An Open Letter

I've really liked James Edward's new RSL blog and wanted to pass along the news to James and a couple of the editors over at Deseret News to let them know about it. Unfortunately, the mail bounced due to 'content restrictions'. So I've decided to make this an open letter instead. Here's the message itself (along with the failure message from the desnews mail server).

  This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification

  Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

    jedward at desnews dot com

  Technical details of permanent failure:
  PERM_FAILURE: SMTP Error (state 16): 550 5.7.1 Message rejected due to content restrictions

    ----- Original message -----

  Received: by 10.142.178.13 with SMTP id a13mr7307458wff.196.1203580103267;
       Wed, 20 Feb 2008 23:48:23 -0800 (PST)
  Subject: RSL Blog


  James,
  I just wanted to send off an email to tell you how much
  I'm enjoying your RSL blog.  I've really appreciated
  the extra coverage of the team during the FL segment of
  their pre-season.

  Too bad you can't make the Argentina leg too, it would be
  great to get the inside scoop on what's sure to be the most
  important phase of RSL's pre-season.  Hopefully you'll be
  able to get some good info from the team.

While I didn't write it in the original email, this seems like a good time to put in an additional plea. I'd love to see the blog (and the Deseret News in general) cover other aspects of Utah professional soccer as well. We're not too far away from the PDL preseason for Ogden and BYU, and it would be great to see them both get better coverage.

West Virginia Chaos Staffing News

The PDL’s West Virginia Chaos have made a move that looks new to me. I’ve been thinking about the PDL’s impact on the upper level USL leagues and MLS for a while, and this seems like another step in the right direction.

On January 29th they announced the hiring of a ‘international consultant’, Dave Beasant. Beasant was a goalkeeper for a number of english clubs and for the English National team (playing in the 1990 World Cup). With his links to Fulham (as a goalkeeping coach), his move to American soccer seems a natural fit.

What’s really appealing to me is the role that Beasant is supposed to play. Quoting from the press release:

Beasant will take an active role in Chaos camps and with talent evaluation through videos and personal visits to several matches this season that will help the Chaos place players on MLS, USL-1, USL-2, and potentially European teams.

The idea of a member of the FO working as a ‘reverse scout’ or a pseudo-agent is intriguing. It will be interesting to see how many Chaos players end up moving on to more senior sides because of it and how many other PDL clubs start doing the same thing.

In the same announcement, the Chaos also announced the hiring of another Brit, Jack Thompson. Thompson will be a player/coach and the Director of Chaos Camps. He’s 24 and holds a USSF ‘C’ coaching license.

Changing Face of the PDL Northwest

The face of the PDL Northwestern Division is changing. In addition to a brand new team this year (and one more for 2009), there are a couple of new coaches on existing teams. None of these coaches appears to be super well known, but here’s what I know about them.

Cascade Surge

The Cascade Surge have hired Larry Delamarter as the team’s new Head Coach. He has been a High School level coach for the last seven years, being named Coach of the Year for the 2006 and 2007 seasons. His Chieftains have posted an incredible 62-6-9 record over the last four seasons. He also coached the Azusa Pacific University and University of Tampa. (In fact, he coached current Surge President Dave Irby who played at Azusa and later made Irby an assitant coach there.) It will be interesting to watch Coach Delamarter’s transition to the PDL.

h2 Abbotsford Rangers

Last season, Coach Colin Miller joined the staff at Derby County in the EPL. Hehas been replaced by Shaun Lowther. Coach Lowther is a former Canadian mens’ national team player, and earned 14 caps. He played professionally from 1980-1988. He’s also been involved in managing soccer clubs in the CSL. Coach Miller is the only one of the three new coaches to have a page on wikipedia so far.

Vancouver Whitecaps Residency

The new team in the bunch, the Vancouer Whitecaps Residency, has named Thomas Niendorf, Managing Director and Head Coach. Quoting from their site:

Thomas Niendorf is a European coaching specialist who holds a DFB (German Soccer Federation)professional coaching license, and maintains an extensive network of contacts in Europe.

Coach Niendorf has a long history with Canadian soccer. He coached the Calgary Storm (and then Mustangs) of the old A League for a number of years, he also coached in Germany. He ‘discovered’ Owen Hargreaves, helping him get a trial with Bayern Munich when he was cut by the Canadian U17 squad.

It’s safe to say that Coach Niendorf has the best credentials of the three. It will be interesting to see how he does with a first year PDL team.

Victoria Highlanders

Since they won’t start playing until 2009, there’s not much to say about this club yet. Victoria is a great city though, and did well hosting U20 World Cup games. This should be a solid addition to the division. (Not to mention taking the ferry from Port Angelas, WA or Vancouver, BC will make for a fun trip—and a great pre-tailgate party.)

BYU's 2008 Schedule Released

The PDL has released its schedule for 2008. I’ve extracted the BYU games here:

Date	Day	Visiting Team	Home Team	Time (MDT)
May 16	Friday	Cascade Surge	BYU Cougars	7:30 PM
May 17	Saturday	Spokane Spiders	BYU Cougars	7:30 PM
May 23	Friday	BYU Cougars	Yakima Reds	8:05 PM
May 24	Saturday	BYU Cougars	Tacoma Tide	8:05 PM
May 30	Friday	BYU Cougars	Abbotsford Mariners	7:30 PM
May 31	Saturday	BYU Cougars	Vancouver Whitecaps	4:00 PM
June 13	Friday	Yakima Reds	BYU Cougars	7:30 PM
June 14	Saturday	Tacoma Tide	BYU Cougars	7:30 PM
June 17	Tuesday	BYU Cougars	Ogden Outlaws	7:00 PM
June 13	Friday	Yakima Reds	BYU Cougars	7:30 PM
June 14	Saturday	Tacoma Tide	BYU Cougars	7:30 PM
June 17	Tuesday	BYU Cougars	Ogden Outlaws	7:00 PM
June 26	Thursday	BYU Cougars	Spokane Spiders	8:00 PM
June 28	Saturday	BYU Cougars	Cascade Surge	8:05 PM
July 4	Friday	Ogden Outlaws	BYU Cougars	7:30 PM
July 12	Saturday	BYU Cougars	Ogden Outlaws	7:00 PM
July 15	Sunday	Ogden Outlaws	BYU Cougars	7:30 PM
July 18	Friday	Vancouver Whitecaps	BYU Cougars	7:30 PM
July 19	Saturday	Abbotsford Mariners	BYU Cougars	7:30 PM

This year, all of BYU’s games are against conference foes (unlike last year when the Colorado Rapids U23 played at BYU). Ahh, the joys of expansion.

I did see some interesting bits:

• BYU plays the Ogden Outlaws four times in 2008
• BYU plays Tacoma and Yakima each twice at home and once away
• BYU plays all the other teams just twice, once at home and once away.
• BYU begins and ends their season with Friday and Saturday home stands
• BYU plays ten home games and only nine away games

This looks like a pretty exciting season. I’m really looking forward to mid-May when I can catch my first regular season game. Who knows, maybe I’ll b able to sneak in some pre-season action too.

More From the RSL-BYU Game

This time of year, it's hard to get a good picture without better equipment than my son was using, but I did like this picture of RSL taking the field at the beginning of the game. Hopefully we'll get some better pictures at next week's game against UVSC.

RSL-BYU Friendly

“We’re on the march with Watkin’s army …”, 850 BYU and RSL fans showed up to cheer for the two teams in last night’s friendly. A lot of the fans were faced with the tough choice of which team to root for. A small pocket of RCB fans were there with RSL flags, but were on their best behavior noting that “We don’t want to get kicked out of the game in the first ten minutes.”

There was a lot of friendly banter between the RCB contigent and the BYU fans, and the same feeling seemed to be present on the field. It was a friendly that lived up to its name, with no cards issued and very few fouls.

RSL came out on top on two goals by Yura Movsisyan (one in the 14th minute and the other in the 53rd). RSL played a number of regular starters along with several bench players, while a number of new faces were on the field for BYU to go with some of their familiar faces.

BYU’s Coach Watkins didn’t seem too put out by his team’s loss to RSL, saying:

It was a great opportunity for our young guys to get out there and to learn quickly. ... We looked a little disorganized out there, but we’ve only had five practices so far this fall. We’ll get better, back to where we were during the season.

One of the new BYU players getting time in the game was freshman, Derek Taylor. He called it a fun game, and added that he grew a lot as a player in facing a professional team. Taylor also talked about the big difference in facing RSL, “It was definitely an adjustment for me because everything was a lot faster in tonight’s game than what I’m used to as a player back home.”

BYU plays again on Tuesday, Oct. 16th when they welcome the UVSC men’s soccer team to the South Field for a friendly match. See you there.

BYU Friendly in the rain

My son and I tried to go to the UVSC @ BYU friendly tonight. Instead of the game, we got some lessons in the realities of PDL soccer.

The game itself was cancelled. I had a chance to talk to a couple of team representatives about the reasons. It turned out that there were two big reasons:

1. To protect the field: BYU is hosting a tournament on the field and with the bad weather they were concerned about it’s condition with an extra game
2. Finances: The soccer team needs to pay for their use of the field, and with the poor weather, they didn’t expect to draw a large enough crowd to cover their costs.

Since the UVSC mens team wasn’t there, BYU decided to hold an open, intra-squad scrimmage on their practice field. Between players who were on the roster in 2007 and some of the other players who are eyeing spots in 2008, they were able to field a full 11 on 11 scrimmage with several substitutions.

Even with the cancellation, there were about 50 fans there in the cold and wet. They were mostly family and friends of players, something that’s pretty common at BYU games anyway.

The scrimmage itself was a lot of fun to watch. We were right on the field (standing on the sidelines mingling with the team). While we were there, we had a chance to talk to Zach DeFrancis’brother juke the goal keeper, and put a great header into goal.

The game against UVSC is being rescheduled for Tuesday the 16th, and BYU is playing a friendly against RSL this week, so it looks like I’ll have a couple more chances to watch the Cougars play this month.