This is the identity that Detroit City FC have pinned themselves to. An instantly recognizable civic symbol of Detroit, and one that suggests sophisticated urbanism rather than suburban soccer.

One of the leading figures behind Detroit City FC, Sean Mann, spoke to Pitch Invasion this week about the new club, who will begin play at the fourth tier of American soccer in the NPSL this May.

You can listen to the full interview with Sean below, or over on iTunes.

Sean explains how Detroit City FC sprouted from an urban soccer league (Detroit City Futbol League) he began a couple of years ago: “When people think of Detroit, they think of a big blob of decay,” Sean said. “But in reality it’s a city with a whole slew of neighborhoods that often get overlooked. So my idea was let’s get people together, let’s build up neighborhood pride and neighborhood recognition. For me, the perfect vehicle for that was soccer.”

That vehicle, according to this piece at model D, quickly proved to be a great success:

Here is a puzzle. Create a program that can achieve the following results:

1) Rally hundreds of motivated, young Detroit residents around a single cause. 2) Highlight 22 different historic neighborhoods throughout the city, and create unique branding for each. 3) Get the crowd out to a different bar, in a different neighborhood, each week. 4) Double the number of participants by the second year. 5) Get 10 people to pack up and move to Detroit.

This sounds like a job that will need a lot of financing, committees and sub-committees, and months planning with a large team in place to implement, right? Wrong. This is what happens when you start up a soccer league in Detroit.

League Commissioner Sean Mann started the Detroit City Futbol League last year as a way to bring city residents together, to celebrate the rich fabric of neighborhoods that make up the city, and to bring the 18-and-over crowd together over something other than frustrating politics.

Detroit City FC aim, at the grassroots level of the NPSL’s essentially semi-pro fourth tier of American soccer, to tap into that urban crowd, and bring them together in the city to support a team consciously striving to appeal to adult supporters and participants already in love with the sport.

“Our core focus is on using this team to build the supporters culture, to boost the supporters culture that’s already here in Detroit and give them a bigger platform,” Sean explained.

Sean tells Pitch Invasion how Detroit City FC’s identity came about, who’s behind it and their hopes for the future. Give the interview a listen to learn about an unusual approach to building a soccer club in North America, and special thanks to Sean for joining us in a special extra episode of the Pitch Invasion podcast.

One correction: we mistakenly identify the Michigan Bucks as playing in USL Pro rather than USL PDL.

Yet if you ask most Americans about this victory, even some seasoned footy fans, they will likely shrug at you in indifference. The reason might have something to do with ESPN’s coverage of the 2002 World Cup.

ESPN Drops the Ball

As many football purists are loathe to admit, the popular perception of a soccer match is often shaped by its representation on television. While 60,000 fans look on in the stadium, many millions more are at the mercy of two voices naming names from an isolated box hovering over the pitch, while camera crews provide intimately detailed angles of the on-field action revealing what live onlookers can only imagine. We might naively believe that the football beamed in to our homes is unsullied by its mode of presentation on TV, but to paraphrase fellow Canadian Marshall McCluhan “the medium is the football.”

USA 3, Portugal 2 should be proudly remembered in America, but instead, ESPN’s inept, uninformed and jingoistic coverage of the event alienated seasoned soccer fans even as it confused newcomers to the game. Ice hockey references were unnaturally grafted onto the action by Jack Edwards, current play-by-play announcer for the Boston Bruins, who shouted, “he shoots, SCORES!” when O’Brien knocked in the opening goal. By the time Brian McBride bagged USA’s third, Edwards, with no hint of irony, remarked in full voice, “Mine eyes have seen the glory!”

This unnatural, flag-waving attempt to Americanize a game that already had a distinct national history (including a healthy, St. Louis-based league interest prior to 1930 and the Miracle on Grass in 1950) did nothing to preserve its autonomy or capture its unique American flavor. Viewers new to soccer were left with the image of a very slow hockey game played on a big grass rink, while Edward’s unrelenting patriotic exhortations underlined that the match was worth watching only to witness the USA beat the rest of the world at their own game.

Certainly the political climate, one year after 9/11 and in the midst of the early build-up to the second Iraq war, may have played a role in EPSN’s patriotic approach. America was on the path to increasing isolation from her international neighbours; a bit of jingoism at the world’s most followed sporting tournament was in keeping in the spirit of the moment, even as it countered ESPN’s stated goal to popularize the game itself.

Getting it Right

Flash-forward six years to ESPN’s coverage of Euro 2008. Instead of Jack Edwards, we had two seasoned British commentators, Adrian Healey and Derek Rae, in addition to colour commentator Andy Gray, a voice familiar to viewers of Sky Sports. ESPN also offered live, uninterrupted coverage of every game from start to finish. No ads for Ford suddenly covering half the screen during the attacking build-up play, no giant banners appearing from nowhere to advertise some horrific sitcom to air later that night, no tape delay, and no presenter trying to serve as interpreter for an audience presumed not to know or care about the sport.

Many have remarked on the significance of this change from previous years, singling out ESPN’s radical decision to dedicate daily, live coverage to an all-European tournament. The Globe and Mail’s John Doyle called it nothing less than ‘revolutionary,’ and Robert Weintraub’s excellent summary forcefully concluded that ESPN’s coverage will be the first step in “…clearing out the morons who feel it necessary to rip what they don’t understand by exposing them to what is great about the sport.” But could network television coverage alone be enough to move the sport from the perceived left-wing elitist fringe and into the American mainstream? The answer might lie just north of the border.

Back in April 2007, much ballyhoo was made by liberal media outlets of Toronto FC’s perceived popularity among the city’s many first and second-generation immigrants. While this had a nice ring to it in Toronto’s multicultural capital, it had no basis in fact. In truth, the twenty and thirty-somethings that filled the stands at BMO Field had been brought up on a local diet of live English, Italian, German and Spanish league football available on Canadian basic cable via European feeds. Stations like Sportsnet, TSN and Telelatino broadcast live matches every Saturday and Sunday in the days before the Sports Channel Packages would force the viewer to make a conscious decision to add soccer to his or her dial. Additionally, no attempt was made to ‘package’ the games for a North American audience; it was understood the matchers were being watched by old-Europe ex-pats longing for a taste of ‘back home.’ Little did they know, younger viewers were busy discovering the unadorned European game for themselves.

If ESPN 1 were to pick up more regular European and South American league matches to show live on weekends, available without commercial interruption and presented by knowledgeable veterans of the game in the same vein as their coverage of Euro 2008, it might do more for the game in America than the NASL, the MLS, and the USA’s success in the next World Cup ever could. Attendances at Major League Soccer games might grow once idle channel flippers new to the game get a taste of the spectacle of club football on mainstream American television (ignoring for now its many flaws, commercial or otherwise).

Or not. We’ve heard this talk before, and it’s possible the spectre of the ‘American exception’ may always hang over the global game, but Americans already in love with soccer should at least thank John Skipper’s ESPN for finally giving it the television coverage it deserves.

In soccer, that’s too late to start competing against professionals and expect to develop into world class talent. As we all know, talent in the rest of the world is now being snapped up and developed by clubs before young boys have even reached an age in double figures.

That’s why it is heartening to report that Major League Soccer has recently taken significant steps to improve player development and directly funnel it to the clubs, rather than mandating all talent be drafted centrally. Unfortunately, there are still significant problems in the MLS rulebook blocking the full realisation of the clubs youth academies.

The Promise

MLS has long relied on what was initially Nike’s Project-40 and is now Generation Adidas to ensure elite American talent signs with MLS. This allows clubs to obtain via the SuperDraft (for far more than the minimum developmental salary, and not counting against the Senior Roster limit of 18 players) a Mapp or an Altidore, rather than seeing them go abroad in search of more money.

But these players did not come through the clubs youth systems, and frankly, with expansion in MLS we need far more Altidores and Adus to maintain and improve the quality of MLS soccer. Thankfully, a major rule change in MLS now gives clubs a greater incentive to spot and develop talent at an even earlier age that ought to lead to this improvement: the Home Grown talent rule instituted in late 2006 mandates that every club sets-up an amateur youth program, and allows teams to sign up to two players from that pool (as long as they’ve been in it for 24 months) each year, bypassing the central draft.

Each club has a “home territory” from which it can draw players, somewhere in the region of 75-100 miles from their stadium. Teams can reap the benefits both in the short term by these players enhancing their first teams, players connected to their home regions who fans ought to be particularly fond of, but also in the long-term as many will be transferred abroad eventually, bringing in valuable allocations and transfer revenues to the clubs.

I’ve been following closely the Chicago Fire’s program this season. They were the second club after DC United to make their youth Academy fully free, an important step towards — if you’ll pardon the word — democratising youth soccer development in this country. Before a recent Fire Academy game, I spoke to a father of one of the Fire’s U-16 players, a very talented Mexican-American boy. He told me that he could not have afforded the fees to send his child to one of the elite youth clubs in the Chicago area, and even considered returning to Mexico to give his kid an opportunity before the Fire solved his problem.

The Fire’s U-16 team is stocked with talent from the Hispanic community, a demographic that, as Paul Gardner never tires of telling us, American soccer needs to draw on more. The Fire’s U-16 team recently more than held its own against a U.S. National U-17 team at Toyota Park, and Academy Director Louis Mateus expects to sign one or two players directly to the Fire’s Senior team by next season. US youth international Victor Pineda is perhaps the hottest prospect, a composed and gifted attacker.

The Problems

That’s the good news. As you might expect in MLS, there are still glaring issues that need to be resolved before these programs can reach the world class level they need to be to compete with Europe. After all, almost two years in, no MLS club has yet signed a player from their academy directly to their first team.

The first problem is that only a few MLS teams have committed sufficient resources to their youth academies. One senior MLS executive told me that only DC, Chicago, New York and Chivas USA have significant programs and the rest of MLS was “piggybacking” of their work, as most players still end up going through the central draft anyway.

Therefore, whilst the Home Grown talent rule gives teams some incentive to develop their own talent, this needs to be expanded further.

The reason for this can be seen in the troubling case of the New York Red Bulls Matt Kassel. A U-18 American international who has been with the Red Bulls youth program for some time, Kassel was expected in many quarters to be signed to the Red Bulls Senior Roster this season. Whilst perhaps not ready to play immediately, such a move would have him committed to the Red Bulls for the future, and allow him to develop alongside the likes of Angel, Altidore and Reyna. Instead, after New York decided not to offer him a Generation adidas contract or a Senior Roster spot, feeling he was not yet ready to contribute significantly on the field (Kassel had no interest in a low-paid developmental contract), he is headed to the University of Maryland.

There are contrasting perspectives on the meaning of this. Metrofanatic believes this is a serious blow to Academy development, revealing it as essentially a “road to nowhere”:

The bottom line is that the club doesn’t get it. Not surprising if you have followed Metro for all these years. What was heralded as perhaps the greatest faction of the franchise, the youth academy, has now been reduced to a joke. Come witness the best youth program in MLS and their quest to get all their graduates into the NCAA where the only way you are going to break into the first team is if you are an uber-star at 18 and can contribute immediately. But to Red Bull this is an acceptable path to follow, they are quick to point out how wonderful playing for Maryland will be; effectively saying that they think the NCAA is a more effective training environment than their own; that is quite a damning self admission. To make matters worse, a quote from Jeff Agoos about Kassel yesterday revealed his ignorance, “My hope at some point is that we can sign him,” Agoos said, “whether it’s next year or a few years down the road. That’s up to Matt.” Earth to Agoos, you could have signed him yesterday, paid for by MLS and cap exempt.

It’s possible that Kassel could be lost to the Red Bulls, though it is equally possible he’ll sign with the Red Bulls next season in any case. Either way, this is something MLS needs to fix so that clubs don’t face such difficult decisions about whether to sign very talented young players. One way would be to expand the Senior Roster, so that clubs can feel more comfortable signing young players at the age of 18 even before they’re ready to start in MLS: the rosters are too tight as they stand.

Another route would be to get rid of the frankly ridiculous rule that MLS teams can only use one Generation adidas deal in a three-year period on an Academy product. This particular rule is the epitomy of MLS bureaucratic heads-in-the-sand insanity. (Edit: and just to confuse things further, I’ve now discovered that teams could graduate a player from Generation adidas earlier than three years — by adding them to their Senior or Developmental Roster — and then sign another GA player from the Academy. Confused yet?)

A further positive move would be to raise the Developmental Roster salary so that good prospects will have a financial incentive to sign on with MLS rather than head to college, even if they’re not worth a Generation adidas deal.

The new MLS rules and the programs instituted by several MLS clubs (as well as US Soccer’s own development academy) bode well for the pipeline of American soccer talent. But there must be further changes that facilitate that pipeline actually directing talent early enough to MLS teams for the good of the players and the clubs that have invested money, and to encourage the rest of MLS to follow suit. The future of American soccer depends upon it.