The World's Game In The Heart of the Sun Belt

The Atlanta Goethe Institute is celebrating the World Cup with a month-long soccer film festival starting Wednesday and that is open to members and the general public.

The series kicks off with The Miracle of Bern, the story of Germany’s first World Cup championship in 1954, the first year Germany was invited to compete after World War II.

Cost for each film session is $5 for non-members.

The organization is also sponsoring the German Street Soccer Cup slated for June 26 in Sandy Springs. It is open to boys and girls ages 12-16.

The Goethe Institute is located at 1197 Peachtree Street, in Colony Square. For more information call (404) 892-2388 or visit the institute’s website.

Saturday’s European Champions League final is always a terrific appetizer in a World Cup year, and a couple of viewing parties in Atlanta are going beyond the usual.

Soccer in the Streets is sending four metro Atlanta youngsters to South Africa, host nation for the World Cup, and also where the FIFA Football for Hope Festival is taking place.

SITS is holding a fundraiser/ECL viewing party at Diesel Atlanta, 870 N. Highland Ave., from 1-6 p.m. Proceeds from drink specials will go toward travel expenses.

The Bayern Munich-Inter Milan game is also the centerpiece for the first Atlanta Soccer Artfest to be held at the Blue Tower Gallery, 675 Metropolitan Ave. That event runs from 2-11 p.m.

Kickoff from the Bernabéu Stadium in Madrid is 2:30 p.m. and is on the Fox broadcast network, the first time it has shown soccer. Martin Tyler, legendary British announcer who will calling the World Cup for ESPN, will have the play-by-play via the Sky Sports simulcast.

Gabrielle Marcotti has the definitive game preview.

This is a “bye” week in Women’s Professional Soccer, but the Atlanta Beat and the rest of the league are anxiously awaiting news out of St. Louis that could have a dramatic effect on everyone concerned in the two-year-old league.

That’s because the St. Louis Athletica, scheduled to play the Beat on May 29 at the KSU Soccer Stadium, is in dire financial straits, along with AC St. Louis, which plays in the newly created North American Soccer League.

Both teams share the same owners, two London-based investors who purchased the clubs last winter. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch this morning, Athletica lost an estimated $2 million in 2009, the inaugural season of the WPS, which launched in the heat of the recession.

There’s been no confirmation of a report posted Thursday night on the Major League Soccer Talk blog that the St. Louis teams are on the brink of folding. Nor is there a response to a post at Inside Minnesota Soccer that neither St. Louis team has enough cash to finish the season.

The WPS is operating with eight teams this season, including the expansion Beat and Philadelphia Independence. The Los Angeles Sol, which won the 2009 regular season title and featured Brazil’s Marta, regarded as the best female player in the world, abruptly folded before the season.

Athletica features four prominent U.S. national team members in goalkeeper Hope Solo, midfielders Shannon Boxx and Lori Chalupny and forward Lindsay Tarpley. Solo and Boxx are on the American roster for Saturday’s friendly in Cleveland against Germany (6 p.m. ET, ESPN2).

Update: Things are looking a little better for AC St. Louis, but no word yet on the fate of Athletica.

Arthur Blank’s stated preference for a downtown outdoor stadium for the Atlanta Falcons — without a retractable roof that he says is too costly — is catching some flak for more than just that reason, and not just from the folks at the Georgia Dome who risk losing their primary tenant.

As my former AJC colleague Tony Barnhart wrote this morning, without a weather-proof venue, Atlanta risks losing a lot of events that have become a vibrant part of the city’s sports scene.

The Falcons owner and team president Rich McKay point out that an outdoor facility with natural grass is optimal for soccer, and it should be heartening to the Atlanta soccer community that the Falcons’ soccer interest remains strong.

Blank is harboring long-range hopes of landing a Major League Soccer franchise, dependent on a new facility for his NFL team that he has wanted for years. And MLS commissioner Don Garber recently reiterated the league’s desire to have Atlanta on board.

A new Falcons stadium also has been included in the Atlanta venue component as part of the U.S. Soccer Federation’s World Cup bid submitted to FIFA last week, with the Dome as the ready-to-go option.

The Atlanta stadium tussle figures go on for some time, beyond the December deadline for FIFA’s decisions on selecting host nations for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, minus final venue choices.

The threat of not getting an MLS team is the greater concern. Atlanta possesses one of the two critical factors the league has required for expansion or relocation: A committed ownership group.

The other is a proper place to play. If Blank’s dream stadium doesn’t come true, then men’s professional soccer in Atlanta will be the biggest casualty. The Falcons likely would remain at the Dome, along with the SEC Championship game, Final Fours, ACC and SEC basketball tournaments and other events that occasionally are staged there.

Blank has prided himself on making the Falcons organization a positive and influential corporate and sporting citizen, and to a large degree that has happened. The Falcons are no longer a laughingstock, either on the field or in the community. That they’re upfront about their interest in soccer is a boon that the sport in this city hasn’t enjoyed in decades.

But his announcement this week also underscores the tensions that have existed for some time over the promotion of college and professional sports in Atlanta. Soccer could be caught in the squeeze if those differences aren’t resolved about a new Falcons stadium.

Gary Stokan, who leads the Atlanta World Cup bid group and is a former soccer marketer for Adidas, departed earlier this year as executive director of the Atlanta Sports Council and now presides over the Chick-fil-A Bowl, which was spun off from the ASC. He also is the chief operating officer for the College Football Hall of Fame that will be relocating to Atlanta from South Bend, Ind.

A sinister mind might wonder if Blank’s aversion to a retractable roof isn’t just about the costs. If all, or even some, of those events did leave Atlanta, the sports offerings in Atlanta would be reduced, especially during the fall football season. There would be less competition for the Falcons for the attention (and dollars) of Atlanta sports fans not fanatically tethered to the exploits of UGA, Georgia Tech, or other college teams, etc., etc.

Admittedly, that’s an Oliver Stone scenario. The Braves, who play in summer, have been outspokenly in favor of having pro sports promoted better. They don’t have any serious competitive threats to their season, since both the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream and the revived Atlanta Beat of Women’s Professional Soccer are in very small niches. An MLS team would be in a bigger niche.

In 1997, after the Braves moved to Turner Field, a local soccer group that included Phil Woosnam felt extremely chastened as it fought vainly to preserve Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium as a soccer venue.

The old home of the Braves was absolutely going to be razed, but there were suspicions that the Braves, and Robert Dale Morgan, Stokan’s predecessor at the ASC, were either hostile to a bigger soccer imprint in Atlanta or at least indifferent to it.

An outdoor stadium built for the Falcons would mean not only keeping the possibility of MLS alive, but also having it stage friendlies such as those last year and this coming summer at the Dome, World Cup qualifying and other big-time soccer events.

Atlanta could finally become a major soccer city and shed its notorious fragmentation in that sport. There’s time to make something work with or without the World Cup coming here, but right now the larger Atlanta sports community appears to be very divided.

At the U.S. World Cup training camp in Princeton, N.J., Soccer By Ives correspondent Franco Panizo talks to Ricardo Clark and his battle to get fully healthy after recovering from a calf strain that sidelined him for most of the winter and spring:

“I feel ready, I have the mentality that I’m always going to be ready. I played the last three games of the season, played full 90 minutes and felt fit so I think I’ll be good for this camp.”

The first national television audience to view the Atlanta Beat at its new home at Kennesaw State University witnessed the same old result for the expansion club.

The Washington Freedom downed the still-winless Beat 2-0 before a crowd of 3,112, less than half for last weekend’s home opener.

Women’s Professional Soccer does have a better television presence than the Women’s United Soccer Association. But the weekly WPS game on Fox Soccer Channel on Sunday evenings isn’t conducive to a good home draw, especially with school still in session.

The Beat is off this week and will entertain St. Louis Athletica on May 29 in the first Saturday night home game of the season.

On Saturday night, the Atlanta Silverbacks women opened their 2010 season with a 1-0 win over Hampton Roads as Kay Harbrueger got the game’s only goal in the first half.

The Silverbacks remain at home this week and will play host to the Tampa Bay Hellenic on Saturday.

The Atlanta Beat is still looking for its first win in Women’s Professional Soccer, and getting it against the Washington Freedom (6 p.m., KSU Soccer Stadium, Fox Soccer Channel) is no small task.

Beat goalkeeper Brett Maron, profiled here by former USA Today soccer writer Beau Dure, appreciates the opportunity to compete at the WPS level after playing in the Icelandic ranks, where she met Beat coach Gareth O’Sullivan.

Maron also appreciates the environment in Atlanta that makes it comfortable for her to be openly gay.

The Atlanta Silverbacks women begin their W-League season at 7:30 tonight at RE/MAX Greater Atlanta Stadium.

Creative Loafing previews a team that reached the semifinals in 2009 and is aiming for more.

On the men’s side, the Atlanta Blackhawks of the PDSL play host to Nashville at 6:30 p.m. Sunday at Alpharetta High School in their home opener.

The “book” has been handed over in Zurich, by U.S. defender Carlos Bocanegra, and into the hands of the folks at FIFA who in December will choose the host countries for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup tournaments.

Atlanta, of course, is one of the 18 venue cities included in the bid, both for games as as the city for an international broadcast center. The World Cup draw would be held in Miami with the opening match in the montrous House That Jerry Jones Built in the Big D.

The BBC breaks down the bidding field of nations, including the oddsmakers’ lines. They’re not so good for the U.S. in 2018, but there isn’t a line for the Yanks in ‘22. What’s up with that?

Of course, if it is later rather than sooner, maybe Arthur Blank will have a new Falcons stadium.

If the Brits don’t get the World Cup in ‘18, after the Beckham Factor on display in Switzerland, then they’re never going to get it again. Jeez, even The Daily Telegraph gives him some op-ed space for all this

And these “books” look about as thick as Congressional legislation, don’t they? Will Sepp Blatter and the Lords of FIFA be inclined go through these any more than the garden variety Capitol Hill backbencher?

After all, Josep has publicly said he does like the bid by Qatar, for the purely political reason of having the World Cup in the Arab world, and therefore expanding his geographical power base from one end of Asia to another.

You know where to keep up with the Atlanta World Cup efforts at its Web site and Facebook page. Here’s a list of local tournaments, festivals and other events in Atlanta tied to the bid effort.

And here’s the U.S. bid’s promo video that may or not get a look in Zurich with decision day less than seven months away:

Calling all fans, players and coaches of the Atlanta Ruckus, especially from the 1997 season:

Want to be involved in a book project?

A British author writing a biography of the late Justin Fashanu has contacted me looking for material from his Atlanta Ruckus days.

From the questions posed it sounds like the Atlanta portion of his life is something the author is straining to research.

If you have something you’d like to share about Fashanu for the book, e-mail me at atlantasoccernews@gmail.com and I can get you in touch with the writer.

If you’re not familiar with Fashanu, a little tragic history: He played here briefly in 1997, not long after becoming the first (and still only) openly gay British soccer player.

After he left Atlanta, he latched on with the A-League Mania in Maryland, where he was charged with sexually assaulting a teenage boy.

Fashanu denied the allegations, but not long after that he fled to Britian, committing suicide in London.

Earlier this year his niece Amal, the daughter of John Fashanu, a star player in his own right, joined an anti-homophobia campaign in the U.K.

What’s been rumored for several weeks was made official today: Soccer is returning to the Georgia Dome this summer.

For the second time in as many summers, the home of the Falcons will play host to an international friendly, this time on July 28, pitting Club América of Mexico against Manchester City of the English Premier League.

It’s formally called the Atlanta International Soccer Challenge, and for a time tickets are a (comparatively) cheap $25 a head. If you wait until late June (with World Cup frenzy heating up) the tickets start at $40.

So welcome, Atlanta, to the expensive international soccer friendly tour.

I only mean that partially tongue-in-cheek, because it’s another audition for Atlanta as a World Cup venue with FIFA due to decide on the 2018 and 2022 events later this year.

On Friday, the U.S. Soccer Federation formally sends its World Cup bid to FIFA on Friday, and that package includes Atlanta not only playing host to games but also to be the site for the World Cup international broadcasting center.

It’s a feature that Gary Stokan, head of the Atlanta bid organizing committee, has been discussing for nearly a year.

Here’s more on the Atlanta bid.

The game features a returnee from last year’s World Football Challenge. Club América, one of the most popular teams in Mexico, will face Manchester City, which has splashed out nearly $300 million in new players since being purchased by an Abu Dhabi conglomerate last year.

Yet City managed to finish only fifth in the Premier League, three points short of earning place in the European Champions League qualifying.

By the time of its American tour, City may well be going through another major makeover. Briefly put, this club is one of the big soap operas of global soccer, and there’s no telling who’s going to make the trip or even take the pitch at the Georgia Dome.

So think about that before you open your wallet.

The idea, of course, is to support spectator soccer in Atlanta, which has had a checkered history of support. Crowds of more than 50,000 turned out for each of the games at the Georgia Dome last year, and a similar draw is likely.

The first big international soccer match in Atlanta also involved Manchester City, which came over to play the Atlanta Chiefs in 1968. That was the last year City won an English top-flight title, while the Chiefs won the inaugural North American Soccer League crown that year.

Over at The Global Game, his most excellent site on soccer and culture, my friend John Turnbull writes about when soccer contagion first hit Atlanta.