Lost in the whirlwind tour of South Africa and the Confederations Cup, which brought outlets from Harper’s to Deadspin to what seemed like every newspaper in the country out for a week-long soccer columning festival, was the demise of Brad Friedel’s once heralded (here at least) soccer academy in Ohio. So why does that matter?

In the last two weeks I’ve received emails asking why I didn’t write anything about the Confederations Cup or when I would. I’m still wondering, what really is there to say? Dan Loney did the best job I’ve seen of basically saying just that while pointing out the US MNT is not that good and doesn’t have any depth and doesn’t have the best coach they could. Too many of the rubberneckers came with, as Loney put it, “nonsense like winning games and getting good performances out of our players.” So where should the attention be going?

The U.S. national team is a roller coaster ride that will continue up and and down and through next year’s return to South Africa for the World Cup, and probably for years if not decades after that. There will be occasional miracles as happened against Spain, and the team will be able to carry the underdog momentum through another game or two, but when you need every player on your team to play at their best to win a trophy, you can’t expect much.

It’s never as good as the first time. The rain, the grand stand bleachers, the wet turf, the steady cam man on the field, the crane cam hovering over the crowd. What was an underground experiment last year became the mainstream mainstay as Steve Nash and Claudio Reyna hosted their 2nd annual Showdown in Chinatown to benefit each of their namesake charities. The line-ups, tweaked a bit from last year, will star in a Fox Soccer Channel documentary about the game.

That’s not to say it won’t be the best sporting event all summer in New York City. Standing over Thierry Henry’s shoulder while he watched the first half from the bench is not something one takes lightly. It was a mid-eighties Michael Jackson moment for some, which is why this event will forever be, no matter how many times they play it, a once in a lifetime experience.

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Besides the FSC cameras and grandstands, there was a PA announcer as well. And this guy in the suit from the city.

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Mathieu Flamini with a young Arsenal fan.

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Bosh took the role left vacant by Baron Davis. The crowd cheered louder for Bosh than anyone. And he hammed it up appropriately.

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Chris Bosh had the best time.

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the point guard

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the swing men, Grant Hill and Chris Bosh.

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Edgar Davids and Reyna, who actually still had plenty of skill left in his newly fresh legs. Davids had more than enough, held the ball longer than probably anybody. Overheard in New York: “Egdar Davids is a ball hog.”

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New York, New York

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tricks galore…

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larger, yet still rudimentary, PDF filmstrip here.

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Salomon Kalou, best player on the field, same as last year.

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Kalou header

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half time

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basketball buddies

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So maybe Steve Nash had the best time.

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Nash was gifted a PK after attempting a failed but A-for-effort bicycle kick

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He sat out the entire first half, but Henry’s health looked fine once he took the field.

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near-miss emotion from Tony Parker in response to Henry’s heckling.

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flash

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Don’t you just love the off-season?

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still photos exclusive to TIAS by Nick Werner.

SI’s 2002 World Cup preview, in which Clint Mathis graced the cover and was heralded as the new face of American soccer, was the “least-read and third lowest-rated cover story measured since 1995.” Four years later, the 2006 World Cup preview “tied for 199th in readership out of 208 cover stories measured to date.” There has never been a feature profile of America’s present face, Landon Donovan, and the recent David Beckham cover story—“a big get” for the magazine—performed less than stellar with readers.

What’s a soccer-loving editor at the classic American sports magazine to do? TIAS sat down with Mravic in his SI office to discuss the past, present, and future of soccer in America Sports Illustrated.

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Mravic with his son, Branko, at the U.S.-Czech Republic game in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, 2006.

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TIAS: You edited books before joining the wonderful and sadly short-lived magazine Inside Sports. Then you arrived at Sports Illustrated, first for “SI Presents,” which produces the commemorative issues, then to the front of book section “Scorecard,” and afterward college football. Now you are the NFL editor. Where does soccer come in?

MM: I have been kind of the stealth voice of soccer here for a while. Hank Hersch had been the soccer editor since I got here, and he recently moved up to assistant managing editor, so the thought was to bring me on to manage the coverage in the magazine, but Hank will still be heavily involved in what we do, guiding the coverage.

I was your classic soccer hater growing up. I played mostly baseball, but soccer was popular at my high school in New Haven, Connecticut. This was sort of the first wave in the 70’s when soccer seemed to be catching on. I think maybe soccer was happening in Connecticut more so than elsewhere, but I was always like, ‘Eh, it’s not American. I’m a baseball guy. It’s odd. It’s different.’ A lot of my friends played, so I wasn’t a serious antagonist like you see from a lot of people still today.

I remember the first game I watched was the 1982 World Cup. It was Germany-France, I think the semi-final where Germany came back from two goals down. I was watching on Univision with rabbit ear antennas and thinking, ‘Man, this is really cool.’ And gradually my interest grew from there. There wasn’t much happening with soccer in the States at the time, so it was mostly around World Cups when I would get back into it. As soccer became more accessible, my interest grew. I traveled around the U.S. for the 1994 World Cup—San Francisco, Washington—and somehow got stuck watching mostly Swiss games. But that is when I really started getting into it. I went to World Cup 2002 and 2006.

Soon after the 1994 World Cup you arrived at SI and MLS came into the market. Take me through soccer as a subject to cover at SI during your time.

I was actually living in LA when they hired me. Mexico played the U.S. in Pasadena as the first game of a double header which included a Galaxy game. Andrew Shue (from Melrose Place fame) played in that game, if it gives you an idea of the time. The Mexico game pulled like 100,000 people and maybe 20,000 stayed for the Galaxy. It was obvious that it was a start-up league, and the quality was not great, but it could have the makings of something.

When I interviewed at SI, they asked what I was really interested in, and I said soccer, and the Olympics, which I’m a big fan of too. They were like, “Well, we really don’t do a lot of soccer.” And we haven’t done a lot. We’ve done more over the past decade—since MLS has started—than we did the previous 40 years. It was World Cup previews and round-ups and maybe a brief review of the NASL when it was around. But it was an oddity, some sport foreigners play.

We’d do a preview of the MLS season. We covered the championship game for the first MLS season, which was when I worked for “SI Presents,” before I worked on the magazine. When I took over “Scorecard” (the front of book section) I would always try to sneak in soccer information. I was getting some news in there. Freddy Adu for instance. I think SI was the first national media to mention Freddy Adu. We did a little “Scorecard” thing that said his mother had turned down money from Inter Milan because Freddy was only 10 or something. That came from just me reading Big Soccer at the time, which is where Freddy was being talked about when he was 10—very below the public consciousness.

One thing we did do was what we call “Advanced Text.” It’s these pages that don’t go to everybody who subscribes to the magazine. They are demographically targeted for high income subscribers or whatever it might be. So it would go out to like 30 percent of subscribers—these extra pages of content for advertisers who wanted to reach this certain demographic. I was editing those pages too, so that is where a lot of our soccer was turning up–national team games or MLS stories that would not get into the main magazine. Our readership doesn’t have that demand. But the presumption was that these higher end subscribers may have a more expansive view of sports.

The obvious stories are always there. We covered Tim Howard when he went to Manchester United. That was a pretty obvious story. That is a story an American sports fan who may not be an avid soccer fan would still want to read. He’s an interesting guy; he has turrets syndrome; he’s going to the biggest club in the world.

And ESPN just got around to telling that story.

We still get pitched by freelancers. “You guys should do this story on Tim Howard.” Well, we did that a few years ago. Jay Demerit is another great story–one of those stories that kick around the hard core internet audience but don’t make it to the larger sports audience. Those stories are the ones that fall in our wheelhouse. You have to really sell soccer.

It has to be that obvious homerun of story.

Yeah, Hopefully it will take less of a sell in the coming years. Of all the sports that are vying for attention, underneath the NFL, MLB, and the NBA to a certain extent, I think soccer is in position for growth. The next generation of kids who are now coming into their 20’s and 30’s played it, have friends who played it; it’s not viewed as that sort of oddball, foreign thing anymore.

Magazines often take on the persona of the top editors, reflecting the coverage they want to see, the subjects they are interested in. Do you see that generational pro-soccer change on the staff—taking it as a slice of the American sporting audience?

Yeah. There is definitely a dividing line, which may be right about where I am. Between “I don’t know about it; I don’t want to know about it,” and others who are open to it even if they are not avid fans.

Sort of like the Kornheiser-Wilbon line if you watch soccer discussed on PTI?

Yeah, but no one here is as stridently outspoken against it as some others are out there. And the young reporters and editors are pitching soccer stories, traveling to the World Cup, paying attention. There is a real appreciation for it, and it has helped turn some of the older guys onto it. In that way it still has that exotic appeal to it. It’s different. It has an outsiders quality to the fan base. You wake up early on weekends to go watch games at bars with fans from all over the world. No other sport has those exotics attached to it.

On the other side from the editors, whose personal tastes obviously drive some of the coverage, you have the readership. How do you guys track that? How do you know soccer is not wanted or when will you know that soccer is ripe for the main magazine?

We do regular polls of readers. Every few weeks. They tell us how much of the magazine they have read, how much time they spent with each story, did they like the story, did they like the cover. We get a really good sense, as far as you can from a poll, what readers like and don’t and what they want. There is not a widespread soccer fan base who reads Sports Illustrated. There is a hardcore fan base that we hear from when we do soccer stories. “Thank god; thank you for doing soccer.” SI is supposed to be this big tent that covers all this stuff. You know the cover story we did on Beckham when he arrived to the Galaxy was a big get for us.

Grant Wahl’s story with the red carpet cover?

Yeah. It was a big coup for Grant to get sit-down time with Beckham. It was a big deal. We got the exclusive—he agreed not to do other media in the U.S. until our cover came out. And then we did the reader survey and it was not a well-received issue.

What were the newsstands sales for that issue compared to other covers?

Not special. Soccer does not move the needle on the newsstands. The NFL does, which is why we put it on the cover in June.

Or maybe another “Chosen One?”

This last one was baseball, which does well as a sport for us; basketball doesn’t do that well. The NFL rules and college football too. Sports Illustrated you come to realize is really a football readership.

Which goes along with the TV ratings.

That is true. We have, because of our tradition, been able to devote time to a certain kind of story, a feature on soccer like with Tim Howard, but the bread and butter is the NFL. I think we did a survey where 86 percent of our readers call themselves NFL fans. Maybe 60 percent for baseball and 40 basketball, and soccer was down there with tennis and horse racing around 15 or 20 percent.

Hockey in between those?

Hockey is down there too, but we have a tradition of covering hockey and within the magazine a strong hockey sense. Our former managing editor was from Boston and a hockey writer, so we covered a lot of hockey for a while. The stance that guys like Grant Wahl take, who are outside the magazine and don’t see the mix of stories every week, is that if soccer is there with horse racing and tennis, than why can’t we do as much soccer as those sports? And I don’t know. Hopefully we will get to that point, but again our past managing editors have been a hockey guy and a former junior tennis champion. So we did a lot of hockey and tennis. Terry McDonell, the managing editor now, played college football.

How do you go about selling the soccer stories to those editors?

I pitched a story when the Champions League was setting up, once we knew the four semifinalists. I set it up as “As you all well know, the biggest sporting event on the planet in May is not Yankees-Red Sox; it’s not the NBA finals; it’s not the Stanley Cup; it’s the Champions League.” I gave them story angles that could work depending on who made it in. If it was an all English final it could be about the international money flowing into the EPL. Is that good for soccer? Is that flow of money to one league good for the sport? That is a tough sell.

Yet a story I would love to read.

Yeah, if you took the time and resources to get into these shady Russian oligarchs and guys from the Middle East. It’s fascinating. I mean, what if the NFL had no salary cap now, what would it look like? Ok, so we could do that, or if Manchester United and Barcelona make it to the final we could set it up around the two best players in the world playing against each other. It’s Kobe v. Lebron for the rest of the world, Ronaldo v Messi. You have the prima donna and the little quiet kid brother or something. And that is the story we did. It was going to be a feature, and if Grant had been here it would have been easier to do as a feature story, but it ended up as a big preview in a column (Grant Wahl is finishing up a book sabatical in South Africa). I pitched it as, “This is what the American sports fan would like to see. It’s what is happening in the NBA but on a much bigger scale—everybody in the world will be watching.”

And if you are going to watch one soccer game every year…

Yes, this is the one you want to watch. What we had in the story that didn’t end up in the magazine because we had to trim it was the comparison of the two teams—the owners, the sponsors. When you broke it down like that there were some interesting aspects. You had AIG v Unicef. A hated American owner versus a club that gave some control to their fans. I wish that had run. But you try to tie it to the vernacular of the American sports fan. The Demerit story was this kid from Green Bay who had to claw his way to professional sports, which is a story that occurs in any sport and something American readers gravitate to.

The World Cup is not such a hard sell. It’s bigger than the Olympics in my opinion, and it’s understood we will be covering it. We do a fairly decent-sized preview and follow stories and personalities that that we can pick up as the games approach or ones that show up once they start. I think some eyes were really opened during the last World Cup when the numbers were just through the roof on the website. It’s funny, because SI.com is pretty well respected as a soccer website. There is a whole different thing going on there—soccer is viewed as any other sport and focused on readers who are already fans. In the magazine we are always asking, “Ok, how much does the reader know, what do we have to explain? Do we have to explain the World Cup qualifying process?”

Does the website’s success hurt soccer’s inclusion in the magazine—the thought being that, “Well, let’s just put it on the website where people can find it” as opposed to potentially shoving it down the throats of the print readers?

I don’t think so. I think it plays off fairly well. We would not likely do a really in depth profile-type piece on the website. The magazine still has better resources than the website does to travel to Europe to do a Jozy Altidore story or something. That would go in the magazine, because at the moment at least, the magazine still has the financial resources to do a big story like that. Travel for the website is often done in conjunction with what the magazine is doing in order to share costs. For the USA-Honduras game, for instance, Jonah Friedman will file for the website occasionally from Chicago and then write a column about the game for the print magazine. During the World Cups that is the case as well. All the writers will write for the web on top of their print assignments. We try to exploit the resources and talent as much as we can, which goes for any sport.

Is there a situation where the website becomes the dump for stories assigned for the magazine that for whatever reason don’t run?

It happens, but the website obviously doesn’t want to be the dump. Frankly there used to be a lot more stuff we assigned for the magazine that didn’t get in. We’ve been a lot more selective because we have to due to budget restraints, so that doesn’t happen as much anymore. It’s more a sharing of resources than it is a secondary outlet.

How do you balance that need to have someone on the ground and the costs it requires. With technological advances and dwindling financial resources for news outlets, that seems to be a big question, especially for sports journalism.

It’s hard. Obviously you would always like someone on the ground. If Jonah Friedman had not been at the USA-Honduras we probably wouldn’t do anything on it. But to be on the scene for the magazines purposes, you need someone who can report on that scene and teach us something about the game or atmosphere. And hopefully you get some good quotes before or after the game that you had to be there to get and that readers would not have otherwise gotten.

That color to add to a story.

Yeah, but it is tough. We still send people to the big events, but we don’t send as many. Instead of people going to Australia for four weeks to cover the Australian Open, maybe we send one person to the final. We are not sending someone to the World Track Championships for the first time this year. There is no question the content and readers suffer, but you have to pick and choose as wisely as you can to serve the widest number of readers.

One of my football writers has gotten to know Larry Fitzgerald pretty well over the years, and it’s almost an SI tradition that the star of the Super Bowl, whether from the winning or losing team, is featured in the off-season. We did it with Hines Ward when he went to Korea. It was a really nice story—discovering his roots there with his mom. So Larry Fitzgerald was going to Africa for like three weeks. It would be pretty cool to tag along with Larry through Africa, but we ran the numbers, and in the end we couldn’t justify it in this economic climate. Hopefully things turn around for those kind of stories. We still do the long think pieces in SI.

That was my next question. We talked previously about how blogs sort of took from the magazine front of book section, in your case “Scorecard,” and ran with it on the internet. Not the content, but the idea about what those sections provide to readers. Given that and the fact that SI has a stable of well-connected and talented writers, does that give you more energy to concentrate on those longer features and maybe give them more space in the magazine? Or is it still a matter of “people don’t want to read long stories?”

It’s a huge debate, and has been a big debate at SI since the advent of television. How much we covered as compared to what is on TV, ESPN, SportsCenter, and now what’s online. I’d like to think there is a place for SI’s kind of journalism where cultivating a relationship with an athlete means something in order to have them open up for those sort of stories. It’s not about “We’re friends with Larry Fitzgerald and you are not.” There is value in spending time and having a background of 20 years covering a beat and being around players. And I read Deadspin and Big Soccer and love all of those things, but there is a foundation for all of those websites based on what is happening on the ground at newspapers and magazines. That still drives a lot of the discussion, and there is still a place for that kind of reportage.

But we still do the front of the magazine which is funny and interesting, and polled readers love charts and graphs and lots of bits of interesting information. But those quick takes on things, the funny and snarky impressions are everywhere now. I think a substantial number of writers at the magazine would rather tell stories, so we should write more stories. But the magazine shrunk. We were doing a 112-page magazine and now it is 80 and 84 and 70 pages depending on the amount of ads we get in. When the pages are shrinking the question is, where is the strength of Sports Illustrated? It’s always been in this sort of storytelling and pictures, and we have to devote the space to them. It’s definitely a tough balancing act.

There are internet threads devoted to “what’s wrong with SI” and “I cant believe they are doing this.” Half the people say they don’t want any of it and half say they want more of it. That’s what we learn in the polls as well. Some people don’t want us covering a game that happened on Sunday if they aren’t reading about it until Thursday. And the other half complain when it is not there. “The Jets played the Bills on Sunday. Where is that story?” There is still the reader who wants the validation. It’s like the Jerry Seinfeld joke: why do people read the sports page if they saw the game? You just want to be able to say, “Yeah I saw that too.”

What’s the one soccer story you’d like to see?

One we’re working on… well, we’ve been bitten in the past by sort of “this is the next big guy in American soccer.” Clint Mathis was on the cover before the 2002 World Cup. We touted Eddie Johnson, who had an interesting story, a black kid from football country in Florida finds his way to the national team—why is he playing soccer? It’s a good story but he ended up washing out. Freddy Adu. But now we have Jozy to pin all of our hopes on! Like I said, the younger reporters are pitching stories and someone is pitching a Jozy Altidore story. And there is Giuseppe Rossi, who has an interesting story, and plays for the same club as Jozy—if Jozy goes back and actually plays for Villarreal. So we might do something on both of them as one story. I think the story of two Jersey boys could be a good one, together in Spain but playing for different national teams.

There is a bigger picture story about why Americans have yet to develop a world class player. That is the one thing—and I don’t know if you could answer it. Barcelona has a guy from Iceland. Manchester United has a Korean starting the Champions League final. Where’s our guy? Is it the instruction? The coaching? The competitiveness? I don’t know if there is a story there, but that is the question I have. Why hasn’t there been a world class player come from the U.S., and will there be one sometime soon? It’s impossible to answer but really curious.

I’ve been trying to find that answer for years now.

It’s impossible.

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In a soccer game, as in a movie, a narrative unfolds for the viewer. There are action scenes and sad scenes, comedy and drama. But unlike other sports that stop and start, aiding in the collection of immense data, soccer builds a non-stop story that can challenge the viewer—full of dialogue that may seem meaningless until the entire tale unfolds. And even then you may not get a final payoff; as fans of soccer and Woody Allen films know, you must enjoy the ride. Life follows the same path, so I guess it’s no surprise those three things converge into one around the first-ever American film festival dedicated to soccer.

When Kicking and Screening opens on July 14, that moment of success, that convergence of soccer, film, and life will not be lost on the festival’s founder, Rachel Markus, who had the red carpet pulled from underneith her festival in London before the idea’s resurrection in New York. “Soccer is art,” she says. “Film is art. It’s not a question of the final outcome, but how you got to that final outcome where the beauty lies.”

After graduating from film school at NYU, the native New Yorker, now 38, tried her luck in the industry, covering film festivals as a journalist and working on a French film production in California. Eventually unable to support herself, Markus leaned back on her two other degrees, from Cornell and Stanford, and returned to work as a marketer in the financial services industry. In 2007 that took her to London.

She had been to London a few times previously, once waiting out a layover in 1998 en route to Marseille and the World Cup semi-final between Brazil and Holland. Markus is a soccer fan, played in her youth before club teams existed for girls in her area of Long Island. She worked as a referee in her teenage years and helped run a youth team while in college. So when she was given a ticket to the semi-final, she took one day off from work—her first big corporate job—and made the round trip from New York to Marseille and back in 24 hours. “I’d do it again,” she says of the tiring journey. “I always was a soccer fan, but from that point on, I was hooked, done—it was the Mastercard moment, priceless. From then one I was the person who read every book and watched every film about soccer.”

She wrote fan letters to Simon Kuper, the popular English soccer journalist and author of two books; he responded via his personal email address. Up to that point Markus was like countless American soccer players (and soccer writers), following her passions in the moments between supporting herself in some other way. So in January of 2008 when she thought it would be a great idea to have a soccer film festival in London, it wasn’t a moment of clarity; it was just another creative idea that probably wouldn’t materialize. Then she e-mailed Kuper again and threw out the idea to him. He loved it, referenced 11MM, a successful soccer film festival in Berlin, Germany, and wondered why there had never been one in London. “He put it in my head that I could really do this,” Markus said. She needed someone to tell her it was possible. Game on.

Markus was living in the southern section of London at the time, working for JP Morgan, and had been to a few Fulham soccer games at Craven Cottage. “It could have been Chelsea,” Markus says. “But I had been to a few Fulham games, so I emailed them.” They too liked the idea and offered to host the festival. She began chasing filmmakers and distribution rights, soccer writers, and potential sponsors. Before long she was speaking with the president of FC Barcelona about FC Barcelona Confidential, a film documenting the Catalan club that she desperately wanted to include in the festival. With absolutely no budget, she did what she could to secure films, even once bringing back six bottles of steak sauce from the famous New York chophouse, Peter Luger’s, because she learned one pair of filmmakers were big fans. Steak sauce got her In the Hands of God, a film that follows a group of English freestyle soccer players to Argentina in search of their hero, Diego Maradona. “From there it just sort of snowballed,” she says.

By September of last year the program was set and the festival just a few weeks away. The phone rang. The economy was dropping into recession and Fulham was worried about sponsors and losses. They issued an ultimatum: if the festival didn’t sell out a week prior to its opening, it would be canceled. “And that’s what they did,” Markus says remembering the next phone call. “Just like that it was nothing. Game Over. I was shattered.”

From July to September 2008 she had been working full-time on the festival because she was laid off by JP Morgan. When the festival collapsed, she returned to New York jobless and too emotionally exhausted with the failure to take another stab at creative success. “I like to think that deep down I knew that it would happen again,” Markus says. “But I didn’t know when I would be confident enough to put myself back out there.”

Then she went on blind date with Greg Lalas. Romance didn’t find a spark, but “Kicking and Screening” did. “She started telling me about this film festival she was putting on in London last fall,” Lalas says, “and how it was canceled last minute. I could hear in her voice and see in her face the disappointment, and so I said, ‘Well let’s do it here in New York.’ She looked at me and said, ‘Really?’ I said, ‘Yeah, sure, why not?’”

“I just needed someone to believe in me again and this festival,” Markus says. “And Greg really stepped up.” For Markus it was a quick lesson on the insular world of American soccer. If it snowballed in London, it was an avalanche in New York.

As a former professional player and present day writer, editor, broadcaster, and website director, not to mention brother of Alexi, it didn’t take long for Lalas to rally the troops. “There is just something about film and soccer,” Lalas says. “We love seeing soccer up on film. We all grew up watching Victory over and over and over again. I actually learned how to play the theme song to Victory on my guitar–it’s such a big part of my life. [American soccer] is insular, you’re right. But it’s also giving. That’s the other side of it. Everyone wants to help. But Rachel is the real cinephile—the only one who can spell cinephile. She’s doing all the heavy lifting.”

In short order North American film rights were procured and soccer friendly locations chosen that connected the global appeal of the sport with the international culture of New York and each film’s subject–a French lounge for a French film, the Spanish Benevolent Society for FC Barcelona Confidential, and the glitzy Tribeca Grand for the Cosmos expose Once In A Lifetime.

On July 16, when Beckham is scheduled to return to the Los Angeles Galaxy and MLS against the Red Bulls in New York, a panel discussion is planned in Manhattan for those unwilling or unable to travel to Giants Stadium in New Jersey. Beckham’s immediate and lasting impact on American soccer will be the topic of debate before a viewing party of the night’s game. (update: Albert Cedales will introduce the Barcelona film on Friday night of festival and NY Red Bulls’ Freestyle Team will perform Wednesday and Saturday nights.)

They obtained the rights to Victory, but it did not make the cut. Along with FC Barcelona Confidential, In The Hands of God, and Once In A Lifetime, Les Yeux dans les Bleus, a documentary about the World Cup-winning 1998 French National Team, rounds out the modest line-up for the first-time festival and another chapter of Markus’ life.

Soccer. Art. Life.

“At a movie or soccer game, you go and sit for 90 minutes,” Markus says. “You sit and you watch because somewhere in that 90 minutes something brilliant might happen to make it all worth it. It’s a story. People are drawn to stories, and you’ve never seen enough stories or enough games to be satisfied.”

That’s not to say Markus doesn’t feel satisfaction, only that she knows it is short lived, and tomorrow, the next day, the next year, she will have to do it all again. But that’s the beauty of it.

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banner photo of FC Barcelona President Joan Laporta courtesy of “Kicking and Screening” and FC Barcelona Confidential.

The trailer for the festival:

A celebration of the U.S. Armed Forces held around Memorial Day in New York, Fleet Week offered up one of the best PR events Red Bull has ever held and a precious photo opportunity. Under blazing sun cut by the riverside breeze, the teams played two small-sided games on the flight deck of the former USS Intrepid, (now a museum) which sits docked along the Hudson River on the west side of midtown Manhattan.

Sadly few fans turned out for the weekday afternoon event, but TIAS was there…

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not exactly bum-rushed walking down the street

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public elevator to the flight deck

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the banner didn’t last long in the riverside wind

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the mid-day sun didn’t provide the best light for photos, but a well-placed                                          control tower helped here - Top Gun might be pushing it though

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this event might be the best idea Red Bull marketers have ever had…

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but I wish Travis Pastrana had jumped out of the Red Bull helicopter that circled overhead

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ball boys; certainly soccer balls are not the weirdest thing NYPD has pulled from the Hudson River

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photos by Nick Werner, exclusively for TIAS

In the May issue of Britain’s FourFourTwo magazine Welsh midfielder and onetime New Englander Andy Dorman lists his MLS highlights as such: Winning the US Open Cup, playing against Cuauhtemoc Blanco, and “also, one time New York brought the old Cosmos players over and I met Pele and Beckenbauer. Not much tops that.”

You can’t go very long in the American soccer world before running into the Cosmos, be it through celebration of their successes or condemnation of their part in the NASL collapse. Today it may be little more than a tape library hidden away in New Jersey, but for sure people know the name; a foreign magazine sees no need to print explanation.

And while it’s hard to get past the fact that MLS built its entire league in direct financial opposition to seemingly everything the Cosmos stood for—a high-powered SuperClub built to thrill audiences and roll over lesser opponents—the Designated Player rule now allows for at least one big signing per team, The Beckham Experiment will teach a few lessons, and the upcoming collective bargaining will at least test the stubborn salary cap.

Sure it’s still a frugal league, but MLS is inching towards the Cosmos.

The last time Peppe Pinton, owner to the rights of all things Cosmos, spoke publicly the problem with resurrecting the Cosmos was a suspected grudge MLS held for the NASL. The ESPN headline read: “Cosmos’ legacy yet to be fully embraced by MLS.”

Almost two years later to the day, the bottom line has not changed. Nearly all of Kristian Dyer’s article still holds true (as does a New York Times article from 2003 about Pele possibly putting the team into MLS)—yes, the Cosmos have a tremendous history in successfully pioneering a soccer franchise into a global brand, and no, they haven’t played a game in over twenty years—but there has been one change.

Pinton is still baffled it hasn’t been the Cosmos, but with the entry of the Whitecaps, Timbers, and Sounders into MLS, it can no longer “be argued that MLS, in its attempt to learn from history, has avoided the NASL, shunning the former franchises and players of the defunct league,” as Dyer asserted in 2007.

And that alone has changed Peppe Pinton. “The Metrostars approached the Cosmos,” he told me during a recent phone interview. “And at that time I was not asking any money. I was just not interested. I didn’t think that was the right time, but this is the right time.”

The talkative businessman has changed his tune, but it is his tone that might have made the greater transformation. Where he and Giorgio Chinaglia were once all but baiting the MLS offices into argument, Pinton is now complementing the league (while, of course, continuing to trumpet the Cosmos). He saw a new Philadelphia franchise budding with support and went as far as to contact the owners about taking his brand. Now he’s watching a beautiful soccer stadium going up just down the river from his New Jersey offices and thinks two teams could share it. He’s done a lot of thinking, and he is ready for more change.

In a candid conversation with TIAS Pinton said he is ready to once and for all get the Cosmos in MLS, offering the brand “free and clear” to the right ownership. You might call it a once in a lifetime opportunity. But there is that little problem of finding someone who wants to pony up the expansion fee and invest in a second New York team. And that’s where the talk runs dry, because until an owner puts forth a bid to MLS, Pinton can do nothing but continue to talk. If only he had the money to simply buy a victory this time around.

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TIAS: There are a couple of pieces that come out from time to time and they’re not always positive for the Cosmos. Who’s fault is that?

Pinton: Contrary to what some people may want for the Cosmos, it is not a ghost. Everyone is talking about it, on the street and high level circles. I have been an advocate and pioneer and curator, maintaining and preserving everything the Cosmos are: memorabilia and trophies which are unprecedented in America to videos, logos, trademarks, images, copyrights. For a long period of time in this area around New York soccer has had a climb with the Cosmos ceasing to play.

So why has it been quiet on the Cosmos front?

Sometimes I ask that same question myself. But one must identify of who to ask the question. There’s gotta be a platform and a venue for the Cosmos to turn. I have done my best financially and emotionally to preserve this thing with one focus: that the brand of the Cosmos would be revived for the benefit of the fans, in New York and all over the world. So again this brand can shine and join a league that would benefit from its inclusion, in the media, in the merchandising, worldwide.

I have done all of that and continue to try to do this. I do not just sit in an office waiting for someone. I have pursued and pursued and pursued aspiring owners, some of who are already in league. Some were just curious. Some contemplated it. There was a period of dormancy in soccer here from when NASL closed to the World Cup in 1994. Then soccer began to generate some energy after the Cup and after MLS started. And from that point I have sought from MLS, with various ideas, options, and business plans—from the Yankees and Mets organizations, to Andrew Murstein who owns the taxi company Mediallian, who was very close to getting something together, to the Red Bulls with who we participated with and licensed footage and licensed the brand for their opening game with Beckenbauer and Pele—I’m trying to say to you that I have approached everyone in hopes of reviving this franchise. I spoke to the owners of the new Philadelphia franchise in regards to possibly name that franchise the Cosmos. We know that would be the extremist move—the name should be in New York—but I spent about 5 months on it. The New York market had been taken by Red Bull—I spoke to the Metrostars management to contemplate a name-change and revival, but did not carry it to fruition. Along the way there is always business decisions that keep things from coming to life.

But make no mistake, it is not because I ever asked a dollar for the Cosmos. I’ve never asked a penny. Although there is an investment of 20, almost 30 years, in keeping an office open and the brand out in the marketplace and in the minds of the fans. That’s not to discuss what it has taken to protect the trademark both worldwide and here in the U.S. The value associated with that—the intellectual property—is there. If you have to pay $5000 a month for rent for the last 25 years, that is something. But I have never asked someone to give me so much for the Cosmos. Because the Cosmos are not for sale. I would like to see an entity that is interested in actually doing something—revive the team, join a league, and put this whole thing to bed. I’ve been trying to find that right organization and have always invited media and anyone to look and see what I’m doing. I am an open book. I don’t hold secrets.

So say the Wilpons (Met’s owners) come to you…

That’s the kind of entity and ownership that I am looking for to dignify and elevate and benefit from the Cosmos. I’ve worked too hard, mentally, physically, and monetarily to not see that happen. Something like that would be a gain to everyone—to the entity, to the Cosmos, and to the fans. And the world. This is a global game, and the Cosmos are our global brand. We don’t have to worry about jealousy now. Some people will say, “Hold on, we’re gonna create another Yankees. We don’t want another Yankees. We want a league that is all the same.” But no matter the Cosmos brand will shine. This is not a joke. In 1983 I owned Lazio, a first division team in Rome. You see, some people don’t know who Peppe Pinton is. Why is it then surprising that people are upset that I own the Cosmos? I purchased Lazio and then exited there because of my love for the Cosmos, my love for New York—it was more than my love for Lazio or the country even where I was born.

What’s the next step?

The next step is very simple. What I realized at Lazio, and what makes sports so great in many places, is to have a second franchise in the same city. Rome and Lazio. Inter Milan and Milan. Juventus and Torino. Particularly—and I think MLS is doing this in LA—the New York market. You need to create competition—Mets and Yankees. You could have Red Bull and Cosmos here in New York—and they could be playing in the same stadium for heaven’s sake. I played Lazio in Olympic Stadium with Roma. No big deal. The economics become much better. Stadiums have empty dates that need to be filled. They are already building their own stadiums all over MLS. Now let’s fill them, while creating rivalry and fan appeal. What needs to be done is lift this asset which is free and clear—I repeat: free and clear for any team. There is no doubt, no loophole. Someone can have the same franchise that Pele and Beckenbauer played for. They get all the trophies, all the history that I have preserved. We never went bankrupt, never went away—it’s the same as it was 30 years ago. It’s the same company. I am the principle of this company and so many people say why don’t I give them back? I am interested to see what anybody has in terms of ideas. I spent three years working with Andrew Murstein who came to me and wanted to start a New York franchise. Legal fees and other costs alone I paid. I was very willing to give it over for what he wanted. I never negotiated any more or less from him. I have reached out to the Mets organization. I basically said, if they were to acquire a franchise, the Cosmos is an available brand to them. I didn’t discuss money. There was no discussing money, and at the time no interest from them to go forward with a franchise, so I have not spoken to them since.

Bottom line, what do you want out of such a deal?

I have never said I even needed to be at a press conference. Make no mistake, I want people finally to know who I am. I have never been an egotistic man. There is no ego about who I am. I have done so much in soccer and out of soccer. I basically retired from soccer at the age of 38. So this is not my entire life. This is not about ego. The trophy case alone of the Cosmos is probably worth a bundle of money, but this is not about me, this is about the people, the fans of New York. They deserve the Cosmos.

I want to refrain from speaking on behalf of the league, but I am open to the league. I have always had an open door with the league. I have had great communication with the league. I have had people from the league in my office, and I have toured the league’s offices.

The Cosmos have a brand name that will make millions for a franchise. I don’t want to knock any other franchises out there, but name one for me today in the U.S. that has reached the level of magnitude that the Cosmos reached. It’s been a long time, but people still know it all over the world. If I am a soccer investor, I would like to embrace this—and you don’t have to embrace Peppe Pinton. It’s never been about that. I am not taking anything away. On the contrary, I have preserved something for the people to have back.

I don’t want to give anybody suggestions, but for a period of time, they could be sharing a stadium until another one is built here. And with the Seattle Sounders and Vancouver Whitecaps and Portland coming into the league, I think it is the right time for the Cosmos to follow those former NASL brands into the league. I have to be very careful because at times the Cosmos has not been embraced the right way from soccer. But when the league signed Beckham, people talked about the Cosmos. It was Beckham-Cosmos, Cosmos-Beckham. The Cosmos paved the way for soccer. The Cosmos did a lot of work and still do. We’re working on youth development with the Cosmos camps and through that and other areas keeping the brand out there.

After all the back and forth over the years, what would you like people to know about you?

People don’t know me. And I want them to know me. I mean, why shouldn’t I be the owner  of the Cosmos? You could own it if you did the right thing back in the day to own it. Why shouldn’t I be the guy to own Lazio? I bought it, so I owned it, and then I sold it. So why should anybody be the owner of anything? I am the owner of the New York Cosmos, and the people are the owners of the New York Cosmos, so let’s try to get them back—not to fill my pocketbook; that’s not what it is all about. If people think that, they are wrong, about the brand, the dignity, and the people who want them back. Some people thought the Cosmos were too much to handle in the soccer market, to live up to MLS’s reputation—but that is stretching it.

Why do you think you’ve often been portrayed as the villain?

It surprises me because I know who I am, and the people who know me, know who I am. There is such a sense of jealousy out there that is very rich toward me, because of the power of the brand and how many people want it. And they wish they had it themselves. This is after the fact. Where were people from 1985 to 1995, when MLS came. The Metrostars approached the Cosmos, and at that time I was not asking any money. I was just not interested. I didn’t think that was the right time, but this is the right time. The league has done a marvelous job. People are making big investments with the league. They are committed to it. The interest is rising. And now the Cosmos could play a role and help them continue growing. The Cosmos would be better today in a name and market point of view than it was before, because the league is very very strong and here to stay. Everything is there for the Cosmos to return and thrive. Nevermind how many people you could pull into the stands. The Cosmos is a brand that will be globally recognized. A lot of people who talk bad about me, but the fact is, if we want the Cosmos to come back we need to stay positive.

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photos from inside Cosmos headquarters in New Jersey courtesy of Cosmos Soccer Club, Inc.

The New York Times Goal Blog ran a preview of the so-called DiploMatch, and I figured someone would give this some post-game coverage–but after years of covering soccer in America maybe I should have known better.

I found a good vantage point above the action that I hope through photography allows for not just a celebration of sport, but the unusual location as well.

Pier 40 juts out into the Hudson River on Manhattan’s lower West side.

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Diplomats under the watchful eye of the Empire State Building

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the giant parking deck rings a large courtyard laid with artificial turf and is home to a number of sports, including soccer, baseball, and American football.

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not exactly a green roof

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not exactly packed, but still the most spectators I’ve seen at Pier 40.

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A soccer vagabond by the age of 19, Devann Yao is now back home in New York, and that’s where he wants to stay. What’s a kid got to do get a little attention around here?

His agent is trying to build him up. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re three for three,” Rob Ross says to his newest client, signed on a two-month contract to see if they could get a Major League Soccer team to bite. “Just kill it in New England and we’ll be looking good.”

In two weeks Devann Yao, 19, has had three unofficial trials with the New York Red Bulls. The first two were with the club’s U18 academy team. He played well enough initially that USSF National Staff Coach and U17 Scout Juan Carlos Michia, who happened to be in town, came by the Meadowlands practice bubble for the second go-round. Red Bulls assistant coach Richie Williams was there too, as well as Alfonso Mondelo, MLS Director of Player Programs. Playing with the U18 bench players against their first team, Devann showed some flashes of brilliance, taking it to defenders with a creative and technical style rarely seen in young American players. It was the first look I got; he seemed promising. Devann nabbed a goal or two and an invite to play with the Red Bulls professional team, albeit as a substitute in an exhibition match between the Red Bulls bench players (there are no actual reserve teams in MLS as of this season) and the University of Virginia, scheduled after New York’s home opener against the New England Revolution.

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“It was kind of a blur,” Yao says about his chance with Red Bull against the University of Virginia at Giants Stadium.

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Tonight, he had about 35 minutes to make his point against last year’s 19th-ranked college team, and Devann again played well, placed in a forward role along side John Wolyniec, on the field with Seth Stammler, Mike Petke and others. He dribbled through two UVA players who had him pinned in the corner. He came back into the midfield for the ball, sped up the run of play, and even stuck his defensive foot in here and there. He wasn’t beyond the occasional errant pass or missed touch, he’s not game-fit, and he did occasionally appear lost, but any player thrown into a team like that, not to mention he is just 19, would be happy with the performance. “For the short period of time I had seen him,” Red Bull assistant coach Richie Williams wrote in an e-mail, “and for him being a very young player, with not a whole lot of experience, I thought he did a fairly good job.” Perhaps the most that can be said is that an unknowing attendee, save for Devann’s generic jersey, would not have realized him as anything different from the salaried players.

Ross is trying to make that point, give some positive post-game reinforcement, and focus Devann’s sight on the goal at hand—his upcoming trial in New England, hopefully a MLS first team or Generation Adidas contract, and an invitation to the U20 national team training camp, which will convene in May ahead of the World Cup in Egypt—the last of which Ross considers top priority. Devann listens but doesn’t have much to say—he admits to being a little nervous and think he played just okay. He asks to borrow a cell phone, because he doesn’t have one, and calls a friend to figure out where they’ll meet later. It’s almost 1 AM on a Saturday night, his calf, hurting from a knock he took on the field, is wrapped in ice, but he doesn’t want to lose out on a weekend night. As we drive toward Manhattan we banter back and forth, but the conversation is rarely about soccer. Devann’s inquisitive yet soft spoken, and when questions are posed to him, it’s as if he draws a blank. His answers are delayed and short; he’s humble damn near to a fault (rarely a good sign for elite athletes). His big eyes and bright smile light up when I ask about his friends. When he extols on his cultural experiences in Europe he almost gets chatty. As for soccer, what is there to talk about? He wants a stable team to play on, a living wage, and playing time. That’s that. He doesn’t want to go home to rest; he’d rather be out with friends.

At 19, Devann is now too old for a youth academy and any hope of a pro career in the United States this year hinges on these tryouts. Since he was 12 he has essentially lived overseas, raised by coaches and teammates and dorm supervisors, first at FC Metz, then Livorno, then St. Mirren. You can easily understand why letting another Saturday night in his hometown pass without a party would be hard to do. At 10 he was a hailed prospect but somehow he dropped off the American soccer map. And now, at 19—did I mention he’s 19–it’s as if he’s washed up, going from trial to trial trying to catch a break while playing pick up games at a local field. If going through the United States’ soccer system—youth clubs, high school, college, USL, MLS—puts a player on the path for a staff salary position somewhere within a domestic professional league, Devann has gone the freelance route, known only to those teams he contacts. But he doesn’t want to have to care about or even understand why he can’t just play soccer—he just wants to play, even if that means hopping around Europe to do so. But for the moment, he’s giving the U.S. a try. He limps out of the car into the Harlem night and back off the map.

It was a drizzle-spitting Saturday last autumn. Leaves blanketed the artificial turf at Harlem’s Jacob Schiff field as winter settled in for its long goodnight. FC Harlem was holding its weekly scrimmage, offering players some structure during the long soccer off-season. I went to practice, as I occasionally do, to check in with the young club’s explosive growth.

“You’ve got to see this one kid,” Irv Smalls, the club’s director, told me in passing. It always starts with that doesn’t it? Marcus DiBernardo, who coaches at both Monroe College and FC Harlem and who says Devann is the best player he has ever coached, told Smalls the same thing a few weeks earlier. This kid, who had been in France or Italy or somewhere, was back home and had showed up at Monroe College, in the Bronx, and was tearing up the community college’s would-be talent while he figured out his next move.

The first thing you learn about Devann Yao is that it has always been about moving.

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Yao plays a lackadaisical goal keeper during a FC Harlem scrimmage last fall at Jacob Schiff Field. He’s been volunteering at the youth club while back home in New York.

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Raised by an Italian mother and Ivorian father in a Harlem brownstone turned bed and breakfast run by his mother, Devann grew up cleaning up after travelers who made his home their home for a few days. He attended a private French elementary school on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, became tri-lingual by learning Italian, and has held multiple passports since birth. (His father became a French citizen while playing semi-professional soccer there).

The real moving began at the age of 11, when, after a few years of recreational and club soccer, Devann packed his bags for the first time and headed to the United Sports Foundation’s soccer program outside Philadelphia, where he was one of three players (the other two were 13 years old) selected for residency scholarships by ex-pat Englishman, coach, and urban soccer activist Tony Williams. “The first few months were hard,” Devann told me about his time in Pennsylvania. “It was obviously the first time away from family. But I wanted to make the sacrifice.”

How much Devann sacrificed over the course of his teenage years only he knows, and he’s not saying much. Under a spiky afro, set upon a slim 6-foot athletic frame, it’s hard to tell whether he’s being shy or coy during our talks. My questions often come back with one-word replies (always said softly and politely) and trailing thoughts. Did he just tell me everything or nothing at all? Girls who love the mysterious must come swooning. You get the feeling he isn’t saying everything that he could, and during the long pauses you wonder if talking at all is in his best interest. Over the few days—an hour here, an hour there—I spent with Devann, I only learned two things that are without question: he has lived much of his life alone, and he is very good at soccer. Just how good he is in the eyes of those that open doors in American soccer, however, is the only thing that matters. And they are just now finding out about him.

Of the soccer, this much is known. One year after Devann arrived in Pennsylvania, the residency program folded. Coach Williams, apparently believing in the boy, helped Devann’s parents set up a few academy try-outs in Europe. “I ended up moving to France the next year,” Devann says. “I was 12, 13. I tried out at a few places but FC Metz offered me the best. They took care of housing and food and everything.” For three years he lived in France, training with the club where players like Emmanuel Adebayor and Franck Ribery spent part of their early careers. He returned to New York just two or three times annually for holidays or summer or fall break. His parents never visited. “It was just too expensive for them,” he says. He can’t really think of a good story about life in France. “I just played soccer and went to school,” he says while shrugging his shoulders. “There wasn’t really anytime to do anything else. But it was fun.”

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Yao warms up inside the Meadowlands practice bubble outside Giants Stadium before training with the Red Bull’s U18 team.

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The reason he left Metz? Devann chalks it up to burn out. “The last year wasn’t going that well,” he says. “I wasn’t getting a lot of playing time. The coaches changed; I kind of grew out of it, lost confidence. They still wanted me to stay because they saw some potential, but to stay on the bench for another year – I didn’t want to do that. So I decided to come back to New York and cool off for a year, I got my GED at this little alternative school in SOHO, because I really wanted to pursue soccer.” He was burned out, but he really wanted to pursue soccer? It was my first glance into the personal side of the growing enigma.

By the fall of 2007 he was playing in Italy. “I stayed six months at Livorno reserves and six months at Piza,” he says. “And then came back to New York and was supposed to go back to Italy, but I went through a phase of being depressed and not wanting to do soccer anymore.” He would later tell me his coach at Livonro was racist. Devann says the coach once told him that, “If you answer back to me, I’ll change the color of your skin.” The other side, and the team’s understanding, is that Devann left because he was homesick. And to some degree, he was, again. Devann felt he was missing out on his youth, torn between his love of soccer and the pressure put on him to succeed. “When I came back in the summer, I had so much fun with friends and everything,” he says. “I was thinking maybe I wanted to try the college life or find a new path. So I didn’t go back that August like I was supposed to. Because I didn’t go back I had problems with my family.”

Up to this point, Devann’s mother has basically acted as his agent and is a proponent, he says, of him staying in Europe. He says their bond is good, but his relationship with his father, who now works in “some kind of factory—putting light bulbs together maybe, I don’t know,” is another story and one Devann won’t address other than to say the two are “distant.” Attempts to contact his parents were unsuccessful, but Devann says his parents want him in Europe. “You’re ruining your life,” he remembers them saying when he left Livorno last year. “They were like, ‘You’ve been doing this since you were nine years old—made so many sacrifices, and this and that.’ But I didn’t want to hear that. I felt I had to experience this new idea to see how it is.”

And for a few months he did, but after a partial season at Monroe junior college and weekends volunteering at FC Harlem, the itch to return to a higher caliber club fanned the soccer flames. Finding himself outside of soccer did not turn out to be the easiest path. “I was burned out and thought I wanted something different,” he says. “But when I started playing again, I found I really missed the competition in Europe. It was then that I realized I did want to push this.” Here we go again.

So the day after I first met him, he was off to Scotland. “I have this guy, Jake Duncan, who acted as my agent of sorts over there,” Devann says. “But I don’t have anything signed with him. He got in contact with his friend in Scotland and got me a tryout at St. Mirren.” Devann did well, signed an amateur contract, played 2 reserve games and 4 or 5 U19 games then came back to New York.

The coach sent you home for eating an egg sandwich? “It was a misunderstanding,” Devann tells me after he returned. “I missed breakfast and grabbed something before training—a sausage and egg sandwich. I went into the training room and was eating, and the U19 coach and technical director came in, noticed what I was eating, and was like, ‘I’ve had it. You’re not training today. Go back to your hotel.’ I got a phone call from him later that day. He said I did well on the field but off the field I didn’t show enough enthusiasm, that I didn’t want to be there. I mean, I missed Christmas, missed New Years. I wanted to be there. But he let me go.”

Duncan attempted to get him on another team in Scotland—“on almost every team in the first and second divisions,” Devann says—but each time the team would follow up with St. Mirren and then reject him on the grounds that he had a bad attitude. So he came home, back to his friends and FC Harlem.

Irv Smalls takes up Devann’s cause, hoping he can use his connections in MLS and elsewhere and at least get Devann a trial that didn’t involve another chancy and expensive trip to Europe and at most find him the stability that he’s yet to find—be it from his meandering enthusiasm or any so-called misunderstanding. “Everyone always is saying this kid or that kid is so good,” Smalls says, “but then I saw him play, and you look at his resume. I mean, how does no one know about him? From my standpoint, I want to help Devann reach his dreams, and at the same time I see the potential inspirational impact on other Harlem kids if one of their own could make it.”

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Yao with his St. Mirren gear stands with FC Harlem coaches while visiting their practice at Riverside Park on Manhattan’s westside.

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Two years ago Devann tried the MLS route, which is how his mom originally found Rob Ross. It was the summer between FC Metz and Livorno, and Devann figured he could make something happen. “Rob told me it would be hard to break into the U.S. system, I needed a resume and this and that, and then they might consider looking at you.” It was a rude awakening for the talented kid who found a team via a phone call by his mom in the past. “She’d call and say, ‘My son played here and here, you want to see him?’ And they’d say yes. They have nothing to lose and only something to gain.”

It isn’t that simple in America. MLS teams aren’t often focused on players at the age of 16, certainly not ones they’ve never heard of, no matter the previous European academy experience. Take away the reserve squads and teams have fewer players—development is now officially on the backburner with years of slack for youth academies to take up (with their own system-wide priority issues in placing winning above development). But Devann is of the age where its pro contract or bust, so he’s giving MLS another shot—but there is still that little problem of notoriety. He has an agent making phone calls now, not his mother, but until a few weeks ago, nobody knew who he was. The top Google hit for “Devann Yao” is a Big Soccer forum wondering where he is playing, linking to the last known article about him, a Soccer Times piece archived at Sports Illustrated detailing his selection for the residency program in 2002. Part way down the message board Devann himself logs in and confirms other posters’ mentions of him at Livorno. Clearly MLS and U.S. Scouts aren’t trawling Big Soccer message boards for players, and it would be sad to think that they should be.

Upon Devann’s arrival back from Scotland, Smalls reached out to Ross, not knowing Devann’s mom had contacted him before. Ross remembered the young player and agreed to sign him to a short-term, two-month contract, which would give Devann some much needed support while at the same time not tying him to anything until his career, if there was going to be one, settled out. Smalls and Ross, who knew each other from when they both worked in MLS’s business offices, set about reaching out to their contacts. The Galaxy passed first. Then New England passed, then put in a discovery claim, then invited Devann for a three-day trial, then passed and dropped the claim. New York, after seeing Devann on three separate occasions prior to his going to New England, promptly invited him for a three-day trial with the first team, which happened last week. “What I am impressed with,” Smalls says. “Is their response time to it. Because the season is already going, they aren’t looking as hard for players, but I’m impressed that so many people took an interest.”

Red Bull again passed. Ross said RBNY coach Juan Carlos Osorio told them that he wished Devann had been available during the preseason, but looking at his team’s roster and style, he wasn’t going to take Devann. “Nobody wants to take a flyer on a kid they’ve never seen before,” Ross tells me after the last disappointing decision.

The Red Bulls would have had to drop a current player in order to sign Devann—someone like first round draft pick and college standout Jeremy Hall—and his agent knows the difficult reality that poses in the present MLS climate. “No reserve team,” Ross says. “24 instead of 28 players. Most of these teams are not going to take a chance on a 19-year-old player who has not gone through the typical programs. There really is no place to bring in a guy, have him play some reserve games, and get a real good look at him. A lot of the coaches are being judged on real-time. Did you win this week? Ok, you’ve got a job. It’s hard to develop players based on that kind of model. That’s not their job to develop talent. Maybe a general manager has the incentive—the money made on a transfer fee of say a Jozy Altidore—but the coach doesn’t.”

The major goal for Ross is not MLS, but more simply having Devann playing—contract or no contract. “The first thing we talked about,” Ross says, “was about 2014 and him playing in Brazil on the national team. And in order to get there, the easiest process would be to play on the U20 team, so the USSF knows who you are. We wanted him to get on the radar, and I think he has.”

Radar, yes. Embraced? Not yet.

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Four trials with the Red Bulls at various levels and no offers.

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So where does he go from here? “Based on his background,” Ross says, “he should have been welcomed with open arms by any American team. But I should have known better. With him not having a solid foundation in American soccer and its particular systems, it wasn’t going to be as simple as that.” Thomas Rongen and his U20 men’s national team is, for now, passing on Devann, according to e-mails I exchanged with Juan Carlos Michia. The still-amateur player could go back to college, maybe even a Division One soccer school, and then enter the MLS draft after a year or two of making some American footprints. And Ross still might find a MLS team interested enough to add a young project midseason—both LA teams have been contacted since Red Bull and Rongen passed. But if a contract offer doesn’t come soon Devann will again pack his bags, move again, back to Europe, where FC Metz offered up yet another trial, one that will likely last weeks not days.

On the field and throughout his resume, Devann Yao has so many things going for him that so many American players do not—a childhood in the prestigious youth systems of Europe, a creative technical flair—but it hasn’t made him special, just different. He’s a really good player who has done some good work without gaining the right connections. He should probably be in MLS but is instead an unknown outcast forced to work harder to get the attention that most likely would have been his had an elite youth career kept him in the United States where his chances to stand out would have been easier and more numerous than a three-day trial with a MLS team. And though his resume should continue to open doors, keep Big Soccer message boards wondering and agents calling, it’s now up to his play on the field during short trials that will determine his greater fate for another year. You gotta light it up, not just fit in. Or yeah, try again next preseason.

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As the games approached, the visiting foreign coaches agreed to answer a short survey. Only two came in, and as the tournament is going on this week, I thought I would throw them up. I tried to craft the questions to be generic enough for all to answer while at the same time hopefully pulling from them something more than generic. While my fears were realized with largely politically correct answers, I do think there is something here–that thing that is always around. One question above all else…

Coach Jorge Sigala Bracamontes from Chivas de Mexico:

TIAS:1. Why come all the way to America for this tournament? What do your teams and players get from it? Are you looking to scout potential players for your own clubs?

Es un torneo que al parecer esta muy bien organizado, con muy buenos equipos, no es muy grande y asi la atencion es mucho mejor, y siempre ir a torneos internacionales es muy importante para nuestro club. Nuestro equipo Chivas, consigue al asistir a este tipo de competiciones un fogeo internacional, en el cual se pueda ver reflejado en la formación de los jóvenes y Desafortunadamente o afortunadamente en nuestro club Chivas no pueden jugar extranjeros, así que es muy difícil encontrar o ver jugadores para traer a nuestro club.

This tournament seems to be very well organized, with very good teams; it is not a big tournament so the attention is better, and it is always good for our club to participate in international tournaments. Participating in this kind of tournaments, our team Chivas gets international exposure that influence the preparation and education of the young players. Besides for better or for worse foreigners cannot play in our Club, Chivas, therefore, it is difficult to find or to see players to bring to our club.

2. How do you view the competition from the United States?

Es muy atractivo por el gran crecimiento futbolistico que se a venido dando en los ultimos años en Estados Unidos, cada vez hay mejores jugadores y de mas nivel.

It is very attractive because of the rapid growth that soccer has experimented in the United States during the last few years, more and more there are more and better players.

3. Compared to how your club trains players, what is different about American youth soccer?

No sabemos exactamente ya que no hemos estado en los entrenamientos que plantea American Youth soccer, pero suponemos que deben de ser muy especificos y muy profesionales por el gran nivel alcanzado en los ultimos tiempos.

We do not know exactly since we have not been in the American Youth soccer training, but we presume that it is very specific and very professional by the great level recently reached.

4. From your perspective, what is the United States getting right or wrong with its development of soccer players?

Yo considero que el sistema cualquiera que sea el que este implementando Estados unidos es bueno y van creciendo a pasos agigantados con el gran profesionalismo con el que se manejan en todos los deportes.

I consider that the system, whichever it is, that the United States is implementing is good, and they are growing tremendously with the great professionalism that drives all the sports.

5. What is the first change you would make to how the United States develops its young players?

Desconozco a ciencia cierta que pudiera cambiar, pero en lo que me enfocaría mas es en la parte técnica de cada jugador, ya que Estados Unidos tiene jugadores muy fuertes, de buen físico y con una gran mentalidad, así que yo me enfocaría mas en la parte técnica individual.

I do not know exactly what I could change, but I would focus in the technical development of each player since the United States has very strong players with great physical ability and with a great mentality, so I would really focus on the individual technical development.

Blackburn Rovers Head Coach Bobby Downes:

I cannot answer the questions in full, certainly questions 3,4 and 5 because I do not know what the US clubs do with their players. How can I if I don’t get to see their training and their games program? I can however answer question number one. We are coming to Washington because [International Amateur Sports president] Elliot Wolff convinced me the Tiffany Cup would be worth competing in. A coach and his staff get to know an awful lot about the players when they are away from home for 10 days, living in each others pockets and competing against good competition, who probably play in different styles to what we come up against on a week to week basis. Also it’s a good experience for them culturally to come to the States, particularly Washington with it’s history and status.

We are not coming to scout players. In my experience the USA is improving all the time with the standard of the players and the teams. We played in Brad Friedel’s tournament in Cleveland earlier in the season and played against 2 U.S. teams who were fit, athletic and well organized.

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Must American players always be labeled “fit, athletic and well organized?”

More than a year ago, Ryan O’Hanlon wrote a column for TIAS looking towards Benny Feilhaber’s fluid flair as the future of American soccer. How is that looking at the moment? Read any of the pieces in the category labeled MNT, and besides some glimmers of hope, the same arguments, the same problems that held true when TIAS launched in 2005, still clamor in my head to start each day like the routine of a rooster call. We are nearing the same point in World Cup qualifying again.

As always, there continue to be things to be hopeful about. Many coaches, players, and critics have come on TIAS to express this hope albeit in the context of the long road ahead. Almost all of them have focused that hope on youth development–how kids are trained and maybe more importantly how they are not trained–not the MNT which seems often to be seen as acceptably mediocre. I mean what do you expect?

Players like Jozy Altidore have fans getting anxious, but the purest hope is tainted by the track record of the past’s last and some say lost hope (Altidore, see Eddie Johnson). For every solid US MNT performance, there is a set back, with neither the wins or loses telling much in the placid CONCACAF waters other than the fact that very little has changed. Different faces, different jerseys, but is today’s team any better than the last World Cup? Should it be?

Is it time to look outside? In the face of what is happening with the Mexican national team, a steady state could alone be viewed as progress, maintaining at least the same level of success; but does that decry a complacency, an overriding patience that might in fact be holding back growth? We’re always looking for players with that killer do-or-die competitiveness, should we be asking the same of our system?

We’ll never know until we try something different–never know until we try, even if we fail. One thing we do know is that players and coaches don’t last forever, and new chances for change will come. And those chances should begin with the youth ranks. They have to. The fact that foreign teams want to come play here for the same reasons some American coaches take their players abroad stands out from the otherwise benign responses from the coaches above. So if the men are still years away from beating the best competition, maybe the boys can begin to build from the bottom, reaching across borders and putting down the roots which could keep any progress the men do make from blowing away. And maybe that progress will arrive from the outside coming in.

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banner photo found at Russiablog.org

-Langston Hughes

On Friday, April 3rd, FC Harlem will open its doors to the public for a photo exhibit and reception, celebrating the growth of the club, soccer’s place in uptown Manhattan, and the first of its kind (in NYC) soccer field, to be built in the borough. For the club’s director Irv Smalls and the few hundred kids that participate in the club, some dreams, all be they minuscule in the grand scheme of things, no longer need be deferred.

Photographer Rojelio Rodger Rodriguez was kind enough to give TIAS a preview of his exhibition. Prints will be available for sale at the event, with proceeds supporting FC Harlem.

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all photos courtesy of Rojelio Rodger Rodriguez. Find more of his work at www.reyesrodriguez.com.