Caught in Possession

I had an interesting conversation with Dave Lifton after Saturday's DC-Chivas game. Talking MLS, the topic of perspective came up -- specifically, the viewpoint of a club's dedicated fan versus that of a journalist, or the proverbial "neutral," and the like.

I am probably oversimplifying here, but in the interests of brevity, Dave described how the instability and uncertainty that loomed over MLS in the years following 9/11/01 contraction helped inspire him to take more of a documentarian's approach to the small, brave, weird happening that was/is the latest stab at a successful soccer league in the United States of America. If we don't think about it, talk about it, write about it and remember it...eventually, someday, it won't have happened, right?

So then I finally got to read the full text of the interview Adam Spangler (who is the brains behind TIAS) recently conducted with Frank dell Appa, the longtime soccer writer who has lately been reassigned from the Revolution/soccer beat to the NBA/Celtics beat by his Boston Globe paycheck-writers. Great stuff, hinting at powerful emotions:

"We need people to write about it, that know the game, that played it when they were kids, or play it now. And they can see the world game which is what we need. That all helps the sophistication level that is the one thing we don’t have. We haven’t observed or coached in a sophisticated manner and that’s gonna take some time. Hopefully that is going to happen, but the media is just as guilty as everybody else of not being there at the level we need to be at."

And for something completely different (or maybe not?)...who knew Brent Musburger was such an *sshole?