USA Copa America Blues

The American view of sports is much different from the rest of the world. To the world, playing for your national team is more important than playing for the club or team that pays you. An example of this is the end of La Liga (the soccer championship for Spain) when Real Madrid had to send Robinho to Brazil and the team’s best defensive midfielder, Mahamadou Diarra, to Mali for nationals. Real Madrid and Diarra got a lot of heat for ditching PRACTICE nationals for one game (Real Madrid and the players had to get very rare special permission to play in the final game).

To put this in perspective, it would be like FIBA forcing Dwayne Wade to pull out of the NBA Finals to practice with the USA Basketball team. You are thinking exactly what the Heat would think: “Fuck you, bitch.” Logically, the American view is that you should put priority on where you get paid over something you are not getting paid for.

So when USA sent their “A” squad to the Gold Cup (our region’s championship) and their “B” squad to Copa America (South America’s championship and globally more prestigious), a lot of USA soccer fans got butthurt. USA soccer fans are like soccer fans from the rest of the world: Nationals over Club. But in a league that is already short on star power, you can’t have your stars gone for two tournaments while your barely-above-water league plays with 2nd and 3rd stringers. And if you have to pick one, you pick your own region. We’re not in a position to try to prove a point yet. The MLS is not like what the Galaxy owner Lalas thinks it is: on par with the Premier League. So the MLS cannot make the same sacrifices the better, more established leagues can. And even if we could, Dwayne Wade should not be gone for half a season to play for nationals in an American market, and neither should the MLS stars.