The Mail Bag
Howard's Everton tribute in Utah
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As the less-than-savvy MLS fans in Salt Lake City learn more about Everton (I saw one Utah letter complaining about getting "second-rate" opponents for the MLS All-Star game), Tim Howard is doing more than his part to share Everton's tradition with the uninformed.
Here's a great quote from Howard: "It blows me away how many legendary players did pull on the same shirt that I'm wearing. It's humbling. It's motivational. I really do love playing for Everton."
The full article, about Everton's history as a "People's Club", can be found at http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705319237/Tradition-rich-Everton-FC-a-peoples-club.html?linkTrack=rss-38.
Enjoy.
Mike Gaynes, Posted 28/07/2009 at 18:48:40
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Whilst it’s great to hear that from our goalkeeper, i am pretty sure that Tim would have been amongst these individuals if he was not playing for our beloved club. Today i looked at a Man City fan site, and they posted about Lescott...’He would be a great addition to our squad’ i nearly fell of my chair, Joe as a squad player!!! the reason i say this is, the shear audacity of these people, the fact that their mindset, because of the billions they have, look upon Lescott as a squad addition, cheeKy bastards . I used to look at city fans and think ’if anyone deserves a billionaire it’s probably them, but after reading that before they are just the same as georidies as such. my question is are we the most reaslist fans in the country, i don’t think we would ever act like this....any thoughts?
Glen Strachan, when England,Scotland, Ireland or Wales show us the medals, only then have you the right to belittle football in the USA.or anywhere else.
Oh! I forgot for a minute, England won the World Cup in 1966 wasn’t it. If yer knows yer histry!
Oh! I forgot for a minute, England won the World Cup in 1966 wasn’t it. If yer knows yer histry!
Whoa, whoa, easy Glen. Just because some of my fellow Yanks aren’t 100% familiar with our Blues doesn’t make them/us morons. I recall wearing my Everton top the day after we beat United in the FA Cup semis and I got compliments all day long about what a great game we played and how good a team we had. Yes, the majority of new American soccer/football fans over here only know their PL teams based upon what they see when the Champions League games air in the afternoon. So unfortunately, these folks fall in love with Arsenal, Man U., Chelsea, and yes - even "them". But our brand is growing because of Tim Howard and also because Everton have nerver looked down upon American players.
The sport has seen almost unprecedented coverage in thed US this year - the Confed Cup (where ESPN played a great little expose on Tim Howard’s play at Everton), they’ve been airing MLS double headers, Gold Cup games, internationals like Seattle Sounders and Chelsea, a pre-season tournament that showcased Chelsea, Inter and AC Milan, and Club America (remember them?), and tomorrow’s All-Star game. Part of the reason ESPN is going to all this trouble is to generate interest ahead of the World Cup next year - I mean the US National Team plays a WC qualifier against Mexico on August 12 in Mexico City and ESPN is doing a live broadcast from there with a 1 hour pregame - they never did that before! So there is interest; just not enough education...yet.
American soccer fans are impatient and want to be competing with the best and so they see the MLS All-Star game as a measuring stick. After playing Chlesea a lot of fans thought every year would bring a Juventus or a Real Madrid, but instead they got Celtic (good club-big name, but not a Chelsea) and West Ham (well...what can you say...they’re West Ham). I will admit that I was offended at the reaction by MLS fans to the Everton selection, as many of them feel we were a fallback pick and they would rather have seen a team from Spain, Italy, or even South America - they’re "Premier Leagued" out so to speak and just want a different flavor. So I hope we "educate" MLS fans tomorrow by destroying the MLS team, especially since I don’t want to have my now Tottenham fan boss giving me lip (he’s a Peter Crouch fan for some reason). It won’t be easy - MLS All-Stars have never lost to a foreign club, but maybe they’re due.
The sport has seen almost unprecedented coverage in thed US this year - the Confed Cup (where ESPN played a great little expose on Tim Howard’s play at Everton), they’ve been airing MLS double headers, Gold Cup games, internationals like Seattle Sounders and Chelsea, a pre-season tournament that showcased Chelsea, Inter and AC Milan, and Club America (remember them?), and tomorrow’s All-Star game. Part of the reason ESPN is going to all this trouble is to generate interest ahead of the World Cup next year - I mean the US National Team plays a WC qualifier against Mexico on August 12 in Mexico City and ESPN is doing a live broadcast from there with a 1 hour pregame - they never did that before! So there is interest; just not enough education...yet.
American soccer fans are impatient and want to be competing with the best and so they see the MLS All-Star game as a measuring stick. After playing Chlesea a lot of fans thought every year would bring a Juventus or a Real Madrid, but instead they got Celtic (good club-big name, but not a Chelsea) and West Ham (well...what can you say...they’re West Ham). I will admit that I was offended at the reaction by MLS fans to the Everton selection, as many of them feel we were a fallback pick and they would rather have seen a team from Spain, Italy, or even South America - they’re "Premier Leagued" out so to speak and just want a different flavor. So I hope we "educate" MLS fans tomorrow by destroying the MLS team, especially since I don’t want to have my now Tottenham fan boss giving me lip (he’s a Peter Crouch fan for some reason). It won’t be easy - MLS All-Stars have never lost to a foreign club, but maybe they’re due.
Well Chris.... if you want to break the MLS streak , we’ll have to play a much better match than we did against River Plate. That performance was also without this new crop of injuries and doubts. Hopefully we’ll take advantage of the opportunity to raise our profile in the US. We certainly didn’t do that last weekend in Canada.
Mike, I’m glad you posted this here.
I sent this link to Michael Kenrick a couple of days ago but he was either too busy or just couldn’t be arsed adding it to the site as I think it is newsworthy enough to be on the homepage rather than buried in a mailbag piece where people have to copy and paste the link into their browser.
Howard is showing himself to be a true blue and a great ambassador for our great club.
I sent this link to Michael Kenrick a couple of days ago but he was either too busy or just couldn’t be arsed adding it to the site as I think it is newsworthy enough to be on the homepage rather than buried in a mailbag piece where people have to copy and paste the link into their browser.
Howard is showing himself to be a true blue and a great ambassador for our great club.
I hope I’m wrong but I have a bad feeling about this game. The All-Stars are well into their season and we are still in the starting blocks. We are also consistently poor in the US (I can't remember a really decent result since we started going pre-season) and the heat and humitidy won't help.
Still, I guess the main things are ’no injuries’ and improvement in fitness levels.
Still, I guess the main things are ’no injuries’ and improvement in fitness levels.
So many Americans dont know much about us? So what? I can't name more than two baseball teams and I’m not sure they even exist anymore?
New York Yankees and the Boston Red Socks (the last one only because of Sam Malone in Cheers!)
Why get upset about our image in a land that just doesnt "do" football?
Mark Murphy makes a fair point: when Americans don’t know anything about football it’s because they’re idiots; when English people don’t know anything about the NFL it’s because the NFL sucks. While "funny" it’s not the most mature approach (not that football comments are notoriously mature).
I heard a lot of monumentally stupid things said about the NFL (in terms of being fundamentally wrong facts rather than just opinions about the quality of the game) when they had their game in London. The general attitude seems to be that doesn’t count; we’re allowed to be ignorant about the NFL because we don’t like it. Well guess what, the bulk of Americans don’t like "soccer."
Americans and English have the exact same mentality, with the exact same type of jokes (did you know both NFL and footie are "sports for girls" if we were to believe both sides of the pond) , and exact same "can’t be bothered to learn anything" attitude to the opposing sports. However some Americans DO try when it comes to "soccer" (probably more than most English people bother trying to pick up North American sports frankly).
Anyway, that rant will of course change nothing.
However, having said all of that, the official MLS website had a preview of the match in which they said Everton had won "two FC Cups." Not doing a lot to help my argument there official MLS website ... thanks for nothing.
I heard a lot of monumentally stupid things said about the NFL (in terms of being fundamentally wrong facts rather than just opinions about the quality of the game) when they had their game in London. The general attitude seems to be that doesn’t count; we’re allowed to be ignorant about the NFL because we don’t like it. Well guess what, the bulk of Americans don’t like "soccer."
Americans and English have the exact same mentality, with the exact same type of jokes (did you know both NFL and footie are "sports for girls" if we were to believe both sides of the pond) , and exact same "can’t be bothered to learn anything" attitude to the opposing sports. However some Americans DO try when it comes to "soccer" (probably more than most English people bother trying to pick up North American sports frankly).
Anyway, that rant will of course change nothing.
However, having said all of that, the official MLS website had a preview of the match in which they said Everton had won "two FC Cups." Not doing a lot to help my argument there official MLS website ... thanks for nothing.
I’ve lived in the States for a while, and there are quite a few "soccer" lovers over here. I came with the same prejudices that many Americans harbour about my own beloved sport, dismissing all their sports as shite — but it’s a very complicated situation. Still, the commentary is cringeworthy at times "Coming to you from Merseyfield"...bleurgh
Incidentally, although "Soccer" may be more commonly used in North America it’s not where the term originated. References to ’socca’ (1889), ’socker’ (1891) & ’soccer’ (1895) all originate here in England.
Mark M is quite right - we shouldn’t expect any different. For example, I am a cycling fan and am often astounded by the level of ignorance which the media here display about the sport.
But ’soccer’ is on the up in the States (are the odd references to kids playing the game in TV shows becoming more frequent?) and they will become a major world player. I think Moyes and Co. believe this to be the case, and I think we will see more transatlantic imports over the next few seasons.
I’ve heard it said that ’soccer’ comes from a version of Association football, possibly used by rugby footballers to dismiss the original code.
But ’soccer’ is on the up in the States (are the odd references to kids playing the game in TV shows becoming more frequent?) and they will become a major world player. I think Moyes and Co. believe this to be the case, and I think we will see more transatlantic imports over the next few seasons.
I’ve heard it said that ’soccer’ comes from a version of Association football, possibly used by rugby footballers to dismiss the original code.
I think there are a couple of other American players we could do worse than sign actually, in Donovan and Dempsey who would improve our squad and our transatlantic profile.
And the word soccer is indeed derived from ’association’ and was originally used by rugby players who bizarrely claim their sport is also called ’football’.
And in reference to British ignorance of American sports, I personally have always followed them (albeit distantly) and could name 90% of the teams in the major sports, and the simplest point to make is that to the British mentality, American sports are really quite silly. A squad of 53 players for an 11 a side game (NFL), a season of 162 games (Baseball) or 82 games (NBA) the point of which is to decide who plays 4 home games instead of 3 come the play-offs: these are things that make no sense to people brought up on heirarchical leagues and playing everyone twice. I could go on, but these are things coming from someone who actually quite likes these sports.
The massive difference between the American and English mentality is that we have the back-up of knowing that the rest of the world plays football and at least some other countries the likes of rugby and cricket. American football isn’t a major sport in any other country and baseball is only in a handful.
And the word soccer is indeed derived from ’association’ and was originally used by rugby players who bizarrely claim their sport is also called ’football’.
And in reference to British ignorance of American sports, I personally have always followed them (albeit distantly) and could name 90% of the teams in the major sports, and the simplest point to make is that to the British mentality, American sports are really quite silly. A squad of 53 players for an 11 a side game (NFL), a season of 162 games (Baseball) or 82 games (NBA) the point of which is to decide who plays 4 home games instead of 3 come the play-offs: these are things that make no sense to people brought up on heirarchical leagues and playing everyone twice. I could go on, but these are things coming from someone who actually quite likes these sports.
The massive difference between the American and English mentality is that we have the back-up of knowing that the rest of the world plays football and at least some other countries the likes of rugby and cricket. American football isn’t a major sport in any other country and baseball is only in a handful.
You’re on the right track, Keith. After the founding of the Football Association & the splitting of Association Football from Rugby Football, Rugby Football was often refered to as "rugger" & Association Football as "soccer". In both cases by bastardising the definitive word in each title to form a nickname. I suppose they could have called it "asser" but I doubt it would have caught on somehow.
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1 Posted 29/07/2009 at 04:33:04
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What do you expect ?
There again what kind of profile does the Jazz have on Merseyside and who were Stockton and Malone anyway ?
Football in America ............. like giving a fish a bicycle.