Back in the dark days of English football, when England were banned from European Competition and Liverpool Football Club where the team to beat an ad popped up on British TV. It was brilliant, two lads dressed in Liverpool shirts raiding the fridge in search of drinks. One asks for Lemonade (which in England is more like 7up but …. lemony), and the other pulls out a bottom of milk and studiously starts filling a glass.

The other kid seeing this asks him what he is doing, as if to say ‘your not really drinking milk are you?’ and the first boy responds that Liverpool hero Ian Rush says that if he drinks enough of it he’ll be good enough to play for Accrington Stanley.

Stanley in those days where a lowly team. The ‘original’ Accrington FC had folded in 1966 and was barely a blip, a new team (unrelated to the first), Accrington Stanley was formed in 1968. With no major history in took them until 44 years until they finally realized league football in 2006. So in the mid 80s, barely anybody had heard of them.

“Good enough to play for Accrington Stanley” was delivered with enthusiasm, like Stanley were up there with the Milans and Real Madrids, the boys voice was filled with awe. “Who are they then?” retorted the dubious friend.

“Exactly!” was the the reply.

Stanley where so amazing,so exclusive, so monumentally magnificent that you had not even heard of them. At this point the other boy starts fighting the first for the milk.

It was an ad that captured the British imagination at the time and put a small town club on the map for being nobody.

This sprung to mind today as I learned that the Kansas City Wizards have brought an Iranian central defender into camp from some team you have never heard of.

It took me right back to my youth when teams in England where predominantly English with the occasional Welsh, Scottish or Irish player added in. As the league started to gain some wealth foreign players started to be sought. Exotic players started popping up in weird places, an example would be the Brazilian Mirandinha playing in Newcastle. Nobody looked at the pedigree – we were all in awe, Brazilian? Like Pele? He must be beyond superlatives. He plays to the samba beat. He is a god.

Players light Dwight York and were brought in for peanuts and did amazing things, and all of a sudden you needed foreigners because they where amazing!

We all had absolute faith in our scouts, like it was a stupendous coup to have stolen Siggi freaking Jonson from some other godly team to have him at Arsenal where he played 8 times. Scandinavian’s players where the fashion item to have … that or aging Italians. Of course the lessons where painful, and the players more often than not failures. We remember the Cantona’s and the Jan Molby’s. Zimbabwean Bruce Grobbelar, the ones that worked and we forget all the big foreign signings that came cheaply because they so wanted to play for Norwich City. Nobody talks about Alexi Lalas and Cobi Jones at Coventry City any more, and like them a million more attempts to tap into talent on the cheap arrived and then left quickly.

Kansas City 2010

We have a billion foreign players signed or in camp representing  Hungary, Moldova, Columbia, Argentina, Iran, England, Guatemala, France, Nigeria, Denmark, Sierra Leone… amongst others.

This all feels very familiar.

My skeptical side is wondering if we really have scouts in Iran and Columbia? Did we really ever stop to think how the whole of France never noticed Auvrey but somehow the Wizards did? Did we buy the hype about being two time Danish goalkeeper of the year? Really there are ten teams in their not so hot Superliga? The same Wizards that made hoopla about Ivan Trijullo?

With all the foreign influx we have not signed one player from a league which we are familiar enough with to be able to intelligently say that any of these guys are better than what is available right here in the USA. How can you compare a Danish Goalkeeper to an MLS goalkeeper intelligently? They don’t play each other ever, there is no discernible way to rank the leagues that makes sense. Or MLS vs Columbia? Or the French second tier? Or the Iranian whatever league.

We are speculating.  Throwing mud at the wall in the hope that some of it might stick …

With a few players coming into needed spots I am happy however the influx now seems to be beyond the pale and just smacks of buying for the sake of buying. I appreciate that we didn’t have much to trade with at the end of 2009, but Cristman for international spot says a lot. In many respects our new signings are just as unproven as he was but rather than letting him move through camp now that he was finally fit we sent him off to DC so we could speculate on a guy that had no clue where Kansas City was before we turned up and offered him safe passage to the land of the greenback.

Just like the early days of British club wealth, the Wizards appear to be awed by foreigners and foreign talent.  This post season has seen at least a dozen players come or gone.  Only one ‘American’ has arrived … and he played for Canada as a youth.

“If you drink your milk you will grow up to be as good as Pablo Escobar!”
“Who the fucking hell is he?”
“FREAKING COLUMBIAN!!!”
“WOAH! GIMMIE SOME!!!!!!!!”

I’m struggling to buy it and yet no part of me says this isn’t going to work …. now give me some of that milk.

Afterthoughts:

Is there this little talent available in the USA that we have to import cheap foreign players to fill our rosters?  If this is the case should the league really be expanding yet further?  How will this ever change without a reserve league and the ability for teams to develop talent?  If Kansas City’s little foreign player experiment works does it undermine the league as a place where talent can be fostered or does it ultimately help raise standards?

As you may well know Fox Soccer Plus is being launched on March 1 2010, its primary content to begin with will be the content Setanta had rights to in the USA.  This includes English Premier League and FA Cup football and is certainly something you will want access to.

Time Warner Cable customers in the Kansas City Metro area should sign the form on the Wizards website (http://web.mlsnet.com/t105/fans/2010/time_warner_survey.jsp).  The more interest Time Warner Cable get, the more likely we are to have this channel soon.  If you are a AT&T or user of another service fill the form out anyway, if Time Warner Cable add the channel you’ll have more leverage when demanding the channel on your service, or will at least have a local provider to switch to if all else fails.

There is also a form on the Fox Soccer Plus website (http://msn.foxsports.com/foxsoccer/plus) listed under ‘Fox Soccer Channel Locator’ which will allow you to sign up notification as to when service is launched in your area.   This information is being stored with a zip code again and is no doubt being used to gauge interest as well.

Get it done.

When Curt Onalfo was fired mid way through the 2009 season it wasn’t a huge surprise.  The Wizards were poor in 2008, and although they made the playoffs they crashed out to eventual MLS Cup winners Columbus Crew in the first round.   The 2009 season had the team taking a further step backwards and as the goals, wins and even draws started to dry up it became all to obvious that a change was required.

There was little dissent amongst the faithful when Onalfo finally left, but there were question marks as to why Peter Vermes was sticking around.  As the Technical Director for the Kansas City Wizards Vermes was responsible for some key areas, not least bringing in talent to augment and improve the squad.  Appointed in November of 2006 Vermes has presided over three full seasons as the technical director.  Long enough to have a major impact upon the measly MLS squad sizes and may where surprised to see that he didn’t depart with Onalfo.

Vermes took over Onalfo’s coaching job, first as interim where he finished the season with a modest 3-7-2 record.  We finally got confirmation that he was not going to relinquish the role in November 2009.  2010 is the year we get to see what Vermes really has to offer and how good of a job he has done building a squad.

Jimmy Conrad, Davey Arnaud, Jack Jewsbury, Lance Watson and (out of contract) Eric Kronberg are all that remain of the pre-Vermes era, everybody else has been brought into under his watch. In a rare situation in MLS Vermes has hand picked his own players and now he gets to coach them with almost no oversight.  He is still Technical Director.

This off season has seen no shortage of changes. No fewer than twelve players have come or gone include Kai Kamara resigning, Claudio Lopez who I do not expect to return and a mystery English player that we supposedly have signed who is as yet unnamed, and apparently not important enough to have been missed by the rabid British media.

By the time this is all said and done we may find that 15-16 players have either made their way into or out of the squad.  As slow as the early season business seemed to be the pace has gone through the roof and the 2010 Wizards are destined to be a different outfit entirely from 2009.

On 27 March 2010 when we kick off against Onalfo, DC United and potentially Adam Cristman in the season opener we will have our first real idea how this torrent of fresh blood will affect things.  If Peter Vermes manages to get the Wizards into the playoffs, if we manage to score more goals than we concede, finish with a winning record and maybe even play the “attractive attacking football” that we have been promised during his tenure already then one man alone will be able to take the bulk of the credit.

Unfortunately for Vermes succeeding in 2010 is not an option, but a requirement.  With strong ticket sales being a must for a 2011 stadium launch we simply have to compete, and if not, one guy has been pulling all the strings and making all the moves.  He will certainly take the blame if we fail.

Kevin Hartman is no longer part of the Wizard’s immediate plans, out of contract and in California with the US Men’s National Team it has become all to clear that Hartman will not be returning.  The signing of Jimmy Nielsen and comments made by Peter Vermes all but confirm what has not been officially announced.   Kevin Hartman is no longer a Wizard.

Kevin joined the Wizards after a decade long spell with the LA Galaxy.  His time there included to MLS Cups and two US Open Cups.  Following the 2006 season Hartman joined the Kansas City Wizards where he has literally played every single game as goalkeeper in MLS play.  For three seasons Hartman performed admirably as the last line behind continually poor Wizards teams and was considered by many as one of few bright spots on the roster, and certainly one that needed to be retained moving into the 2010 season.

Hartman was by no means a perfect keeper, a brilliant shot stopper he was prone to moments of occasional eccentricity when it came to fielding aerial balls.  The overriding memory many will have of him however will be of finger tip saves that prevented numerous goals and losses over the past few years.

Those of us who watched the game from behind him have gotten used to him simply being a good guy that never once failed to acknowledge the fans behind either end.

When the whistle sounded on the 2009 season. Peter Vermes, Jimmy Conrad, and the remainder of the squad melted out of view quickly without taking a second to acknowledge the fans who had paid to watch them perform miserably for a season.   Two players remained.  Kevin Hartman and the (the almost certainly gone) Claudio Lopez.  While Lopez walked the field applauding fans on all sides of the ground Hartman stopped in front of the Cauldron and chatted with the fans, leaving gloves behind him.  A class act to the end, it was no surprise that many are sad to hear that many he is no longer going to be tending goal in Kansas City.

Good luck Kevin.