The most notable local soccer news this morning: Chivas USA taking a bus to LAX enroute to Saturday’s game in Columbus (I kid you not).
That being the case, far more interesting was the recent arrival of a box from MLS containing media guides for all 14 teams.
Filled with facts and figures, the media guides are indispensable aids to covering the league, but the books also inadvertently tell much about the identity of individual teams.
For instance, only one club – the Columbus Crew – put an actual player in action (in this case Argentine Guillermo Barros Schelotto) on the cover, while most of the rest opt largely for stylized logos that emphasize the team is the thing rather than select star players.
That includes the Galaxy, which could have put David Beckham on the cover, but chose not to do so.
Exceptions: the defending champion Houston Dynamo, which opted for a picture of Dwayne De Rosario lifting the MLS Cup; the Colorado Rapids, which went with a shot of their new stadium; and D.C. United, which chose to acknowledge their especially fervent fan base with a crowd shot. Logical covers in each case.
Only the Kansas City Wizards bravely chose to illustrate their coach, Curt Onalfo, on the cover. That hopefully does not mean the kiss of death for him in the job before the season is out.
For a couple seasons, the Wizards media guide was among the flimsiest in MLS, perhaps indicative of the previous owners lack of commitment (and cash) to the franchise; now it is among the heftiest in the league.
Among the longest guides in MLS this season is the one for Red Bull New York, a tome that checks in at 330 pages (one of the shortest is for the Dyanamo at just 140 pages, thereby illustrating it’s what you do on the field that really counts). Thankfully long gone is the season when the then-MetroStars issued a CD-ROM rather than an actual book for their media guide, an unwieldy format that reminded one of the poorly-performing team a little too much.
And while we’re looking for analogies, I always appreciate those guides that come with a coil to hold pages in place (which I’m guessing are more expensive to print and the reason we don’t see more of them). Does it mean anything that I’ve already cracked the spine of the Real Salt Lake guide and some pages are falling out?
FC Dallas continues to salute the far-reaching influence of late owner Lamar Hunt on the sport and league, placing his bio on page six of their guide. In contrast, (and as usual) the Galaxy somehow managed to keep the name of reclusive owner Phillip Anschutz out of their guide entirely, even though the league would likely have collapsed a few years ago without his backing.
Some things are just plain weird.
Why, for instance, does RSL give us both English- and Spanish-language biographies of such executives as Chief Financial Officer Gary Reimer, but doesn’t do the same for a single member of the playing roster? Much more important for Spanish-speaking journalists to learn about the details of Mr. Reimer’s career (he’s the former CFO of Capri Sun!) than, say, that of goalkeeper Nick Rimando, I guess.
The crown jewel of the guides, however, is the 588-page MLS Fact and Record Book (last year’s edition was “only” 554 pages long) pictured above.
The league resumed printing these three years ago (if memory serves) after what was presumably a money-saving hiatus. Only a few thousand are printed annually, so if you can get your hands on one it’s an excellent way to wile away a boring 0-0 game.
The book contains the career record or every player to ever grace an MLS field, a season by season record for every team and even the past and present logos of every club (remember LA’s Twizzle thingie that was supposed to represent a spinning galaxy?).
But it also contains essential information the league itself appears to gloss over.
For example, at the bottom of page 8 the reader learns the MLS format this year will be the top three teams in each conference and then the two with the most points regardless of conference.
That compares to last year’s playoff structure of the top two teams in each conference plus the remaining four regardless of conference.
I can’t recall the league ever announcing the change though, so I guess it pays to read the fine print.
The book contains a dizzying amount of information only a soccer geek would love (can you name the 13 sets of brothers who have played in MLS?) including how many teams have opened a season with scoreless draws in consecutive games (the Fire and Crew in 2004 and 2007 respectively).
And in what is surely some sort of commentary on the growth of MLS, the size of the media guides has outgrown the stiff cardboard “book case” to house them all in the league provided a few years ago.
The best thing about the books though?
That new media guide smell, all plastic-like and crisp.
Just don’t breath too deep.