Category — international soccer

More than 26,000 advance tickets have been sold for Wednesday’s friendly match at the Georgia Dome between AC Milan and Club América, a presell figure that compares to last month’s match in Atlanta between Mexico and Venezuela.

At Saturday’s summer meeting of the Georgia State Soccer Association, president Larry Green said drawing a crowd similar to 51,000-plus that turned out for the June 24 match is critical to bolster Atlanta’s forthcoming World Cup bid.

“Please do all you can to support this event,” Green told a gathering of more than 100 member representatives at a suburban Atlanta hotel. “It’s really important to hit the 50,000 mark. We think the U.S. chances of getting a bid are good, and that Atlanta has a story to tell.”

Atlanta is one of 37 cities vying to be included in the U.S. Soccer Federation’s bid for the World Cup in either 2018 or 2022. The deadline for U.S. venue bids is July 29, and the USSF will narrow down the final field to around a dozen by next May. FIFA will select the host nations for both of the following World Cup cycles in December 2010.

The GSSA has been an active partner with the Atlanta Sports Council in promoting Wednesday’s game in the World Football Challenge, which involves a number of leading European and Mexican club team playing in several U.S. cities. Next Friday’s match between AC Milan and Chelsea in Baltimore, which also is bidding for a World Cup venue, has been sold out.

The GSSA is extending through Monday a discount group ticket plan aimed at organizations, especially youth associations.

The Mexico-Venezuela match was the first soccer match held at the Georgia Dome and was organized by Soccer United Marketing, which puts on an annual summer American tour of the Mexican national team, among other events.

Presale ticket figures released a few days before the game were around 30,000, but walk-up sales were heavy as a largely Mexican-American fan base from around the Southeast came to see El Tricolor play in Atlanta for the first time.

“Some people thought that game might have given the city a black eye because there weren’t local groups involved,” Green said. “But it got more than 51,000 without local organization or publicity.

“There’s no bigger event that we could aspire to be a part of,” Green said, referring to the possibility of Atlanta playing host to World Cup matches.

ESPN Radio host Colin Cowherd can sound quite often like one of many typical American sports shock jocks: Baseball, basketball and gridiron football rule, and soccer is for sissies.

His regular listeners might not believe their ears these days as he’s talking up what the rest of the world calls football: Yes, soccer.

Here he explains his reasons why, and Cowherd admits that his interest as a fan comes as he is growing older, and is intrigued by new sports fare. The U.S. Confederations Cup team drawing international attention didn’t hurt, either. And neither has some demographic investigation by his employers who are tapping into new viewing markets:

“Research at ESPN shows a growing appetite for soccer, especially in Miami, L.A., N.Y. and Atlanta (read diverse cities). Couple that with my recent interest and I’m looking for ways to introduce more Team USA soccer into my show. Yet, it’s a delicate balance. My guests have to be big and opinionated and the story lines have to be similarly captivating or polarizing.”

A reader from around these parts was happy to chime in:

“Being from Atlanta, you hit the nail right on the head. Young people love soccer, especially the English and Spanish leagues. I wasn’t much of a soccer fan until I went to college and to my surprise everyone was into soccer, and this was a college in rural Georgia. Now it’s my 4th favorite sport behind NFL, College Football, and the NBA. MLS won’t get ratings but EPL and La Liga would, good research, keep it up.”

I’ve heard testimonials like this from a number of people I’ve met covering soccer over the years. When I was still at the AJC, a reader called in to identify himself as a Valdosta boy who first got the bug on a business trip to Manchester, England. A client there had soccer tickets, and our friend from south Georgia said they went to “a place called Old Trafford.” When he got back home, following Manchester United rated a strong second to the Georgia Bulldogs.

Soccer converts are abounding, everywhere. Especially in this part of the world.

Discounted tickets for next Wednesday’s Georgia Dome friendly between AC Milan and Club América will be available only through today on the Georgia State Soccer Association Web site.

The tickets are priced from $23.75 to $118.75 per person, an average of a 5 percent savings. Each discounted group ticket comes with free admission to practice sessions the day before the game.

Here’s more information on ordering tickets.

AC Milan’s World Football Challenge match scheduled for two days later, on Friday, July 24 against Chelsea in Baltimore, has already been sold out.

Before heading on its American summer tour that stops in Atlanta on July 22, AC Milan is getting in some training time back home. But it’s been hardly a subdued return to the pitch.

Players were greeted by fans throwing smoke bombs and firecrackers Monday as they got in their first stretching and kicking of the preseason.

The fans weren’t mad at the players who were in attendance, but at club management for selling Brazilian midfielder Kaká to Real Madrid.

The subject of their ire, owner Silvio Berlusconi, was nowhere to be found. And as Italy’s prime minister, he’s got problems of his own, embroiled in a sex scandal (yes, in even in Italy now!) as he prepeares to host the G-8 summit this week.

AC Milan, which plays Mexico’s Club América at the Georgia Dome, is deep in debt, but Berlusconi remains his typical blustery self about the quality of his club, which has seen crosstown rival Inter Milan claim the last four Serie A championships.

First-year coach Leonardo, who takes over from new Chelsea boss Carlo Ancelotti, has named club and Italian World Cup veteran Massimo Ambrosini to take over as captain for the retired Paolo Maldini.

In one of his first public comments in his new role, Ambrosini stated that he thought AC Milan “rushed” its sale of Kaká and furthermore, doubts that Ronaldinho, who had a limited role in his first season, is up to sharing the burden.

Well, how’s that for starting off on the same page? And it’s anyone’s guess who will be on the roster of Italy’s most popular club when it arrives here in two weeks.

There are all kinds of transfer rumors kicking about in terms of who might be joining and leaving the rossoneri during the July window, but one player thought to be looking elsewhere, midfielder Andrea Pirlo, says he wants to stay put.

Updated, July 7: Well hells bells! AC Milan has gone and signed U.S. central defender Oguchi Onyewu, whose name was connected to virtually every team from Real Madrid to Fenerbahçe to Genoa to Ajax to Fulham to Birmingham City, among others. The 27-year-old former Clemson star was sparkling for the Americans at the Confederations Cup, boosting his stock after his contract expired at Belgian champion Standard Liège. But even though he was a free transfer, Milan thinks enough of him to have done a three-year contract.

“Gooch” becomes only the second American to play in Serie A after Alexi Lalas parlayed his 1994 World Cup stardom into a two-year gig for Padova. Says Lalas:

“The pressure will be more because he’s an American than the fact that he’s playing at AC Milan. . . .

“Most Italian clubs have at least one big forward, an Ibrahimovic, a Iaquinta, or whoever, and I think he’ll match up very well against those big forwards that a lot of these teams have. As a matter of fact, I think he’ll gobble them up.”

The timing of the Georgia Dome match coincides with the end of the CONCACAF Gold Cup, but Onyewu was not called into the American camp for that tournament.

Tickets for the AC Milan-Club América match are on sale, and the Georgia State Soccer Association is selling discounted tickets ranging from $23.75 to $118.75 per person. There also are special group rates that includes free admission to a July 21 practice session for the teams at the Dome.

Like a few other European club teams, AC Milan isn’t limiting its presence in North America to elite international friendlies. The club just completed a week’s camp at North Atlanta Soccer Association.

After initially being left off the roster because of duty in the Confederations Cup, Atlanta’s Ricardo Clark has been added by U.S. coach Bob Bradley for the CONCACAF Gold Cup, which gets underway this weekend across America.

The U.S. was allowed to add seven players to its 23-man training roster because of its appearance in South Africa. All seven players added by Bradley were on that trip.

Is this summer the last good chance for Ricardo Clark (13) to merit a spot with the U.S. national team? (zimbio.com)

What’s curious here is CONCACAF’s rationale for this apparently one-time exemption: That the glut of competition makes it necessary to look at more players. Except that Bradley’s initial Gold Cup roster had just two players from the Confederations Cup, including Freddy Adu, who didn’t play a single minute there.

Indeed, Bradley has planned to use the Gold Cup to look at some young, lightly capped players between the rigors of South Africa and the big mid-August trip to Mexico. Don’t Confederations holdovers — including Jozy Altidore, like Clark a starter for most of the tournament — need a bit of a break? It’s true that they won’t be available for all matches — the U.S. group opener is Saturday against Grenada in Seattle.

But if I’m Mexico, for example, I’d be a bit miffed by this shotgun move by CONCACAF, even if the bottom-line benefit might be for these seven to get in some more good training time in the American camp.

For Clark, this is another great opportunity to show that he belongs in the national team fold. After a number of years marked by injuries and a lack of discipline on the field (including a red card against Italy in the Confederations Cup opener) he knows he’ll have to battle for a place at a position — defensive midfield — in which the U.S. has some depth.

A veteran with the MLS Houston Dynamo, the former St. Pius and AFC Lightning standout is also starting to draw some attention from European clubs during the July global transfer window.

Hispanic Market Weekly has an interesting numbers breakdown of last week’s friendly between Mexico and Venezuela, estimating that Soccer United Marketing reeled in around $2.5 million in ticket sales from the first soccer match played at the Georgia Dome.

Local Latino business owners and media entrepreneurs are also buzzing:

“It opened the eyes for this city on how powerful and vast the Hispanic market in Atlanta is.”

My friend David Tulis, who photographed the game for SUM, has offered up a couple of videos from that event. First, a nifty collection of fans and a cool soundtrack:

And he also put together a fun time-lapse video of the Dome preparations, from the laying of the sod four days before the match to rolling it up and out. Rinse and repeat to follow in late July for Club América and AC Milan:

When the U.S. soccer team reached the quarterfinals of the 2002 World Cup, I experienced first-hand some good cheer from a most unlikely source: The dean of a generally sour British press corps.

The same bitter lot whose reigning “sportswriter of the year” later dubbed the final match between Brazil and Germany as The Boys from Ipanema vs. the 22nd Waffen SS Panzer Division. Or something like that. And this was penned in one of the “quality” broadsheet papers, not a tabloid.

I met World Soccer magazine columnist and veteran soccer journalist Brian Glanville at the media center in Seoul the day after the Americans’ scintillating second-round win over Mexico. Groggy from a lack of sleep on a midnight train from Jeonju (they should write a song about that!), I was unprepared to shake hands with someone I had read for a number of years and regarded as a world-class curmudgeon. In a good way.

So when Glanville said to me upon our introduction, “It’s fantastic, the States doing that,” I did a double take. He wasn’t being facetious in the least. It was genuine admiration for what a soccer minnow had accomplished on the biggest stage of the sport, with literally the whole world watching. The way the Americans played in losing to Germany in the quarterfinals was even more impressive. Without Oliver Kahn in the nets, that imaginary arm coming out of Gregg Berhalter’s forehead and Torsten Frings’ impression of the Venus de Milo, Rudi Völler’s boys might have been busted down to regular Wehrmacht.

Up until that moment, the Yanks had generated more headlines for the heavy security detail that followed the team everywhere just a few months removed from Sept. 11. And for the team’s visit to the DMZ. It was refreshing to write about what the U.S. was doing on the field, and not the larger context of Americans in the world in the newly-coined Age of Terror.

That run for the U.S. in Korea was eventually regarded as a fluke, given the disastrous World Cup cycle that ended in three-and-out ignominy in Germany.

But looking back on that time now, in the wake of the shocking U.S. upset of Spain in the Confederations Cup semifinals, I’m not so sure. Perhaps what has worked against the Americans’ efforts to develop on a consistent basis is timing and alternating levels of expectations.

In recent years, the U.S. seems to have played better with the pressure off. In 1994, the Americans did respectably well under the duress of being hosts, getting to the second round before falling to Brazil. In 1998, with aspirations of matching that performance, they fell flat, finishing dead last among the 32 teams in France. When Bruce Arena took his team to Korea, we weren’t expecting much, again, but a win over Portugal and a draw with the co-hosts South Korea had the U.S. on the verge of advancing. That it lost the only game it was expected to win, the group finale against Poland, was telling.

Going into Germany, the American public had been told that budding young stars like Landon Donovan and experienced hands like Kasey Keller in goal comprised the best U.S. team ever put together. Aside from that bizarre draw against eventual champion Italy, there wasn’t much to back that up.

Now we have a U.S. team that a little more than a week ago was being savaged by the tiny American soccer press contingent. There were plenty of calls for the head of coach Bob Bradley. The style of play and player development that is unique to the States was once again called into question. Also facing the heat were players like Donovan, who at times has shrunk in big games, and Atlanta’s own Ricardo Clark, whose red card in the opening loss to Italy set the tone for what appeared to be another miserable FIFA tournament. After the 3-0 drubbing by Brazil, American soccer bloggers howled in humiliation. Surely this coach can’t go on, and this team must be broken up.

That same coach, and those same players, were pitted in the finals against the new Boys from Ipanema again. After stunning the five-time World Cup winners by taking an early 2-0 lead, the U.S. could not withstand the barrage and fell 3-2. It was still the best finish ever for the Americans in an official FIFA event.

The most impressive aspect of the U.S. win over Spain was that it was so comprehensive, from first to final whistle, from one end of the field to another. There was no fluke here, no fortuitous own goal or late penalty kick to sink the Spanish Armada. It was the Americans taking out the talented Xavi Hernandez, in my mind the best midfielder in the world right now, from his playmaking role. It was stranding the prolific David Villa and Fernando Torres as a result. It was bagging two goals past the fabulous Iker Casillas, who hadn’t conceded even one.

It was a dominant performance, even as Spain peppered Tim Howard’s goal. Donovan has been an absolute lion out there. The central defense has been superb. Jozy Altidore is showing just a glimpse of his marvelous potential. Yet they haven’t gone into convulsions about it, which is a healthy sign. Clark’s perspective strikes a nice balance.

This showing also comes less than a year before the World Cup in South Africa, which means there will be greater attention placed on the U.S. than ever before. There’s still work done to get there, and how the Americans play in the upcoming CONCACAF Gold Cup ought to be scrutinized just as intensely as the Confederations Cup.

So should their massive qualifier at Mexico on Aug 12. Right after Mexico had defeated Venezuela in a Wednesday friendly at the Georgia Dome, Mexico coach Javier Aguirre was asked about the U.S.-Spain match earlier that day. He and his El Tricolor were watching intently as their continental nemesis scored one of the biggest upsets of recent international soccer history. Mexico is fighting like hell to finish in the top three of CONCACAF qualifying and avoid a playoff against a South American team. They understand very clearly how the stakes have been heightened by what happened in Bloemfontein.

More importantly, the Americans are making the rest of soccer world take notice as World Cup qualifying hits its climax all over the planet. This is what’s different about the place the U.S. finds itself in. The Yanks won’t be able to vanish into a post-World Cup lull for a year or three, until the next World Cup reveals them. They’ve revealed all of themselves in South Africa, the good and the ugly, at one of the most critical stages a team can draw back the curtain.

There are permanently raised expectations now for U.S. soccer, and that’s a very good thing.

The Georgia Dome’s soccer debut certainly made Atlanta sports officials happy. The announced attendance of 51,115 also made Soccer United Marketing, which organized the event, very, very happy.

Most of the fans who attended the game, overwhelmingly donning Mexico’s Tricolor of green, white and red were extremely happy as they made their way from all around the metro Atlanta area, Georgia and the Southeast.

Several dozen surrounded the Mexico team bus outside the Omni hotel, cheering, snapping photos and incessantly blowing those annoying vuvuzela horns.

(And for those of you complaining about hearing such a racket on your television during the Confederations Cup, try getting an earful of those blasters inside a domed stadium.)

The Jose Cuervo shooter girls at the Futbol Fiesta before Wednesday's match inside the Georgia Dome. (photo by David Tulis)

At the pregame Fútbol Fiesta, a monument to blatant, overbearing corporate sponsorship, at least a few young couples enjoyed dancing at the Jose Cuervo tent. If that doesn’t make you happy, what will?

And the Mexican national team, testing some young talent with a colossal summer schedule awaiting, might have been the happiest of all after a 4-0 throttling of Venezuela.

“I expected less people, but they deserved the win,” said Mexico striker Carlos Vela, who scored the first goal of the game. “It was great bringing happiness to them.”

Wednesday’s extravaganza at the Dome went off without a hitch — unless you were among the rare souls sporting Venezuela’s burgundy colors. The specially imported real grass was smooth and playable, especially for the young, dashing Mexican club struggling to gain top playing form. The crowd was well-behaved and organized, basking in the communal experience of celebrating Mexican nationality and heritage. The post-game traffic was a nightmare, but expected.

The immediate verdict — Atlanta is now on the map as a spectator soccer destination — is hard to counter. An untapped market in a part of the world that big-time soccer spectacle has long bypassed figures to get increased consideration for future events.

Mexico's Giovano dos Santos (left) scored twice against Venezuela as the man of the first soccer match at the Georgia Dome. (photo by David Tulis)

“You’ll see more of this on a regular basis,” said Atlanta Sports Council president Gary Stokan. “This has a good vibe to it. There’s a pent-up demand for this. I’ve got to give SUM and MLS credit for looking at the future of the [Mexican-American] demographic.”

Even more ecstatic are members of the Latino community who have long awaited a game like this to come to the city.

“I’ve been here 25 years and this is the biggest event for Spanish-speaking people that I’ve ever seen,” said Will Ramirez, director of Estadio Sports, an Atlanta Spanish-language sports media outlet that covers primarily soccer, including many of the metro areas dozens of Hispanic soccer leagues. “They are very happy because this is the first time there has been something like this in this city.”

But Ramirez said that while the Mexican bonanza is nice, next month’s friendly between Club América, and AC Milan, the two most popular club teams in Mexico and Italy, respectively, could draw a more diverse crowd. And a bigger one.

Even the youngest Mexico fans made no doubt of their loyalties. (photo by David Tulis)

“For as many people as there were here tonight,” he said Wednesday, “there will be more then. You will have Mexican and Latino fans. You will have European and African fans.”

Although AC Milan no longer has Brazilian star Kaká, sold earlier this summer to Real Madrid, it still has a star-studded roster that includes Ronaldinho and stars of Italy’s 2006 World Cup championship team.

The Rossoneri, as AC Milan are called, may not field those all of those players in Atlanta, since the match is during a preseason tour of the United States.

So it might be hard to match the happiness factor that erupted around town this week.

“This is my first trip to Atlanta,” Mexico coach Javier Aguirre said. “And I leave very happy.”

Here are some extensive video highlights of the match from Telemundo, where famed announcer Andrés Cantor also was happy calling mucho goles:

Thought I’d pass along some great reads from the world of soccer in the hours leading up to today’s U.S. vs. Spain match in the semifinals of the Confederations Cup and Atlanta’s first international match tonight at the Georgia Dome between Mexico and Venezuela. I’ve tried to find links that have some resonance with the soccer scene in Atlanta, or some other connection to the city, but I don’t want to get too provincial here either:

• John Turnbull is an Atlanta soccer writer, book editor and creator of The Global Game site, a fabulous compendium of stories about the culture of soccer around the world. He’s been in South Africa for the Confederations Cup and here writes about how preparations for next year’s World Cup are resonating through that society:

• American soccer blogging superstar du Nord sits down with Peter Wilt, CEO of the Chicago Red Stars of Women’s Professional Soccer and formerly the GM of the MLS Chicago Fire. This is Wilt’s foray into management of the women’s game, and he makes a shrewd observation that new Atlanta Beat owner Fitz Johnson and his cohorts would do well to keep in mind. The WUSA did engage in girl power and some social advocacy, but not to the degree that is seen in women’s basketball. WPS has to avoid falling into that trap if it wants to successfully market itself beyond its base of young girls and their families:

“I think in women’s soccer there’s a sense that it should be promoted as a cause, a social cause for women’s rights. Girl Power. That was never the case with MLS or men’s soccer. WPS in general, and Chicago in particular, made a point of saying no, this is about entertainment. This is a great athletic sport. It’s absolutely a good thing for women and a good thing for girls. But we really believe that the product as a sport, as entertainment, is worthy of your investment.”

• And finally, the U.S. Soccer site has named Atlanta’s Brewhouse Café as its June bar of the month. That’s been my soccer oasis in Atlanta for many years, and I just may head down there this afternoon to catch the Confederations Cup before going over to the Dome.

What a great day of soccer in Atlanta beyond!

The electronic signboards were flashing their messages in Spanish halfway around the field at the Georgia Dome Tuesday morning as the Venezuelan national team departed, making way for Mexico’s El Tricolor.

Mexico's Giovani dos Santos meets the press at the Georgia Dome.

That would be the real grass field at the Georgia Dome, laid down Saturday for tomorrow night’s friendly between the two nations, in what will be the first competitive soccer contest in the home of the Falcons.

Aside from the red and black seat and remaining Falcons logos, there’s little other indication that the Dome hasn’t been completely taken over by the Mexican soccer federation and the corporate sponsors — four of them based in Atlanta — who are financing this summer’s five-city American national team tour.

Because the Mexican team prefers to play on grass, Soccer United Marketing, the Major League Soccer-affiliated group putting on the tour, is paying an estimated $100,000 for the real sod, which will be pulled up after the game and donated to local organizations.

More than two dozen media representatives gathered Tuesday, and while Venezuelan players were made available for interviews, most of the press snapped photos, shot video, turned on microphones and jotted down notes while talking to Mexican players and coach Javier Aguirre, who conducted a press conference almost entirely in Spanish.

And Aguirre, who recently took the reins of El Tricolor after a slow start to World Cup qualifying, was questioned rather vigorously, and repeatedly, about Mexico’s chances of getting to South Africa next summer.

Awaiting media members at the accreditation table was a glossy 22-page program, “La Ola Verde,” featuring the Mexican team. There was no similar information for Venezuela, a baseball-happy nation that’s the only member of CONMEBOL, the South American confederation, never to have reached the World Cup.

As Atlantans are about to find out — and what many cities across the U.S. have known for some time — when El Tri comes to town, it’s always the home team.

The Sports Business Journal declared the Mexican squad the most marketable soccer property in the United States, ahead of the U.S. national team that has had El Tri’s number on the field in recent years, and ahead of all of the 15 Major League Soccer teams that are currently in mid-season. Attendances, television ratings and corporate interest back up that assertion, and since the Mexican tour began in 2004 new territories are being explored.

Such as Atlanta, with its vibrant Mexican-American community. SUM’s ticketing and promotional efforts have been concentrated along an Atlanta-Birmingham-Charlotte line, but the entire region is expected to be part of the draw that could attract more than 50,000 spectators Wednesday.

“The Southeast area is one that we’ve been looking at for a long time,” said SUM spokeswoman Marisabel Muñoz. “It has been on the commissioner’s radar.”

That would be MLS commissioner Don Garber, who may be in town for the game to discuss long-term MLS expansion possibilities in Atlanta with representatives of Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank, who briefly bid for an expansion franchise earlier this year before withdrawing.

Muñoz said the Mexican team played in Seattle last summer when organizers were skeptical about the turnout, but more than 56,000 attended. Now in its first season in MLS, Seattle’s become a soccer hotbed in North America. So has Houston, where the Mexican team played before the MLS Dynamo relocated from San Jose.

Part of El Tri’s visit to American cities include player and team appearances around game dates. Since Sunday, individual Mexican players, past and present, have been featured at places such as Home Depot and AT & T retail stores — they’re among the Atlanta corporate sponsors — from Gainesville  down to Gwinnett and North DeKalb. Signing autographs, appearing with fans in photos and other promotional work are part of a busy summer that coincides with a break in the Mexican domestic league seasons.

There also was a team event at the World of Coca-Cola — another corporate sponsor. On Wednesday, an interactive “Fútbol Fiesta” fan zone will open in the Dome’s orange parking lot at 3:3o pm.

The Mexican team heads off to San Diego for a match against Guatemala over the weekend, and will remain in the States to participate in the Gold Cup, which is the continental tournament of the CONCACAF region. It’s an event Mexican players are adamant about winning. After that, there’s “August 12,” as Aguirre put it, referring to the date of the U.S.-Mexico rematch in Mexico City’s imposing Estadio Azteca, where El Tri has never lost to its rival.

Georgia Dome officials are used to playing host to big events, but spokeswoman Ashley Boatman said the only different aspect of preparing for this game is the installation of the grass.

“On an international level, it equates to a Super Bowl or a Final Four,” she said. “For fans of soccer, an event like this is a major event.”