“Club World Champions?” isn’t exactly right around the corner, but Salt Lake’s run to the final of a tournament that does see the winners head to the FIFA Club World Cup has indeed been mightily impressive of course, and “The team is the star” is a fitting pull quote for this graphic. Ridge Mahoney is spot on with his take on RSL’s strategic success:

As a team, RSL’s advancement to the brink of a regional club title is a study in smart tactics and intelligent deployment of talented personnel. As an organization, its management of limited resources to succeed against richer clubs may be an even greater accomplishment, and a challenge to its league foes.

Indeed: their success with limited spending has been a fine example of simple resourcefulness, an underrated asset in MLS. One of the stats also pulled there tells the story of their remarkable fortitude: 25-0-9 at home, a 34 game unbeaten streak since May 2009.

Salt Lake have managed to create a buzz locally around the tournament unseen for quite some time in MLS, if ever, as Sporting News reports:

Unlike MLS teams in the past, Real Salt Lake has put significant promotion behind the tournament, and club president Bill Manning credits its Champions League success for securing two new sponsors—international home-security firm Vivint and Ford Motor Co.—to six-figure, three-year deals.

“We feel like we’re the first (MLS) team to make this our No. 1 priority,” Manning said.

The club also has drawn strong attendance numbers for Champions League games. An October match against Mexico’s Cruz Azul sold out Rio Tinto Stadium with 20,463 fans; a March 1 quarterfinals game against the Columbus Crew netted 15,400; and a March 15 semifinal against Costa Rica’s Saprissa drew 16,888. Manning expects Wednesday’s game in Salt Lake City to sell out.

In comparison, the club’s average attendance in 2010 for MLS games was 17,095.

“Our fans have a sense of ownership with this tournament,” he said.

Of course, there’s a fair bit of hyperbole here. For the first time in soccer history, one American MLS team should be on everyone’s mind as they take the soccer world for a spin, forever changing the global perception of US soccer.

Uh, sure. I can’t quite see the world paying more attention to RSL-Monterrey than Real Madrid-Barcelona tomorrow, but maybe that’s just me.

That said, regionally it is of considerable significance: MLS’ #MLS4RSL campaign may have become tiresome, but there is an obvious truth to the need for MLS to gain more regional respect, particularly amongst fans of the Mexican league. Salt Lake’s gutsy performance last week in Monterrey earned all the plaudits it garnered.

MLS sensibly euthanised SuperLiga this year, and has accommodated Salt Lake’s scheduling requests to aid its title tilt, rearranging last weekend’s game against Philadelphia for later in the season. The league has quite rightly put its weight behind Salt Lake and helped manufacture some needed buzz for the competition.

Of course, fans of DC United and the LA Galaxy will rightly point out they have already conquered the regional championship – then known as the CONCACAF Champions Cup – in 1998 and 2000 respectively. Neither featured a final on foreign soil, so the RSL advocates go in championing the unique nature of their possible victory, and the name and format-change the tournament underwent in 2008 means RSL can claim to be the “1st MLS Club Ever To Possibly Win The CCL”. Hell, if they do it, they deserve to claim whatever they want: and they’ll have done the CONCACAF Champions League some good, too.

It’s easy to poke fun at Chuck and his blog, with his unruly beard and what some might say are his chronicles of junkets round the world on the football fan’s collective dime. But on the other hand, where else are we going to see Chuck at a “special dining experience” at Eleven Madison Park, at the final US Sendoff game, during the CONCACAF Champions League summit and at pre-game dinner with Javier Aguirre, Mexico’s manager?

Big Story
Jack Warner has returned a handbag given to him by the England World Cup bid because of “embarrassment”, launching — even by his absurd standards — a bizarre rhetorical attack on the Football Association.

Most odd was his wording at the lack of the response by the FA to his concerns: “Equally disappointing is the deafening silence from you and the FA and which seems to support these allegations,” Warner wrote to the FA. “No one has sought to correct this betrayal in a way that would unequivocally remove any doubt or question not only in the global village at large but among my few peers where honour is valued and character is cherished.”

Who does Jack think he is, Sir Lancelot?  Last I checked he was a greedy and corrupt minor politician.

Warner then continued with an usual use of wording. “This malaise of my wife and I has been allowed to fester for too long much to our embarrassment and the embarrassment of the institutions which I represent. In this regard, therefore, there is only one recourse: a return of this gift, which has become a symbol of derision, betrayal and embarrassment for me and my family.”

It’s about you got some derision, Jack, just a shame this is for something stupid that the English FA did, and not for one of your own many abuses of power.

Worldwide News

• It’s getting a little old commenting on what a mess it is, but America’s lower league crisis continues to drag on. Match Fit USA looks at the revamp USL-1 is facing, and potential expansion to fill the gaps left by the renegade teams. Anyone fancy a trip to Detroit?
• Supporters of Celtic in Scotland and St Pauli have long had a close association, and 1,000 of the latter are set to join Celtic fans as they face Hamburg in the Europa Cup today.
• Glasgow’s other major team has had another less friendly week abroad in Europe: the behaviour of Rangers fans in Bucharest may lead to another fine for the club. “Seats were ripped up and thrown at stewards during half-time of the Champions League fixture at the Steaua Stadium, prompting Uefa to make a PA announcement threatening the suspension of the game,” the Scotsman reports, though Rangers chief executive Martin Bain blamed the poor treatment of fans for the trouble.
• In today’s Stan Kroenke update, he has upped his share of Arsenal again to 29.9%, but Russell Kempson cautions that he is not yet ready to pony up the remaining £460 million needed to control the club outright.
• EPL Talk has an interesting piece on the different treatment given to beat journalists by American and English sports teams. The former have learned that providing good facilities and access is a way to win respectful coverage, as Eric Altshule wonders why Premier League clubs are so stingy: “with a ravenous press population eager to promote their product and a worldwide audience ready to consume every nuance and tidbit, why do teams deny access with such militancy?”
• I hope you’ve been following the Guardian’s excellent series on location in South Africa, looking ahead to 2010.

The Sweeper appears daily. For more rambling and links throughout the day every day, follow your editor Tom Dunmore @pitchinvasion on Twitter.

Blog of the Day

The blog of the day in American soccer has to be one made by an anonymous author on a popular US-blog ripping the US Soccer federation in a quite wild, spectacular, and absolutely unsubstantiated fashion. I don’t link to anonymous authors, so you’ll have to find it yourself if you want, but lets just say this kind of blogging nonsense from someone who somehow managed to get accredited by CONCACAF to the Gold Cup damages the entire circle of American soccer blogging. Sure, there are real issues with US Soccer, but this was an absurd way to address them.

Not only did this puerile but popular post lead to America’s soccer community wasting half the day discussing the piece’s problems, this kind of sub-conspiracy-theorist gutter blogging does damage to those of us who would really like to explore the problems in US Soccer and to gain accreditation to future events. Will CONCACAF be so willing to give a blogger a media pass at the next event if they read the nonsense that resulted from this?  Will US Soccer be as willing to open up to bloggers who want to actually investigate (and not just speculate on) their internal workings? Sure, we can hope everyone sees the difference between them and us, but we’re all hurt by this in a small way.  And I’m sorry I’ve had to give it even more coverage by even writing about it here. Onto real news and interesting writing:

Americas

• A disappointing result for DC United in the CONCACAF Champions League, as they’re held to a 1-1 draw by Firpo of El Salvador at home. Except for the DC players, it didn’t even feel like home — goalkeeper Milos Kocic said “Today, we felt like we weren’t playing home. We felt like we were on a neutral field. I was screaming, I was yelling at guys, ‘Let’s go, let’s go, this is our field.” Does anyone know what the attendance was? (I can’t find it listed it on the DC site).  Even more depressingly for DC, Firpo only qualified for the tournament after replacing CD Chalatenango, who messed up their registration. Even more depressingly for MLS, DC have long been one of the teams to really take CONCACAF games seriously.
• Bad news in Argentina, as the continual debt crisis is threatening the start of the new season next month, according to Argentine Football Association president Julio Grondona. “There is no doubt that the beginning of the tournament is at risk because several clubs have very big debts.” Clubs have been unable to pay players, who have lodged a complaint through their union. The problem, Grondona said, is that fewer and fewer players are assets of the club that can be sold to make revenue — “The invention of… agents was a misfortune,” he said. “It can’t be that a person owns 30 percent of a player and another 40 (percent). It seems like we’re talking about cows.”
• Eric Wynalda has replaced Steven Cohen on U.S. show Fox Football Fone-In; I don’t think that will make the show much more watchable, but it’s no great shame for American soccer if we have to hear less of Cohen’s nonsense about Hillsborough, and his general lack of knowledge/interest in MLS made him an odd choice for a national phone-in anyway.
• Excellent round-up by Melissa on the playoff situation across women’s football in the US, including the odd nugget that the Washington Freedom have a chance to win both the W-League and WPS.
• This media conference call with US Soccer boss Sunil Gulati is not very interesting, but I like the way he gently explains just how dumb Sepp Blatter is when he makes comments about MLS needing to play a Western European schedule.  “In principle, both [MLS Commissioner Don Garber] and I agree that would be a good thing, but we’ve also explained to the FIFA president that temperatures in Chicago are not like the temperatures in London or Paris in January. They’re more like Helsinki or Moscow. So the challenges are a little bit different. … We can foresee being on a European-type calendar, but also pointing out that not everyone plays on that calendar, primarily for those weather reasons.” Just pointing that out, Sepp, ‘cos it’s not bleeding obvious….

Europe

• Villa manager Martin O’Neill expresses his frustration about being leapfrogged by Man City due to their outrageous spending. Nothing new there, but he also notes one reason why their league title challenge will be bolstered by coming from so far back in the pack — they have no European football to drain and distract them all season. Not to mention they are finally signing defenders.
• Good piece on Dynamo Moscow’s search for Champions League glory (or even mediocrity) from the ever-excellent Jonathan Wilson at the Guardian. It’s interesting that Russian teams have been very successful in the UEFA Cup since the big money started rolling into their coffers, but that any success in the Champions League has eluded them. Obviously, the competition is much tougher in the latter, but you’d think there’d be some improved performance — though as Wilson points out, the scheduling is hardly ideal for Russia with the group stages kicking off just as they end their long summer season. He also notes something interesting – “no side from any of the seven largest metropolitan areas of Europe – Istanbul, Paris, Moscow, London, St Petersburg, Berlin and Athens – has ever won the European Cup.” A fact worthy of a book on its own.
• ESPN will air MLS in the UK on its new international football channel, starting next month. It’ll be interesting to see what the reaction is; we all know here there is a spectacular range in the quality of play and stadia from game-to-game. As Richard Whittall wonders, will this mean UK-based journalists make more or less fun of MLS now they can actually see it?
• Interesting piece by James Waterson at When Saturday Comes on the aftermath of Scarborough FC’s collapse a few years ago, and the two competing non-League clubs that sprung up after them — dividing the supporters’ base, with Waterson concluding that “Scarborough United remains a very distant prospect”.
• In Italy, Paul Grech takes a look at Pisa AC’s latest financial collapse — a torrid rise, fall, rise and fall again.
• At the Guardian, Rob Bagchi suggests owner Mike Ashley might have “squandered his opportunity” at Newcastle and it’s time for him to walk away. Uh, you think?  Is this a reprint from a year ago?

The spotlight was far brighter on the previous Gold Cup finals held just two years ago in this city. Most countries sent their ‘A’ squads: the U.S. rightly prioritised their own confederation’s contest over the Copa America they would participate in shortly after, probably because a spot in the Confederations Cup was the carrot for the winning team. Holding the semi-finals and final in Chicago at Soldier Field allowed the buzz to envelope the soccer-loving community in the city, and the final itself was a classic: a capacity 60,000 crowd at Soldier Field saw the U.S. defeat Mexico on a beautiful sunny day before a crowd clearly partisan for El Tricolor.

Gold Cup Final 2007, Soldier Field, Chicago

That buzz isn’t quite the same this year in Chicago, even though I’m looking forward to tonight. What’s different?

For a start, it seems awfully soon for the same semi-finals of the same international tournament to played in the same city (though the final will this year be held in New Jersey).  There’s a strong argument to be made that the Gold Cup ought to be held only every four years instead of biennially. This would ensure a great prize — qualification to represent CONCACAF at the Confederations Cup (now held only every four years) — is available every time (the US certainly took advantage of their opportunity in South Africa).

Such a change would of course give the tournament greater scarcity value. And it would also make it easier for MLS to do what it really should do during these important national team tournaments — stop domestic club play (even if only for the weekend of the final) to focus attention on the Gold Cup.

Indeed, in the 1970s and 1980s, the CONCACAF championship was held only every four years — and the prize was even greater than qualification for the Confederations Cup. At stake was CONCACAF’s sole berth in the World Cup finals. No fewer than six different countries won the tournament out of the ten tournaments held between 1963 and 1989 in eight different countries.

Mexico and U.S. fans at the 2007 Gold Cup Final in Chicago

But in 1991 CONCACAF decided their regional tournament needed a rebranding, renaming it the Gold Cup and holding it roughly every two years since, with World Cup qualification no longer the prize. It has been hosted in the US every time (Mexico were co-hosts in 1993 and 2003), presumably because of the facilities available and the crowds that can be attracted across the country with such considerable immigrant populations from so many CONCACAF nations. Tonight’s semi-finals will surely feature more fans of Costa Rica, Mexico and Honduras than the Stars and Stripes.

The expansion of the tournament to twelve teams means it’s probable only Mexico could also even conceivably host the tournament logistically now, and the financial incentive for packed stadiums every two years in the US is likely to ensure the same set-up continues for some time, at least as long as CONCACAF is run by Jack Warner.

Something has probably been lost from the days when Haiti could host the CONCACAF championship in 1973 and surprise the world by winning it and heading to West Germany for the World Cup finals the next year. The hegemony of the US and Mexico has been broken only once in Gold Cup history, with Canada’s victory the lone non US or Mexican win (both countries have won it four times).

The Gold Cup has been a financial success since its inception, but it probably needs a few more upsets and little more scarcity value to ensure the kind of buzz we saw two years ago in Chicago is replicated every time.