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Thursday at a Glance
Major League Soccer All-Stars test their skills
Latest: Thursday July 27, 2000 03:20 PM
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Columbus' Matt Chulis (right) and Newcastle's Gary Speed chase down a loose ball in Wednesday's exhibition match. AP |
By Jeff Green, CNNSI.com
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Mayor Michael B. Coleman didn't proclaim this "soccer week" in Columbus for nothing.
Columbus Crew Stadium -- the premier soccer stadium in the United States solely by virtue of the fact that it's the only major venue built for the sport -- stands to see two of its largest crowds since its 1999 inauguration.
On Wednesday night, a boisterous crowd of 18,212 showed up to see the Crew come back to draw 2-2 in an exhibition against Newcastle United of the English Premier League on an 84th-minute goal by Jeff Cunningham.
"This was a tremendous way to start off All-Star week here in Columbus," said Crew coach Tom Fitzgerald. "I am very pleased with the way we battled back to earn a tie here tonight."
Major League Soccer officials say a sellout crowd is expected Saturday afternoon for the fifth All-Star Game in league history. As of Wednesday night, only 200 tickets remained for the 22,555-seat stadium; once those are gone, standing-room-only tickets will be sold.
The All-Star Game returns to an MLS city this year for the first time since 1997, when it was held at Giants Stadium in New Jersey.
A substantially smaller if more dedicated crowd should be on hand Thursday at 6:30 p.m. for the MLS All-Star Pro Skills Challenge, which follows the Kellogg's Bowl national youth soccer competition.
It ain't the Home Run Derby or the Slam Dunk Contest yet, but you will find players signing autographs (only with sponsor BIC pens, of course) and spectacles such as D.C. United's Marco Etcheverry and Jaime Moreno playing "Air Soccer" against Carlos Valderrama and Mamadou Diallo of the Tampa Bay Mutiny.
While the All-Star Game matches East vs. West (the six teams west of Columbus against the hosts and the five teams to the east), the skills challenge pits the players against each other along divisional alignments -- Eastern, Central and Western.
The contests are Air Soccer, or "soccer tennis;" Fastest Man, a two-stage race run partly with a ball and partly without; Goalie Wars, where keepers compete to protect their nets; Gol Olimpico, similar to "around the world" in basketball; Power Shot, using radar guns to measure shot speed; and Bull's-eye, a shooting-accuracy challenge.
You might need to set your VCR if you want to watch the festivities on television. It airs on espn2 at 1 a.m. EDT on Saturday morning.
In a private event later in Thursday evening, MLS tips its hat to Ohio's top 100 soccer leaders in the All-Star Salute to Soccer at the Columbus State House.
In Wednesday's night's match at Columbus Crew Stadium, the Crew may have played without some of its top players, including All-Stars Brian McBride and Dante Washington, but Newcastle is just beginning its preseason in preparation for an August 20th opening game against Manchester United.
The concept of an All-Star Game might be foreign to the English Premier League -- and nobody would sanely contend that MLS is on par with the Premiership -- but Newcastle coach Bobby Robson said soccer in the United States is heading in the right direction.
"In a month's time, our team will be better," Robson told the Columbus Dispatch. "That aside, the standard of American football is better than I thought. I'm quite impressed. You're doing OK."
Robson, whose team lost to D.C. United 3-1 on Saturday, said he was also impressed with Columbus Crew Stadium, though he did note its lack of cover from the elements.
"It's a terrific stadium," he told the paper. "It was a great atmosphere."
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The only game in town
Though they will soon be joined by the NHL's Columbus Blue Jackets, the Crew are currently the only "major" professional sport in town. That is paying off this All-Star week in media attention, with a color photo highlighting solid coverage on the front page of the Columbus Dispatch sports section, and at least one local TV news broadcast leading off its sports segment late Wednesday night with coverage of the Crew's draw against Newcastle.
All-Star curse
Two would-be All-Star reserves were stricken from the lineups on Wednesday. Galaxy goalkeeper Kevin Hartman will miss at least three weeks after arthroscopic surgery on his left knee; he was replaced by Fire keeper Zach Thornton. MetroStars defender Daniel Hernandez will miss the rest of the season with a torn ACL in his right knee, suffered Tuesday during the MetroStars' 3-0 win over the Tampa Bay Mutiny in the U.S. Open Cup. Here's hoping the skills challenge goes off injury-free.
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| Players to Watch |
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Big Mama's house
Don't be surprised if Mamadou Diallo appears motivated in Saturday's All-Star Game. The Senegalese forward is the MLS leading scorer, with 18 goals in 21 games, in his first year in the league, but he wasn't voted to the starting lineup by fans. He's not happy about it. "The people need to vote on the players who proved it on the field," he told the St. Petersburg Times. "That's the difference between here and Europe; here, everything is politics." Despite being courted by foreign clubs including France's Metz, Diallo says he's happy in MLS, but if the league wants to keep him, "they're going to have to do something for me."
Heaps of respect
West coach Bob Gansler of the Kansas City Wizards said no rules were laid out for his selection of eight reserve players, but, he told the Columbus Dispatch, league officials "said it would be 'nice,' that's a quote, it would be really 'nice' if there were two [players] from every team." Gansler said he had no problem with that, but apparently East coach Octavio Zambrano did. He chose just one Miami Fusion representative, defender/midfielder Jay Heaps, making it the only team with one player in Columbus.
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| Bandwagon |
| Alexi Lalas
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For the casual sports fan, there might still be only two American soccer players who could be identified at first sight. One is Los Angeles Galaxy forward Cobi Jones; the other is his 1994 World Cup teammate, Alexi Lalas. While Lalas ended his playing career last season at 29, he is still doing his part to boost the sport. The red-haired, goateed rocker recently replaced former U.S. teammate Roy Wegerle as a studio co-host on espn2's MLS Extra Time, adding much-needed life to the broadcast.
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| Lamar Hunt | |
Nobody could be higher on tonight's list of the top 100 soccer leaders in Ohio than Lamar Hunt, the investor-operator of the Crew and the Kansas City Wizards. Hunt maintained his dedication to the game despite the collapse of the North American Soccer League in the 1980s, helped get MLS off the ground and then went one step further than anyone ever had -- he shelled out more than $20 million of his money to build a stadium in the league's smallest market. It's an example that the league hopes will be followed by its other investors, with the Los Angeles Galaxy perhaps being the next team with a more appropriately sized home to call its own. |
| You, the fan
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You know who you are -- the fans who voted two of Major League Soccer's biggest busts into the All-Star starting lineups. Despite being more of a distraction than a leader with the MetroStars, veteran German libero Lothar Matthaus was chosen among the East All-Stars. Lining up for the West is star Iranian attacker Khodadad Azizi, who has as many red cards as he has goals (1). While they may yet prove their worth, they haven't earned their honors this season.
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