odds and ends

On the December Jersey Count
There won't be one, unfortunately. The only jerseys I saw on campus were the USMNT jerseys I wore, and since the stats are already padded in my favor, I'm just going to not count this month. Hopefully I'll see more in January.

On my Soccer Library
My Soccer Library has now expanded from 4 to 6, thanks to some awesome Christmas presents from my family. I've already started A Massive Season by Steve Sirk, and I also got Soccernomics by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski. They join:
-Bloody Confused (started, didn't have time to finish thanks to school)
-The Beckham Experiment (amazing, amazing, and amazing, a must-read for any MLS fan)
-Fever Pitch (a must-read for any soccer fan-even if you don't like Arsenal)
-The Thinking Fan's Guide to the World Cup (skimmed through, though slightly out of date now, there are good stories and facts)
If I had time to read more, I'd spend all my money on Amazon buying soccer books.

On my upcoming first MLS experience
The Carolina Challenge Cup happens to fall on the front weekend of my Spring Break, and since Charleston's so close (and $25 for a doubleheader is a price nobody could pass up), I've already got my front-row tickets. Even though none of the teams participating are teams I really support, I'm going just for the experience.

Of course, MLS First Kick 2010 falls on the back weekend of my Spring Break. I'm still trying to convince my mom that it'll be worth the trip up to Columbus (Mom, when you read this, I still want to go. :) Also, kickoff is at 4pm.) but hopefully we'll make it up there at some point this season.

November Jersey Count

The number of jerseys I'm seeing on campus is kinda dropping off, but I have a feeling it has more to do with the cooler weather and people not wanting to wear short sleeves. Nothing really exciting about the count this month, unfortunately.

USA 3 (Bradley 1, all me)
Liverpool 3 (Torres 1, Gerrard 1)
AC Milan 1
Barcelona 1
Real Madrid 1 (me)
France 1
Mexico 1

I updated my total jersey count through the four months I've been doing this, and if I discarded all of the jerseys I've worn, AC Milan and Liverpool would be tied for most-represented teams with 9 each. I feel like Milan became a popular jersey after the Milan-Club America match at the Georgia Dome, where I think a lot of people bought them. As for Liverpool's high count, I'm going to blame that on the guy with the Fernando Torres jersey who I see eating lunch in the Student Center all the time. All the Torres jerseys have been him (although I can't really say much about wearing the same jersey all the time). But since I'm counting my jerseys, Real Madrid is tied with Milan and Liverpool for second, and the three times a month I wear my USMNT jerseys (usually once each, though I apparently wore my Michael Bradley jersey twice in October?) brings the USMNT up to first place with 12.

Also, since the list was getting sorta crowded on the sidebar, I've split it up to have a teams list and a players list. The players still count towards the overall team count, but with the two it'll be less crowded.

on my european disinterest

So December is about to start, which means it's going to be a pretty boring month for me soccer-wise. Most soccer fans love December- sure, La Liga and the Bundesliga take breaks towards the end of the month, but the Premier League has a full schedule that would have any other fan mesmerized in front of the TV all day. And sure, I'll probably watch as much as I can, because I won't really have anything else to do and I love watching soccer. But I won't be nearly as into it as I would have been two years ago. For some reason, European soccer just doesn't interest me as much as it used to.

I have two schools of thought as to the reasoning behind my sudden disinterest. The first, which seems more logical, is that it's no longer convenient to watch games now that I'm at college. At home, we get Fox Soccer Channel and GolTV, and my weekends were always jam-packed with games from the Premier League, Bundesliga, and La Liga. I don't get GolTV at school, so I've almost completely fallen out with La Liga and the Bundesliga, simply because there's no way for me to watch matches besides streaming, and even with my newly acquired HDMI cable, it's a lot of work in comparison to the crappy picture quality I get from an internet stream. I still get FSC, but I always end up staying up late on Friday and Saturday nights and I can never bring myself to get up in time to watch a 10AM game. I'll occasionally put on the noon game while I'm eating lunch, but I'm always distracted by other stuff and I just can't get into it.

The other school of thought is that my newfound love (my parents call it obsession, but I beg to differ) for MLS has replaced my past love for European leagues. It is more convenient to watch- I don't really do much on Saturday nights other than maybe watch a movie with friends, so I'm not missing much if I stay in and watch a game, and midweek games are even easier. The 800k streaming on Match Center hasn't really given me problems with quality or freezing, so I don't mind taking the time to hook up my HDMI cable, although I mainly just use it for Columbus Crew games or the occasional "big game" that isn't on TV. As for games that are on TV, though, I'll generally watch whatever's on, unless I could honestly care less about both teams playing or I have an important prior engagement. I'm the rare soul who actually enjoys the commentary on FSC, with the "6 in 60" segment being a personal favorite of mine (the fact that they used my questions and sent me cool stuff has nothing to do with this, obviously). I've even started watching the Sunday Telefutura match, despite the fact that I have to put up with a crappy internet stream. They usually get a pretty good game, and the commentary gives me a chance to practice and improve on the six years of Spanish I took in middle and high school, so it's worth it.

But the fact of the matter is that I'll put up with a crappy, non-English stream to watch an MLS game, but I won't for a European game. I'll forgo hanging out with my friends to watch an MLS game, but I can't be bothered to get up early to watch a European game. It's a solid argument, and but it's not one that I want to believe. I'd like to think that I could potentially get back into watching the European leagues some day in the future when it becomes more convenient, because I really enjoyed watching them. But for now, I'll just spend my December disinterestedly watching European soccer, because why not?

October Jersey Count

I figured since it was almost December I should probably post this. October was a special month- it was the first time I had seen someone at Tech wearing an MLS jersey. Which is the second time ever (outside of the Milan-Club America game) that I'd seen someone wearing an MLS jersey anywhere (guy in a Houston Dynamo jersey at the Palm Beach airport going home from Spring Break in March). So even though it was New York and I don't really like them, it was really exciting. Still no USMNT jerseys, though.

USA 3 (Bradley 2) (all me)
Real Madrid 2 (1 was me)
AC Milan 1
Italy 1 (Totti 1)
Galatasaray 1
Liverpool 1 (Gerrard 1)
Barcelona 1
New York Red Bulls 1
Manchester United 1
Bayern Munich 1

I'll update the cumulative count after I post November's count, it seems stupid to update it twice in such quick succession, especially since I doubt anyone cares anyways.

Jersey Count- September

Some trends I noticed this month were that on Champions League gamedays, many students (like myself) wear jerseys for their Champions League teams. I saw the same guy two days in a row wearing two different Barcelona jerseys- Iniesta the first, Ibrahimovic the second. I have still yet to see anyone else on campus wearing a USMNT jersey.

Real Madrid 5
AC Milan 5
Arsenal 5 (Fabregas 1 (me))
Manchester United 4
Barcelona 4 (Messi 1, Iniesta 1, Ibrahimovic 1, Ronahdinho 1)
USA 3 (Bradley 1) (all me)
Chelsea 3
England 3 (Gerrard 1 (me), Beckham 1)
Holland 2
Italy 2 (Materazzi 1)
Republic of Ireland 2
Liverpool 2 (Torres 1, Gerrard 1)
Inter Milan 2
Tottenham 1
Boca Juniors 1
Celtic 1
Sweden 1
Everton 1
Germany 1

For reference, the cumulative jersey count will be kept on the sidebar.

a confession...

Dear soccer,

I know we haven't been seeing a lot of each other lately. I mean, I know you've been busy on international break, and I've had my schoolwork and a couple of Georgia Tech football games to keep me busy, but I think it's time we had a talk.

You see, soccer, I have a confession to make. I don't know how you're going to take this, but...I've been cheating on you. With tennis. It's sorta been going on for a while now, too. It started last summer, just for a little while...but then this summer, it came back and I just couldn't say no. Paris, London, New York...it was just so glamorous that I couldn't resist. And it wasn't just me. Over the summer, I had my sister, then when I left for college I had my roommate. And it was always on, for 12 hours at a time, and I just couldn't help myself. But I think it's over for now. At least for a while, you'll be my one and only love again, with the exception of my Yellow Jackets, until I get swept off my feet again to Australia. But I'll always come back to you, my one true love.

So soccer, I really hope you can forgive me. What we have is special, and we've had it for so long and been through so much together. I mean, sure, with tennis it always started out with love, but it almost never ended with it. With you, it'll always be love. And I know you've got a lot planned for us in the next few weeks, with Champions League and Europa League and then league play, then more Champions League...then another international break. I promise, soccer, I won't keep breaking our dates this time. I'll be there for you during international break, through thick and thin, for better or for worse, till death do us part. Please forgive me.

Love,
Rebecca

When soccer and nerdiness combine

So it's been a while since I've posted, school started back a couple weeks ago and I've been busy settling in to a new schedule. But things are starting to normalize and hopefully I'll be posting more, especially since I even less people to discuss soccer with now that I'm not living at home.

So as you're well aware, the Champions League draw was this past Thursday. What you may not be aware of is the number of possible groups that could have been formed. When I saw the four pots from which the groups are drawn from on Wednesday night, I became so curious that, after a quick Google search to make sure no one else had already done it, I decided to calculate it myself. I figured I had a decent knowledge of statistics and my engineering brain knew I could find a solution somehow, even if it took forever. But it was a Wednesday night, I was waiting for CONCACAF Champions League games to start, and this was far more interesting than the Physics 3 homework I had been working on before the idea struck me.

This task would have been a lot easier, of course, if teams from the same country were allowed to be in the same group. Then it would have been just 4(8!), or 161280. But of course UEFA has to make it more complicated than that. My calculation doesn't take into account teams being drawn already- that would have made it way too complicated. For my purposes, I assumed all 8 teams in each pot were available for group placement.

I started out listing all four pots on the white board, with team names as well as their country. I then put each team from pot 1 in their own group. Then I went through pot 2 and wrote down the number of possible teams each pot 1 team could play. I then went through pot 3 and summed up all the possibilities from say, Barca-Lyon, Barca-Inter, et al, then I did the same premise for pot 4 to get the final number. 3,196.

An hour and half's worth of work.

Looking back on it, the easiest way to have done this would have been to write up a big recursive function in MATLAB, since that's pretty much what I did by hand on the white board, but besides the fact that I'm not that great at coding from scratch, I also never installed MATLAB on my new laptop. And of course, I could have saved myself a lot of time by just skipping the steps for pots 1 and 2 and pots 1, 2, and 3, because the final step took both of those steps into account, but whatever. It was made easier by the fact that four of the groups started out with an English team, so the calculation for one of them was the same for all four. I used the same consideration for the two Spanish teams. So really in the end, I only had to make four calculations, but I'd say overall it was worth the work.

Jersey Count- August

So last year was my first year of college, and I noticed a ton of people wearing jerseys for various teams. Sometimes it would be the same people over and over again, I think, but it was still fascinating to me to see so many people wearing jerseys since the only people who wore them at my high school were me and this Italian-American kid who cycled through 3 or 4 different jerseys. It's even more exciting when I saw someone wearing a jersey from a team that wouldn't be considered a big club in the US (i.e. I saw a guy wearing a Marseille jersey going to lunch one day and got far more excited than I should have).

So two weeks ago, I started my second year, and in my first class I noticed a guy in the front row wearing a David Villa Valencia jersey. And that was when I had my brilliant idea.

I've been keeping a list of every jersey I see people wearing so I can see which teams are the most popular and/or just keep track of all the cool jerseys I see. I always have my I-touch with me so I just started a note on there and update it every time I see someone in a jersey. If I notice it has a name on the back, I write that down as well so I can see which players are more popular on their teams. I'm posting this here just a way for me to keep up with my count on a monthly basis, in case anyone else out there thinks this is as cool as I think it is.

Valencia 1 (David Villa 1)
Real Madrid 1
Chelsea 2
AC Milan 2 (Gatusso 1)
England 5 (Rooney 3)
Liverpool 3 (Torres 2, Gerrard 1)
USA 3 (Bradley 1) (all me)
Galatasaray
Netherlands 2 (Van der Vaart 1)
Marseille 1
Argentina 1 (Messi 1)
Brazil 1
Aston Villa 1 (Laursen 1)
Japan 1 (Nakamura 1)
Inter Milan 1
Barcelona 1
Arsenal 1 (Nasri 1)
Manchester United 1

Converting the Eurosnobs is the key for MLS success

Eurosnobs. Every American soccer fan has met them- they belittle you for calling it "soccer", laugh about what a joke MLS is (and obviously you're a joke as well for caring about it), and proudly support one of the "Big 4" in the EPL and one of the top European national teams such as Spain, Italy, or Germany...even though they're American as well. They wouldn't dare lower themselves to watch an MLS game, yet they would get up before 8AM on a weekend to watch their beloved Premier League team play. Their love for the game is evident- but only for the European game. If their love for "football" can be harnessed and directed towards MLS, the league will have the support it needs to succeed.

TV ratings for Premier League games are consistently much higher than those for MLS games. February's game between Liverpool and Chelsea on FSC averaged a 0.5 rating (294,000 viewers) while last weekend's game between the Kansas City Wizards and the LA Galaxy on widely-available ESPN2 (which included supposed ratings-booster David Beckham) only averaged a 0.3 rating (231,000 viewers), just a bit less the season-high rating set by the season opener between Seattle and New York (254,000 viewers). MLS is watched even less on FSC, averaging a 0.1 rating (44,000 viewers) through May of this season. Ratings for Euro 2008 averaged a 0.5 on ESPN2 and a 0.9 on ESPN, with the final on ABC earning a 3.1 rating. MLS Cup 2008, also on ABC, only earned a 0.7 rating.

And it's not just TV where European games attract higher crowds- July's World Football Challenge had attendances ranging from over 31,000 to over 81,000 across 6 venues (I was one of 53,000 in attendance in Atlanta). This is combined with sellouts of 67,000 and 27,000 in Seattle and LA, respectively, where the Sounders and Galaxy faced European opposition. Future friendlies this summer for Real Madrid and Barcelona have pretty much sold out. But so far this season, the MLS has only averaged over 15,000 a game, with average team attendances ranging from almost 9,500 in Dallas to over 30,000 in Seattle. People are coming out to watch these European teams (Chelsea's three games drew the three biggest crowds) as opposed to their own local teams, which is understandable, especially in Atlanta, where men's top-level soccer has been virtually non-existant (I'm not really a fan of AC Milan or Club America, but the chance to actually go to a live soccer game was too good not to take), but there shouldn't be this big of a difference between the two.

I've recently defended the MLS against a barrage of insults from two sports-crazy friends who said, among other things, that "people want excitement and entertainment and that's the EPL not MLS" and that there isn't "a big consistent enough fan base in America" for the sport to succeed. I'm not sure if he's ever watched an MLS game, but I certainly find them exciting- I didn't really care as much until I picked a team to support, but I still watched games whenever I could catch them and always enjoyed it. The past three MLS Cup finals have been very exciting, in my opinion. As for the big, consistent fan base, it's there for soccer, just not for the MLS. The Eurosnobs are holding the league back- if even half of them decided that it was okay to like the MLS and actually showed up to a game or watched it on TV, the league's popularity would skyrocket. But they're most likely not going to convert. They'll watch one MLS game on TV, and if it's not up to their standards, they're going to write the league off and not watch again. And unfortunately, there's not a whole lot the league can do to attract them. Setting up the friendlies against big clubs is a great move for the league as well as the clubs, though I'd like to see a wider range of MLS teams' international friendlies on TV. Designated Players for the most part haven't really worked out the way the league hoped they would- they've brought in fans, but the degree to which they've improved their team varies, with the most impressive being Guille at Columbus, and he didn't even start out as a DP!

Hopefully, the day will come when MLS fans outnumber the Eurosnobs. And that will be a glorious day for soccer.

Cable TV drops the ball

Next month, the USMNT will be headed to Mexico City for a very important World Cup qualifier against Mexico. I'm going to make a bold statement here and say that it's the most important qualifier for us. Mexico have already tried to knock us down a notch by scheduling the match at 4 PM EST, during the hottest, most humid part of the day. The US has never won at the Azteca EVER and with the squad we have now and the form we were in for the last three Confederation's Cup games, winning in Mexico is DEFINITELY a possibility.

HOWEVER, most of us won't be able to see it on television. Why, you ask? Basically, ESPN won't be carrying the ridiculously important US-Mexico World Cup qualifier next month. They decided it was too expensive to buy the English language rights from Telemundo, a Spanish-language channel that is part of the NBC Universal network. And that's understandable, since they apparently really jacked up the price because they knew it'd be in demand. But that leaves no English-language broadcast. NBC Universal had the bright idea to use their ties with Telemundo to broadcast it in English...on mun2. I had actually never heard of this channel until yesterday when I read about this. Apparently it is a bilingual channel aimed at the Hispanic 18-34 demographic. And it's only available to 30.4 million homes in the US, which isn't a lot of people. So hardly anyone is going to be able to watch this match. However, most people in the US get the USA network, which is part of NBC Universal. Do you know what they are showing during the time that the game would air? Reruns of House and NCIS, which, although they are good shows, are not crucial to watch and could either be aired on a different day or a different time or something. But of course they aren't, because this is America, and the mainstream media hates soccer.

Wanna help out? First off, you can sign this petition. It's unofficial, but when I signed it there were almost 500 signatures and this thing started yesterday, so if you sign this and send it to people, tweet it to everyone, put a link on facebook, whatever you want to do, you'd be helping out.

Another way would be to go to Matchfit USA's article which gives more details about the situation and has more things you can do to help. One of these ways is emailing NBC Universal network officials- they have a template email that you can just copy, paste, edit, and send to the NBC people whose email addresses they also give.

If you were to do all of this, it would maybe take 5 minutes out of your day. I think you can sacrifice that in the name of American soccer.

Pre-Panama musings

So it doesn't appear that any of the seven extras will be called in for the USMNT's Gold Cup quarterfinal against Panama this Saturday, since I'm assuming the MNT blog would have told us when they posted the updated roster. This leaves us with even less options than we had against Haiti, since Charlie Davies, Steve Cherundolo, and Michael Parkhurst will be back with their clubs by then for preseason. Granted, Parkhurst was suspended anyways for yellow card accumulation, but it leaves us stretched in the back and up front.

As for who I'd like to see...

-----------Perkins-----------
Pearce-Conrad(C)-Marshall-Evans
-----------Beckerman---------
Rogers-------Arnaud--------Holden
----Ching/Cooper---Quaranta----

Luis Robles' performance against Haiti showed that Troy Perkins in goal is an automatic pick. The back 4 pretty much picks itself at this point- Brad Evans did well enough against Haiti and Grenada to keep the right back spot. Robbie Rogers, Kyle Beckerman, and Stuart Holden are all locks in the midfield, and I think Davy Arnaud could do well in a central role. He looked better than Logan Pause and Sam Cronin, so he gets my vote. And up top, there aren't really that many choices. Knowing Bob Bradley, Brian Ching will get the start, but either him or Kenny Cooper partnering Santino Quaranta up top is fine with me. I'm a huge Kenny Cooper fan, but he didn't do enough against Haiti to pull him ahead of Ching.

If we make it through to the semifinals, Bob Bradley has to call up some of the extra 7. The roster just isn't deep enough for him not to.

obligatory "why should you read this blog?" post

In my first season playing soccer, I only got the ball once. Somehow I ended up with the ball, and dribbled it for a few glorious moments...until it was taken away from me by one of the boys on my team. In my last season playing soccer, eleven years later, I could typically be found in line with the last opposing defenders, but rarely marked, because the other teams made the (generally) correct assumption that nobody was going to pass the ball to the girl. Boys will be boys, right?

Those eleven years of soccer weren't filled with glory and championships (every trophy or medal I have was based on participation), but they instilled in me a love for the sport itself that has grown even stronger since I've stopped playing. Unfortunately for me, I live in Georgia, so opportunities to share my love of the game with others are limited. That lack of opportunity led to the creation of this blog. I've grown accustomed to sharing articles and USMNT/MLS info with the rest of my family whenever I get a chance, but although they may start off paying attention, I usually go into far more detail than they care about, and I really hate to be bother them all the time. So this blog will give me an outlet to ramble about the latest USMNT roster or how our Yanks Abroad are doing or whatever happens to be going on in MLS.

tl;dr, who I support and why
In terms of support, my number one team is and always will be the US national teams. I couldn't have picked a better time to grow up as a girls soccer player. My earliest non-documented memory is watching the 1999 Women's World Cup final between the US and China. I would put that game as the main reason that I love US Soccer as much as I do today- for the first time I was just so inexplicably proud of my country, and I loved it. The WNT players of the late 90s, early 2000s weren't just a team for me- they were idols. I was within 10 yards of Mia Hamm after an Atlanta Beat game once and it's still one of the greatest moments of my life. I don't remember exactly when I started following the men's team, but it was at some point during qualification for the 2006 World Cup because I knew who everyone was when I watched the Send-Off Series. After the 06 World Cup, my focus shifted more to the MNT than the WNT, but I still have tons of love for the women, especially now that the Atlanta Beat are coming back next season!

The 2006 World Cup opened up a ton of doors for me because after my parents saw how mesmerized my sister and I were by televised soccer (somewhat of a rarity on cable), they added the sports tier to our cable package, and suddenly, between Fox Soccer Channel and GolTV, I was watching 4 to 5 games per weekend, across the EPL, Bundesliga, La Liga, and some MLS. I was hooked. I would schedule plans around games I wanted to watch live, I'd watch one game on my laptop while watching another on TV...I remember one time during an international break, I had the US vs. Poland game on the TV, the England game on my laptop, and either a Spain or Germany game on the desktop. It was madness, but in the best way possible. As for support, I'd classify myself as a Fulham fan- six months ago I would have added Arsenal to that, but I found myself caring less and less about their results and more and more about Fulham's results, and the whole big-4-dominance is getting pretty old. In the other leagues, I'll watch pretty much anything just to see a good game.

As for the MLS, I don't really have a local team to support. Up until the 2008 season, I was just a casual fan, watching games when I happened to be home to watch them, then engrossing myself in the playoffs. At the start of the 2008 season, I decided that I was actually going to get into the league and pick a team or two to follow. I'd always kinda liked FC Dallas after playing with them one season on FIFA, so I picked them in the west, but it took a few games for me to eventually choose Columbus in the east. Besides the fact that they wore my favorite color of yellow, they were playing the same attractive soccer that Arsenal were playing, which pretty much sold me. I ended up becoming far more invested in them than I thought, especially since they ended up being both Supporters Shield and MLS Cup champions.


Some basic background stuff...I'm from Augusta, Georgia, and I go to Georgia Tech, where I major in Nuclear and Radiological Engineering. Other than a couple of Atlanta Beat games back in the day, I've never been to a professional soccer game, although that will change after I see AC Milan play Club America in the Georgia Dome in 8 days. This can mostly be attributed to the fact that teams never play within reasonable driving range.

My claim(s) to fame in the soccersphere? 2 years ago Jimmy Conrad answered my question about Landon's pre-penalty kick ritual at around the 9-minute mark. Also, I was the first person to have their 6-in-60 questions asked during FSC's MLS broadcasts (which was made even better by the fact that my questions were answered by Danny O'Rourke, a Crew player, and Brad Evans, a former Crew player), and I have some pretty sweet FSC swag to prove it.

Tl;dr? In summary, I'm pretty legit. For a girl.