HexagonalBlog

CONCACAF Congress in Budapest: Not as bizarre as it sounds

CONCACAF's announcement that the new confederation president would be selected at their Congress in Budapest -- Hungary! -- raised eyebrows and drew considerable derision from the media and the Twitterverse.  The Congress will meet on 23 May to select a president who will complete the remaining four years of Jack Warner's term.

I know that I have been critical of bizarre CONCACAF decisionmaking in the past, but I don't believe the decision to host the CONCACAF Congress in Europe is as odd as it sounds.  The CONCACAF delegates will be in Budapest for the FIFA Congress, and it would be very bad for a FIFA Ordinary Congress to meet without a permanent CONCACAF president in place.  This CONCACAF Congress is an Extraordinary Congress (i.e. not regularly scheduled) for the express purpose of selecting a new president.  If all of the CONCACAF national association delegates will be in Budapest anyway, why not have them meet the day before to select a new president?  From the confederation's point of view, co-locating its Congress with FIFA's saves them money and logistical headaches.

CONCACAF's ExCo has started the countdown to the candidate nomination process, with national associations having until 25 March to nominate someone.  I would imagine that Alfredo Hawit, the interim president, will run for the permanent position.  The Caribbean associations will almost certainly try to put forward a common candidate, which may prove difficult in the post-Warner era but will be forced upon them as an act of self-preservation.  And it remains to be seen whether the North American associations will stand in the background or finally take an interest in the region's highest soccer leadership position. With closer integration if not an outright merger with CONMEBOL under consideration, this could be a consequential presidential election.

Is CONCACAF moving into CONMEBOL's orbit?

On Wednesday of this week, interim CONCACAF president Alfredo Hawit gave the clearest signal yet that the confederation will collaborate much more closely with CONMEBOL than they have in the past.  Will it be a merger in everything but name?  Not yet, but significant factions within both groups are considering the possibilities.

In recent years Mexican and some other select North and Central American clubs have participated in South American club competitions.  Mexico is practically a half-member of CONMEBOL given their clubs' participation in both Copa Libertadores and Copa Sudamericana and the national team's consistent participation in Copa América.  Other CONCACAF clubs have been limited to participate in the Copa Sudamericana with some limited national team participation in Copa América. 

Hawit's proposal for a 16-team Copa América (in the truest sense of the word)  to celebrate CONMEBOL's centenary is an intriguing one that could serve as a proving ground for such a competition in a merged American confederation.  Such a competition would give CONMEBOL a figleaf for hosting the tournament in either USA or Mexico.  It's not known how the eight CONCACAF representatives would be selected -- rankings? qualification tournament? -- but what is known is that the USA would be a participant in an expanded event.  And if rankings are used, it's possible that one or two Caribbean countries would be in the group of eight.

Beyond an expanded Copa Libertadores and Copa América, full integration and then a full merger of CONCACAF with CONMEBOL would be much more difficult.  Hawit did not propose any changes to the World Cup qualification process, which would require CONCACAF Congress approval and then FIFA approval.  While Mexican teams have CONCACAF's blessing to participate in Copa Libertadores, no other domestic league in the region has the financial ability to carry out a Libertadores program or the television market to interest CONMEBOL, with the exception of MLS.  But even then, CONMEBOL already has access to the US market through Mexican teams and MLS teams haven't shown much interest in Copa Libertadores anyway.

At the end of the Medio Tiempo article was Hawit's call for a 4-year rotating presidency between the Caribbean, Central American, and North American subregions.  It doesn't take a rocket scientist like me to notice that such a proposal is dead on arrival in the Caribbean.  As far as the Caribbean nations are concerned, it would be like turkeys voting for Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Such a presidency would force the other ten nations of CONCACAF to take a more assertive role in the leadership of the confederation as opposed to their more subservient role.  My impression is that the events of last year have awoken them from their disinterest, but the confederation has not yet found the right vehicle to get the North and Central Americans "in" and keep the Caribbeans reasonably happy.

The bottom line here is that Hawit is proposing some significant changes in the direction of CONCACAF, changes that need to be ratified by a new Congress and election.  The next four months will be important ones in the history of the confederation.

T&T federation assets seized

The long, long, long dispute between a group of players from Trinidad & Tobago's 2006 World Cup squad and their national football federation reached a new but not yet final phase today when many of the physical assets of the federation were seized by order of the Trinidadian High Court.  (The original article is located here.) Court-appointed personnel confiscated assets that were removable and thought to be valuable, such as furniture, match memorabilia and trophies, uniforms, computers, and appliances. 

Crates containing unsold copies of Jack Warner's autobiography were left behind.

The seized assets will be auctioned off, but the chances that the proceeds will cancel out the US$700,000 still owed to the players are very small.  The next course of action for the players would then be to liquidate the remaining assets of the T&TFF, which would include their building and other land holdings, and then go after the principals themselves such as former T&TFF president Oliver Camps. 

Of course no further discussion of this saga can proceed without mentioning Jack Warner.  In hindsight, his appointment as a Special Advisor to the T&T Football Federation was a clever move.  The players would like to add him as a party to the case, but it not certain that a judge will grant such a motion.  The federation in a statement today recognizes that there is a debt owed to the players but they are unable to pay it, and besides, Jack Warner was the person in charge of those World Cup accounts.

So the focus in this case will shift to Warner.  Will he be made a party to the proceedings by the courts?  Will he reveal what happened to the money from T&T's World Cup campaign?  The answer to the first question will determine if the second question will ever be resolved.

WPS suspends operations, which is a nice way to say that they've folded

When a politician suspends his or her campaign, it effectively means the end of the campaign.  Even if it is restarted, all of the momentum generated has been lost and almost impossible to recover.  Sports league operations are no different, and especially soccer leagues in the USA.  So the news today that Women's Professional Soccer has suspended operations for the 2012 season is very bad.

Now in Arizona

Greetings from sunny and cool Arizona, where I will be spending a few days in Phoenix.  I'm here to visit some friends but also to check out some of the MLS training camps that are going on in metro Phoenix, Casa Grande, and Tucson.  I believe that New England Revolution, Sporting Kansas City, Seattle Sounders, Real Salt Lake, and San José Earthquakes will be here, so I hope to catch a few glimpses, assuming that their sessions are open to the public, of course.

 

Belize football returns

It's been a very long time since I had anything to write about Belizean soccer beyond the power struggle in the national federation.  But the newly formed Premier League of Belize elected a chairman earlier this month, and a new league season is on the horizon.  The new season starts next weekend (4-5 February) with twelve clubs split into two geographical zones.  The top two winners of the zones meet in the playoff stage.  Given that the playoffs are scheduled to start on 15 April, the regular season will be short, but it's not clear whether it will be a traditional double round-robin or some other variation that permits more intrazonal matches.

With the CONCACAF Champions League now providing a direct berth to all qualifiers, it's even more important that Belize get their domestic league competition in order.  We should see the first participation of a Belizean team since the first edition of the CCL.

 

Becks signs on to another two years with the Galaxy

At the end of the 2011 MLS season, the conventional wisdom was that the images of David Beckham raising the Anschutz trophy would be his last in a LA Galaxy uniform.  Paris St-Germain, bankrolled with the billions of their Qatari benefactors, were pushing hard for Beckham to join their team and were willing to pay any price to have him.  So popular opinion was that upon Beckham's contract expiring on the 31st of December, he would join PSG on the 2nd or 3rd of January.  Well, we all know how the PSG negotiations worked out, but it still wasn't clear if Beckham would return to the Galaxy.  Today, Beckham settled the issue about his future by signing a two-year contract with the LA Galaxy.

So why did Beckham turn down a PSG contract that no Galaxy offer could ever match?  I think it came down to a quality-of-life issue.  That's an odd thing to say or read if you're comparing Los Angeles to Paris, but Beckham and his wife have four children and a temporary move for his family was a non-trivial matter (the classic multi-body problem).  It is even less trivial when everyone else in the family likes being in LA.  I would have thought that Beckham would relish the opportunity to become the first English football player to win league titles in four different countries, but it appears that for him, his family comes first.  Good for him.

Beckham said in his statement that he had received offers from various clubs around the world, and I wouldn't be surprised  if that were the case.  The marketing and ticketing payoffs to the club are obvious, and he can still play at a decent level but perhaps not at a major European club (PSG notwithstanding).  Beckham's not coming back to England to play for a club not named Manchester United, and even though Sir Alex Ferguson has recalled recently retired midfielders, Beckham isn't going back there.  Anywhere else gets back to the quality of life issue that I mentioned in the previous paragraph.

For the Galaxy, Beckham's return is a huge boost to their chances for the league and the CONCACAF Champions League.  They still need to acquire a replacement for Juninho to become a contender for the CCL, and that signing will pose the bigger challenge to the team.  Donovan and Keane have to return healthy, of course.

For MLS and their broadcast partners, Beckham's return makes the newly negotiated contracts much more valuable and makes ticket and broadcast promotions easier.  There are of course 300-odd other games to promote, and MLS still needs to find other players like Beckham who can become big stars and help the league continue to grow.

Massive changes coming to the Champions League

Next year's CONCACAF Champions League competition will look significantly different from current and previous versions.  Ted Howard, CONCACAF's acting general secretary, announced today that the preliminary round would be eliminated from the competition, and all 24 qualifying clubs will proceed directly to a group stage containing eight groups of three teams each.  All sides will play a minimum of four group matches.

Howard becomes new CONCACAF General Secretary

No, not me.

CONCACAF announced that Ted Howard has been promoted from deputy general secretary to acting general secretary of the confederation.  He was previously involved with the original North American Soccer League in the 1970s and early 1980s, and held executive marketing positions with Ohlmeyer Communications (formed by fomer sports television producer Don Ohlmeyer) and the NBA before joining CONCACAF in 1998.  He has held adminstrative positions within CONCACAF and FIFA, such as membership on FIFA's referees and stadium/security committees.

The key word in the CONCACAF press release is "acting".  The general secretary position, like all the executive positions, are elected posts, so CONCACAF will have to form an Extraordinary Congress to ratify the decisions.  No date for such a Congress has been set.

Howard's ascension to general secretary is no surprise, but it means that one of the two top executive positions in the Confederation will be filled by a North American.  I would pay very close attention to who chooses to run for the CONCACAF presidency.  I doubt that the Caribbeans, with three-quarters of the CONCACAF membership, will accept being completely shut out of the top levels of CONCACAF leadership.

CORRECTION: And yes, it's Ted Howard, not Tim Howard.  Text corrected.

Thoughts on the end of the Warner/Blazer era

Today marks the final day of Chuck Blazer's tenure as general secretary of CONCACAF, an office that he has held for 21 years.  Jack Warner, who had served as CONCACAF president over the same period, was forced out as a result of his FIFA-imposed suspension six months ago. It brings to a close a consequential era in the history of the confederation.  Much has been written about this pair in this almost past year, and will be continue to be written in the coming year. I'd like to give my thoughts on the impact that these two men had on football throughout the region and the legacy that they have created.