Much Ado About Nothing

Ahh, the sweet stench of desperation: Jaime Moreno & the MLSers lift some sort of trophy. Lean in close - you can almost hear "We Are The Champions" playing in the background.




Another slow week in the soccer world, as evidenced by the lack of activity here at World Soccer Blogger, but don't fear - we can always find something to complain about...

On Saturday, the MLS All-Stars beat Chelsea 1-0 in a friendly in Chicago. From their World Cup-worthy trophy presentation and ensuing celebration, you would've thought that the game actually mattered. From the league executives to the coaches and players, everyone talked about the growth of the league, the newfound respect that the victory would bring, and how it signalled that MLS, in beating England's best club team, had finally arrived. Um, not exactly.

As Jose Mourinho went to great length to note, Chelsea was in week two of their pre-season; this was their first pre-season game and it featured a slew of players that up until late July could be found enjoying cocktails and sunshine on the beaches of the Mediterranean and Caribbean. Chelsea's squad was just gearing up for a long season and, mainly for marketing reasons, were forced to play an away game in the sub-Saharan heat engulfing the United States in recent weeks.

Meanwhile, the MLS All-Stars were in mid-season form, they were playing in front of their fans in their All-Star game, and they had far more at stake than their opponents. If Chelsea won, it would just be a meaningless victory when there are far bigger games just weeks away - it would be a nice way to start the season at best, a completely meaningless exhibition win at worst. If the All-Stars lost, it would be another damning indictment of the low quality of play in MLS. So when the All-Stars emerged 1-0 victors, it was to be expected that the MLS players would be relieved, while the Chelsea players were more concerned with their post-game trip to Holland; instead, we got a celebration that rivalled scenes from July 9 in Berlin - all it was missing was Dwayne DeRosario cutting off his ponytail.

Look, as an American soccer fan (not an easy plight in life, trust me), I want MLS to succeed as much as anyone. There are good players (DeRosario, Adu, Albright, Ching, Moreno to name a few), great new stadiums (this was the first game played at Chitown's new Toyota Park), and a real determination to become a top-notch soccer league. While I conceed that we might be able to chalk this fiasco up to growing pains, the post-match celebrations can only be described as embarrassing.

There's an expression that we always repeated to the team I used to coach: "Act like you've been there before." Well, dancing around like you just won the Champions League after winning a friendly is not the way to do that. The way to earn respect is not to celebrate beating a team that cared more about signing autographs in L.A. than winning a friendly - it's to gather a collection of top-notch players, give them the chance to play in world-class stadiums, and let the quality of play speak for itself. Instead, MLS danced around like a horny drunk girl at a nightclub who'd inhaled one too many tequila shots - and just as that's not a pretty picture, neither is the sight of a league virtually begging to be liked, noticed, and respected. Desperation is a stinky cologne, MLS, and on Saturday in Chicago - scoreboard aside - you stunk up the joint.