FIFA's #1 Female Player Marta Is Unemployed

Just this week, Brazilian player Marta was awarded the FIFA Player of the Year award for the 5th consecutive year. As the soccer's number one female athlete, her career is still without obstacles.

After joining the Women's Professional Soccer league from Sweden, her club the L.A. Sol folded after one season. Marta relocated her talents to FC Gold Pride which after winning the WPS Championship this summer had to call it quits due to a lack of financial solvency.

The New York Times article, The Best Player on Earth is Looking for a Job, is worth a read. As I mentioned in an earlier entry, one of our 2011 goals is to bring some meaningful solutions to the quandry soccer leagues have found themselves in stateside. The MLS is faring a bit better, but it could stand for an injection new ideas. As for the women's league Stay tuned.

Soccer Gamers: RealSports Soccer 2011 Release on Nintendo

Good Morning Soccer Lovers who have a penchant for video games. I do have a video game announcement but it's not about our beloved Electronic Arts' FIFA series. Throwback video game producer, Atari, is planning to release Volume 2 of their Greatest Hits series on Nintendo DS. This collector's item includes....RealSports Soccer! If you are expecting graphic wizardry akin to FIFA 11, it may be a little disappointing. However what the game lacks in pizzazz, it definitely makes up for it in historical value. If you love all things soccer and want to show off a new "artifact" of your collection to your friends, this should do the trick!

Spanish Defender Tweets Match Time Decision to Fans

Newcastle manager Alan Pardew had hoped that an injury sidelining defender Jose Enrique wouldn't be disclosed until right before Tuesday's Premier League game against Tottenham.

But more than four hours before kickoff, the Spanish defender wrote in broken English on Twitter: "Sorry lads i have a test this morning and we decide is better dont play. ... Im so hungry because this game is nice to play. ... My hamstring is so stiff today."

Pardew, whose team lost 2-0, now wants his his players to withhold such revelations from social networking accounts. He acknowledges, however, that "it's difficult to police" and he won't impose an outright ban.

"I got a text message that the press knew," Pardew said. "Did he tweet it, did he? It's something as a club we need to look at. Players can't be giving that sort of information out. ... We need to make it as a club policy that it has to stop."

Asked if Enrique would be ready for Sunday's match against West Ham, Pardew cracked: "I'll check his tweet."

He may have been a bit late. Enrique already provided an update for his more than 5,000 followers.

"Im sure is ok for sunday because is just stiff nothing worse," he tweeted. "Thanks everyone for your support."

Pardew's annoyance must have reached Enrique. The messages were subsequently deleted from his feed.

"Sorry i want to delete twetter just get me problems," he explained on his feed.

TOP 10 Reasons People Don’t Watch the WPS

Who can count the number of articles that have been written about the big black cloud that is looming over the Women’s Professional Soccer league in the United States?

With the Chicago Red Stars failing to secure reserve funding in order to participate in the 2011 season, sportswriters are pointing fingers and predicting future doom for the remaining clubs.

Initially, this article was going to have a similar bend. However, what good would that do? At this point, there needs to be some creative conversation on the matter because women’s sports, whether soccer, basketball, lacrosse and softball, would benefit from it.

For the longest time, I have had several, highly engaging conversations with people who could care less about women’s soccer, but (fortunately) enough about me to lend me their opinions. The conversation always begins with the following question: Why do you think people do not watch women’s soccer?

It was a question that I again posed a few weeks ago to many of my counterparts inside and outside of the global soccer community. Their responses have been compiled into our….

TOP 10 Reasons People Don’t Watch the WPS
(In no particular order)

1. Lack of media coverage
2. Not aware of women’s soccer
3. Pace of game is too slow
4. Less women’s matches on television
5. Not heavily promoted until international competitions
6. Huge disparity in the abilities of the players
7. No commercials showcasing women’s technical abilities
8. Women’s soccer is still considered a recreational sport
9. Women do not promote themselves or their games
10. Most of WPS coverage is negative.

Over the next few entries, I am going to tackle each of these challenges with the help of some “experts.” At this point, it’s not enough to talk about the problem. Let’s see if we can provide the remaining clubs with some creative solutions for their upcoming season.

Qatar Makes It Rain On FC Barcelona

Two weeks ago, the tiny nation of Qatar took the soccer world by storm with its host selection for the 2022 World Cup. The country’s proposal included financial investments in infrastructure that put its bidding committee in quite a class of its own.

Now the oil rich nation seems to be still hungry and on another soccer spending binge. This week a Qatar “foundation” was able to buy what many thought was the untouchable-the front of Barca’s shirt. The club was a lone outlier in not selling its most coveted piece of real estate. When other clubs took the cash, Barca went in the opposite direction and gave away cash to UNICEF for use of the organization’s name.

Barca had embodied it’s tag line of “more than just a club.” Now, the storied club may just become another impulse by for national investors that would to blow off steam, spend some cash and turn the global soccer community on its ear.

A Winter 2022 World Cup In Qatar? Beckenbaur Proposes Alternatives

According to Goal.com,"Franz Beckenbauer has confessed that he would like to see World Cup 2022, which has been awarded to Qatar, staged in January and February.

Concerns have been raised from several quarters about the intense summer heat of the Arab state, and the former Bayern Munich and Germany star has echoed those suggesting that one way around the problem would be to play the competition in the winter.

“We should think about a solution in January and February. There will be pleasant temperatures around 25°C,” the member of Fifa’s executive committee explained to Bild on Saturday morning. “Why would it not be? The calendars of the major European leagues should be changed in 2022. It would not have too great an impact and would represent an alternative to the enormous expense of providing cool spaces and stadiums for fans.”

Beckenbauer also expressed his surprise that Australia was eliminated in the first round of bidding for the competition, a sentiment he echoed with regard to England’s bid for the 2018 World Cup, which was ultimately handed to Russia."

In other Beckenbaur news, the German legend has announced that he will be stepping down from his FIFA Executive committee post in March. He cites personal reasons fo his departured. German football federation chief, Theo Zwanziger is going to run for the post.

US Virgin Islands' Bold Soccer Move

Investing in a midlevel Italian soccer club would not be up for discussion by many towns on the opposite side of the globe. However, the recent legislative showdown in the US Virgin Islands could prove to serve as a case study for many tourist towns. On September 20th, Senator Wayne A.G. James garned enough support to override the governor’s veto on legislation that would provide a $50,000 sponsorship to the Montescudaio football club.
This legislative landmark had its humble beginnings with the suggestion of Italian architect Alessandro Sonetti. He had mutual friends in government in the Italian village of Montescudaio and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Consequently, he proposed the formation of twin city alliance. A formal ceremony was held in the town of Montescudaio and while attending the ceremony, Senator Wayne A.G. James conceived a brilliant idea to put forth a sponsorship deal for the local soccer club.
With the statistics to support his idea, Senator James realized that this move would be an amazing marketing effort to capture a larger share one of his nation’s most coveted imports-Italian tourists. Traditionally, Italian tourists arrived during the low season, visited the island nation longer and patronized its top end establishments.
When word of the pending sponsorship first hit the media waves in early August, the US Virgin Islands receive millions of dollars of free publicity. It was reported in Times Square, the Vatican’s FM station and Yahoo! Finance. Now that the legislation has passed, Senator James can claim a victory for his idea and his country’s bottom line.