It’s no secret that the average North American sports fan likes things bigger. Thanks to modern architecture, stadiums are huge these days. Thanks to ignorance of governmental food and drug policies, we can now buy hot dogs that are two feet long.
And thanks to the regular folks that make up the bulk of Major League Soccer rosters, we had a week that produced a staggering 40 goals in 12 matches.
Another not-so-secret: Normally in soccer, one would have to watch through 40 matches to see 40 goals. It’s the element of the beautiful game that most of America calls boring. Baseball, and to a lesser extent hockey, surpass soccer scorelines without lifting a finger. For crying out loud, basketball and American football don’t even score one point at a time!
North American sports fans have been plagued by the score en masse system. They sometimes fail to see the finer intricacies that lead up to the points. It’s why the quarterbacks and wide receivers drive Lamborghinis, while the offensive tackles struggle to pay off their rent (not really but you get the point). If soccer was built this way, the only players on a team would be the forwards and the goalkeeper.
If nothing else, this week sent a message to the non-fans that soccer in North America doesn’t have to be that way. At least not for the odd week, because you can be pretty certain that it will be a while until this many goals are scored in a week again. But more importantly, it doesn’t have to always be about the headliners.
Take the New York-Chicago game for example. Eight out of the nine goals were scored by the also-rans, including matching hat tricks from New York’s Bradley Wright-Phillips and Chicago’s Harrison Shipp. BWP is a phenomenal case on his own. Not only is he the brother of the far more established Shaun Wright-Phillips (and for that matter the son of Premier League legend Ian Wright), but he is also playing in the shadows of Thierry Henry and Tim Cahill.
Did I mention that among Henry’s previous forward partners were proven MLS vets such as Kenny Cooper, Sebastian Le Toux, and Fabian Espindola?
You get the point; lots of pressure for an unknown. Yet he has thrived. With nine goals and two hat tricks already, Wright-Phillips has become one of the league’s feel-good stories of the year.
BWP’s counterpart has to have a high self-esteem right now. Harrison Shipp scored the first three goals of his MLS career on Saturday, adding to his four assists. Considered the runaway Rookie of the Year Award winner by Week Four, all hope may have just been lost this weekend for the rest of this year’s rookie class.
The third hat trick hero of the week was Real Salt Lake’s Javier Morales. A Designated Player, MLS Cup winner, and All-Star, Morales is far more of a star than Shipp and Wright-Phillips. But he isn’t Robbie Keane. He isn’t even the biggest star on his team. That honour belongs to Kyle Beckerman or Nick Rimando, depending on who you talk to.
Keep looking around the league. Sporting Kansas City’s Dom Dwyer scored his second brace of the year against the Montreal Impact. This time last year, he was playing with Orlando City in the third division of the US soccer pyramid. Even on a team-first side like SKC, Dwyer’s star power falls far below that of Graham Zusi, Matt Besler, and Aurelien Collin.
In Columbus, Vancouver’s Erik Hurtado hit his first career MLS goal in spectacular fashion. Earlier in the week, Hurtado’s Whitecaps had parted ways with DP forward Kenny Miller. Even with Miller’s departure, Hurtado is seen as the third best scoring option the Whitecaps have behind Darren Mattocks and Kekuta Manneh.
Major League Soccer started out as a team-first league. The money and the interest weren’t there to make star players feasible. It wasn’t until 2007 when the mentality changed and teams began selling the players they owned instead of the sport they played. In some cases it worked. In a whack load of others it crashed and burned.
This week is a small sample size, but it gave us the sense that the game is becoming the focus of North American soccer once again. And that is a great thing.
Are big names important? Of course they are. They’re like the big markets I talked about a few weeks ago. They are how you are taken seriously.
But soccer has always and forever been a team game. Kansas City won MLS Cup last year with their lone DP coming on as a substitute. The L.A. Galaxy won the two Cups prior with their big three of Beckham, Donovan, and Keane, but they also had DeLaGarza, Gonzalez, Juninho, and Magee.
Seattle couldn’t win it all with Fredy ‘n’ Eddie. New York hasn’t gone the distance with Thierry and Tim. It took five years for a DP to lift the trophy for crying out loud.
People care more about the North American Academy system than the league’s rumoured courtship with Dider Drogba and company. In a short time, Home Grown Players could generate more buzz than Designated Players.
Major League Soccer used to put all their eggs into one basket. They banked on the celebrity status of players who they paid for but couldn’t realistically afford to drive the league forward. I’ve seen the big boys come out to play. They are nothing more than human hype machines that draw all of the attention for all of one match. The next time they come to play, nobody cares.
A complete product is what MLS needs. It keeps the stars happy because they aren’t playing with nincompoops. It keeps the anonymous players happy because they get lifted above the poverty line. It keeps the fans happy because they still want to come out to matches when their stars are at the World Cup. It keeps the owners happy because more money is made and the return on investment skyrockets.
Building the game is the goal here, not hitting the net. Of all the arguments I’ve made here, I hope that North Americans can pick that one out.
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