I Dislike Your Favorite Team

So, David Beckham is coming to the MLS. You knew that, right? Right. To be fair, in terms of fitness, he should only just be beginning to enter his decline. He's 31 years old, he's never really been a player who has relied on pace to score--he's always been a cunning shot taker, a great crosser of the ball, and a lethal free kick specialist. The number of times on film you'll see Beckham beating someone with a brilliant run are few and far between. He has the exactly the kind of game that should extend one's career. And yet, here he is, at 31, moving to the ghetto of US Soccer. He said he wanted to make the move before people said that money was a motivating factor. If that were the case, he should have done it before he was worth (apparently) A Quarter of a Billion Dollars.

I say all of that as a preface, and almost as an apology for my Headline. Beckham isn't necessarily on his decline, it just sure looks like is, and coming to the MLS seems to confirm the suspicions. But we'll get into all of that another time. For now, some historical perspective (rather short term, MLS perspective. One of these days we'll get into the ugliness that was the NASL collapse). But what I'm really wanting to do is talk about

Other Great Foreign Players who played in, or auditioned for, the MLS: A Survey.

Let's be clear about our methodology here. I'm not talking about foreign players who were unknown before coming to the MLS, and then establishing themselves as great MLS players. If I were, to be sure, Jaime Moreno and El Diablo would be at the top of the success list, and countless dozens of players would be crowded at the bottom. I'm also not talking about guys from countries with unproven Big League status who came to the MLS and rocked the house and never got a sniff at the real big leagues, like Digital Takawira or Doctor Khumalo. The MLS is a place where players who can't get work anywhere else come. Lots of them are foreigners. They do the jobs Americans won't do, you see.

So I'm talking about players who had hugely successful professional careers and treated the MLS like an Elephant Graveyard. There were successes there, and failures. Let's get to it, in order of success.

Preki--Possibly the best success story of the MLS. He started life as Predrag Radosavljević, a Serbian who played with famous (later infamous) Red Star Belgrade in Yugoslavia. He moved to the US, and played 7 years in the MISL, which should be enough time to declare him an unsuccessful international player. But he did play some in the Premiership and First Divisions in England in the mid-90's. He became one of the MLS' most dangerous offensive players, and after retaining US citizenship in 1996, became of the US' best players. As of this writing, he's coaching in the MLS. To my mind, an unmitigated success--a player who loved being the US, loved playing in the MLS, was talented, and has continued to contribute after retiring.

Carlos Valderrama--Valderrama is still the All-Time assist leader, and single-season assist record holder in MLS, and yet I don't remember him breaking a pace past a jog. But he was incredibly effective, and had an incredible pedigree prior to joining the MLS. He played in Top Leagues in Europe. He's the only Columbian in the Top 125 South American Players of All Time (not much room there after the Brazilians and Argentians). He was great in the MLS, but his very presence signalled the lack of quality surrounding him, or more accurately, opposing him. Starting in the MLS at age 35, he never seemed to be worried that anyone would take the ball off of him. He set the season record for assists at age 39, which is an indictment of MLS, as that record has stood for 6 years. He also showed by his play that he could affect a game without working very hard (or at all). To his credit, he stayed in the league for 6 years, moving from team to team, and delivering deadly passes his entire career.

Peter Nowak, aka The Polish Rifle. Nowak had a pretty decent career in the Polish leagues, where he started playing at age 15, which sounds like maybe he was young when he came to the MLS, until you realize that he was 15 years old in 1979. Yikes! Old Man Walking! He played inTurkey, Switzerland and Germany. Nowak's best year in Europe was 1996, when he was named the Polish Footballer of the Year, and the Bundesliga Playmaker of the Year. In 1998, he moved to the MLS, where his scoring and assisting are good, not great. More importantly, he has stayed in the US, coaching in the MLS, and now recently, starting to work with the US National Teams. Pretty much exactly how the MLS should work in recruiting foreign players--get them to come near their peak, keep them after they fall off, and use them for coaching.


Hristo Stoichkov--Hristo had made a splash in 1994, winning the Gold Boot leading Bulgaria to an improbable 4th place finish in the World Cup. He played in the Spanish League for Barcelona (where he became a proponent for Catalonian independence, according to Franklin Foer). He played in Japan before coming to the US to wrap up his career. He is the anti-Valderrama. By the time he arrived, he was 34, and Stoichkov's physical gifts had clearly diminished, but his intensity was almost scary to behold. He was still one of the best players on the pitch. But where Valderrama would feed passes and shrug as his American teammates struggled to do anything with them, Stoichkov would stare daggers at his teammates. There were times when I actually thought that Hristo would hurt his own players. "Run away Josh Wolff, run away" I would yell. Stoichkov scored 22 goals in 72 games, had a bunch of assists, and brought his scary ass intensity to America. I wish we could have had him a few years earlier.


The first three players were named to the MLS' First Decade Starting 11. So, you can consider that a good thing, or a bad thing. They were 3 of the best players in the first decade of the MLS. Preki and Nowak have continued to contribute to US soccer. So that worked out pretty well. Valderrama, while great fun to watch, hasn't done dick. I believe he got the fuck out of Dodge.

But lest we forget, the true garbage dumps Europe has saddled the MLS with:

Lothar Matthaus--One of the Greatest German Midfielders of All Time. 150 Caps for the German squad, including 3 World Cup Finals. Creative on the ball, great field vision, absolutely vicious shot. So when he joined the MLS, specifying that he would only play for the New York MetroStars, there was some quiet expectation that Lothar would show the occasional flash of his greatness. He never, ever did. Fat, lazy, out of shape. Unwilling to practice. He played 16 games, never scored a goal, never did dick. His idea of playing soccer in the US was, "I'll see you at the game. During the week, I'm cruising."

Paul Gascoigne--A brilliant headcase of English soccer. Paul "Gazza" Gascoigne was famous for being photographed coming out of nightclubs the morning of key European soccer games. Another brilliant midfielder, he waited until he was a couple of years out of European football before he even bothered to try work out for the MLS. And yet, somehow, he was excelling at getting photographed coming out of nightclubs. I believe it was Peter Nowak, in his role as DC United coach, he said, "Thanks but no thanks" to Gascoigne. And Gazza went back to what he does best--getting in fights outside pubs in London.


Update: Fairly regular commenter LButler makes a good point in my forgetting goalkeeper Walter Zenga. The guy only played for over 10 years in the Serie A, winning an UEFA Cup in 1994. He was also one of the best at the international level, arguably the finest goalkeeper in Italian soccer history (though certainly Dino Zoff would have to be included there). Zenga came to the MLS in 1997, played two seasons. He managed the Revolution in 1999, before leaving for the glamorous coaching destination of the Romanian league. He's now coaching a team in the United Arab Emirates.

LButler also made a fine point about Zenga's excellent taste in headwear. I'm happy to report that even as a fulltime manager, he still likes to bust out the ballcap. I wouldn't have thought that business suits and caps would go together, but clearly, they do:












Update #2: Not very regular commenter Joel informed me that I had forgotten Roberto Donadoni. I actually didn't believe him at first. But Joel was quite right. Donadoni played the first two years in the MLS. Where he was, of course, completely wasted. Not in a drunk sense, but in a sense of being so much better than the other 21 men on the field that he could possibly be used well.

Donadoni is an example of a failed MLS experiment. He played in the league, made a tiny splash, and then decided he'd rather play in Saudi Arabia. He moved back to Italy to manage, and has never had anything to with American soccer since.

There's no point in recruiting aging European stars unless they fall in love with America and continue to stay here, helping to show Americans how to play. Donadoni didn't do that, and his impact on American soccer was so forgettable that I forgot all about his time here. Despite the fact that he may be one of the top 10 players in the last 20 years to play professional soccer in America. Or you help grow the league by lending an air of value the league, by hanging around for awhile, and attracting your fellow aging stars.

This is why Beckham is a potential watershed. He's only 31. He's got at least 3 years of quality soccer in front of him. He's competitive, and he, by his presence, makes the league more legitimate. Ronaldo's chances of signing with the Red Bulls just went up 20%. And yeah, he's a little porky, but he's under 32 years of age, as well. And he'd be, easily, the best striker the league has ever seen. And hey, why not Zidane, for a year or two?


also, I should give credit to wikipedia for helping me remember the details on those of these guys.