And I thought he did a pretty swell job picking over the details and potential pitfalls of the proposed SuperLiga - a.k.a. the tournament between the clubs of Major League Soccer (MLS) and the Mexican Primera Division, a.k.a. the thing that has me most excited about 2007.
This one passage, in particular, got me thinking:
"[SuperLiga] will have to convince people that the games mean something. To do that, MLS should insist that all the participating clubs field their full-strength sides. MLS also will have to make sure it has an English spanish language tv partner and that this partner is committed to plugging the games. Finally, it is going to have to sell this tournament all season long — and it is going to have to make sure all of its teams make winning this tournament a talking point and a goal."
"MLS and the soccer media cannot sit back and just make this a "Hispanic" tournament — that, sadly, would condemn it to obscurity in the greater sports world, and American soccer needs a competition that can pass both the 'competition' smell test and reach across ethnic lines. For too long, the USA has lacked a major cup competition."
Not to put too fine a point on this, but I have a sneaking suspicion he's right about all that. Personally, I had fallen into a kind of automatic assumption that, if Mexican fans do take to this tournament more quickly than American fans, that hometown pride will prompt the latter to step up. I think the first part of that holds - e.g. about the Mexican fans getting to the games - but suspect I'm being a bit credulous on the second.
For what it's worth, I think this has the potential to do twice as much for the generating interest in MLS as two Beckhams. If this tournament either produces a series of sellouts, and if this gets more Hispanic fans interested in MLS, SuperLiga will be nothing short of brilliant; after all, it's harder to ignore sold-out games and broadly rising attendance. This also strikes me as a relatively low-risk idea.
In any case, good luck to SuperLiga - and may all our clammy little fantasies come true...at least those having to do with soccer.
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