It wasn't the worst World Cup ever, but it was still pretty bad

Am I disappointed I sat this World Cup out to spend my time on more productive things? Um, no. Sure, there's all that internet traffic and reader goodwill I've pissed away, but in regards to the act of sitting down, watching the games, and adding one more unnecessary voice to the noise machine that's finally going to die away, I have no regrets. While the rest of you were watching crap soccer masquerade as the pinnacle of the sport, I was carving corners in the mountains in a foreign sports car. Which one of us do you think had more fun?

Let's be frank, the World Cup has its share of unjust disappointment. Germany over Hungary in 1954. Italy over France in 2006. Argentina over Holland in 1978. It goes on. But even by World Cup standards, this tournament was pretty much shit. At least the parts of it I saw.

The embarrassment that was France and Italy. The appalling officiating decisions that seemed to come at least once a game. The unbelievably negative quality to the games. The half-filled, buzzing stands. ESPN's too-much, too-late overhyping of a mediocre spectacle that left most casual American sports fans even more flummoxed at how the game of soccer is run than they were before. Let me ask, if you were new to the game, or didn't care regardless, and that was what you saw coming out of your tv, is this the sort of thing that would have compelled you to become a fan?

I'd say the World Cup has jumped the shark and become a twisted mutant of its former self, but let's not lie, I'll see you all in Brazil in 4 years, assuming Latin America isn't totally decimated by the deflation/stagflation/hyper-inflation (pick one) making its way down from Europe and North America. For this year's tournament, we brought down lots of twitters and internets, we all turned on our tvs or EPSN 360 in our summer school dorm rooms until the network admins shut us down, and presumably, we haven't committed mass suicide over the despair we feel from watching the matches. So we'll probably watch the next one.

At the same time, if someone told you two months ago to describe a World Cup final between the Netherlands and Spain on neutral ground in your mind's eye, is today's match what you would have come up with? Is that what the octopus saw, too? Were you not more relieved than anything to be able to turn on an MLS match again, only to find that you suddenly have a keen interest in cutting after watching the Fire-Real and Dynamo-Crew matches?

And no, I haven't watched a minute of WPS since St. Louis Athletica got its head shoved into the mud under the Mississippi River and finally stopped thrashing around. I'm either grieving or sexist, but at least all those former Athletica players really helped Atlanta turn their season around.

Sure, there's all you Spain fans, but be glad the Spanish didn't have to play America, otherwise theirs would have been a very short dream. In all seriousness, Spain defended very well. They just lost their souls to Satan.

As for the Americans, what a wasted opportunity. Bob Bradley finally shows some tactical acumen and gets a bracket easier than that atheist kid in high school, except he only has access to his soccer coaching abilities in the last 45 minutes of matches. I guess it gave us a better chance than him not having a clue, but sweet. Glad I waited around a year to watch him piss away what should have been a victory over Ghana.

But, hey. I'm not doing anything right now. I'm sure as hell not rolling out a new web site like I need to be. Maybe I could coach the US men's national team. Sunil, you have my number.

-FS

Real Artists Ship

Which is precisely why I'm fake through and through when it comes to shipping the new web site. Douglas Adams really did say it best: "I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." (See here for the attribution of the quote in the heading).

Except for the damn lawyers, this thing is good to go. Final tweaks abound, but we've been testing the new site on rabbits and orphans for weeks, and so far the only problem is that the rabbits keep ending up at the Fake Sigi Soccer Shop looking for Carmelo Anthony jerseys, and the orphans keep clicking on the giant picture of lettuce on the home page. So something we're doing is not right, not right at all.

On the plus side, it's felt good to sit out the world cup and barely write a word. It's occurred to me that I should make preparations for the next time. Maybe a guest blogger, maybe fresh heads of lettuce, I don't know. Would have been nice to have that lettuce on hand on June 8th or something.

Yeah, 8 posts in June? What is it, 2008 or something around here? And I suppose you're wondering why Bill Archer hasn't posted much lately either. We wouldn't be the same person or anything would we? Would we?

Never fear, we're about to take a big step toward being real. We'll have a final flourish on blogger to remind you all that I'm here before the cut over. I've missed you all, I've really missed you. I once had a lover who said "Absence makes the heart grow obsessive." Let's see if that's the case.

-FS

So I'm announcing my free agent move later this week on prime time tv

Fucking Martin Tyler (is that how you spell it in England?) is going to be in a chair like Diane Sawyer back in the day and he's going to be like, Fake Sigi, you've been a free agent now for months. Everyone knows the Seattle losing streak has only increased your hatred for the cold, rainy city, and we all know about that "OUT" claus in your contract, and we know you're the one planting stories about how Bob Bradley needs to go, so where are you going to go?

Yeah. And I'm going to spend an hour showing footage of me feeding the homeless and clothing the blind in dilapidated, empty Seattle warehouses before I finally put on the hat of the next team, the team I really want to play for.

So get ready. And Seattle fans, sorry, it's been a hell of a ride, what with all that Silverware, but this shit is worse than Columbus '06.

-FS

Feature creep and life

Both have happened in the last week, which partially accounts for my absence around here.

The bad news is the redesigned site won't launch at the end of the month like I had planned. The good news is the launch shouldn't get pushed out too much longer. I'm going to aim for the week of July 4th.

The site is going to change more than I thought, and the editorial direction may even change a little bit, but I think in the end it will be for the best.

Regarding feature creep, I've been working on a couple non-technical aspects of the site. I decided I wanted to get it as close to right as possible on the relaunch instead of going with something I knew was half-ass. Of course, it still may end up being half-ass, but at least I gave it a good effort.

Regarding life, I have been busy with some other things these last two weeks. There's always that chance of that happening in long projects like this, and it has happened here.

Every now and again, I put together a blog entry, or research one that's been on my mind, but I haven't posted any of them. I recognize such a situation may seem unfair, but there's a certain chronological order in which things need to happen.

I apologize to my readers for the long delay between posts, and for the missed deadline on the site relaunch. But I'm also exited for what's to come. I promise it will be worth the wait.

-FS

Fine time to take a breather

What with the World Cup no one wanted to attend going on, Brian Phillips of Run of Play becoming some kind of soccer blogging overlord (who could have guessed that would happen when he spent 2009 blogging almost exclusively about a video game? Now he's linked to by MGoBlog, and yes, I'm jealous), Duane Rollins calling me a know-nothing blogger without using my name over the Athletica piece I still have to revise, Beau Dure hosting virtual watch parties that I didn't get invited to (Dan Loney and Steve Sirk, but not me? I wept.), Richard Whittall hacking it up at Yahoo with Phillips and Brooks Peck (who always finds time to be sexist), and Bob Bradley coaxing a respectable result from a vastly over-rated foe.

So in case you can't tell by that pathetic lead paragraph, I'm in a pretty self-loathing state right now. On the one hand, it was months ago that I decided to provide kick-ass World Cup coverage - in 2014. And I actually spent most of last week doing things like sleeping and talking to other people as opposed to building a search engine. Then on the weekend I decided that the CMS database really needed to be moved, so I spent some time doing that.

On the other hand, autonomous withdrawal tends to start the negative feedback loop, and it feels pretty sucky to be doing WHAT I KNOW IS BEST FOR THE FUTURE, but which is keeping me from fully participating in the social vortex that is the World Cup.

And deep down that social vortex only makes me feel worse. This is really the first time the overwhelming influx of mass media into soccer has seemed completely disorienting and displaced. An inundation of slick interlopers talking about how AWESOME and HUGE and COMPELLING the 2010 World Cup is would be fine if the games hadn't so far been utterly forgettable and the atmosphere subdued. I've found very little compelling about the current World Cup, and that perception doesn't jive with what the pundits are saying on my tv screen.

We can talk about how much of that is down to my own feelings versus how pedestrian the games have actually been, but everything about this tournament feels cold and inhuman to me. It feels like everyone is going through the motions and dancing around a giant - how do I say this? - turd sandwich.

I find myself wishing for when it's over so I can do some compelling work in the post-tournament quite time. This blog is primarily a place where I carve out my own mental space, where it becomes one with the internet and contributes something to our overall idea of soccer. It's harder to do that over the drone of the vuvuzelas and the mass media pushing alcohol, tires, fast food, and some idea of "African Unity" into every possible nook and crevice around the game.

Don't get me wrong - putting it on the continent has been great. But having to watch Bono prance around on a stage while post-colonial third world teams labor impossibly against the debt-laden richer nations has convinced me that the 2010 World Cup exposes more about what's broken in our world than what's correct. When the colorful clown trying to take your money wraps itself in the cause of those who are well and truly disadvantaged while its own foundations appear to be on borrowed time, it becomes a problem.

I watched USA-England under threatening skies on Saturday, and the weather didn't feel out of place.

-FS

The Atlanta Beat become Athletica south

If you watched the games on the weekend, you already know this, but the Atlanta Beat now have 8 former Atheltica players including Hope Solo, Lori Chalupny, and Eniola Aluko. Too bad Tobin Heath is done for the year.

I can't say I'm an Atlanta fan, but it would sure be something for that team to climb the standings and make the playoffs.

Fake Sigi's first (3rd) anniversary

Although this blog has been around since 2007, June of last year is when I really started making an effort around here. I tend to think of the real start as June 7th since that's when the Analytics turned on, but in reality June 4th is when the work started.

But a fake anniversary is most apropos, so June 7th it shall be. Besides, that was the day I made it official with these words:

I want this to be a place of ideas, my ideas. A place where my genius can spread it's wings and fly. A place where the soccer gods and I become one. A place where Bob Bradley constantly checks to see if he still has a job.

Today I'm celebrating almost 600 blog entries on soccer over the course of the last year, and the sheer fact that I'm still around and trying to up my game. In recognition I present you a few pieces on the Confederations Cup and other topics from the criminally under-read month of June 2009. Enjoy.

Me

I love to feel smug

Sounders

What have I gotten myself into?
Man have I got these guys brainwashed
Translating Barcelona's President

Confederations Cup

So Bob Bradley Calls me (Pre-tournament)
Bradley calls again
So I call Bob Bradley (Post-Italy defeat)
Morning Roundup
It's getting dark for Bob Bradley
Another Bradley Call
So Giuseppe Rossi calls me
Being Depressed with Steve Nicol (No mention of the confed cup, but this is after the US went through the group stage)
You all thought Spain was for real?
Bob Bradley, Dragon Slayer
This is why normal Americans hate soccer fans (aka, fun with Kartik)
1 half to glory
Well, it was a fun little run
Bob Gansler wants his money

WPS
Get injured, get taunted by teenagers

"Soccer equals fan violence" from ESPN

This is why I've stopped looking at the internet while I finish up moving the site. Because I see headlines on ESPN's front page like "World Cup fans injured in stampede" with leads such as:

Thousands of soccer fans stampeded outside a stadium Sunday before an exhibition game between Nigeria and North Korea, leaving 15 people injured, including one police officer who was seriously hurt.

Several fans fell under the rush of people, many wearing Nigeria jerseys. The Makhulong Stadium in the Johannesburg suburb seats about 12,000 fans.

The mayhem happened only five days before the start of the World Cup, the first to be held in Africa.

And with this finish:

Such chaos is not uncommon to soccer. Last year, FIFA fined Ivory Coast's federation $46,800 after 22 people died in a stampede at a World Cup qualifying match.

Mayhem! Violence! Not Uncommon! With the subtext that this is something foreign to be distrusted and viewed with suspicion.

Compare this to the BBC coverage, which is much more even-handed in its assessment of the fans and conveys the subtext that the authorities are completely incompetent. The lead:

Sixteen people, including two policemen, have been injured after a crush outside a South African ground hosting a World Cup warm-up game.

Several fans fell under a rush of people outside the Makhulong Stadium in the Johannesburg suburb of Tembisa.

Entry to the friendly between Nigeria and North Korea was free, and many more than the 10,000 capacity turned up.

And the finish:

The incidents have provided the wrong sort of build-up to the World Cup that the South African authorities would have wanted, the BBC's Piers Edwards, outside the stadium, says.

The venue is not a World Cup venue, but the incident is likely to heighten security even further ahead of the World Cup opener between South Africa and Mexico at Soccer City on Friday, our correspondent says.

The game itself finished 3-1 to Nigeria, with Yakubu Aiyegbeni, Victor Obinna Nsofor and Obafemi Martins scoring for the Super Eagles, while Jong Hyok Cha was on target for North Korea.

This, I would argue, is closer to the impression that the reader should be left with.

Maybe I'm a little sensitive, but I honestly thought ESPN of all outlets would be past this sort of thing. If this is what their idea of audience-targeted content looks like, they really do have it all wrong.

-FS

New Feed URL

I've moved the post feed over to my domain. It now lives at feeds.fakesigi.com. The DNS could take some time to propagate, but it shouldn't be as much of a transition as the one to "soccer.fakesigi.com" since this is a totally new address.

The good news is that the old feed address should continue to work, meaning that if you do nothing, you'll continue to receive Fake Sigi goodness in your RSS reader. As always, let me know if you have issues with that.

The main reason I ask my readers to subscribe or link to the new address instead of the old is that it helps the blog become more visible. Instead of linking to "FeedBurner" you're linking to "Fake Sigi." And honestly, it makes a whole lot more sense to do so.

As always, let me know if you have problems staying with the old feed or subscribing to the new.

Edit - The real transition issues may/may not occur when I replace the blogspot feed with another source. But I'm a lot more confident in the seamlessness of that than I was earlier.

-FS

Update from the Sigi Bunker

At some point in the web migration process, you have to decide that you're close enough to launch that it makes sense to momentarily stop producing new content so you can concentrate on moving the content you have.

It's safe to say I reached that point sometime after my last blog post on Tuesday. So I've been working on this project in the Sigi Bunker since then. Sigibot did a nice job last night, though, so no harm no foul, even if it was the Revs.

There really is no good time to do this sort of thing, particularly as the Athletica discussion of two weeks ago loses its freshness and the World Cup is on our door step. But rather than see this drag out any longer than it has to, I'm going to continue to keep my head down to make the final push this week.

There's not a small amount of work to be done, but there haven't been a lot of roadblocks, either. For those of you interested in this sort of thing:

1) The content management system behind the new site is what you might call "industrial strength". You might even call it "overkill". Friday night I moved it off my laptop onto its own machine, and it now has a whole set of processor instruction cycles to itself. It is happy, which makes me happy.

2) The Athletica discussion was a big argument in favor of comments remaining a part of the site, but I have so far not devoted a whole lot of resources to the commenting scheme the site might have. It's not entirely out of the realm of possibility that the site will launch without comments enabled for a variety of reasons, but I haven't made that call yet.

3) Among the worst parts of the site right now is the crummy results that get returned for searches. So I'll be switching to an in-house search solution which I'll be implementing in a couple of days. This and the comments are the two primary pieces of work that are left.

4) There will be a beta test of the site before launch. Hopefully it will be a short one.

5) Official due date is still the end of the month in case "bad things" happen, but I think it can happen before then. Maybe in a week. We'll see.

Thanks to those of you who have been reloading the home page and linking to articles to let me know you care.

A bit of Athletica and some meta

I took the weekend off just like the rest of the Sounders did but I haven't forgotten about the Athletica story. Before I get all thoughtful on you in the longer post being written, I'll just pass along that the bits and pieces that I've found and picked up since last week haven't changed my general impression of the situation. Namely, that Jeff Cooper and his band of merry Englishmen rolled like giant douchebags. Assuming I was off on some of the specifics, if we were to talk about being in the ballpark, maybe I'm on second base.

No, I did not stick my hand up Cooper's shirt. That's not what that means.

As for the meta, I've been working on FS v. 2.0 the last two nights, and making good progress. In my dreams I triumphantly roll it out on the 1 year anniversary of me writing on a somewhat consistent basis that happens next Monday. That depends on a lot of things going my way in the next week, so I wouldn't count on it. But I'm getting close enough to say, this will happen some point soon.

And I'm warning you now - whereas the domain change maybe broke a couple RSS feeds, this one is probably going to break a lot more. There will be an upgrade path, and I'll let you know what's up when I know more.

I'm also planning a "Fake Sigi Website Disaster" retrospective for the blogger site, which I know you'll all be interested in. I'd like to write more, but the more I look around this place, the more I need to get out. So that will happen soon.

I'd love to have the Sigi-bot code, but its XML parser is fucked. So, not going to happen.

More tomorrow.

-FS

St. Louis Athletica's death is Jeff Cooper's shame

The St. Louis Athletica women's soccer team didn't have to shut down and fold the way it did yesterday. Attorney Jeff Cooper, the former owner of the team, has a lot to answer for in regards to the financial troubles that trickled into public view only a week ago. Not to mention the inherent sexism in shutting down the more-established, less-financially risky women's team in favor of the men's team that appears to have caused the whole financial mess in the first place.

Athletica's fans have every right to demand more from Cooper, from the Women's Professional Soccer league, and from those of us who purport to comment on the professional game. In my opinion those fans would not be remiss to take out their frustrations on Cooper's remaining club, AC St. Louis. If Cooper's allowed to kill off one of the city's pro teams with bad business decisions and an apparent disregard for the effects of his actions, there's no reason the fans can't finish off the other one for him.

So even though Hope Solo says:

People can place blame all they want and think they know the true story, but I don’t know if anybody in the outside world will.

I'm going to go ahead and assign some blame. Even though I was an Athletica fan and can hardly be objective, the little we do know about Jeff Cooper's role in Athletica's demise does not paint a pretty picture.

Ownership

The question of Jeff Cooper's control of both St. Louis Athletica and AC Saint Louis, first under the auspicies of Saint Louis Soccer United, LLC, then under Athletic Club of Saint Louis, LLC, is central to his culpability. Apparently last week was the first time anyone in the general public really knew that Cooper was no longer actually the person in charge of running Athletica or AC Saint Louis. Sure, he introduced new investors last November when he announced that AC Saint Louis would play in the men's second division bizarro world. But this is what was said in the press at that time:

AC St. Louis also announced it has reached a partnership agreement with Heemal Vaid and Sanjeev Vaid of the United Kingdom. The two brothers will serve as directors with the club.

I've seen this text in other places, too. Here's another way it got phrased:

Cooper brought brothers Heemal and Sanjeev Vaid of the United Kingdom on board as partners in his team’s ownership group, St. Louis Soccer United.

The clearest description of the new partnership was actually given by the South County Times, a weekly with a subscription base somewhere south of 75,000:

The initials "AC" were chosen in appreciation of the support the team has received from members of the Missouri Athletic Club, according to Jeff Cooper, chairman of St. Louis Soccer United, which owns the team as well the St. Louis Athletica women's professional soccer team.

Cooper introduced his partners in the venture, Sanjeev and Heemal Vaid, brothers living in Britain who have invested in ventures ranging from fast food franchises to commodity trading (and now soccer).

We'll get to the brothers later. While this article confirms Cooper's role as "chairman" and the Vaids as "partners," it's still not clear where the money's coming from or who's on the line for what. Like Bill Archer said last week, we've always known Cooper was trying to get financial backing from somewhere else, but he announced himself as a committed investor without that extra backing when he launched St. Louis Athletica:

"There's a tremendous upswing in women's collegiate soccer, particularly in our market," Cooper said. "Combined with the coming bump in media coverage and public interest during the FIFA Women's World Cup, this just makes sense. It's a good proposition for all involved."

And not only that, but the St. Louis Business Journal still described Cooper thusly on the day that he named AC St. Louis, weeks after the new "partners" were announced:

Cooper, the principal owner of St. Louis Soccer United and spokesman for the new league, is a lawyer who started St. Louis’ professional women’s soccer team.

The emphasis is mine. Of course at some point St. Louis Soccer United got folded into AC Saint Louis, and I'm guessing that was when Cooper was no longer the principle owner. So while everything in the late-fall/winter announcements is *true*, the crucial detail that Jeff Cooper was no longer running the show as "chairman," or that he was taking some kind of sabbatical from the soccer owner rock star lifestyle, particularly at Athletica, curiously got left out. And no one really went to any kind of length to make it apparent. There was no press release on Athletica's web site. AC Saint Louis's staff page omits any of the new investors. And Jeff Cooper continued to talk to and be portrayed in the media as though he was still in charge. April 10:

AC St. Louis is the product of Athletica owner Jeff Cooper's long-running quest to bring pro soccer to St. Louis. After several failed efforts to land an MLS team, he opted for a second-division club and aligned with USL owners who were disenchanted with their longtime home.

April 11:

So why tear the [2009 Athletica] team apart?

"If you didn't win the championship, you didn't have a successful season,"owner Jeff Cooper said.

May 8, from an article on the fading prospects of MLS expansion to St. Louis:

Money has always been the big issue in St. Louis and it's why Jeff Cooper, who co-owns AC St. Louis and the Athletica and has been the driving force behind trying to bring a team here, is on the sidelines at the moment.

Co-owns. Hey, that's new. Hell, *two weeks ago* was the first time WPS knew there were money problems:

Just two weeks ago, the league learned of a cash flow shortage at St. Louis Soccer United – which includes the owner of the Saint Louis Athletica and a St. Louis men’s team – that threatened the remainders of both teams’ seasons.

So you've got to wonder how much *they* knew about the ownership situation, too. And it was then a week ago that it finally started coming out that Cooper was no longer really involved in anything at all, and that the Vaid brothers had stopped sending money:

The obvious inference from this, of course, is that there’s a money issue at the club. Team founder Jeff Cooper took on two partners in the offseason, the Vaid brothers, Sanjeev and Heemal, from London, and they are now the majority owners of the teams.

And this wasn't even a solid quote, it was beat writer Tom Timmerman having to infer things.

It's almost like the ownership issue was intentionally hidden until the last possible moment before everything blew up. I feel really stupid for not paying attention, and want to call out others for the same, but information on the new partners was presented in such a way so that no alarm bells were set off anywhere at anytime. Whether the intention rises to the level of willful deception, I'm not yet sure.

The Vaid Brothers

As for the new owners, these guys are pieces of work. Pete Hayes at The Telegraph on the other side of the river ("We deliver the River Bend - and more") has done as good a job as anybody coaxing out what went down between Cooper's people and the Vaids. And yet this statement:

According to a high-level source in the organization, the meetings between the parties were expansive and the Vaids were vetted by Cooper and his staff extensively.

Makes my head spin. A 15 minute tour of the interwebs shows these guys are small time, shady, and not to be trusted.

Keeping in mind their interests in fast food and commodities, let's start with Sanjeev Vaid. According to his linkedin profile, he's the owner of IGV Group, which is in the Mining & Metals Industry. Ok then, what's their website look like?



Alarm bells started ringing the moment I saw the site. Stock photos on a stock layout with copy that over-promises on overly-broad service offerings. No names, not even pseudonyms, anywhere on the site. The about page says all you need to know:

IGV Group has been involved in commodity trading for a number of years. In early 2006 the company established a dedicated team to carry out international trading activities. This division is a leading worldwide supplier of a wide range of commodities, raw and secondary materials to industrial and retail consumers.

In four years you became a "leading worldwide supplier of a wide range of commodities?" Why are you opening Subway sandwhich shops?

Anyway, Heemal Vaid's linkedin page credits him as the owner of "Nina Trading Limited," which is also in the "mining and metals" industry. There's no website for this company, just a couple listings like this one, which indicates the company was knows as "Nina Diamonds Limited" prior to 2006.

Among other questions, why do two brothers need two or three different business entities to do commodity trading? It's hard enough to build one brand, but we've got at least three in less than four years? It makes me suspect shady gray or black hat stuff going down.

And then there's the subway Sandwich shop. I'm just going to point you at this promotional landing page for the Subway Middle East Region which features a video of the two of them talking about how great it is to be franchisees. Their video is the last one in the list:

“People want more variety, and Subway offers you that. They have new menus every three, four months, and the actual menus changing all the time with different flavors, different sandwiches, different breads. “

“The long term objective is obviously to have as many stores as possible. The US is dominated, and now the plans are dominating England. . .”

“And Europe.”

“. . .and in Europe.”

I love how the one of them keeps looking off in the distance while the other is talking at the start. I know guys like this, I've seen exactly how the hustle works. It's based on getting in, making a quick buck where you can, and getting out fast if you're not making the money you need to make. It's not the sort of thing WPS *or* MLS are doing.

So if I knew these guys were no good to run an American soccer team after 15 minutes on the internet, why didn't Jeff Cooper know after his "extensive" vetting process? Sharp trial lawyers are highly trained in the art of nonverbal communication and discerning trustworthiness, so someone who has litigated up and down the spectrum of business and personal injury law like Cooper has should have been able to pick up on this stuff instantly. And if Cooper did know, then why did he bring these guys on anyway and turn over the keys to them?

Meanwhile, the Vaids put at least one friend or relative in a position they probably shouldn't have been placed in. There have been a lot of rumors going around recently about how this year Athletica's front office staff had been totally gutted at the expense of AC St. Louis. Hey, who was running that stuff anyway?



Who is Kamal Vaid, and why is he Athletica's Chief Executive Officer? And why haven't we heard of him?

Apparently he's this guy:



And apparently he's the CEO of St. Louis Athletica because his Facebook interests include the NASL and Athletica.

Do you see what I mean? A random dude standing on a deck which presumably is in England oversaw the lifeblood of the female professional soccer game in the United States. He was in charge of the company which provided a place for Hope Solo, Shannon Boxx, Lori Chalupny and others to gain the skills they need to whoop ass in USWNT shirts. At least he had a management degree, right? Right?

The Endgame

It's real easy to call Tonya Antonucci a hypocrite and a liar for standing up four months ago and talking about "8 committed owners and 8 committed markets" but I don't think the WPS central office had any clue what was going on in Saint Louis. Perhaps, as former USA Today reporter Beau Dure suggests, they should have known. But I'm not sure I can wholeheartedly get behind that until we know more about Cooper's strange behavior in hiding the role of the Vaids. And I'm not the only one who thinks WPS might have been misled:

Cooper was the sole owner of Athletica, and appeared to have brought on those investors without properly bringing it to the attention of the WPS.

Anyway, according to our friend Pete Hayes at the Telegraph (again, not THAT Telegraph) here's the explanation of how the endgame went down and why Cooper just couldn't take the teams back over:

Three weeks ago, the Vaids said that someone had embezzled a large amount of money from them. The brothers own and operate Subway and Papa John's franchises in the UK. They indicated at that time, however, that the situation would have no effect on the soccer club.

But a few days later, all the club's credit cards were suddenly canceled. That threw officials for a loop - after all, it's tough to make travel arrangements for two soccer teams without credit cards.

A subsequent internal audit by the club revealed a large amount of unpaid bills. The Vaids have not been available and neither have their CEO or CFO.

Even though the Vaids could have breached their contract, Cooper can't just start putting his own money back into the club. If he did, that could be a breach of contract on his part.

He could try to get a court order allowing him to fund the teams while looking for an investor, but arbitration is required first. But for arbitration, both parties need to be present. Without the Vaids, that's going to be difficult.

A third party could invest, however, since they're not a party on the original contract, they can't breach it.

I think I speak for all of us when I say, "What kind of contract was that? Why did you draw it up like that, and are you sure you're not lying about your ability to get relief from the courts on this one? Are you sure this isn't a bunch of bullshit, because it sure sounds like it to me."

This post is long enough without getting into the legalities, but I find this sort of contractual arrangement very strange. Usually contracts provide processes and direction in the event that things go wrong. This contract appears to exacerbate the problems. Did a 1L draw the contract up? Or did a kindergartner? I can't tell. And it's all the more curious by Cooper's background as an attorney - as someone who should, no, strike that, as someone who knows the impact of contracts, the importance of precise language and the need for contingencies, Cooper has given us more questions than answers as to why he would put Athletica in a legal bind like this. Especially when he was dealing with investors an ocean away who became intimately involved in the day-to-day operations of soccer teams on the Mississippi River.

Furthermore, the chairman of a company generally has a duty to keep tabs on how the assets of that company are being run. So why did Cooper fail in that duty, only becoming more involved the last few weeks?

The cynic in me looks over all of this and comes to the conclusion that this is how Jeff Cooper decided he would kill Athletica. The hypothesis goes something like this: Once he had the team he wanted, the men's team, AC Saint Louis, what sense did it make to own two pro soccer teams in the same city, teams that would be competing for the same entertainment dollars in a market that was already a bit tight and suffering from the economic downturn? So one of the teams had to go, and of course it had to be the women's team since that one would never have the possibility of making it into MLS where the *real* money was. But since Cooper was the savior of all things soccer, and he actually had a free stadium, he couldn't just pull an AEG, he had to be craftier.

So Cooper brought in "partners" who weren't really partners at all; he downplayed their role at the start, didn't talk about the corporate maneuverings where he no longer controlled the teams, let the money run dry, and didn't tell the USSF, WPS or NASL until it was too late for WPS to save Athletica. The bond money would go to save AC St. Louis, which would buy him time to "fix" the contract issues, and then be in control of what he really wanted - a men's pro team with the potential to move up a division at some point in the future like Seattle, Vancouver, Portland and Montreal have done.

This hypothesis is not without its problems, and it largely depends on Jeff Cooper being extremely intelligent and knowing exactly what he wanted to do and how he would get there. If Cooper's just this average attorney with few people skills who lucked into asbestos litigation money, and he really does love the sport of soccer, he just screwed it all up, then the house of cards sort of collapses. But if he really loves it, why the sabbatical that allowed the Vaids to run things into the ground? You'd think he would be on that sort of thing immediately.

At best, Jeff Cooper acted with utter incompetence in selecting a business partner, signing away his majority share, and becoming so uninvolved in the operations that in 5 months things got so bad it was too late to save both teams. In this scenario, WPS is ultimately culpable for failing to realize what was going on.

At worst Jeff Cooper plotted to kill Athletica, hid the nature of his dealings from WPS and others, and could give a fuck for the development of the women's game in this country.

Right now it depends on which Jeff Cooper you want to believe in. And neither one is attractive.

Sexism

Dumping a women's team with lower costs, similar attendance, a better record, and much better players IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SEASON, to save a men's team that by all indications is bleeding cash, is undoubtedly a sexist action. And given MLS's expansion strategy (ie, not to St. Louis) there is almost no basis in economic reality for the decision to shutter Atheletica over AC St. Louis. Kenn Tomasch and Wendy Parker want to pretend that sexism doesn't exist, and it's all about economics. Sorry. You're both wrong.

[EDIT: I do think Parker and Tomasch are wrong, but on Twitter Kenn accused me of slagging them off. So let me say that I respect their views, and from what I know they could be decent human beings. Their mental faculties are obviously in decent working order. The intent was not to slag, and I regret the insinuation. -FS]

Absent all the other crap that's happened with this, Jeff Cooper did a sexist thing by shutting down Athletica. I'm going to leave it to Ms. Barch to sum up:

Ms. Barch - And like a husband going home to his noble and self-sacrificing wife, the rat keeps returning to the food box. That is, the positive reinforcement. Huh, if only men could be more like rats. Oh, sure, they come home at first. You feed them, you wait on them, and then, after twenty-two thankless years, they just up and leave. No note, no phone call, no nothing! (slams pointer on desk) Just... like... that!

Remember when all the men were going to save the women's pro soccer league from the bad decisions they made with WUSA when *they* were running things?



Jeff Cooper and the Vaids did a sexist thing here. And did the people who chose this moment to give the most attention they've given to WPS all year.

[EDIT: A commenter below pointed out that my logic and exploration on the issue of sexism is pretty lacking. Travis contends that I just hang my hat on a "I'm right, you're wrong" statement and leave it at that. When I wrote this section, I thought the issue was pretty clear cut, but it's become apparent that I need to provide better support for my contentions. In the next day or so, I'll do a follow-up post clarifying my stance. In the meantime, consider this recognition of the need to make a better case on this issue for those who are unconvinced. -FS]

The Future

When I first started researching this, I thought WPS was just about done for. But an awful lot of work/incompetence had to be perpetrated to kill Athletica. Absent knowing the books of the other teams, I'm guessing they are as stable as they can be. But who knows?

I'm going to be pretty bitter about this for a while, and I hope someone with resources or money can dig a little deeper into what went wrong. I won't stop watching WPS, though. Lori Lindsey is too damn good on any given day to give that up.

-FS

"www.mlsnet.com" doesn't redirect to "mlssoccer.com"

"MLSNet" still points at the new website, but it doesn't redirect to the new URL. Go ahead and take a look. It's probably an oversight, but check out how MLSnet ranks in the googles compared to MLSsoccer when you search for "MLS" and even "MLS soccer".

It does make me wonder if MLS is now hedging on the new soccer-centric URL.

-FS

Chicago Red Stars fire coach Emma Hayes

That was fast; cf. the weekend when I thought she'd have a week or two left. Nope.

-FS

WPS may take over St. Louis Athletica

The WPS statement from the St. Louis Globe-Democrat:

“WPS and its Board continue to work closely with the appropriate parties on the matter related to Saint Louis Athletica, including the possibility that the league will take over the team which would enable the Athletica to play the 2010 season in full.”

Not good.

Journalism, blogging and branding

Maureen Tkacik has a nice piece up at the Columbia Journalism review (via NSFW ErosBlog) that talks about "a writer's search for journalism in the age of branding."

From a commercial perspective, “branding” has consistently bestowed its greatest rewards on those capable of projecting a kind of elusive authority that turns consumers’ fears, insecurities, aspirations, unarticulated dreams, etc. into healthy profit margins. But a sense of humanity is also a kind of authority. And maybe the best policy for our beaten-down population of journalists just naturally involves letting down the old guard of objectivity and letting go of illusions of unimpeachability. Rather than train journalists to dismiss their own experiences, what if we trained them to use those experiences to help them explain the news to their audience? Allow their humanity to shape their journalism? This isn’t some radically profound notion—it only seems that way in the context of the ridiculous zero-sum debate over the relative merits of “straight” news versus the self-absorbed nature of blogs. Maybe there is a way to combine the best of both.

The post is definitely not soccer related, but still an interesting read none-the-less. While I don't think Tkacik has a firm grasp on the issue, I empathize with a lot of her observations. I'll have more on this topic later.

-FS

Pressure starting to build on Red Stars coach Emma Hayes in Chicago

I thought this team would struggle, and now it appears ownership is very unhappy. Peter Wilt at Pitch Invasion:

We have an owners meeting tomorrow and we’ll be discussing the usual topics of financial and operational updates, but I imagine the topic of this talented team’s inexplicable poor record will also be on the agenda.

It doesn't sound like Hayes has to worry at the present moment, and ordinarily I might not draw attention to such a comment. But I've noticed a couple other subtle signs coming out of the organization that indicate things aren't peachy keen. It will be interesting to see how the team responds, but I worry that Red Stars management has unrealistic expectations for the current lineup.

-FS

Robert Pires rejects Philadelphia move

Philly is now claiming they never made him an offer:

"It's a bit of a shock as to where all this is coming from," said [Philly owner Nick] Sakiewicz. "A, He's never been here and B, we never made him an [official] offer. Look, I think Robert is a good player with a lot of experience and a lot of good football left in him, but he may just not have been for us; and obviously, given his comments, he clearly is not for us."

I think it's helpful to recall the journalism-drenched PR push that MLSsoccer put in on this story back in April via soothsayer Simon Borg:

MLSsoccer.com confirmed Tuesday that an MLS club is working on signing the Frenchman in a transaction that could take place during the summer transfer window. France Football first reported that club to be the Philadephia Union and MLSsoccer.com has since confirmed the report identifying the expansion club as the interested party.
. . .
There is even a chance that Pirès could make the move before the April 15 deadline, but his representative does not think it will materialize.

This story ran with a huge headline on the MLSsoccer.com front page. So, way to build credibility guys.

-FS

The Problem of Red Bull New York

I think Don Garber and most other Major League Soccer custodians have given up on the New York Red Bulls ever amounting to anything other than a financial sinkhole and a clever fizzy water ad. It's what I get out of the push to put another team somewhere else in the New York metropolitan area. It's what I get out of AEG allowing itself to be bought out of the arena. And honestly, it's what I get out of the new designated player rules that got unveiled this year.

With these three things, MLS is essentially admitting that the last 15 years were a total waste of time, treasure, and good will, and the best thing to do (absent shuttering the league's biggest mistake outside Florida, something they could not get away with in the country's largest media market) is to start totally over with a completely different team and a completely different business plan.

Red Bull GmbH could not disagree more. From their perspective, they've built the future of marketing today, an international brand that seeps into the consciousness of young people and children by way of the things they love. Racing, soccer, goofy stunts - for Red Bull GmbH, the game day experience exists to give people good feelings about their product, and the brand of the team is there to push other products.

So when Grant Wahl blathers on about how Henry is going to bring "star power" to MLS, remember this: Thierry Henry will not be coming to New York to benefit MLS. He would be coming to New York because endless video of him running around with the Red Bull logo on his shirt is worth many millions of dollars to Red Bull in the form of drink sales here and abroad. From a business perspective, Henry in New York has about as much to do with soccer as it does with interstellar travel.

And this is where Red Bull GmbH's ultimate goals diverge with those of MLS, which seeks to promote itself as the keeper of all things soccer in North America. The brand in Harrison is sugar water, and the brand everywhere else in MLS is soccer. Red Bull Arena is not a *soccer* palace. Soccer may be played there, but as constructed it is a full on advertisement for fizzy water. It's more than the team being named "Videoton" or "Vasas." It's a brand strategy that's at odds with the rest of the league. It's also the point where MLS is hedging itself against a global downturn in the fizzy-energy drink market.

During the the team sell-off/expansion orgy from 2004-2007, it spoke volumes that three of the new ownership groups were foreign - Chivas USA, Toronto FC, and Red Bull GmbH. The league was in the position of needing cash, and needing it now, and so long as you had a check and a verified line of credit, you were in. Of the three, only Toronto FC wasn't a branding monstrosity, and coincidentally is now the only team that can make a claim to have really worked out for MLS so far. TFC's success is the main reason why we've seen more Canadian expansion, even in instances where it wouldn't seem to make sense. Somewhat paradoxically, Red Bull New York's failure is why we'll see more expansion into New York.

We've also seen MLS acceding to Red Bull's desire to let it spend more money on players with the new designated player rule. I think the other owners went along with it because it hasn't worked out well for anyone in the past, so they're giving Red Bull GmbH just enough rope to hang themselves. Of the other teams that would presumably take advantage of the rule, DC United can barely make rent, LA has been burned by Beckham (on the field, of course), Toronto could throw millions of dollars at a player and he would instantly become worthless, and Seattle already has enough high-priced stars and can't get out of the West's cellar.

Of course, if Red Bull New York starts playing Calvinball and actually wins some trophies, then things might change. But I don't exactly detect an air of concern from the rest of the league. Maybe everyone's complacent. Maybe the MLS system is going to dash these guys on the rocks. Maybe everyone else is just happy that the league found a sucker to not only absorb all the debt in New Jersey, but do it happily in exchange for plastering a Red Bull logo over everything.

So the obvious question is why let it linger, and the best answer is that for now Red Bull GmbH is underwriting the last days of the most Pyrrhic of victories. After fifteen years, untold sums of money spent, and a string of ownership groups that have struggled to put a decent team on the field that anyone would be willing to hike out to watch, the other MLS owners seem entirely content to bide their time, hope Red Bull eventually gets tired of doing this thing it's doing, and that at some point in the future the team can be sold, rebranded again or moved. In the meantime, they're going to work their hardest to put a new team in New York, this time using all the lessons learned in Toronto and Seattle to get people to come out and watch it, and MLS will sink millions of dollars into the market that Don Garber simply must own. Again.

-FS

Financial problems may shut down St. Louis Athletica

Obviously, this is terrible news if true, and there's clearly something going on. Dave Lange at the Globe-Democrat has a long article, and Tom Timmerman has another take. Pick your poison for what's gone wrong - Lange says the soccer park Athletica and AC St. Louis play at is draining the team, Timmerman says Jeff Cooper is no longer majority owner and the partners he brought in from London to take over are broke, too, and I've also seen reports that AC St. Louis is dragging the women's side down.

Whatever's going on, the USSF, NASL and WPS are all involved, so clearly something is very, very bad. They won't say it out loud, but MLS is not looking entirely stupid today for not having given Cooper a team in their umpteen rounds of expansion.

As for WPS, apparently the best teams get the kiss of death. When people talk about relegation, I'm not sure this is the sort of thing they imagined.

-FS