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Soccer – international sport, American problem

May 30, 2015

I certainly hope NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has gotten out his Crane’s stationery to send a thank-you note to FIFA president Sepp Blatter.

As the NFL’s season of deflated footballs and inflated fists fumbles into the post-season, along comes a corruption and bribery scandal in soccer that makes the NFL look like “The Sound of Music.” Football officials must be wiping their brows and going “Whew!”

Usually when there are billions of dollars at stake and charges ranging from vote-selling to slave labor – brought by the U.S. Department of Justice, no less – the person who heads the organization under siege steps down. But no, no. Blatter – Is that a great name, or what? – was just reelected president of the soccer governing body, vowing to make the organization stronger.

And we can just imagine how he’s going to do that. Human rights abuses? Slave labor? Whoo-whoo, World Cup for you, Qatar. To paraphrase the New York Lottery commercial, all it takes is a (few million) dollars and a dream.

The nation that has decided to take on FIFA, with help from Switzerland (home of FIFA and tired of its image as bank vault to the corrupt), is of two minds about the situation.

On the one hand, the only thing America likes more than a scandal is a scandal set in a five-star hotel. (It was at the Baur au Lac on Lake Zurich that several officials were roused in the early morning hours May 27 and arrested. Ooh, Is it like “The Grand Budapest Hotel?” I love that movie.) ...

A-Rod, Ray Rice and the game of ‘Who’s Sorry Now?’

February 18, 2015

Cue Connie Francis. In this “the winter of our discontent” – the season of 90-inch snowfalls, Southern ice, broken water pipes and equally shattered hearts – the lament of the woman with the catch in her voice and a torch-song life to match would seem most appropriate.

Really, it’s as if we’re all stuck in “Dr. Zhivago” – without Omar Sharif.

In this “region of ice” – thank you, Joyce Carol Oates – everyone is sorry. Ray Rice is sorry for cold-cocking his then wife-to-be, Janay Palmer, issuing an apology almost a year to the date of his Valentine’s Day (image) Massacre. (Could the holiday of hearts have been the inspiration?)

Hot on Ra-Ri’s Achilles heels comes A-Rod and his handwritten apology for steroid abuse and – the thing that always does you in more than the transgression itself – lying about it.

And speaking of lying, opprobrium and ridicule continue to snow down on disgraced anchorman Brian Williams for aggrandizing his role in the Iraq War – although Jerry Seinfeld’s line on the SNL 40th anniversary show about Williams being part of the original “Saturday Night Live” cast was one of the subtler digs. The irony is that the talk show-minded Williams probably counted as friends many of the people now making fun at his expense. Ouch.

Let’s just say Williams should be glad that he’s not A-Rod. The disdain heaped on him by The New York Times’ columnist Tyler Kepner is typical of the way in which the once and apparently future New York Yankee is now viewed. There are two schools of thought on this. One says that justice is justice and compassion, like patience, has its limits, particularly as said limited patience is often accompanied by the sneaking suspicion that the contrite are not all that contrite but actually seeking something less noble than the epic redemption found in Joseph Conrad’s “Lord Jim,” say like a return to the Yanks or the NFL. (It reminds you of the moment in “Gone With the Wind” in which Rhett Butler tells Scarlett O’Hara that she’s like the thief who isn’t sorry for what he’s done but is awfully sorry he got caught.) ...

Is soccer playing the gender card?

September 22, 2014

The NFL domestic abuse narrative took a twist Saturday as that other “football” game – soccer – got into the act.

Or didn’t. Hope Solo – goalie for the U.S. national women’s team – extended her shutout record to 73 even as she’s facing charges of punching her sister and 17-year-old nephew at a late-night, alcohol-fueled party, leaving them with head and face injuries. (Ironically, she was involved in an incident in which her husband, former football player Jerramy Stevens, allegedly assaulted her. A judge dismissed the case on the grounds of insufficient evidence.)

This as Roger Goodell...

Awesomely athletic August

August 7, 2014

Summertime and the livin’ is supposed to be easy. (Thank you, Ira Gerswhin.) But for athletes and sports fans, there is no rest for the weary.

First, Phelpte (as in the Michael Phelps-Ryan Lochte rivalry) is back in action at the USA Swimming national long-course championships in Irvine, Calif., which will determine next year’s team for the world championships. They were slated to face-off four times, including Wednesday night’s 100-meter freestyle event.

The story lines go something like this: Phelps was bored in retirement and is glad to be back. Lochte – who turned 30 Aug. 3, Happy Birthday, Ryan! – moved to Charlotte, N.C., where he’s acquired a new coach and a new maturity, which should be music to fans’ ears. We’ll see how his newfound maturity and Phelps’ newfound hunger for swimming pan out.

Tonight, Colin Kaepernick leads the San Francisco 49ers into M&T Bank Stadium to meet the Baltimore Ravens for a nationally televised game that’s a rematch of Super Bowl XLVII. I am so there (i.e., in front of the tube) for this.

I wish I could be there (as in Cleveland) Friday for the start of the Gay Games (through Aug. 16), which always take place the same year as the Winter Olympics. But at least “Water Music,” my new novel about four gay athletes and how their professional rivalries color their personal relationships, will be there...

Will soccer eclipse football?

August 6, 2014

Today’s thought comes from my editor-friend Bill and my Uncle Johnny. As they uttered the same thought to me within hours of and unbeknownst to each other, I took it as a sign from the sports gods that I should write about it. And the thought is this:

We have seen the future in America, and it is soccer.

This because Manchester United and Real Madrid – perhaps the two best-known “football” teams in the world – faced off this past Saturday, Aug. 2, in a match at Michigan Stadium that drew more than 100,000 fans.

This is a sport in which you can see the passion and excitement on the faces of the players, which communicates to the fans, Bill told me. Not like a certain other sport in which the players wear helmets and are bent over much of the time.

Still soccer has a long way to go to supplant that other football game. For one thing, as this article makes clear, Major League Soccer doesn’t have the $49 million that Real Madrid has to pay Cristiano Ronaldo, the No. 1 player in the world. The money’s not there – yet.

But it could be, someday sooner rather than later, particularly as America becomes a more multicultural nation.

The NFL’s female trouble

August 4, 2014

Hard to believe but it’s already football season, and God, it’s off to a dreadful start, isn’t it, what with former coach and analyst Tony Dunghy saying he wouldn’t want Michael Sam, foreseeing trouble ahead for the NFL’s first openly gay player, and then Baltimore Raven Ray Rice getting a slap on the wrist for allegedly beating his wife in an Atlantic City elevator when she was still his fiancée.

This has been compounded by ESPN analyst Stephen A. Smith saying that women should be careful not to provoke men, for which he received a week suspension. Now ESPN ombudsman Robert A. Lipsyte has weighed in, saying, “Smith’s attempts at coherency are often as exciting as Tim Tebow’s scrambling.”

OK, people, let’s start with the easiest of the problems here. Why drag Tim Tebow – a man who has never shown women anything but respect – into this? Here’s a guy who’s training hard, hoping to get back into the NFL, unwilling to give up on his dream. There’s something at once poignant and commendable about this. But the NFL culture – which rejected him – can’t stop making fun of him even as it uses him to draw eyeballs. Pathetic.

But there’s something more serious going on here.

World Cup over Wimby

June 30, 2014

I think it fair to say that the World Cup has eclipsed Wimbledon this year, what with the biting and the shouting and the salsa-dancing and the making of breakfast chicken enchiladas for the U.S. team and the holding up of the Uruguayan team’s dulce de leche in Brazilian customs and a point system that implies that even I might make the finals, just the whole internationalism of it. And you know what? Tennis is fine with it, because a lot of tennis players are soccer buffs.

Tennis actually has a lot in common with soccer as both require lots of fancy footwork. Indeed, YouTubers can check out videos of Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic playing soccer tennis, in which they use only their heads and feet to get the ball over the net. That Rafa and Nole, never at a loss for a way to entertain.