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International intrigue FIFA scrambles to settle Player of the Century snafu
Talk about screwed up elections. When FIFA decided to name its male and female Players of the Century -- the rough equivalent of the Vatican naming its Catholics of the Century -- it had the spectacularly dumb idea of relying on an Internet poll. Sure enough, rumors began spreading late last month that Diego Maradona had outpolled the more deserving Pelé, while (even more unjustly) China's Sun Wen had beaten American Michelle Akers. When Akers received an invitation to FIFA's award gala last Monday in Rome, there was no way she was going to drag her battered body across the Atlantic (she's still recovering from shoulder surgery) to watch somebody else win her award. "So I made several phone calls," Akers told me. One of them was to FIFA president Sepp Blatter, in which Akers explained she wouldn't come unless she had won. Blatter soon left a message for Akers. "You've won," he said. Meanwhile Sun (in Florida for last week's WUSA draft) had a letter from FIFA telling her that she, in fact, had won the prize. In a ridiculous compromise, both women (and both men) took home awards. Sun and Maradona had indeed won the Internet polls, and so FIFA cooked up a last-second way of saving face, assembling a committee that chose Akers and Pelé as its winners. In the end, those two were anointed Players of the Century, while Sun and Maradona won something called "the FIFA Internet Award," which made them sound as if they were -- what exactly? A couple of cool Web sites? The most shameful part of the mix-up is that FIFA could have truly honored U.S. soccer and helped answer the great barroom debate: Who's better, Akers or Mia Hamm? But even though Hamm is the sport's all-time leading scorer and has won three world titles to Sun's zero, Sun somehow out-polled Hamm in both the Internet and Committee votes. (Understandably, Hamm was the only one of the three invited women not to show up in Rome.) Comparing Akers and Hamm is like debating DiMaggio vs. Mantle, and while Hamm may be the clear choice by the time she's done playing, I'd pick Akers simply because she's the most dominant women's player of all time and has played better than Hamm has at the major tournaments. Nothing more, nothing less. Then again, Akers and Hamm may yet get a chance to go head-to-head. Laughably, FIFA announced this week that it will name the best male and female players of all time when the organization celebrates its centennial in 2004. A word of advice, guys: Scrap the Internet polls next time. Arena tips January camp rosterLeaving no stone unturned, U.S. national team coach Bruce Arena will call in a wide variety of players when he opens the first training camp of 2001 in Chula Vista, Calif., on Jan. 5. According to Arena, the 26 players include a few veterans not seen in a while (Mark Chung, John Harkes and Roy Lassiter) along with a slew of youngsters and other new faces (DaMarcus Beasley, Carlos Bocanegra, Jeff Cunningham, Matt Jordan, Pablo Mastroeni and Josh Wolff). Some of the other invitees are Chad Deering, Chris Henderson, Chris Klein, Tony Meola and Zach Thornton. The camp is the first of four that will take place before the Americans' World Cup qualifier on Feb. 28 against Mexico. Arena says the main focus of Camp I is to take a look at "MLS players on the young side," but it's also clear that he'll be giving one last shot to Chung, Harkes and Lassiter. Camp II will run from Jan. 22 until the U.S.'s friendly against Colombia on Feb. 4 and include a few European players, Arena says, along with members of the L.A. Galaxy and D.C. United, which will be competing in the CONCACAF Champions Cup in January. Camp III will assemble on Feb. 14 for an as-yet-unreleased friendly, after which Arena will marshal his best men for Camp IV the week before the Mexico game. Whither the U.S. Player of the Year?When I asked Arena whom he considers the national team's Player of the Year, his non-answer was actually a pretty revealing answer. As possibilities he mentioned Cobi Jones ("The statistics show that he had a good year."); Chris Armas; Claudio Reyna; Jeff Agoos; and Brian McBride. Moreover, Arena said, "Tony Meola's play in MLS speaks for itself." The underlying theme, of course, is that nobody did anything particularly outstanding to earn the award. Jones isn't even starting these days. Armas and McBride had injuries, while Reyna got himself suspended for two qualifiers. Agoos was solid enough, but David Régis deserved the nod over him as recently as August. Finally, Meola may have been superb in MLS, but he played in only one qualifier. It's enough to make you wonder: Do you have to give a player of the year award at all? And the answer, of course, is no. That's not an insult to the U.S. players, who accomplished their main goal of reaching the final round of World Cup qualifying. It's merely a reflection of the turnover in the lineup and a year that was OK -- hardly a disaster, but by no means memorable. Which is a long way of explaining why I didn't send in my Player of the Year ballot -- and why Arena finally gave up on choosing a winner and told me, "It's not my job to pick player of the year awards." SI Staff writer Grant Wahl covers soccer and is a regular contributor to
CNNSI.com.
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