sprawler? nah man, its sprawler lime

If it were up to Anheuser-Busch's Bud Light division -- department: Lime, specifically -- my summer wouldn't qualify as having even started yet, despite the calendar now reading August/Agosto. (I haven't brought one out, sadly. I'm presuming I won't by autumn, either, by which I'll have then denied myself a summer, which may or may not retard the space-time continuum.) Now, quite frankly, that's horseshite. I don't need lollipop beer to a) actually provide the feeling of a cavity during its formation and b) try to disparage the amount of interest I've feigned towards the States' Summer of Soccer! -- the Confederations Cup and subsequent is-this-it? debate, The Beckham Experiment and subsequent catfight, Gooch to Milan, a jejune Gold Cup (best documented here, which you should have read already), a god damn ESPY award, the friendlies and their astonishing attendance -- feigned but still consumed, every last morsel, licked cleaned from its plate.

How pleased was I to learn appetizers were officially over this past weekend, that it was time to get on with the pertinent? Sure, the first to kick off 09/10 was the Eredivisie, and thus (thanks to Deportes) I was afforded PSV's opener against just-promoted VVV-Venlo; a game not trancing children into the piss-dance from stimulation but a game worth actual points nonetheless. I had sort of forgotten what an invested crowd actually sounds like (there is a difference between invested and demented, Mexicans); the PSV faithful's acoustics and tone were more than helpful in reminding everyone but their own team (3-3 draw) that this one mattered, that this had implications, that this shit was on. Give me that over a preseason friendly any day, mastodons and HD be damned (unless taken in live, which is a different contextual beast entirely).


Now I'm atop no apple crate here, bellowing "brothers and sisters, come hither!" ; for mostly in theory but also a fair amount in actual action, the Peace Cup lapped the other friendliments (not to be mistaken for friendly mints) tenfold, and could even perhaps have been dubbed as "interesting". Four teams staging four games in two days? Please -- try a dozen teams, from ten countries in four confederations, complete with a group stage and semifinals -- close your eyes and you could dupe yourself into thinking it actually possessed some meaning. And maybe it did. If Juve display a similarly raunchy performance on spot-kicks during the season as they did in the Final, it might not be that naïve to launch blame that way, though in turn it might be very. And more so it could hold varying degrees of weight for the Peace Cup 2009 Champions, the lil' engine that could (but probably won't), Mad Marty's Aston Villans. A benign trophy in the bank, perhaps the exact consolation deserved for the two-thirds of last year where they had us all going reeeal nice-like.

But perhaps most so for -- you guessed it -- a Damn Yankee; Brad Guzan, who won't be the opening-day starter for Villa this year but surely now will be the second World B. Friedel (Berman, eat your stomach out) leaves the post, in case O'Neill had had any doubt, which is probably one of the prominent litmus tests he had outlined coming into the tourney. Yes, all three botched takes by bianconeri were of their own doing, but Guzan did what was laid out in front of him to do, including equipoising ADP's stare and telling him to take his guile and fuck right off (not to mention the saves and clean sheet preceding the penalties, and the tournament's performance preceding that). He, like so many 'Merican keeps and now our national (A, not C) team before him, have shown they at least have the, or at least enough, mettle, be it with seismograph-consistency or what have you.


So why can't it just be about that then, the growth and the betterment? I know how loaded an inquiry that is, but most of what's trodden in this are cul-de-sacs, seemingly posed to piss off the US soccer contingent. Need every discussion of the sport in the mainstream media waste no time in putting everything in terms of "Is it soccer's time?", no matter the story? It's as though they think their connotation won't be sniffed out, asking not really if it's time but if it's time for them to actually have to pay attention to it -- rather akin to similar debates concerning MMA, a comparison at once horribly laughable and laughably horrible. Many are quick to criticize the elitism coupled with following soccer, and are then even quicker to be bovinely elitist towards it. Why doesn't get golf get this kind of slung mud? It's slow, it's boring, it's European, perhaps all in higher doses. (...alright, not more European.) I've watched but one golf tournament the past, I don't know, seven years; Tom Watson relieving himself in the Fountain of Youth last month, which was as large of a white whale as you're bound to see in sport. Has golf arrived then, really? (Shortsighted? Absolutely -- but I can only really use myself as a barometer anyway, however obtuse that is, and the name on top of this page doesn't read Birdie me, Ballesteros!, now does it?)


I'm probably in the minority here, and the cynic's cap doesn't fit my head all that well (or it does and I think I look putrid in it), but it just isn't fully complying why soccer has to become a leading name, as though that's actually even possible. Why can't it stay a cult sport? The MLS can (and should and hopefully will) grow and grow and grow like Dubai's skyline and it still won't be anywhere near the NBA, let alone the NFL, or even Major League Baseball, so why all this burlesque conversation?

Yeah, you're right, obvious-but-unsatisfying-reason-why, that it's la hostia in pretty much every other nation on the planet. But xenophobia is as ingrained an attribute in the Yank psyche as is the hush-hush looting of other's customs, and since soccer isn't exactly hush-hush anymore, we've come too far now to embrace it wholescale. It's not that it won't happen, but soccer's ephemeral rise this summer will be forgotten once pro/college football commences, and further once baseball's postseason starts, and furtherer once basketball season begins; to lay dormant in its niche until June 11, 2010. This is because it was remembered this summer beside Brett Favre, Michael Vick, and steroids in baseball -- not exactly the sexiest corral of topics. So why all this disrespectful fuss about vogue when all that seems to ever be in vogue is backhandedly complimenting the sport and its followers? Can't we just enjoy this?

Now, I've ruined these pants a tad early, I recognize, as the SOS has yet to have found its proverbial conclusion, on the twelfth in the Azteca, which if there's some or any sort of divinity will provide the US with a befitting cap to a fascinating summer, of which I have proof I experienced (fuck Busch!) through an inordinate amount of passive-aggressive soccer and a birthday suit uncannily resembling the Peruvian flag.

bet he's never even heard Counting Crows

It's probably best this topic waited until after the game today, in hindsight. It just needs to be stated, it's too easy to just Pinpoint (!!!!) that that absolutely heinous red card's victim occupied the same position that Jermaine Jones happens to play. If only because Jones can't be guaranteed to have not made the same uncouth challenge as did Ricardo Clark on Gattuso. That's part of what makes JJ (as I'm presuming we here will soon take to calling him) and his capitalization on FIFA's new ruling so intriguing; his game is not American as per what was witnessed on the field against the Azzurri today, but instead features facets that would pull the US team closer to some sort of identity they've so lacked for so long.

Jones, in both alias and appearance, kind of just exudes "American". He looks more like an NBA player, complete with most of his tattoos done in English, and who at one time even had straight-up Chris Bosh hair. He plays a bit like a free safety in a Cover 2, complete with reckless abandon and constant caviling and running off at the mouth. I guess athletes from every pocket of the world say outlandish and/or inappropriate shit these days, but Jones does it in spades; he conveniently then just committed to a country wherein, God bless him, Chuck Barkley got arrested for getting behind the wheel drunk while Jonesing (shameless pun) for a hummer, careened through a stop sign, and came back to work even more beloved in but two months time.


None of this really means anything, I know. I like Ricardo Clark (and Mastroeni), I really do (and Mo Edu, too), but you'd have to be about halfway through a peyote trip to deny that JJones isn't an upgrade of some form in every aspect besides true Americanness, whatever the fuck that is. With him hopefully affixing severed heads upon wooden sticks in midfield and Michael Bradley frolicking around in face-painted glee right beside him - well, the US would have something there, albeit with a decent German influence. But it couldjustmaybefingerscrossed be with a twist couped from the American sporting quo; not just getting stuck in, but, for lack of more eloquent terms, getting stuck the fuck in. Like Kobe the last couple of years, or Bob Sanders at his best. It might be a tremendous pipe dream, and Jones probably isn't capable of the whole of it, but I have no problem taking greens with Jermaine (you know he would) and seeing you all on the other side. (pinpoint me, pirlo - where idioms go to be abused and die)

I've heard David Regis' name mentioned as a forebearer, but that shit's completely apples to oranges in my book. I don't think it's worth mentioning the difference between father and wife in terms of heritage, other than growing up a military brat, partially in Chicago - indeed, within the United States' borders - is far more qualification than a Walter Sobchak converting to Judaism for his ex-wife and her pomeranian. Jones is 27 years old - no spry chicken in footballing terms, but as a potential American citizen? Might as well be statutory that he can play for the US after three friendlies, but a) who really isn't all for demeaning the significance of the profligate friendly and b) if you were Bob Bradley, what other choice do you have? This "acquisition" doesn't guarantee anything for the Red White and Blue, but it does give them a devil-will-care machete with which to maneuver the South African jungle of the next calendar year.