for the most tenuous current job holders: It’s hard to see Frank Yallop (Chicago) or Pablo Mastroeni (Colorado) holding onto their position if they cannot get into the playoffs, but they are still in there fighting for now. Mastroeni is 13-25-17 over two seasons in Commerce City for the Rapids. Yallop is 12-21-12 over the same time in Bridgeview for the Fire.
5b. What a hard few months these have been for Jozy Altidore. In review: he was rightly thrown out of a U.S. friendly for losing his cool in a ridiculous, shouting hissy fit at a referee; pulled a hamstring not long before an important stretch of U.S. matches, leading to … ; looked out of form in U.S. Gold Cup matches, leading too … ; got sent back to Toronto after Gold Cup group play, a possible message being sent by manager Jurgen Klinsmann; got thrown out in the first half of Saturday’s loss to Orlando. Luckily, he’s got league MVP frontrunner Sebastian Giovinco to carry the team into the playoffs. With big performance there, Altidore can potentially rescue a 2015 that is otherwise looking like a year to forget.
5c. Last year the New England Revolution snapped an 8-game losing streak on July 31. Jay Heaps’ team went on a 10-2-2 run and finished in the MLS Cup final. This year, they snapped a 5-game losing streak on July 18. Including that one, Heaps’ team is on a 2-0-1 run. In both cases, Jermaine Jones’ entrance into the team has helped push matters forward. So, heads up on this one.
5d. Speaking of New England, I have complained before about the MLS Comeback Player of the Year and its loosely defined criteria. But Charlie Davies’ big season at Gillette defines “career comeback.” His previous “comeback” at D.C. United was mostly a PK-inflated PR bit. This time, the guy really is helping the Revs cause.
5e. What is the deal with U.S. national team center backs? Matt Besler (last year’s World Cup starter, even if he was omitted from this year’s Gold Cup proceedings) had a tough time keeping up with Harry Kane in last week’s All-Star game. That’s just misdemeanor stuff; Kane is really good. There is a reason he scored 31 times across all competitions for Spurs last year. But last week was an especially hard ride for Club America’s Ventura Alvarado, who was Jurgen Klinsmann’s Gold Cup starter. Watch his own goal and read more about his tough times here.
Steve Davis has covered Major League Soccer since is first kick in 1996. He writes on-line for World Soccer Talk and Fusion TV’s Soccergods, and co-hosts the weekly radio show/podcast ESPN Soccer Today on 103.3 FM in Dallas. Davis is also the radio play-by-play voice for FC Dallas on 100.7 FM.
