The Rise of Leicester City ... and Donald Trump

Two weird and miraculous things happened this week, one in England and one in the United States.

One says a lot about soccer and the other about our nation, the latter not in a particularly flattering way. But they are, I believe, connected.

In the English Premier League, Leicester City, a soccer club that had never won a championship at the highest level of English football in its 132 years of existence, triumphed over the biggest clubs with some of the highest payrolls in the world, clinching the title when Tottenham Hotspur could only manage a draw against London rival Chelsea. Spurs' tie put Leicester's seven point lead out of reach with two matches to play.

To put things in perspective, the metropolitan area of Leicester has about the same population as that of Kalamazoo, Michigan, while Spurs and Chelsea have that of, well, New York City (if you need something other than London as a reference). The Foxes' payroll was 17th in the Premier League at about 48 million pounds (or approximately $70 million), certainly nothing to sneeze at, but chump change in comparison to the 110.5 million pounds ($160 million) that Spurs spent to finish first last or the 215.6 million pounds ($312.5 million) that Chelsea paid out to finish ninth.

Leicester's heroes are easy to identify now, but would not have been recognized as such until very recently: leading scorer Jamie Vardy was playing non-league football four years ago; midfield wizard Riyad Mahrez was signed for a pittance two years ago; and manager Claudio Ranieri, of whom Jose Mourinho once famously said was "almost 70 ... and hasn't won anything" (Ranieri was 56 at the time), really hadn't ever won much of anything.

Mahrez (left) and his notably diverse teammates celebrate a goal.
(photo from theguardian.com)

The Foxes are the type of club that, if they weren't English, would embody the American dream. They are the epitome of grit and determination; of punching above your weight; of believing in your collective self when all around you don't even give you a thought, let alone a chance. Theirs is the story of immigrants and itinerants, of castoffs and factory workers, pulling themselves up by their bootstraps and making something wonderful of themselves collectively: The whole greater than the sum of the parts. How much more American can you get?

That's what I used to believe the American ideal was. But that was before Donald Trump, whose apparent ascendence to the Republican nomination for President is the second phenomenon of the week.

We are now, or at least a significant minority of us are, the inconsolably aggrieved. We're not interested in helping ourselves. We are unhappy with the changing world around us and instead of figuring out how to fix it, or how to adapt and lead the way as we have done for a century, we prefer to attach ourselves to a bully, a lying huckster offering not fixes but simply to point the collective middle finger of blame anywhere but at ourselves.

When asked to explain their support of a narcissistic shill with no sketch for the future let alone a road map, Trumpites resort to calling him "genuine" and "believable" and ascribing to him similar traits only slightly more oxymoronic than the notion of a billionaire populist.

There's no thought to how we might actually make America great again (even if we're not, or even if we can). Just the mindless choosing of the easy way out by blaming others and yearning for what some assumed to be a birthright - to be at the top of whatever little heap we had mentally staked out as our own.

When conservative talking heads bash soccer as being "un-American" I used to just ignore it as simple pandering. But, turns out, they may be on to something. 

If Leicester City is the new soccer, and Trump the new America.

How Cool Is It That ...

How cool is it that ...

The son of a former major league baseball player is now an established veteran of Major League Soccer?

That MLS can now afford to bring one of the best American soccer players back to play in his prime?

That the undisputed home of the U.S. men's team is in Columbus, Ohio, a city dominated all day, every day except once every four years, by American football and is the residence of a fairly miserable MLS team in recent years?

That the "home" of MLS is the Pacific Northwest, where there was no MLS club six years ago?

That many MLS clubs now play, or at least attempt to play, dynamic, passing football rather than the long ball and hoof it game that dominated the game in the U.S. for most of its formative years?

I'll admit that I've been a fan of soccer teams other than MLS clubs for a long time. Blackburn Rovers, Celtic, Barcelona, and now I am grudgingly becoming somewhat of an Arsenal fan as I have convinced myself that it will be years, if ever, before Rovers make it back to the Premier League and I want a club to root for in the Premiership.

But I think many American soccer fans, later to come to the game than I, are doing the MLS and American soccer a disservice by ignoring MLS in favor of the EPL.

There is no dispute that the level of soccer in MLS is still not equal to that of the top European leagues. Or some of South America. Or even (not yet) the Mexican League. But it's gaining. And it's our league.

American soccer consumers have been duped, first by Fox, now by NBC, into thinking the Premier League is the be-all and end-all of professional soccer. And I'll admit, that I am among that number and continue to be, because I've followed the highest (and lesser) levels of soccer in that league for close to 20 years now.

But we confuse the hype with the play on the field. And confuse the Premier League with English soccer. Let's face it, England long ago stopped being the center of the World's game. Except for the huge infusion of cash by foreign owners of EPL clubs, which brought it back to prominence in the 1990's and the early part of this century.

Four of the last five UEFA Champions League winners have not been English clubs. In the past 20 years, Spanish clubs have won six titles, Italian and English four, German three, and French, Dutch, and Portuguese clubs one each. And while I don't have the time or inclination to examine the rosters of each club, my uneducated guess is that, with the exception of Manchester United's 1998 roster featuring Beckham, Giggs, Scholes, Keane, etc., the English clubs that won had more "foreign" players than those from the other countries had.

This post didn't start out with the intention of bashing the Premier League, its clubs, or its fans. Especially not its English fans, many of whom have followed the same club, through thick and thin, for generations. 

But American soccer fans have a certain obligation, I believe, to grow the game in this country. And the only way that can be done is with a strong domestic professional league.

I took this picture at a Sporting Kansas City match in 2012.
I wasn't supposed to end up right next to the field while trying
to find my seat, but took advantage of the situation.

Yes, MLS has its definite flaws. And the quality of play, while improving, is not up to that of the best leagues in the world. But it's getting better, and it's feeding more and better players to our national team.

So, go ahead and watch the Premier League on Saturday and Sunday mornings. But watch the MLS too. Or better yet, go see a game in Columbus or DC. It's a great experience. And it's real football.

Your Game Wasn't Stolen, It Was GIven Away

The World has their game and the British want it back. Or so says Dave Richards, Chairman of the English Premier League.

Speaking at a conference on sports and security this week, Richards went on what can only be described as an ill-advised and misinformed rant about soccer and its governance, saying:

England gave the world football. It gave the best legacy anyone could give. We gave them the game. For 50 years, we owned the game . . . We were the governance of the game. We wrote the rules, designed the pitches and everything else. Then, 50 years later, some guy came along and said you're liars and they actually stole it. It was called FIFA. Fifty years later, another gang came along called UEFA and stole a bit more.

One can easily perceive Richards' diatribe as a misguided call for some order in soccer's governing bodies, where decisions regarding the location of the next multi-billion dollar extravaganza are seemingly based on which suitor has the willingness or ability to line the decision-makers' pockets. It's a point that has merit, and when made usually falls on deaf (or lucre-stuffed) ears. But he didn't specifically identify the problem and didn't really address the solution, other than presumably a return to the "good old days" when the English controlled all aspects of the sport.

But setting aside for a minute the absurdity of the notion that in this day any nation has exclusive rights to a sport, his history is completely wrong. I don't mean about soccer being an English game (Chinese claims to the contrary, Richards is correct that the English invented the game in close to its current form), but about others stealing it from them. In fact, in their arrogance, the English gave it away.

Soccer is the World's game because the English exported it to their vast imperial outposts in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. Europe, Africa, the Middle East, South America -- almost anywhere that soccer became the sport was because the locals learned it from British teachers, engineers, entrepreneurs, and, more often than not, soldiers and sailors.

But the English refused to allow the World to share in the governance of the sport. As David Goldblatt explains in his seminal history of soccer "The Ball is Round" the British founded the International Association Football Board (IAFB) to serve as soccer's law-making body. The IAFB was solely comprised of representatives of the four "Home Nations" (England, Scotland, Wales, and, at the time, Ireland). Twenty-two years later, the rest of the world created the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) without any British involvement.

England's initial refusal to recognize FIFA, and its reluctance to even allow the rest of the world a role in the IAFB, ultimately led to the irrelevance of the IAFB and the dominance of FIFA as the governing body of the sport. I'm sure that the irony isn't lost on Richards, or the English, that the ruling body in soccer has a French, not an English, name.

Now we are stuck with FIFA and its Gallic soul, to paraphrase Goldblatt. But make no mistake, we are stuck with it not because it stole soccer from Great Britain, but because the English gave it away.

When Enough Is Enough

Now that my coaching days are over, I've spent more time over the past two months being a fan - of music, of American football, but most of all of soccer and Blackburn Rovers.

These are not good times if you're a Rovers fan. In fact, they may well be the worst of times. For while I and many of my fellow supporters with whom I commiserate (or, to put it more accurately, whose commiserations I read on our list-serve without comment these days) have lived through the dark days of relegation and far too many inept players and managers in the past, we always had hope. Now, we have none.

That hope was provided by two means: first, strong, ambitious ownership provided by local-boy-made good steel magnate Jack Walker; and, second, dedicated, knowledgeable decision-making from the front office, led by long-time Rovers' employee John Williams.

A statute of Jack Walker outside Ewood Park in Blackburn.

Walker's love for Rovers was clear from the millions of pounds that he spent turning the club from a Second Division afterthought into the Premier League Champions. It was not a love shared by his family, however. After Walker died in 2000, his holdings, including the Rovers, were put in a family trust. For a time the trust operated Rovers with parsimonious oversight but not neglect, allowing Williams, who began working for the club in the 1990s and rose to the rank of Chairman, to spend enough money to keep Rovers afloat.

Eventually Walker's heirs tired of the drain on their fortune that Rovers created and sought a new owner for the club. After several false starts and many rumored interests, finally a buyer was found: Venky's. I knew nothing of the company at the time but learned that it is based in India, began as a poultry company, and is privately held, owned by a family named Rao. Several fans expressed concerns about Venky's true intentions for the club from the start (sell off all the "assets"? treat it as their play toy like some Indian version of the Beverly Hillbillies?) but I put it down to the "glass half-empty" nature of most Rovers fans, or, to be honest, perhaps a touch of bigotry.

There is no doubt, however, that Venky's ownership of Rovers has been an unmitigated public relations disaster. Soon after taking over they fired manager Sam Allardyce, claiming that he lacked the ambition that Venky's had for the club. While many Rovers' fans (me included) were dissatisfied with Allardyce's boring tactics we were comfortable Big Sam's ability to keep Rovers in the Premier League.

In his place Venky's appointed Steve Kean, the club's first team coach, as the new manager. Kean expressed what was apparently the requisite ambition for Rovers -- attractive soccer, a top five finish, and challenging for the championship. But he had no real managerial experience before taking the job and his ambitions seemed completely out of touch with small town football in the toughest league in the World. Kean's reign has been marked by last minute collapses, poor tactical decisions, and, perhaps most galling, toadying to Venky's (including frequent command performances in India at a time when he should be devoting his energies to his club).

Kean's summons to India are indicative of Venky's management style, which appears to be to trust the counsel of those who tell them what they want to hear and ignore those who don't. Particularly troubling is the relationship of Venky's to player agent Jerome Anderson, who, despite his fervent denials, seems to have considerable influence with the owners in player and managerial decisions (he represents Kean and his son is on the Rovers' roster).

Even more troubling than Allardyce's dismissal was Williams' departure soon after. While managers always come and go, especially at smaller clubs like Rovers who tend to either lose the successful ones to bigger clubs or fire the unsuccessful ones when at the brink of relegation, the chairman is hopefully the constant -- the one person in whom power lies who can be expected to do what is in the best interests of the club, not him or her self. Williams was certainly that person for Rovers.

Matters off the pitch reached a fever pitch this past week as Kean accused a growingly vocal majority of Rovers' supports calling for his (and Venky's) ouster of essentially not being "true" fans. This apparent effort by two Johnny-come-latelies to take it upon themselves to define who is or is not a "fan" follows on the heels of previous attempts to censor fan's statements about the club (under the disingenuous guise of safety concerns) by prohibiting anti-Kean banners at Ewood Park.

The beliefs of many supporters regarding Venky's ineptitude was confirmed earlier this week with the belated release of a letter that was sent by Williams and two other then-Board members noted that they were being by-passed and ignored regarding the most fundamental decisions made at the club: "We now find ... that the board are not even being consulted on some of the most fundamental decisions this or any other football club ever makes. This includes the termination of the manager's employment and the appointment of a new manager."

Venky's and Kean's actions and statements have sparked a discussion among Rovers' fans regarding what it means to be a fan and, when matters of The Club and Our Club collide, how a true fan should act.

This is, admittedly, an easier call for me to make than that of those who were born in Blackburn, or near there. Many figuratively bleed Blue and White and some, literally, will be buried in the Blue and White halves. The Club has been "theirs" for thirty, forty, fifty, or more years. They are season ticket holders who have invested their lives in the club.

But, simply put, it is no longer their club. It is Venky's, and they have made that very clear with everything they have done since they bought the club.

While fans are relatively powerless these days in the face of billionaire owners, multi-millionaire players, and millionaire agents, they do have one chit left. And that is the ultimate one. To not willingly pay one penny (pence?) to further the interests of those owners, players, and agents.

If they have already purchased their season tickets for 2011-12 I encourage them to attend the matches, root for the Rovers, cheer every goal, boo or whistle at every appearance by Kean, and hope for the best. But don't buy a pie or a pint or a shirt on the grounds. Do not give Venky's one more penny.

As for me, I laugh at the emails that I get from Rovers telling me about the latest sale at the club's on-line shop and scoff at the invitations to sign up for internet access to match commentary and video highlights. For now, I'll just have to console myself with my Tugay Rovers' shirt and my tape of the 2002 League Cup triumph over Spurs.

For me, enough is enough.