John Riordan: Welcome shift in focus between the lines for US soccer

The ever swelling wave of real football in the US is starting to feel like a tsunami

Fri, 28 Oct, 2022 - 07:15

It’s a common refrain in this column but it’s only because I want you to be always wary; the ever swelling wave of real football in the US is starting to feel like a tsunami.

And it is rightly back in the spotlight this weekend and will continue to linger there over the next six or seven weeks.

Starting with the next 48 hours or so, the National Women’s Soccer League final takes place in Washington D.C. on Saturday night and that will be followed by Major League Soccer’s double header of Conference finals on Sunday in LA and Philly.

When I write the next paragraph, I am going to be forced to first set aside two of the six teams competing for the ultimate crown this weekend. Reigning champions New York City FC have so far failed to translate their intense financial backing from the ownership they share with Man City into a true marketing foothold in the Big Apple, admittedly a tough task. It’s even tougher for their Eastern Conference opponents and rivals, Philadelphia Union, whose current thankless task is to compete for attention with arguably the NFL’s best team on current form displaying real Super Bowl aspirations, the Philadelphia Eagles, and one of Friday’s World Series contenders, the Philadelphia Phillies.

Casting a glance at the other four, three new and the other relatively new, each of them have displayed an aggressive ability to burrow deep into the extremely fertile territories churned up by the evolution of the game since the 1994 World Cup.

Going alphabetically, Austin FC started life as recently as 2018 and in just their second MLS season, they’ve stormed to the final four, selling out their neatly purpose-built soccer stadium with regularity.

Kansas City Current are even younger but similarly are performing ahead of schedule in just their second season, having finished bottom of the NWSL in 2021. They knocked out Megan Rapinoe’s OL Reign last weekend and before long they will be the first women’s football club in the world to enjoy their own purpose-built training facility.

Back on the men’s side, Austin’s opponents are LAFC who dared march into the lion’s den occupied by the LA Galaxy, disrupted their solitude and then, this season, made marquee signings such as Gareth Bale and Giorgio Chiellini which, though headline-making, weren’t exactly conducive additions to an already very cohesive squad. It just helped stoke up the chaos of the whole rivalry, nicely nicknamed El Trafico in honour of their city’s least favourite activity.

The oldest of these four clubs resides in the country’s most football-oriented city, Portland. The Thorns are much more embedded in the game here and have the 25,000-capacity sell-outs at Providence Park to show for that.

Both leagues have been enduring notably stunted growths for wildly different reasons but if you wanted one quick and digestible chunk of evidence for huge optimism, go dig out Crystal Dunn’s winning goal for Portland last Sunday against San Diego, another new team with its own record-breaking attendances about which they can brag.

Dunn is a Long Island icon who boasts well over a century of caps for the national team as well as a haul of medals the current squad has been enjoying scooping up and away from the rest of the international field.

The popular full back missed most of the season due to the birth of her first child in June and she immediately went about an aggressive regime to get herself back on the field before the end of the season. Remarkably she not only got herself back into club shape, she also appeared in the USWNT’s 2-1 defeat to England at Wembley earlier this month.

When introduced just after the hour mark last Sunday, the home fans rose in unison to applaud her addition to a tight 1-1 situation. Early in injury time, a misjudged defensive header from a corner landed perfectly to her right foot with which she unleashed an unstoppable shot to the top left hand corner. Game over and heroic comeback story accomplished.

For supporters of the domestic leagues here, the seasons will flow a little too seamlessly into a World Cup which will be one-quarter expectation around a young men’s squad and three-quarters nervous energy that the redemption of a tainted process will soon be the happy responsibility of North America.

Whenever the US Men’s team exits the World Cup in Qatar, there will be an all-consuming switch of focus to their co-hosting duties in less than four years' time.

Not to mention slightly more behind-the-scenes will be the campaign to bring the Women’s World Cup here in either 2027 or 2031, an ambition US Soccer holds with burning determination.

I saw the game’s governing body president, Cindy Parlow Cone, speak at an event on Wednesday at MetLife Stadium, the home of the Giants and the Jets and potentially the venue for the World Cup final in 2026. And she spoke with the calm and confidence of a former player and a coach who has seen and done it all.

Twice an Olympic champion, Parlow Cone was a goalscoring member of both US squads that competed the last two times the tournament was played in her nation, the runner-up campaign of 2003 and the iconic win of 1999.

So while it’s understandable that she is determined to bring the event back to America for the first time in a quarter century, there was also a notable swagger about how her and the federation she leads has an equal amount of bandwidth to do the right thing for the men’s game.

Just as with most of the rest of the world, there is an increasingly glaring spotlight on the mess that got us to Qatar. In America, both inside football and outside of it, there is an evident smugness that cometh the hour, cometh the saviour.

And because Parlow Cone has led her own association out of problematic scenarios such as the struggle for equal pay and is currently leading the start of the recovery from the NWSL scandals wrought by coaches and owners’ mistreatment of its female players, she is the type of leader who can bring some experience to the table.

Earlier this month, a report commissioned by her federation outlined the abuse of female professional, collegiate and youth players over the past couple of decades and sent shockwaves around the sport.

The findings of the investigation by Sally Yates were described by Parlow Cone as the "first step" in changing the environment that allowed the abuse fester for so long.

The Yates report involved 200 witnesses and revealed "a league in which abuse and misconduct — verbal and emotional abuse and sexual misconduct — had become systemic, spanning multiple teams, coaches, and victims”.

"The misconduct and abuse is entirely inexcusable and has no place in soccer on or off the field," Cone reacted a couple of weeks ago. "I think this report makes it clear that we need to make systemic changes at every level of our game. This report is just the first step in taking a hard look at the entire soccer ecosystem in this country and what we need to do."

The report primarily focused on three male managers: former Sky Blue FC and Racing Louisville coach Christy Holly, former Portland and North Carolina boss Paul Riley and Rory Dames, who used to be in charge at the Chicago Red Stars.

The findings will cast a shadow on Saturday’s decider but will surely also inspire a final break with the sins of the recent past, the hope being that a well-watched primetime spectacle will help shift the attention to what should happen between the lines.

Meanwhile, given the US Federation’s CONCACAF membership and proximity to the likes of Jack Warner and Chuck Blazer, there is a keen awareness here of how Qatar achieved the unthinkable. There is a renewed sense of shock and also a determination to right many wrongs, both internally and internationally.

The three-step plan for domination is simple and probably unpopular in a very American way: win the Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand next year, host a reborn Men’s World Cup in 2026 and then bring the women’s game back in 2027.

Get ready to be sick of the sight of the nation that was so tactically granted hosting honours almost 30 years ago.

@JohnWRiordan