episode 006: in which we turn off the internet and hot water

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Of course Juventus are still angry over their lost titles and relegation due to the scandal but you’d think at some point they could just accept history and move on. Instead, they decided to show their distaste with Italian football authorities by displaying a giant banner on the outside of the stadium proclaiming the club are “Campioni D’Italia” for the 30th time.

This is of course a problem because Juve are “Campioni D’Italia” for the 28th time. That’s what the record books show but the club is clearly not going to let things go.

Personally, I hope they add a third star above their crest on their kits next season and start a massive hullabaloo because it would be entertaining. It would only be better if the Italian Federation swooped in a deducted Juve points and gave the title to AC Milan. It won’t happen but it would be the best story of the year.

Just a quick point of reference, in Italy a star above the club badge denotes 10 league titles. After all seeing Juve with 28 stars or Milan or Inter with 18 stars over their badge would look a bit crazy.

episode 005: orgies, porn, corruption & football

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And for Agudelo …

I get it.  Mohawks seem like an easy answer to the problem of not getting enough recognition.  Soccer players have a hard enough time trying to convince other players and coaches that they’re tough enough to sprint around a field 90 minutes dodging elbows and kicks to their face, but having reasons like ‘I listen to rap music’ or ‘I am thinking about a tattoo’ don’t say as much as shaving two thirds of your hair off than maybe dying it a different color. 

Keep in mind that a mohawk is also pretty much par for the course for a small subset of young outgoing soccer stars that command legions of fans.  For example: Neymar, Mario Balotelli and Christiano Ronaldo all went through the hair phase and you can’t say they’re renegade psychotics (maybe Mario is a bit physical match-day but could you consider his mohawk the craziest thing about him?).

Just as a goof and because I get the feeling the mohawk trend might get a bit more popular come 2013 I put together some headshots of some other MLS players when they went ahead with intriguing hair cuts.

The thing with Beckham is that he, or Victoria/whoever makes his fashion decisions, made a deep shave on the side of his head even when the rest of his hair is pretty long and they also dyed it.  If I myself had a mohawk I would grow into it like something Mr. T would, but maybe when you’re David Beckham and have to make a hair statement you pretty much have to go big or not do it, which would explain the ‘lion in surgery’ look.  Also keep in mind that I know NOTHING about fashion but chances are that women approved of this.

This isn’t a mohawk but that’s missing the point (pun intended).  I’m from San Diego and I’ve never even seen beach bums with goatees as long as Lalas’s.  I understand that he had to cut it to move on with his life but could you imagine Lalas in the ESPN studio at half-time getting upset at bad defending?  I think it could’ve been a riot watching his hair shake back and forth with comments about how players are using ‘clueless, terrible marking’ or not playing up to their potential on the world stage.  Anyway, you must be a pretty cool guy if people in the far middle east recognized your hair from a handful of international games.

And  now ………………

My girlfriend’s favorite!  The Columbian fro of peace and good intentions!!

Valderrama came through with a look that was upbeat, not defiant, warm and inviting, not stand-offish and he even stood out on a Columbian national team known for a goalie who’s hair went halfway down his back and one foot in the air.  Perchance it might make more sense for a young soccer player to emulate this type of look for soccer recognition when ‘earrings’ or ‘a hidden drinking problem’ might not cut it. 

Instead of proving to people that you’re an uncontrollable unique individual with a mohawk, maybe keep growing your hair out and see what happens.

Note: No Brek Shea images were used in this post as it would’ve been redundant and he should have two or three new looks by the middle of 2013.   2nd Note: Freddy Adu’s hair didn’t look that much like a mohawk in the following week of MLS play and for all I know he might have just shaved his sides too much the first time.

Ginge Has Lost His Mind: Social Media Lessons

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Ginge Has Lost His Mind is back!

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It’s important to note that I never hear harsh negative reactions, just a slight pecular interest, as if I told them I follow the NBA’s recruiting process for foreign players in China or Spain (an interesting hobby, how novel, what made Matt follow that?).  They can’t outright say that they’re oblivious to soccer becaue the World Cup and the U.S. Women’s teams were gigantic stories … but still, the chances of a non-soccer fan just sitting down one day and deciding to root for an MLS team must be about the same chance as me sitting down and deciding to root for Chinese pro basketball teams with no previous experience with it.  The reasoning is that I HAVE to be led into it by people that I’m close to and that I HAVE to have a local team that keeps appearing in the papers over and over again (Note, I live in New York and my girlfriend’s family watches Premiere League games about once a week  … soccer was bound to happen for me).

To cut this short, for 2012 I am getting annoyed by people who are going to get crushed by a soccer avalanche in four years and don’t see the future coming.  Surrounded by over-hype and outright exaggerations from MLS there are two relevant stats that any U.S. soccer fan can appreciate: 1.  Every year more and more young American children care more and more about soccer and 2.  The U.S. National Team fields players that are recruited by competitive, global teams.    It’s not crazy to think that in three years America will open it’s eyes and give Lionel Messi enough respect to name-drop him along with the likes of Pele and Beckham even if he doesn’t play in the U.S.

So, instead of giving advice on how to get your soccerless friends into the world of just soccer, I’m going to give advice to current MLS fans on something far more difficult … getting Americans into MAJOR LEAGUE SOCCER.  The following questions and my recommendations for answers are meant for MLS fans this year to try and spin the league into something positive and expanding instead of middling and on occasion, embarrassing.

In thinking this over, it’s important to ‘Garberize’ and leverage the conversation into why MLS is becoming competitive (even if it’s not).  Don Garber and his outlook on soccer has taken the league from the brink of insolvency to landing David Beckham for two contract signings and creating multiple soccer stadiums for the league (even if a lot of teams are losing money).

A non-MLS fan asks: Do the teams ever do good against the Mexican ones?

Answer: All the time, easy. A Mexican soccer team even has their own American MLS team in Los Angeles and has spent millions of dollars for Chivas U.S.A. to become just as competitive here than with the team in Guadalajara.  When MLS and Mexican club teams play against eachother the games are close and it’s not a stretch to say the American teams have gotten better than Mexican teams.

BAD, BUT REAL, ANSWER: The Mexican clubs pay much higher salaries than MLS and can blow us out of the water in international competitions.  When an MLS team almost beat a top Mexican club last year it might’ve been because the Mexican side lost key players before the game.

A non-MLS fan asks: Do MLS teams ever play against the top European clubs?

Answer: Yeah, of course (add an extra pause for a ‘duh?’ effect).  New York tied Arsenal last year and Arsenal’s pretty much a top three British team (they were at least).  And Manchester United lost a game to the Sounders a couple of years ago (I’m making this up and I’m too lazy to check which specific MLS team did or didn’t beat Man U).  So if you look at the worst European teams compared to the worst MLS teams there’s not that big of a difference (keep this VAGUE).

BAD, BUT REAL, ANSWER:  When the MLS teams DO play against European clubs it is because most often an MLS team PAYS FOR THE TRAVEL EXPENSES of the European club to arrive and field their B players for most of the game.  Any competent soccer fan here will realize after three months that when it comes to MLS and European clubs you’re just comparing apples to les oranges.  There are major differences with MLS and European play across the board, so just play dumb and keep stating that MLS is just as good.

The best Garberism to express is ‘Look, those teams have been playing for a hundred years, they have rich histories and traditions compared to American play’ … but you don’t have to state this expression because 85% of the time your neophyte friend might not even care about foreign football teams enough to research them.

A non-MLS fan asks: Why do you watch it?

Answer: Pretty much all my friends watch it.  Soccer’s the most popular sport on Earth isn’t it? (How can they respond no?)

BAD, BUT REAL, ANSWER: The ratings nationwide are abysmal but having a beer and watching MLS isn’t that bad if I like one of the teams.  It’s just that the channel will be changed if something important comes on like the NBA or Iron Chef America.

A non-MLS fan asks: How many more years until MLS is more popular? 

Answer: It’s popular now (again, pause as if their question is absurd).  The league just added another team and New York might get the next one for 100 million dollars.  MLS games are on NBC and anybody can watch MLS when they couldn’t do that a few years ago (this is a total Garber tactic, name drop NBC, NBC Sports and NBC again just to emphasize the league’s new T.V. deal.)

BAD, BUT REAL, ANSWER: Ten years, fifteen years? A HUNDRED YEARS LIKE THE ENGLISH CLUBS?    Attendance wise MLS is growing at a slow pace but that’s not going to convince your friends to watch it, nor are the flatlining T.V. ratings.  Just sidestep this question and emphasize that right now, at this moment, the league is fine as it is.  Keep it as your mantra.

And now, on a better note, let’s look at what’s good for the league: the snobbyness of some of it’s fans and the pride they have in their team.  I am directly thinking of Sounders and Timber fans although other cities might have aggressive polarized fans that are just as condescending (Galaxy fans?).  My point on this is that if you’re in a city already forming a mob of legion supporters there’s no reason to spin truths about being an MLS fan.  The safety in numbers provided by hundreds of thousands of others like yourself won’t make you try to convert anyone else to follow your team, if anything people will be asking YOU about MLS.  This is something the league might not have had going for it ten years ago ….

But for the misfit fan supporting a middling team in a city that doesn’t care, please take heed on what I had written before: MLS plays fine against Mexican clubs, it plays top European teams all the time, all your friends watch it and the MLS is popular.   Even though those ideas aren’t based in reality at the present moment you might find someone open enough give the game a chance (even if it might a Real Madrid game instead of Real Salt Lake, they have to start somewhere).

Now you can remember where you were when the  American Association of Retired Persons gave a Twitter shout-out to the memory of Biggie Smalls. Awesome.

The Ginge is joined by Josh Guesman from Corner of the Galaxy podcast to discuss the sanctions against the Houston Dynamo supporters and some broader topics involving the supporters culture in MLS.

In this episode, Ginge laments today’s announcement that the WPS has suspended operations for the 2012 season…and he has a few words for Dan Borislow who is at the center of the shit storm of fail.