The MLS Whitecaps are trying to tie in their identity to the history of the Whitecaps in Vancouver, most notably to the NASL-era Whitecaps from 1974 to 1984, including their 1979 championship. So, on the back of Vancouver’s MLS jersey it reads “Since 1974″. And the Whitecaps news release on the logo unveiling said the following:

The new brand and logo, which will be used throughout the club come November 2010, draws its inspiration from the spectacular geography of Western Canada’s largest city, as well as the club’s long tradition of success. The new brand will see Whitecaps FC continue their long tradition of using white as one of their primary colours, while the club have also incorporated the colour of ‘deep sea’ blue as a reflection of Vancouver’s natural landscape.

At Brand New, a design blog, the verdict on the new logo is positive, comparing it favourably to its immediate predecessor, the current USSF D-II Whitecaps’ logo:

This is a very welcome change, as the old logo looked like a whitewater rafting attraction you would find somewhere in an interstate; it’s really amazing they sold any merchandise with that silly thing. In contrast, the new logo is no nonsense and it screams “don’t mess with me.” It’s actually a surprisingly hard-edged logo in this era of bubbly friendliness, almost leaving without points of comparison. But once you get past that initial reaction to the change, the logo is a little dull and not too sophisticated. It feels as if it needed one more round of refinement to make the typography sit a little more comfortable in those spaces, or make the mountains a little more interesting beyond just repeating the same shape six times.

On a more positive light, it wants to look like an international soccer team crest, and that’s not a bad thing to strive for.

There’s no doubt the current USSF D-II team’s logo was a cartoonish travesty that completely failed as an update to the Whitecaps classic NASL logo. But maybe the actual point of comparison should be that 1979 incarnation, a very good piece of design-work, and it’s somewhat surprising the new MLS logo is such a radical departure from it, especially given the team is trumpeting its connection to that team’s identity and success.

That 1979 logo replaced the original logo for the Whitecaps from their first season in the NASL in 1974, an effort that tied the club much more into country than city:

The 1979 change was a radical one, but one that made sense for the team’s local identity.

“With all logos, they tend to evolve over a period of time,” said Paul Barber, the Whitecaps CEO. But the new Whitecaps logo really stretches the concept of evolution, and does not succeed as a revolutionary change, either. The new logo is a radical re-conceptualisation of the club’s identity that loses the warmth of the 1979 version that was still present even in the USSF D-II club’s poor logo. There may be a formal tie to the whitecap waves that dominated the classic 1979 logo in the new logo with the blues and the bottom half of the logo perhaps evoking waves, but in terms of style, it’s a complete reversal: angular, jagged, cold and sterile are the feelings the 2011 MLS logo evokes in me. It does not evoke anything of the history of the club or its previous success.

To illustrate our point, let’s look at them together side-by-side:

The Whitecapsfan blog makes much the same point about the coldness of the logo and its departure from the club’s past identity:

The City of Vancouver has an odd relationship with sporting tradition.  Perhaps it is because we are living on the West Coast that we demand constant change and newness.  Look at the Vancouver Canucks for instance. They joined the NHL back in 1970 with a great uniform. The colours were great, the logo was great, but it was deemed not good enough. Subsequently there have been so many changes to the look of the Vancouver Canucks it makes your head spin and you wonder which team you are really watching. It gives the Canucks a sense of impermanence and weakness other NHL teams like the Boston Bruins or the Montreal Canadians simply don’t have.

The Vancouver Whitecaps acted accordingly today, largely dispensing with tradition.  There is no wave and no soccer ball to be found in the new logo, just a cold geometric pattern (the logo consists of three diamond shapes: one large and two smaller, with the name Vancouver Whitecaps FC written in the middle). There really is no love or affection in the image. There are no organic forms.  It reminds me of going to the art gallery and seeing a cold geometric piece of  modern art.  It is utterly humorless, and completely lacking in charm. It has the same emotional appeal as the Hamburg FC logo: austere and geometric. It must have been designed by someone with German ancestry…  It makes me feel as though we are not joining Major League Soccer, but the German Bundesliga!

The logo is meant to reflect the North Shore mountains and their reflection in the ocean, but does so in such a cold geometric manner that it fails to capture the organic beauty of our city.   It is too corporate, like an automobile company logo, and does not contain the love of our club.  I far prefer the Seattle Sounders Logo, which more accurately reflects a familiar attraction of Seattle’s skyline.   There is  charm, humour and love there.

This, for point of comparison, is the Hamburg logo mentioned:

Welcome to the world of cold and sterile logos, MLS Vancouver Whitecaps.

Watford vs. Vancouver Whitecaps programme, March 1981

Credit as ever to the outstanding Footysphere for the programme cover image.

Colorado Caribous 1978 NASL jersey. Can't wait to see this brought back!

“Party Like It’s 1979″, says the usually stone cold sober Kenn Tomasch. “The future of American soccer appears to be the past of American soccer.”

Kenn writes this because news broke today that the breakaway second-tier league made-up of nine former USL and new clubs may use the North American Soccer League name for itself, after Miami FC put in two trademark claims.

Kenn’s response, not quite as euphoric as I painted it above, is actually a well-balanced take on the name’s real importance (not as important as a lot of other stuff) tinged with a little welcome nostalgia for those of us too young to remember the league.

Kenn points to the growing trend of American soccer teams claiming a part of their city’s past with the sport, and resurrecting NASL team names has hardly done any harm to Seattle, Portland or Vancouver, for example. Indeed, a connection to the past is something that gives a little more depth to each club’s existence, even if it’s a mythical imagined past of fathers and sons following the Sounders various incarnations since the 1970s.

I think American soccer has grown up enough not to be afraid of the NASL boogyman any longer (lessons have been learned well enough already), though there’s something fitting if it is indeed used on this risky, ambitious breakaway. What really matters is the substance of the league’s business plan and the performance of each club’s front office, not the name.

Though some have immediately rubbished the name’s return in any case, a poll on Inside Minnesota Soccer (the best site for news on the breakaway league, incidentally) suggests reaction is mixed and broadly positive, with more in favour of the NASL name returning than against it.

Oh…and how about them Cosmos, then?

The Montreal Impact defeated the defending champions Vancouver Whitecaps 3-1 at Stade Saputo yesterday to win the USL-1 Final 6-3 on aggregate.  First half goals from Tony Donatelli, Joey Gjertsen and Roberto Brown were all Montreal needed to win, although Vancouver defender Shaun Pejic’s controversial red card in the 29th minute for hauling down the last man in the area probably helped a mite.

Although there was some controversy concerning calls made in both legs, few could deny that on the basis of Montreal’s 6-0 post-season record they didn’t deserve their two-leg win.  The storyline this year leading up to yesterday’s first all-Canadian final though is beyond belief.  It was only back in March of this year when, after winning the first leg of the CONCACAF Champions League quarterfinal against Mexican club Santos Lagunas, Montreal gave up four goals in forty minutes to lose 5-4 on aggregate.

It was the sort of loss that can throw clubs into total chaos, and it seemed for much of this year that Montreal were heading down that road.  After posting a worst-ever opening season record in May which led to coach John Limniatis getting sacked and replaced with assistant coach Marc dos Santos, things went from bad to worse after Montreal suffered a horrible 6-1 defeat at home to Toronto FC in the Nutrilite Championship.  The defeat handed Canadian CONCACAF qualification from the Vancouver Whitecaps to Toronto FC, the latter club needing to score a seemingly impossible four goals or more to go through.

Football being football, somehow the Impact found the “mental toughness” to ignore past failures and on-going league turmoil to win the Division 1 championship.  Liverpool FC fans, take note.

Worldwide News

• In case you didn’t know, Liverpool FC lost 1-0 to Sunderland from a Darren Bent strike that should have counted as a Liverpool beach ball own-goal. The Guardian’s John Ashdown reminds everyone that the rules state the goal should have been disallowed.  So with all the renting of garments over a silly beach ball, why is Rafa Benitez the only one pointing out that Liverpool actually didn’t play very well?  Or that it was the same Sunderland that narrowly missed out on defeating Manchester United at Old Trafford?
• Heading into MLS‘s final stretch, figuring out all possible playoff qualification outcomes is giving the stat crunchers an MLS Cup-sized migraine.  As the 24thminute points out, teams chasing the final playoff spots basically have to win away from home to keep their seasons alive.  Best not think about tie-breakers…
• Back to the Guardian now and Paul Wilson’s piece on Birmingham City‘s owner, Carson Yeung, and why flashing wads of transfer money isn’t always a good idea: “McLeish, not exactly accustomed to throwing money around, is going to have to both persuade players to take a chance on Birmingham, while insisting to selling clubs and agents that he is not prepared to go above a certain price.”
• Media naval gazing corner: Andrew Buscholtz at Sporting Madness is doing an excellent job reporting back on a sport blogging conference in Las Vegas.  Of particular interest is his latest installment on increasing blogger access to professional team, even if some clubs grant it so that bloggers, as one panelist mentioned, can become better “brand evangelists” for a particular club.  Missing from the debate is any mention of the further degradation of living wage sports journalism.
• If the future of African football needed a boost heading into the World Cup in South Africa this summer, it sure got it when Ghana beat Brazil 4-3 on penalties after 0-0 scoreline after 12o minutes in the U20 World Cup final yesterday.

Richard Whittall writes the no-access blog A More Splendid Life.

Furthermore, in the U.S. and Canada as a whole, it’s hard to see soccer becoming a truly nationwide game over such a massive continent without the broad and deep structure provided by a strong base beyond the “major league”.

In other sports, such as the NFL and NBA, there isn’t a deep professional pyramid, but there’s a massive college base across the country that develops players and a love for football and basketball, even if not all college fans follow the professional leagues closely as well. In baseball, there is the wide-ranging minor league system to supplement weaker college ball than football and basketball have.

Though there isn’t promotion/relegation between MLS and the USL, the latter can lose cities to the former as we’ll see with the Seattle Sounders in 2009. Vancouver is another club often mooted for MLS expansion, especially given the success of Toronto F.C., but they seem to be making slow progress in advancing towards a planned 15,000 capacity waterfront stadium.

Still, the USL is planning to expand itself by a couple of teams (though it also lost the California Victory this year) and owners such as Vancouver’s Bob Lenarduzzi are trying to sound upbeat about the prospects for the league.

“I’m actually quite positive about the future of our league,” said Lenarduzzi. “Existing ownership is quite stable. There does seem to be a commitment by USL ownership to stay the course. The MLS option is always going to be there, but that’s something we can’t control.”

What are your thoughts about the USL? Can it thrive without promotion/relegation to MLS? Is it patronising to fans of those teams to always even assume they want to be in MLS?

According to Kendall Blanchard in The Anthropology of Sport: An Introduction (Bergin Garvey/Greenwood, 1995), akraurak is contested between goals that are “markings in the snow at unspecified distances from each other. Teams kick the ball up and down the field, the object being to drive it across the goal line of an opponent. The game is played predominantly in the spring and summer months, and everyone, regardless of sex or age, may participate” (150).

As Nuttall also writes, Inuit from Greenland and across the Arctic see in aurora borealis, the northern lights, the souls of ancestors. They call these heavenly apparitions arsarnerit, or “the football players.”

Among First Nations, who are distinct from Inuit and another Canadian indigeneous group, the Métis, it is harder to identify a precursor to modern football. Traditions of leisure and games, however, form part of the cyclical life pattern characteristic of aboriginal culture. Recurring competitions such as the Arctic Games and North American Indigenous Games feature traditional sports as well as soccer. Started in 1990, the latter includes more than 9,000 participants in sport and cultural events.

Go and read the rest of the entry to learn more.