I'm On The Third Half

Yours truly will be on the airwaves again, this time joining my good buddy Johnathan Starling, host of The Third Half, to preview teams A-F in the Premiership. We recorded a couple solid segments yesterday afternoon, and the podcast will become available for download on iTunes at some point later today after its first airing on CSRN. You can also, of course, listen to the show on CSRN, and on Sports Byline.

It's a weekly, hour-long show devoted primarily to MLS and the Premiership, and I encourage everyone to have a listen to any of the first nine episodes that John has put out so far. I'm honored to be his first guest; it meant a lot that he asked me to come on. My spot comes towards the end of the hour, so keep your ears peeled for that, but enjoy the rest of the show as well.

I'll be back on The Third Half again next week, and possibly the week after, to talk about several more clubs as we get closer and closer to the start of the Premiership season. As I wrote here on Monday, my full previews start tomorrow here at English Soccer Talk, and I'm looking forward to hearing your feedback on the show and my team capsules.

Arsenal Is Now a Selling Club

Every day, I start off the morning surfing around various sites and checking for interesting stories or issues relating to, most often, the Premiership. You all know by now how much I despise the summer (in the soccer world, that is, not in real life) and the gossip used as filler to pass the time until August, when the new season kicks off.

Two leading media outlets in this country -- ESPNsoccernet and CSRN -- have raised the question in recent days of whether or not Arsenal is now a "selling club". Soccernet's Norman Hubbard believes Arsenal could be for the next 20 years (http://soccernet.espn.go.com/columns/story?id=555120&sec=england&root=england&cc=5901), while my colleague at CSRN, Johnathan Starling, takes the opposite viewpoint and doesn't believe Arsenal is a selling club even now.

When you simply look at the Gunners' domestic and international prestige, not to mention the fact that they're a perennial top-four team in the Premiership and a participant in the Champions League, it would be hard not to agree with Starling. More often than not, success doesn't come cheaply, and sustaining success is even harder to do without spending money.

We've seen this in England with Chelsea, a mid-table team until Roman Abramovich bought the club and invested hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars to launch Chelsea to the status it enjoys now. We've seen it with Portsmouth, who you could count on to finish in the lower half of the league until a wealthy Franco-Russian-Israeli businessman, Alexandre Gaydamak, became the sole owner of the club in July 2006. We've seen this here in the States with the New York Yankees and now the Boston Red Sox, and especially in college football and basketball, sports traditionally dominated by larger, public, well-endowed universities.

Upon closer examination, though, Arsenal doesn't fit that same mold anymore. To me, they're still a successful club, although those with different definitions of success have every right to disagree with me, but they're not doing it in the same manner as any of the teams mentioned above.

It seems like too many people attach a negative stigma to the term "selling club", and they're wrong for doing so. Look, soccer is a business just like any other professional endeavor: it's all about the bottom line, money. How much money can you make, or perhaps to put it another way, how much money can you save while not compromising your high standards and still putting a good product out there for the consumers.

There's nothing wrong with being a selling club, just like there's nothing wrong with buying every player in sight if that's what you want to do. It's a personal choice made by those in charge, the ones spending the money.

Arsenal just moved into a new ground, Emirates Stadium, after spending decades at Highbury, which had become a charming but antiquated and out-of-date stadium for the North London club and their large fanbase. It takes a lot of money to build new, state-of-the-art stadiums, and the Emirates was no exception -- cost of construction was roughly $860 million for a stadium that can seat 60,355 people. That may be chump change when compared to the new Wembley Stadium, also in London, which took four years and over $1.5 billion to construct, but still, the Emirates didn't come cheaply.

To pay back the loan required to build the Emirates, Arsenal needs to bring in a surplus of $48 million a year for the next quarter century. Ticket prices are rising every year and fans who love their club will deal with it and pay the extra money, but that alone isn't going to completely repay the debt. Arsenal also has to rely on bonus money from playing in the Champions League and from finishing at the top of the Premier League, not to mention merchandise sales and other financial efforts that are based off the field.

Manager Arsène Wenger has earned a well-deserved reputation over the years of having one of the keenest eyes for talent in the game. He buys players when they're young, often times in their mid-to-late teens, and cheap, then brings them through Arsenal's youth system and, if they develop sufficiently, into the first team. If/when they play well enough at the highest levels, raising their values, and if/when Wenger sees fit, he sells them off, thus making a huge profit on his original investment. He then takes that money and spends it on more young players, and then the cycle repeats itself again. Remember, this is a man who holds a Master's degree in economics; he knows what he's doing.

We've seen this model most recently with Lassana Diarra, who was sold to Portsmouth last winter, but perhaps most famously with Patrick Vieira (signed for $7 million, a relatively large sum by Wenger's standards, then sold to Juventus for nearly $27.5 million) and Nicholas Anelka (signed for $1 million, then sold to Real Madrid only two years later for just over $44.5 million). We're going to see it continue the future with players like Kolo Toure, who was signed for just $300,000 from Belgian club ASEC Mimosas, Cesc Fàbregas, who joined as a 16-year-old from Barcelona, and perhaps as soon as later this summer with Emmanuel Adebayor, who came to Arsenal from Monaco for a reported $6 million but could be sold for anywhere upwards of $50 million.

He is loyal to his players, but only to a certain degree. He'll stick by them when it suits him and the club, but when he believes it's time for them to go, even if they'd essentially devoted their lives to the club and contributed significantly to the club's success like Thierry Henry, Freddie Ljungberg, Robert Pirès, and Martin Keown all did, they go.

Wenger refuses to pay his players a salary that would break his traditional wage structure, meaning that no matter how good Cesc Fàbregas becomes, it's likely Arsenal won't pay him what he could make at that same point in time as, for example, Inter Milan, AC Milan, Barcelona, Real Madrid, or Manchester United. Wenger would rather sell Fàbregas to one of those big clubs and take the transfer fee and replenish the already-thriving youth system he's helped create.

He had the opportunity to raise Mathieu Flamini's wages when other teams became interested, but he declined and let Flamini walk to AC Milan without getting a pound in return. Instead of paying Flamini, a very good holding midfielder with the ability to get forward, what he could get elsewhere, he let his fellow Frenchman go, showing his steadfast desire to stick to his guns.

Wenger beat the likes of Manchester United and Everton to bring in Aaron Ramsey from Cardiff, who's only 17 and, in a not-so-coincidental anecdote, will wear #16 with Flamini's departure. Ramsey is an extremely talened (for his age) center midfielder, which Arsenal have plenty of already, and probably won't play more than a handful of games for Arsenal's first team this season. He may make a couple appearances in the Carling Cup, which Wenger seems to use as a glorified training ground for his young players, but likely won't play in the Premiership. Wenger may or may not be around for many more seasons, but there should be no doubt that if in three or four years, Ramsey could bring a substantial return, he'll be moved elsewhere.

Even the cost of Arsenal's high-profile signing this summer, 21-year-old Samir Nasri, formerly of Marseille, was basically offset by the sales of Aliaksandr Hleb to Barcelona and Gilberto Silva to Panathinaikos. The net sum of players brought in compared to the net sum of players sold is generally very close to equal for Wenger, and rarely does it exceed more than $10-12 million, which is play money these days in the Premiership.

Like I said earlier, this is an interesting issue that had been brought to my attention recently. Arsenal doesn't buy established, big-name players like Chelsea, and won't pay to keep players at the Emirates when they become superstars. It's a personal philosophy that Wenger and club executives clearly believe in, and even if the fans don't agree, it's not necessarily about them. Yes, the club has the responsibility to provide its customers with a capable product, but at the end of the day, those who foot the bill are the ones who get to make the decisions, not those who benefit or don't benefit from those decisions.

In Arsenal's case, a clear pattern has emerged during Arsene Wenger's tenure and it's one that favors young players over veterans, cheap over expensive. It has brought the club success, but the question is, can they maintain that success in a global soccer market fueled by large amounts of money more so now than ever before? We'll see.

I'm On The American Soccer Show (Part II)

Hopefully everyone enjoyed my segment on the American Soccer Show last week with Kartik Krishnaiyer, a good buddy of mine. We had a good chat about the Euros and the US National Team and the feedback I've gotten so far has been positive, so I appreciate that.

Living where I do in Virginia (at least I until this fall, when I head up to Erie, PA for my second year of college), I get a chance to follow DC United fairly closely. They're playing very well in MLS right now and advanced in the US Open Cup last night with a victory over Rochester, and ABC reached a record audience in United's 4-1 win over the LA Galaxy last weekend immediately before the Euro 2008 final. Players like Luciano Emilio, an early MVP candidate, and Marcelo Gallardo are extrememly fun to watch, so keep an eye out on this team heading into the dog days of summer.

DC United was the topic du jour for Kartik and I in our segment today, which will hit CSRN's airwaves on Friday at 2 PM and iTunes shortly thereafter. With SuperLiga upcoming, we previewed United and their chances as they're in a group alongside Atlante and Guadajalara of Mexico as well as MLS' Houston Dynamo. We discussed their recent surge in form and some potential landmines down the road. We touched briefly on SuperLiga itself as a competition and where it ranks on the pyramid of importance for United.

Check it out and have a listen Friday afternoon; hopefully you'll enjoy it.

I'm On The American Soccer Show

For those of you who have enjoyed the previous audio spots featuring myself as a guest, it's your lucky day.

This week on CSRN's American Soccer Show, hosted by my good friend Kartik Krishnaiyer, I'll be on twice for one segment each (about 12 minutes long). Kartik and I recorded the conversation that you can hear starting tomorrow night, either by subscribing to the hour-long show on iTunes or by heading over to CSRN's website (www.csrnusa.com) and navigating your way to the American Soccer Show archives.

We had a good chat about Euro 2008 and how it's been received in America, then covered the US National Team and their recent friendlies against England, Spain, and Argentina, as well as their 9-0 aggregate win over Barbados to move on to the next round of World Cup qualifying. I posted the first part of my E-mail interview with Kartik concerning the USNT a couple weeks ago and will have the second half up either tomorrow or Wednesday.

I'll also be on later this week after the Euro 2008 semifinals have been played, so we'll probably get into those games a fair bit then.

Check out the show and feel free to give me your thoughts. If all goes well, something bigger and better could be on the horizon...

Interview with Kartik Krishnaiyer

As I mentioned several weeks ago, there is an ongoing commitment from me to make English Soccer Talk better and to make the site grow. I've been working on lining up interviews with several pundits both in this country and in the UK, and a rough plan for a podcast that would debut later on this summer is still on the backburner.

You'll see the first of these interviews a little later in this post. This is the first part of a conversation with my good friend Kartik Krishnaiyer, who you all will remember from his college basketball podcast which I appeared on several times last winter.

Kartik is the co-host of The American Soccer Show along with Dave Denholm, and you can listen to their show weekly on CSRN. Kartik also maintains a blog for CSRN, American Soccer Spot (http://csrnusa.com/ussoccerspot). He is an expert on all things concerning the US National Team, both at the senior and youth levels, and MLS.

On this site, the main focus is obviously English soccer, but as an American, I have a vested interest in the national team and covered the U-20 World Cup in Canada last summer, in which the US played very impressively, winning their group (beating Brazil 2-1 in the process) and reached the quarterfinals before being eliminated by Austria in extra time.

The senior team has been in the news recently and is two games through a three-match series of friendlies against impressive opposition -- England, Spain, and Argentina. They haven't come away on the right end of the stick thus far and haven't played particularly well in the process, with a 2-0 loss in England at Wembley and a 1-0 loss in Santander, Spain, but are gaining a little bit of credibility around the world by going out and playing some of the world's top nations.

With these results in mind, I asked Kartik specifically about the US National Team and what he sees in the squad and the way it's currently configured. He went to Wembley for the US-England game, so there was no better expert to turn to for first-hand insight and analysis. I also asked him briefly for his pick to win Euro 2008, which starts in less than two days. Here's the first part of our conversation:

After watching the recent friendlies in England and Spain, what were your impressions of the US team in those games and the direction in which they're headed?

"The quality of the US National Team has regressed substantially since the early part of this decade. That's hard to believe when you consider the player pool is deeper than ever, our domestic league, MLS is better than ever and that the game is more popular than ever here in the U.S. But since 2006 we've seen the international retirements of Brian McBride, Claudio Reyna, Eddie Pope and John O'Brien. All four of those players were far superior than the players that replaced them and this has not only affected the quality of the US squad but the style the US has traditionally played. This is something that speaks loudly about player development in the US: we are not at the stage we thought we were in that we are not able to simply replace aging and retired players very easily. That is evidenced by the continued prominent role old veterans Frankie Hejduk, Eddie Lewis and Pablo Mastroeni continue to play in the US setup."

Speaking of that game at Wembley, I know you were there in person to watch. What were your impressions of the new stadium and how was your overall experience in London? As an American, were you frowned upon by the native English fans?

"Wembley is an awesome facility. It's large but still has outstanding sight lines. The facility is easily accessible via the tube and bus. I used the bus to reach the stadium, and returned back to my hotel via the Bakerloo line of the overground and then the tube. As an American it was a difficult night. The English fans were in many cases rude but others were curious about the US team and MLS. Some English fans were actually very interested in specific players in MLS like Rohan Ricketts and Terry Cooke."

Bob Bradley -- He's taken a lot of heat for his team's uninspiring performances over these last couple of weeks. Is he the right man to be leading this team into the World Cup (hopefully) in 2010, or should USSF perhaps look towards a foreign manager?

"I was firmly in Bradley's corner until recently: I felt he did a good job in 2007 of deepening the player pool and giving looks to some players who had been overlooked by Bruce Arena. However in 2008, despite some good results (wins over Sweden and Poland) Bradley has fallen into a pattern of picking the same players albeit in different positions and has reduced Landon Donovan, our best player to a wide midfield position where he sees less of the ball than ever before. Donovan is the key player for the US and passing him over for captain and then reducing his role in the attack was a bad idea. Even worse, Bradley has a clear bias much like Arena did towards players he has coached at the club level."

Heading into the start of World Cup qualifiers this summer, what do you think the starting XI and formation should be for the US? Because Bradley can't seem to settle on one specific way to play or group of players to play with.

"I think the US should play a 4-5-1 or a 4-2-3-1. But Bradley prefers a 4-4-2, which is odd considering the US is one of the few countries that really has never used a 4-4-2 with our national team. We've played a 5-3-2, 3-6-1, 3-5-2, and 4-5-1 respectively in our last four World Cups. The US has traditionally used wide flank play with the likes of Cobi Jones, Eddie Lewis, Frankie Hejduk and others to stimulate our attack, which is why a 4-4-2 never worked for us. The current 4-4-2 utilizing two holding midfielders is a disaster.

Here is my ideal US starting XI (4-5-1):

GK: Howard
RB: Cherdundolo (Hejduk)
CB: Onyewu
CB: Orozco (Bocanegra)
LB: Pearce
DMF: Edu (Mastroeni)
RMF: Dempsey
LMF: Lewis (Beasley)
AMF: Donovan
AMF: Adu
ST: Cooper (Altidore)

For qualifying I think it is critical to take advantage of Eddie Lewis' veteran savvy and his ability to get down the flank despite being 34. I like the idea of starting Michael Orozco who was a key member of San Luis run to the Mexican Clausura playoff semifinals and the US Olympic qualifying team because he is now used to playing in front of tough latin styled crowds . I also like the idea of playing Kenny Cooper a tall target forward up top. The players in parentheses are acceptable replacement starters for the player named."

What do you think the differences were between our U-20 team's success in the U-20 World Cup in Canada last summer and the way our U-21's bowed out woefully in the Toulon Tournament in France just a couple weeks ago?

"The squad. Thanks to MLS' insistence on playing right through international breaks as well as the Mexican League playoffs, a weakened squad was sent to Toulon. That having been said the US has a long history of doing well in U-20 and U-17 World Cups only to see the very same players fade at the U-23 and full international levels. One bright spot from Toulon was the play of Sammy Ochoa whose club in Mexico, Tecos missed the playoffs. Expect to see more Mexican-American players like Ochoa and Orozco who are eligible to play for either nation and who play their club football in Mexico involved in the US player pool going forward."

Who is your pick to win the Euros, and why?

"Germany. They have the most balanced and experienced squad. I like Frings and Schweinsteiger in the midfield as well as Mario Gomez one of the emerging stars of German football in the attack."

So there you go. I'll post the second part of our chat sometime early next week. Kartik makes a lot of good points about the US and the relationship between MLS and USSF, which is in charge of the national teams. From other conversations I've had with him in the past, he and I aren't quite on the same page regarding the senior team, especially on the abilities and performances of Oguchi Onyewu, but we're definitely in the same chapter, if you will, and hope for good things to come from them in the future.