Which company has done the best job with World Cup kits?
by denz on Mar 9, 2010 3:17 PM MST
1 comment
24 of the 32 teams in the World Cup will be wearing kits from either Adidas, Nike, or Puma. I have been critical of the Adidas effort in MLS, too much cookie cutter for me, I am not a huge fan of the Nike USMNT kits, but I thought their green efforts were very cool.
This is a huge business with over 10 billion dollars in annual sales, Adidas has been the leader for as long as most can remember, but Nike has stepped up their efforts and is taking a bigger and bigger chunk of the pie. How important is this segment of the market, well Nike paid a reported $64 million dollars a year to be the official kit of the French National team from 2011 to 2018. That is four times what Adidas was paying.
The article in the Oregonian quotes a NPD analyst as saying if the US makes it to the semi finals, 1 in 10 could purchase a team shirt, that is 30 million shirts sold in less than 3 months.
So I thought I would put it up to a vote, which company did the best job on World Cup kits?
Images are from worldsoccershop.com (which is offering all of the following for purchase)
Here are the Adidas offerings: 
Nike and Puma after the jump:
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CBA talks begin, opinions are still being formed
by denz on Mar 9, 2010 1:25 PM MST
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Today will be the first day that the MLS and MLSPU sit down with their new best friend federal mediator George Cohen, and while I don't expect a lot of news to come out from either side today, the soccer community is still offering up some opinion pieces on both sides:
From the Columbus Dispatch: MLS Should Give Free Agency
Uncommon Cents offers up: Why the MLS owners are fighting the union so hard
Match Fit USA had this to say last Friday: MLS CBA: The Mediator if you want a good primer of the issues MFUSA is a great place to get info, look to the right nav for a series of articles on the MLS CBA
It is now midday on the East coast and still there is little information coming out about today's CBA session, if I hear anything major I will post it as soon as I can.
OFF MY SOAPBOX
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Team USA announces camp roster for US vs. Mexico at Rio Tinto Stadium
by denz on Mar 8, 2010 5:36 PM MST
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From US Soccer:
CHICAGO (March 8, 2010) - U.S. Women's National Team head coach Pia Sundhage has named 24 players to a training camp surrounding two matches against Mexico taking place on March 28 at Torero Stadium on the campus of the University of San Diego and March 31 at Rio Tinto Stadium in Sandy, Utah.
The match in San Diego will kick off at 2 p.m. PT and will be televised live on Fox Soccer Channel and Fox Sports en Español. The match in Utah will kick off at 7 p.m. MT and be televised live on ESPN2. Fans can follow both matches online via ussoccer.com's MatchTracker and at twitter.com/ussoccer. The U.S. Women are coming off an emphatic championship run at the 2010 Algarve Cup in Portugal where, led by four goals from Lauren Cheney and three goals from Abby Wambach, the USA defeated the seventh, fourth and second ranked teams in the world, including an exciting 3-2 victory over Germany in the title game.
The matches against Mexico will mark the first two domestic games of the year for the U.S. team and will come just days before the opening of the second season of Women's Professional Soccer on the weekend of April 10 and 11. The U.S. call-ups will leave WPS pre-season camps to start training in San Diego on March 24. Sundhage will suit up 18 of the 24 players in camp for each match.
Sundhage named all 19 players from the 2010 Algarve Cup squad, including San Diego product Rachel Buehler, who was an All-American at Torrey Pines High School. Buehler, along with Amy LePeilbet, played key roles in anchoring the center of the U.S. defense during the Algarve Cup. Buehler and Wambach were the only two players on the Algarve roster who played every minute of all four matches.
More after the jump:
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Different sides weighing in on the CBA and some thoughts on Landon
by denz on Mar 8, 2010 2:04 PM MST
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So as we found out on Friday the union and the league will sit down this week to continue work on a new CBA, this time they will be joined by a federal mediator. I really hope things go well and both sides can come to an agreement before the season starts, but it seems that some folks are still lining up behind one side or the other (which I think is a part of the problem):
Big Apple Soccer: Points to some lessons from the NASL player strike in 1979
A writer from the Houston Chronicle offers: Major League has major problems
Both of these articles have some valid points but then both have some points I disagree with, I do like that finally someone has chosen to mention what should have been the rallying cry for the players from the start (in my opinion), which is the injustice of Stuart Holden making under $35,000 last year and while Houston offered him a significant raise in the off season, they should have done so two years ago. The only problem with StuHo's situation is that he took the option to leave after his contract expired and go to Europe, not every MLS player has that option.
For me this has never been about sides, despite what some think, it has been about what is best for the sport. It is that reason that I side with the players on raising salaries, quality of life issues, and why I tend to side with the league on issues like guaranteed contracts, and neither side on the sticky "free agency" issue. The latter is one that given the current league structure could be a disaster if it was done blindly, but one that with an eventual restructure of the league to more team control, I fully support.
Whatever happens in the talks this week, I just hope that both sides realize that much more is at stake than what either side is wanting. Soccerlaw.com does a nice job of pointing out that both sides will likely need to moderate their current position in order to come to a new CBA
after the jump an update on Landycakes:
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Yura Movsisyan, be back in action this weekend
by denz on Mar 6, 2010 7:02 PM MST
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So after the MLS Cup and the end of the MLS season Yura Movsisyan headed off to join his new club in Denmark, Randers FC. This weekend they will return to league action after their winter break and face Esbjerg, who currently sit in 3rd place in the Superliga. Randers is sitting in 11th place, but considering the league only has 12 teams that isn't very good, in fact they are 13 points behind FC MIDTJYLLAND and safety from relegation.
Randers are 1-5-12 with just 13 goals scored for and 33 against, it is clear that for Yura the task is simple, score and do so as often as you can.
Yura will be in the 18 on Sunday as Randers FC start their season back up, He will be joining 3 other new faces on the squad according to the Randers website:
When Randers FC Sunday meetings Esbjerg 14.00 on Blue Water Arena can start drawing contain no fewer than four SAS League debutants. Club quartet of new players, Anders Egholm, Soren Jensen, Morten Karlsen and Yura Movsisyan is all included in the squad of 18 players who Ove Christensen take with them into play bus Sunday.
The squad is as follows:
Kevin Stuhr Ellegaard, Peter Friis Jensen, Alexander Fischer, Nicolas Bøgild, Robert Arzumanyan, Soren Pedersen, Kasper Lorentzen, Mads Fenger, Michael Byskov, Morten Karlsen, Anders Egholm, Ricki Olsen, Søren Berg, Marc Nygaard, Søren Jensen, Jonas Damborg, Mikkel Beckmann, and Yura Movsisyan.
I have send off an email to Yura in hopes of catching up with him and seeing how his transition to a new team in a new league in a new nation, the Randers FC front office has forwarded it to him and hopefully we will get an update soon.
I haven't found a feed for the match but you should be able to get updates on soccerway.
OFF MY SOAPBOX
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A new supporter group for Real Salt Lake fans
by denz on Mar 6, 2010 11:33 AM MST
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As Real Salt Lake begins defense of their 2009 MLS Cup Championship, excitement is all around the community and building on that excitement is the newest supporters group, The Royal Pride.
The Royal Pride strives to engage soccer fans with both Real Salt Lake and the local community. The Royal Pride promotes fan involvement throughout Rio Tinto Stadium and participates in local community and charity events in an effort to extend the RSL community and increase the excitement for our team.
While still in their infancy the group will be hosting an event this afternoon (1-3pm) at Rio Tinto Stadium in the 100 Lions Club area, so interested people can come out and learn more about the group. You will also have a chance to have your picture taken with the MLS Cup. (sorry it appears the Cup is missing in action, we hope it will show up later)
The group has a facebook page and a new website
I hope to see you there.
OFF MY SOAPBOX
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CBA talks take a very interesting turn, mediator anyone?
by denz on Mar 5, 2010 5:20 PM MST
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Well it has been announced that after a couple weeks without much in the way of talks the MLS and the MLSPU will sit down next week, that isn't too much of a surprise with the season less than 3 weeks away. The big news is that they won't be alone as George H. Cohen, Director of Federal Mediation and Conciliation Services, will be joining them.
This is a huge step and hopefully will lead to the talks moving forward, but mediation often means that both sides will have to give up items on their lists of wants and demands.
Director Cohen is a Obama appointee who has a background as a labor lawyer (which could be important), here is the brief bio for him from the White House website:
George Cohen has had an extensive and distinguished career as a labor lawyer, negotiator, and mediator. During the period 1966-2005 he was a senior partner at Bredhoff & Kaiser, a Washington, D.C. law firm with a national practice, specializing in representing private and public sector labor organizations in collective bargaining involving a wide variety of industries and government entities. Prior to entering into private practice, Mr. Cohen served as an appellate court attorney with the National Labor Relations Board. He is a graduate of Cornell University and its Law School and earned a LLM degree from Georgetown Law. In the past three years he has been engaged in a solo practice as a mediator. He is a member of the prestigious Mediation Panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and has successfully mediated numerous complex, high profile disputes. From the mid 1970's thru 2005, Mr. Cohen was an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown Law School where he taught the Art of Collective Bargaining and other labor courses.
So what does a mediator bring to the table? Learn more after the jump:
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A very interesting week, work and RSL both provided some surprises
by denz on Mar 5, 2010 5:01 PM MST
4 comments
Well it has been an exciting week for me, but unfortunately not all of it has been good. It was a crazy work week with my companies Global sales meetings taking place here in SLC, but good to catch up with some friends from the UK. We just held a celebration of "National Employee Recognition" day, what made it cool was our presenting Olympic Athlete rings to a couple of team USA members in a stand up meeting. It was great hearing from them how important the rings are in helping them celebrate their accomplishment.
On the down side I headed out to Rio Tinto on Wednesday to try and do a couple interviews with the players, and then to help out with the sizing of them for their Championship rings celebrating their MLS Cup victory. It should have been a good day, but I was told that I was now considered "persona non grata".
It seems that when I suggested that the players union might want to stop parading wealthy players (those making over $150,000 a year) around as victims of the evil league (which one article compare to Wal-Mart), that it got under the skin of a player or two. I can fully understand that, and I know they are passionate about what they believe is best for the players, and I hope they consider best for the league as well. I have for months championed the raising of both the minimum and maximum player salaries in the league, as well as moving the salary cap up.
More after the jump:
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