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?