| | CHICAGO -- "Well, I'm in the gym six days a week, I'm taking some horseback riding lessons, and I'm watching the Yanks and the Mets. Not doing much else."
So says Doug Logan, Major League Soccer's former commissioner, as well as one of modern professional soccer's most interesting casualties.
Today, just two months after he was unceremoniously booted from his
post, Logan is something of a forgotten figure. He's keeping a low profile, to be sure, but to hear Logan speak about it you get the distinct sense that he's
still got the door open -- it's just that few are coming to call. Sure, he's
chatted with his replacement, Don Garber, "four or five times," but MLS
really doesn't figure into Logan's life these days: "I've seen a couple of
games from the stands.
"I've told Dr. Bob (Contiguglia, president of USSF) and the General
Secretary (Hank Steinbrecher) that I'm available for projects in the future
that I might be helpful with," says Logan. "And I've been asked to be the
Cuban liaison for the national team's trip down there next spring, but
that's about it."
Logan's curious absence from the soccer stage is symptomatic of a lot of
the modern American game's ills. Once again, a person with international
experience is being left out of the loop by those in power. At best, this is
wasteful.
I'm not bringing this up to urge anyone to give Logan a job, by the way --
the reason I called him in the first place was to get some perspective on
the way the league looked two months after he left the office. He sees it as
pretty much the same, and is adept at saying all the right things, ergo:
"I'm still bullish on soccer in this country, still bullish on MLS."
Yet, as I was chatting with him, I got a distinct whiff of Woosnamitis, the condition wherein those who labored in the vineyards but lost a political battle are consigned to the scrap heap.
There are many other cases: take Timo Liekoski, for example. He's over in
Finland, doing whatever it is Finns do, instead of helping the league over
here; it's worth noting that his Columbus Crew team remains substantially
unaltered since his firing, and the players that he identified in the initial
draft remain at the head of the MLS class. How about Octavio Zambrano? OK, he wasn't well-liked, but then again, that wasn't his job. Why isn't MLS
tapping him to shore up the Hispanic audience, which is surely drifting away
from this league? For that matter, why hasn't USSF tapped Logan -- a Cuban -- to bulk up their Hispanic promotional efforts?
One of the great criticisms of MLS -- and the USSF, in fact -- is that it is
too choked with marketing guys and not enough soccer guys. I'm not sure I
agree, but there is something curious about an organization that can't find
room for people that do know the biz -- in every other sport, coaches who
get canned invariably turn up as assistants or aides or GMs because they
know the game, and are therefore a valuable resource.
Soccer doesn't seem to work this way: It's my way or the highway, and that
leads to alienation, across the board.
Take Hispanics, for example. They can rightly assume that MLS isn't
really paying attention to their support of this young league, as it has
managed to ditch its Spanish-speaking coaches in almost every market. Logan, who speaks fluent Spanish, was a shrewd salesman to this group, having the courtesy and wherewithal to address them in their own language at press conferences.
Logan spent last week in Las Vegas, watching the CONCACAF Champions Cup, and his
take on that tourney is illuminating. "It showed me that there isn't an
audience for an MLS team in Las Vegas, though I have no idea how it was
promoted," he said. "The crowds were disappointing, and they were largely there to root
for Necaxa or Alajuela. It reaffirmed to me the importance of the Hispanic
fans for MLS, because they were the ones who showed up."
Logan also has an eye toward one of the other problems bedeviling MLS at
the moment involving the Hispanic audience, that being the wholesale poaching of fans
in MLS cities at key times by Mexican national and club teams.
"In the last 18 months, there have been 31 games played here in MLS cities by Mexican teams," says Logan. "That's a huge number of games. It's troubling."
In fact, there are three such matches coming up this month alone: Mexico
will face Paraguay at Soldier Field on Oct. 13, Ecuador in Houston on
the 19th and Colombia in San Diego on the 21st. Not to mention the
CONCACAF Gold Cup qualifying, which gets underway Thursday night in Los Angeles.
All of these conflict, at least indirectly, with MLS games: If Chicago finishes second, for example, the Fire will then play a home playoff game three days after the Mexico-Paraguay match. Dallas could be home three days before the Ecuador game, and the San Diego match could pose a conflict with the Galaxy.
The Gold Cup is at least being staged when the Galaxy is not home, but the
fact that there is a limited audience for soccer means that the Galaxy will
likely suffer lost ticket sales as a result.
That's not an absurd leap of logic. Just ask the Fire, who saw their gate
drop precipitously after a series of Women's World Cup matches and friendly
games had exhausted the pot. "There's a finite audience for soccer," said
Fire GM Peter Wilt at the time.
Of course, as Logan notes, there is an irony here of complaining about a
surfeit of games: "We've gone from six years ago, when there were virtually no games, to this conversation here about having too much soccer.
"What this all means is that the marketplace will right the situation,"
says Logan. "MLS has to be on its toes and produce some quality events.
People having soccer choices is good for MLS, but in the long term, in the
short term, the day before and the day after, it's gonna hurt."
This is a situation complicated by USSF's apparent unwillingness to stand
up to the Mexican Federation and refuse to sanction the games. The federation's feeling
(echoed by Logan) is that it would be an unfair restraint of trade; however,
what MLS and USSF really should be thinking about is how FIFA would react were they to shut the Mexican Federation out.
And here's the answer: FIFA wouldn't -- in fact, they have backed up every federation which had tried to limit such poaching in the past. Were it to come right down to it, let the promoters try and take USSF to court; either way, American soccer wins. On the one hand, FIFA doesn't take kindly to legal challenges to federations. On the other, a court case would likely take a great deal of time to be resolved, buying a window for MLS.
But what USSF and MLS might need more than anything right now is a voice to speak to the Hispanic fans and federations, and there's certainly a guy that could do that in Logan. Right now, American soccer doesn't speak Spanish -- and it has to, for its own sake.
As for Logan, he's still out on the road, looking for something to do. "I
have no ill will or hard feelings," he says. "I had the good fortune to be
at the tiller for a while."
Jamie Trecker, editor of Kick! magazine, writes regularly for ESPN.com. You may e-mail him at jamie_trecker@go.com; while he guarantees he will read all letters, he regrets that he cannot guarantee a reply because of overwhelming volume. | |
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