At the risk of sounding naïve—actually, check that. Embracing naïveté with two magnificently clenched thighs, riding naïveté down through the upper atmosphere like the bomb in Dr. Strangelove, I can’t understand why I’m supposed to accept that “the point” of the Gold Cup was to audition players for South Africa. Why wasn’t the point of the Gold Cup to, you know, win the Gold Cup?
You: Soccer in the modern era is a complex hydra-headed thing and competitions have to be prioritized and managed and it’s all a balancing act and compromise and targeted expectations and the conservation of resources.
Me: Yes, I’ve heard that.
But I want to suggest—and again, I say this with the concentrated innocence of a body pillow that will one day be made the legal bride of a 35-year-old Japanese virgin—that this whole system has out-finessed itself.
Seriously, if there were a player who showed the kind of craft and subtlety that we routinely employ in judging the importance of soccer tournaments, he’d be spending the summer professing his loyalty to his current employer while not saying anything to discourage Real Madrid. Think about this. Had we lost 2-0 to Mexico in the Gold Cup final, no one would have cared; we would’ve been all insouciant and “but think of all the guys who got international experience out of this.” But since we lost 5-0, it was suddenly a national emergency. Dear, mild Christopher Sullivan was calling out Bob Bradley’s selection policy on TV. Soccer blogs staged fantasy executions that spilled almost as much imaginary blood as real electric ink.
What, exactly, as fans, are we supposed to do with that? How are we even supposed to prepare for a game when we don’t care if we lose it, but do care if we lose it by a lot? We’ve gone way beyond saying a tournament is important or unimportant, like it’s a switch that we flip. We’ve put the thing on a dimmer knob, and we’re actually taking in tournaments at just the right softly ambiguous level for a dinner party with semi-decent wine.
Now, obviously, this isn’t only an issue for America, and it isn’t only an issue for soccer. Lots of sports, at least outside the monolithic season-playoff-championship structures of the major American leagues, suffer from confusion over which competitions are the ones people are meant to care about. Boxing’s probably the most obvious example, since at any given time over the last hundred years there may have been an actual champion, or there may have been a group of mugs holding some percentage of the 237 variously sanctioned belts. But soccer has taken this to the point that barely a week goes by when we don’t find ourselves watching a team not quite trying to a win a game they’re not exactly interested in—to the point that this is such a distinct match genre that it ought to have its own name, the way some late-season games are called “six-pointers.” (Maybe a “half-pointer”? Maybe a “Sisyphus game”?)
So what’s the problem with this? To put it very, very naïvely, the problem with this is that it isn’t fun. Whatever sport is supposed to do for us, whether you think it’s entertainment or food for the spirit or an excuse to drink liquors and opine, it clearly isn’t supposed to make us endure this kind of strategic quasi-defeatism. To put this another way—and try to suspend your reality-based objections for a second and just imagine this simply—what would have been more fun, the Gold Cup we just watched or a Gold Cup in which the American stars who beat Spain last month went all-out against the best players from Mexico? What sounds like more fun, a Gold Cup that was a semi-unimportant chance to give some untried players a run-out, or a Gold Cup that people cared about like it was the continental championship it’s supposed to be? That people cared about, say, the way they care about the European Championships?
You: But we have World Cup qualifiers coming up. We can’t wear everybody out. Plus, we can’t risk messing up anyone’s European career. For God’s sake, the Gooch is at A.C. Milan!
Me: I know. I don’t know what I’m thinking. Clearly no other continent is able to stage a championship that good players play in and everyone tries to win. Clearly that is an impossible goal, as I was just thinking to myself yesterday when watching a clip of Joan Tomàs scoring the winning goal for Spain in Euro 2008.
Anyway, I understand that this is how things are, and there aren’t any immediate fixes for it at either club or national level. (Oh, but what the hell: make participation in national cups optional; make the Europa League a single-elimination tournament [which would actually make it more fun than the Champions League on some levels]; tie continental championship tournaments to World Cup qualification; make Franz Beckenbauer the FIFA czar of enforcing the rules on clubs that hold their players back from international tournaments and make the penalty for infraction a weekend seminar hosted by Franz Beckenbauer. None of these suggestions is a joke, by the way.)
I just think that amid all the hands-being-wrung-so-hard-they-spontaneously-burst-into-flame that’s followed the Mexico game, we could stand to realize that part of the problem is that we’ve created a continental championship that no one knows how to feel about. If we had a North American championship that unambiguously mattered—or if, to go even more pie-in-the-sky, soccer were organized so that, you know, teams were motivated to win the competitions they entered—our current outrage-or-not wouldn’t be complicated by the fact that we treated the Gold Cup as a clinical trial to determine whether Kyle Beckerman was a World Cup-quality player. (Since there was obviously so much uncertainty on that point.) Instead, we got what we got, and as is so often the case in this sport, wound up who knows where.
Read More: Football as Drama, Gold Cup
by Brian Phillips · July 29, 2009
Although come to think of it, I’m not sure that body pillow is really all that innocent.
Best thing I’ve read about the Gold Cup. Well done.
And yes, the body pillow story gave me nightmares when I read it. Especially the guy that says that it’s part wife, sister, and daughter.
The doubly strange thing about the Gold Cup is that sometimes it’s of paramount importance — in 2007, when it qualified you for the Confederations Cup — and sometimes it’s meaningless.
And then in 2007 we sent Eddie Johnson and the Layabouts to the Copa immediately afterward. Apparently we have the wherewithal for one major tournament per summer, which means two things: 1) we should not participate in two, and 2) there should damn well be something in even years that aren’t World Cups.
great post. agree with Evan.
this whole thing has been muddled in my mind. i would sit watching the games and i wouldn’t know if i should get angry at a missed tackle or bad pass or if i should just write it off as a nothing tournament with our B/C team.
this tournament should only come around every four years like the euro. then it would matter. make it worth something, and not just a way to see the young guys.
Bradley would have been murdered in the press (even more than he already has been) if he would have brought a clint dempsey or a gooch to this tourney and one of the them got hurt and couldn’t play at the azteca in august.
What Charley said. Hold the Gold Cup every four years, not every two, like they do for the EUROs. We could have had at least two worthwhile WCQs out of the way in the time it took to have this year’s Gold Cup, and it wouldn’t have been completely upstaged by a preseason tournament with one Mexican and 3 European clubs. All the American fans that would have gone to a meaningful WCQ went to Chelsea v. Inter instead. That alone should tell you how woefully CONCACAF is managing the Gold Cup.
The point about fun is dead-on (and I don’t know that I’ve heard it isolated so succinctly as the root problem with meaningless competitions, which I’ve had plenty of time to ruminate on as a fan of a successful MLS team that enters at least one competition every year that it doesn’t even pretend to care about) and I think the fix is, rather obviously, exactly what you suggest (with the caveat that there are plenty of interests who aren’t interested in this): reduce the number of games.
The Gold Cup, as one example, is a great tournament exactly every four years (even if it lacks the quality of the Euros), and would greatly benefit from eliminating the extraneous 50% (edit: I see Dave made exactly this point).
But the idea that less is more is rather counter-intuitive, particularly for the bean-counters, as it relies on the unquantifiable and unmerchandisable to tip the scale in the direction of less. Too bad.
Oh, and I just read that body pillow story. I might be the guy who got “the talk” from a woman who chose to date Douchey McManwhore instead of me, but damn if I don’t feel so much better about myself now.
Agree with everyone who’s suggested holding the tournament every four years; that should have been in my original list of fixes.
Also, Charley, I agree about Bradley—it never makes sense to blame the manager in a situation like this (same with O’Neill in the UEFA Cup last year). Out of everyone in the game, the manager has to be the most unsentimental realist, and these guys are just playing the actually existing terrain. Change the terrain and they’ll act differently.
My view of the problem, from across the atlantic is, by virtue of distance, less focused on the northern part of the American continent.
If there is one thing that i would change in the FIFA structure is the existence of North American and South American Confederations.
Merge them together and make the US and Mexico and Brazil and Argentina have to go through a World Cup Qualifying stage similar to the one that exists in Europe, Africa and Asia.
That would eliminate the need for a “Gold Cup”, as it would be replaced by an expanded format of the Copa America, for which everyone would have to qualify. Having qualifiers against the good south american teams is the way forward for the US and Mexico teams to advance and evolve. It would also give a World Cup birth for all the qualified nations a bit more value.
Also, at club level, having the MLS clubs play the Copa libertadores and the other club competitions, against top brazilian and argentinean competition (and all the other good clubs), would do wonders, both for the economics of the competition and the sporting level of all involved.
Build this, and in a few years the center of football could well be moved further west, from it’s European centric map.
Joao:
Flight distance between Chicago and London: 3963 miles.
Flight distance between Chicago and Buenos Aires: 5559 miles.
Flight distance between Washington, DC and Madrid: 3791 miles.
Flight distance Washington, DC and Sao Paulo: 4726 miles.
That’s just one reason why combining CONCACAF and CONMEBOL will never work, but really, do you need another? Do you think anyone at Gremio and Boca Juniors wants to spend that much time in the air just before a Copa Lib contest in Seattle in February?
No one is suggesting that UEFA and AFC combine into one confederation, so why does everyone want to do the same with North and South America? They’re two different continents. Let it go.
Dave:
Flight distance between Lisbon to Moscow?
Flight distance between Lisbon to Astana?
Flight distance between Melbourne and tokyo?
and yet they all play in the same continental qualifying zone.
Also:
Members of UEFA: 53
Members of CAF: 53
Members of CONMEBOL: 10
Members of CONCACAF: 40
If Mexican teams play in the Libertadores, what is the reason that would make a US team, a bridge (flight) too far?
I know that they will never merge. I just think that it would be the best way forward, both in terms of the economics and the sporting quality of all involved.
I just can’t understand why Heaps got called up. It makes no sense.
Lisbon to Moscow is 31 miles less than New York to Los Angeles.
Also, Mexican clubs withdrew from the Libertadores, and I think they’re still offended enough that they won’t be back for at least a few years.
As to why US clubs wouldn’t want to compete in the Libertadores, simply put, no MLS owner would pay the airfare, and the players aren’t paid enough to want it. Plus, the Copa Lib starts in late January, which is the MLS preseason. If you think MLS has a disadvantage in the CONCACAF Champions League because of its schedule, try tacking on 9K frequent flyer miles for each group stage match. No club in Brazil or Argentina wants that, either.
If there were a way to combine CONCACAF and CONMEBOL for international qualifying without combining the club competitions, that would be a different story. But I don’t think FIFA would allow that, nor do I think either confederation would buy into that.
As to why CONMEBOL only has 10 nations, well, blame Brazil. They’re bogarting all the land space down there. ;^)
Dave:
So you would agree that, at the present stage, it would be good for all of american football that both the Continental and World Cup qualifiers were to be played by all of the represented nations in both CONMEBOL and CONCACAF, right?
As for club competitions, maybe that would be a stretch, i concede. However i still think that it would be a dream scenario.
Imagine a Corinthians Vs New England semi-final and a Cruz Azul Vs LA Galaxy tie, for such a prestigious competition…
Maybe not now, but one day… a man can (and should) dream!!
(and also, Lisbon to Astana, Kazakhstan 3836 miles – 5 time zones)
Joao:
Maybe. But until Richard Branson and Virgin Galactic can get an entire football club from London to Syndey in 2-3 hours, it’s not gonna happen.
Dave, Mexican clubs are back in the Libertadores now. Apparently Chivas and San Luis have already been given a place in the final 16 of next year’s competition, as an apology for being withdrawn last season. And then there will be three other Mexican clubs in addition to that, for five in total (equal to Brazil’s allotment).
I agree that a unified “American” confederation would be ideal, eventually, but it’s probably not very likely to happen soon. In the meantime, I’m sure the US and Mexico enjoy their almost ensured qualification for every World Cup.
I would like to see Concacaf (mls teams) play against more south american opposition, and your proposal to merge the two is intriguing.
Maybe there could be three different groups from within the American mass – north, central/Caribbean, and south?
And great piece Brian. The Gold Cup really tossed a wrench into the US “linear improvement” machine.
Quick note: there is now a sizable population of American soccer-fans/zombies forever doomed to walk the earth moaning, “But why did they play Jay Heaps?”
About combining the confederations: I think its a great idea. To me, the problem with the Gold Cup is twofold:
1) It happens too often; this has already been addressed.
2) Its not so much a competition as a series of exhibitions leading to the inevitable Amero-Mexican culmination. Being the best team in North America only means something to the US/Mexico because it presupposes being better than Mexico/US. The competition features two top level teams (in terms of fanbase, population, and quality, etc), and everyone else. Its like playing an Iberian Championship between Spain, Portugal, and Andorra, except with 40 Andorras. Do we really care about proving that we are better than Panama and Nicaragua?
The only way to fix the second problem is to expand the competition and add more meaningful nations. In Europe, there are at least a dozen teams that could conceivably win the championship, thereby making the proceedings incredibly exciting. This is an attribute that the Western Hemisphere could easily duplicate if it combined the Confederations.
Panama tied Mexico and Honduras has more EPL players than Mexico.
I really think its only a question of time before the minnows become fish. And not piranas, but also not guppies. Globalization means the cream of the Catracho crop is starting to get noticed in Europe and skipping the MLS sideshow.
Abolish the Gold Cup and expand the Copa America.
Or rename it the Ambivalence Cup and never broadcast it again.
Reminds me of last year play, still the Gold Cup is “Gold”.