Major League Soccer continues its stunning growth by the addition of new clubs, stadia and lucrative financial deals. As a league it has thrived in what is over decade of service now and as a brand of entertainment. I urge anyone to catch a game in person, via any media outlet or talk to anyone associated with the league whether it be fan, executive or player and they will tell you how sensually stimulating it has become up and down the country. To run what is a worldly sport in an American style and fashion isn’t easy. Teams are in my opinion, at least more franchises than anything else. They can be rooted up and relocated if the league chooses to do use if something runs foul. A concept in soccer to the rest of the planet seems very foreign. What isn’t a foreign are teams that go defunct or dissolve. The Tampa Bay Mutiny, Miami Fusion and Chivas USA are casualties of this North American soccer system. As much good the MLS has done, by allowing these clubs to fall by the wayside and not figuring out how to save them, they ultimately failed in that respect. In Europe bad clubs do get dissolved but that’s because teams are ran privately by businessmen with the leagues only operating as shepherds. Bad business decisions by private owners lead to horror stories like the one we see in Italy with Parma and over in England with Portsmouth. Major League does allow private ownership of teams but in the end they are really good protectors of their brand and does allow for parity among the teams making sure the league is balanced. Which is a healthy trend in all major league sports in the United States which makes for good for viewing. Everybody gets a Lebron, everybody gets Cam Newton, everyone gets a David Villa despite the market they play in. Markets in pro sports in America count for a lot. Texas, New York and California gets oodles of attention. Naturally because they hold the most Metropolitan cities and thus hold the most TV wise rights and shares and all types of mumbo jumbo that they taught me in college in my media classes at university. Essentially that’s why we are here to talk about one of those big markets and a big team that is coming to Major League Soccer. In October of 2014 MLS announced that Los Angeles Football Club will become part of the league set up come 2018. As mentioned above LAFC will be entertaining us in 2018, a full two years from now and will have to watch Atlanta United Football Club take the leap first into MLS. The Georgian side are set to enter the fray in the not to far off 2017. Anything I could stir up would be pretty superficial simply because there isn’t much content to go on at the moment on the club! Which will make this post short and sweet. Word is the California outfit are looking to build a $250 million stadium in in the Los Angeles area which no doubt will be caldron of color when it is completed . Tom Penn, Henry Nguyen and Peter Gruben according to various sources head up the ownership group. Vincent Tan the same guy who owns Welsh side Cardiff City and Belgian side KV Kortrijk also is a co-owner in the LA venture. Tan is best known for trying to undo almost 117 years of footballing tradition by trying to change the home colors of Cardiff from blue to red. An effort that didn’t sit very well with the Welsh locals. So it’s a good thing this newly founded club doesn’t have domestic misnomers to fret about for Mr. Tan. Aesthetics aside LAFC has some very eye catching affiliates they can can hang their hat on. Basketball legend Magic Johnson, actor/comedian Will Ferrell and soccer icon Mia Hamm all investors. Los Angeles Football Club seems like a cool thing to do and it kinda reminds me of the Brooklyn Nets in the NBA. A trendy looking, clean and edgy looking team that is in an enclave in a big market (New York) trying to give it’s more establish neighbor (New York Knicks) a bloody nose. There is no doubt that LAFC is trying to cut into the LA Galaxy’s shares and they are using there new vibe and energy to wow a city that expects to be dazzled. As for the colors and crest I’m personally a sucker for black and gold but I feel for an artistic city like Los Angeles a wing emerging out of an “A” is a little lazy. I expected a little more flair especially from a west coast club. All around I hope LAFC’s birth can bring a real hate to the LA area something to rival Portland and Seattle’s beef. I look forward to when the Galaxy and the “Black Gold,” meet. LAFC
As a kid growing up in the 90s my image of a football coach or a manager was an elder gentleman with grayed or balding hair, a little round in the middle and having a semi permanent scowl on his face either barking orders in a British winter or standing quietly on a warm Mediterranean night with smoke choking the air surveying the scene. The likes of Sir Alex Ferguson, Gerard Houllier, Vincente Del Bosque, Sven Goran-Eriksson, Sir Bobby Robson, Marcelo Lippi, Giovanni Trapattoni and Jupp Heynckes are frankly what I was use to. All of these gentlemen have lifetimes upon lifetimes of games managed between them. As I’ve aged, these men who were already for lack of a better word “old,” even when I was a kid started to fade away from the touchlines. Del Bosque and Eriksson the only two from the bunch that are still currently actively mentoring. A natural turn of events and as their ilk expired the likes of Jose Mourinho, Roberto Mancini, Didier Deschamps and Pep Guardiola finessed their way into the managerial wing. Bringing with them a tidy, clean and stylized look to the pitch. Well groomed, sharp eyed and ushering a zest and zeal to the sidelines. Maybe I can’t articulate it as much as the real students of the game but they made an ancient sport more streamline. Pep Guardiola certainly had a solid playing career but I have to be honest I can’t remember seeing him ever playing. The more decorated Didier Deschamps I certainly recall stroking the ball around for those powerful France sides of the past. Roberto Mancini as a player I only go by what people said of his career and as Jose Mourinho, he was nothing more than a lower leaguer in his playing days. My relationship with these men are recent, simply because coaching for them is all I know of them. They are the successors to the Fegusons and Robsons and now they've started a trend and their brand seems to be the one in vogue. Arsenal’s Arsene Wenger and for now England’s Roy Hodgson’s are true relics of the game. The parental, father-like coach is being phased out either naturally due to retirement or being pushed aside by these younger minds. Sounds a little outlandish but I ask. Why haven’t we seen the likes of Alan Curbishley or Harry Redknapp doing anything significant in the last few years? If we start to research maybe that claim doesn't seem so far fetched. As the popular adage goes “time waits for no man,” coaches like players retire too...they simply can not carry on forever and as for them being forced out...well you be the judge! It is hard to say from my end. Yes, the hot new thing is to have a new kid on the block coach but elder statesman like Carlo Ancelotti and Fabio Capello are still among the best managers still in circulation so a few holes can be poked in that theory. One could argue that the older manager maybe more pricy than his younger counterpart, which is a fair assessment with the better young guns like Guardiola and Klopp the two that buck the trend. I find that most clubs in these new financial times play the guessing game. Banking that a bright new young savior will rescue them which is odd from a traditional business standpoint. Elder coaches tend to demand a higher wage so financially offering a greener guy new to the role of coaching a smaller fee can only have an upside most teams hope. It has worked some of the time, prime example coming in the form of Atletico Madrid’s appointment of Argentine Diego Simeone a few years ago. His salary has no doubt increased due to the bevy of titles he has already delivered to capital club. On the other end of the spectrum the rookie coach can lead an already established side into wilderness of relegation and financial irresponsibility. Former Aston Villa and Tottenham Hotspur manager Tim Sherwood can attest to that. Being deployed at Tottenham was a blessing in disguise as the London club were too stable to really suffer from the newbie’s teachings. However you place him at Aston Villa and what you got was a sacked manager and a historically strong club on it’s sick bed ready to slip into relegation. Villa are one of the founding clubs of the old English 1st Division a team never to be relegated. Through financial mismanagement on the part of ownership by either not investing in on field talent and Tim Sherwood’s hiring...which I also cite as financial mismanagement this an old pillar of English will fall. A young inexperienced manager who didn’t have the know it all at the time has ultimately led to the destruction of a club’s honored status. Aston Villa will be relegated this season of 2015-16 and Sherwood would had had a huge part to play in that. Aston Villa wasn’t in most recent times a side a-washed with money but what little change they did have they could had gone out and get a manager who had the a little gray hair and proven track record. If they did maybe Villa would not be smarting. Simeone and Sherwood are just different sides of the coin when it comes to the youthful managerial debate. The new wave of coaches coming through sit a little odd for me at the age of 27. Currently Sampdoria’s Vincenzo Montella, Bordeaux’s Willy Sagnol, Real Madrid’s Zinadine Zidane and my personal favorite Deportivo la Courna’s Victor Sanchez are all players who saturate my childhood memories. How many times have seen Victor deliver a cross to Walter Pandiani or Diego Tristan in the Champions League that led to goal sending the Depor fans at the Riazor into pandemonium? Montella saving Roma from defeat with a last grasp equalizer in the Serie A for me is still vivid image in my mind. Willy Sagnol hustling up flank for Bayern Munich and France to go snatch a the ball from some other worldly striker that thought is so fresh for me. As for Zidane! Pick a game and I will tell you about it...I am getting older, this is true but seeing these guys running the show at their respective clubs is surreal for me because I still see them as when I was a little boy. Victor was my hero and so many good feelings for me personally involve him kicking a ball. Now he is the one telling people to kick a ball and the child in me wants him to do just as well. Maybe this article is a little pointless in that I’m not just highlighting new coaches coming into the frame and older ones panning out of view but rather showing me a glimpse of my life and how I saw the game then and what I see now.
