MLS Conference Call guests: MLS Deputy Commissioner — Ivan Gazidis MetroStars/ U.S. national team forward — Clint Mathis Clint Mathis’ opening comments: “I think the (U.S. national) team as a whole is very excited about this game. Right now we’ve played two games and earned two good wins. It’s been great here in Kansas City. The atmosphere has been good and I’m looking forward to all the support from all the fans in Kansas City.” Mathis on his ascension on the American soccer scene: “Fortunately, things have been working out. It started on the club level. I went from a team in Los Angeles where I was playing different positions and didn’t have a solid role to the MetroStars where I play consistently at forward day in and day out. Bruce (Arena — national team head coach) has given me a chance to come in with the U.S. team to play and fortunately I’ve been able to produce in the last few games. So things have been moving in the right direction for me and hopefully that will continue.” Mathis on the chances of playing with Claudio Reyna in Wednesday’s qualifier against Costa Rica: “I think that’s all up to Bruce to see what kind of formation we play in and if we have different positions. As we all know Bruce is a good coach and a smart man so if he feels we both need to be on the field at the same time, I’m sure he’ll figure out a way to do that.” Mathis on how the team avoids being overconfident: “We need to look at the big picture and realize that we need to win games no matter what. We’re in a situation where there are still eight games left. There are plenty of points to be grabbed and any team can do it. You need to know that six points are not going to qualify us for the World Cup. We need to keep our head on straight and go out there and win games.” Mathis on his World Cup dreams becoming reality: “It’s definitely happened a lot quicker than I expected. But things happen that way. As long as I can eat everything on my plate I should be fine. I hope that it continues to work out in my favor but I’m just going to have to work hard day in and day out and hope for the best.” Mathis on whether he’ll be tightly marked against Costa Rica: “I don’t think that after two games I’ve done enough. Maybe they will mark and if they do it’ll open up an opportunity for someone else. That’s part of the game and hopefully I can go out there and meet the challenge. Whether I am a marked man or not I still need to go out there and do my job and if that’s scoring goals or setting up people I need to continue to do that.” Mathis on his reaction if is he’s fouled frequently on Wednesday: “I need to keep a cool head and hopefully it’ll be around the box and we can get a goal off a freekick. It happened to work out for us in the Honduras game. In these types of games it tends to be low-scoring and freekicks are definitely a plus.” Mathis on what he expects from Costa Rica: “I think they’re going to be a different team than what we saw last time. They’re probably going to be happy with coming out of this game with a point. So they might tend to sit back a little more and counter. Hopefully we can go at them and if we can get an early goal, that would be great because it would force them to come out a little more and we may be able to get a couple of more goals on them.” Mathis on how playing with the MetroStars has led to his increased confidence: “When you change your level of play to the national team, there needs to be a consistent basis of playing. It’s tough to not consistently get games and then come here to perform on the national team. It’s also a factor in confidence knowing that you can play at a high level (with the MetroStars) and then be able to join the national team and play.” Mathis on whether he will be the first option on free kicks on Wednesday: “Hopefully he’ll be able to give me a chance. It’s going to depend on a couple of different factors: whether it’s in the right spot, which side it’s on and who’s in the game. And if I get that chance again, hopefully I can get the same result as in Honduras.” Mathis on where he’ll play on the field: “It’s still a toss-up. I’ll probably find out today if I’m on the field or where I’m going to play. As of right now I’m not sure. I haven’t been told.” Mathis on dealing with game officials: “At times I need to keep my head a little bit more but at the same time I need to keep that spark and fire to keep working hard. I need to keep my cool and not let the outcome of calls or anything else affect my game.” Mathis on the spirit of the national team: “We’re very excited. It’s good to be back on home turf in Kansas City. I think we should expect from 30,000 to 40,000 people for this game. We’re going to have a home crowd and if we can come up with a win it’ll be another three points. The morale of the team is promising.” Mathis on whether he watched the Tampa Bay vs. MetroStars match last Saturday: “Yes, I watched it but I didn’t get to see the ending. I thought the team (MetroStars) was playing really well. I thought in the first half there could have been four or five goals we could have finished. The team looked good even when we were a man down. We were knocking the ball around and getting plenty of chances but then we weren’t able to hold them off defensively. I don’t know if we just ran out of gas with a man down or whether it was because we were missing a couple of players. It was tough with a man down to fill up a game when you’re down a few defensive players.” “Regarding the controversy at the end, we’ve seen that type of attitude with Mamadou (Diallo). I thought (Mike) Petke did really well on Mamadou and I thought Mamadou was a little frustrated. I thought we saw that a little bit last year, not necessarily in our games, but in other games where he hasn’t had success. It’s part of the game and it heated up and those are situations when people get frustrated. It’s part of the game and as long as no one gets hurt, it’s not all that bad.” Mathis on his recent success against the Dallas Burn: “Dallas is one of those teams. There are many players who play in this sport who have favorite teams to play. For some reason, I don’t know what it is, it’s not that they’re a bad team with bad defenders. They have great players in the back that do real well. For some reason I happen to have success against them and hopefully I can continue to do that.” Ivan Gazidis’ opening comments: “The Wizards continue to be a force to be reckoned with and they continue to move forward. D.C. United is doing extremely well. Even though many might have thought this was going to be a rebuilding year for them it looks like they have some ideas of their own and that they’ve rebuilt already. Alex Pineda Chacon continues to live up to expectations for the Fusion. He leads MLS with four goals in three games and he didn’t play 90 minutes in those three games. I’d hate to think what his goal per minute average must be. He’s off to a tremendous start and we’re very pleased with that great new addition to the league. Edward Johnson and Santino Quaranta continue to score at an unbelievable rate for the U.S. under-17 national team who qualified for the World Championships in Trinidad later this year. We’re very pleased with our Nike Project-40 players’ performance in those games. We think the U-17 national team can do very well at the World Championships and we’re looking forward to watching that team compete. ” “The full national team plays Costa Rica tomorrow night. Don Garber and I will be attending that game and we’re looking forward to a great match. We think that Costa Rica is a tough side but we also believe we can get the result and we were pleased to be able to assist Bruce Arena in making our players available for that camp this past weekend. In a wider sense, qualification to the World Cup finals is a priority for everyone involved in U.S. Soccer. We wish the national team well.” “As I mentioned last week, we have new disciplinary procedures in place and we issued those in our weekly press release. As will be the case going forward, we will make decisions on the disciplinary committee on the fourth business day following the incident, Saturday being a business day. That means that incidents from this past weekend will be made on Thursday and announced on Thursday. To help the disciplinary committee in reviewing that incident we’re going to draw upon the services of our technical advisory panel which was set up this year and this will be the first time we’re using it. It’s a panel of ex-players, ex-coaches and referees who have extensive experience in the game and who all bring their own perspective to a particular incident. The expertise of members from that panel will be taken into consideration in reaching decisions. This will be the first time we formally use such a panel. We’ve had informal processes in the past. This year we’ve formalized a panel. We’re not disclosing who the members of that panel are.” Gazidis on the rate at which cautions and ejections are being accumulated: “Also, comparing the first three weeks of this season on the discipline side to the first three weeks of last year’s campaign in terms of yellow cards and red cards and the rate at which they’re being accumulated: this year is almost exactly the same as last year – it’s about four yellow cards a game. Last year it was 0.53 red cards per game and this year it’s 0.42 red cards per game. So we’re down slightly on the red cards. That’s a reflection of the fact that the referees weren’t given any specific instructions other than the instruction regarding dissent during the offseason. Over the course of the season we will likely see a slight increase because of the dissent directive but we haven’t seen that so far.” Gazidis on whether Paulo Wanchope may end up in MLS: “We were interested in him once and he scored one of the best goals in the English Premiership last weekend on a back heel. He’s the kind of player we’d always be interested in. We came very close to signing him before he moved to England and we just missed out. We knew he was a great prospect then. And he’s turning into a very exciting player over in England. At the same time those are the types of situations we monitor. It’s not inconceivable that someone like Wanchope would come to MLS but there’s nothing on the horizon. Before his move to England there was interest from his part to come to MLS. We definitely feel like we were in the running and ultimately we got outbid and there wasn’t very much we could do about it in the end.” Gazidis on the review of the Diallo-Petke incident: “It certainly is the primary item on the agenda of the disciplinary committee this week. We’re spending a lot of time looking at it and speaking to different people about it. We have different angles of videotape of the whole incident. We’re also reviewing the whole game as well to put it in context. We’ve done a lot of review already. We’re going to be speaking with our technical panel but at this point I don’t anticipate interviewing any of the players involved. I think the actions are fairly self-explanatory from what I’ve seen on the tape. But if that’s something we think is valuable it may be something we choose to do.” Gazidis on whether a player can be suspended for making comments: “Players are league employees and so certainly they can be suspended for actions outside of the field of play, which might include comments. We have done that once since our inception. We did do that for Edwin Gorter a few years ago, and he received a large fine for a comment he made in a training session. I won’t comment on the Mike Petke-Mamadou Diallo case until Thursday.” Gazidis on contact MLS has had with Eddie Lewis: “We’ve had some contact and some conversations. At this point I don’t see a real possibility of Eddie rejoining the league. I don’t think that’s very likely from what I’ve heard.” Gazidis on the makeup of the disciplinary committee: “The committee has a delegated authority from the commissioner. It is a three person committee: Nelson Rodriguez, the assistant to the commissioner, Joe Machnik, the VP of game operations and competition and myself. The committee is the same as it was last year. We regularly receive Monday morning calls from teams on any issues. We don’t hold a formal hearing. I don’t think that would be practical with the tight timeframes.” Gazidis on adding more talent from the U.S. under-17 team: “We are not closed to it. We always look at Nike Project-40 as a resource for players who are turning professional and want to explore their options. We are not out there actively recruiting the U-17 team, but if one of them had made the decision to turn pro and if we felt he was an elite player, it is something we would consider. The door is never closed to the best young American players. There is no signing deadline. We are very pleased with the two we have, Santino Quaranta and Edward Johnson.” Gazidis on whether past history plays a part in disciplinary action: “What you have to do is consider whether or not past incidents factor into the current incident. To the extent that they did, then past history may play a part in current cases. There is a lot of history here. Sorting that out is a little bit difficult.” Gazidis on the makeup of the advisory panel: “The panel is made up of former players, some recent and some not-so-recent. We use different players in different situations. You wouldn’t use an ex-MetroStar in the Petke-Diallo incident. We are even sensitive about using a former Cosmos player there.” Gazidis on the development of the youth systems in MLS: “There are three models currently in place, with more models likely to develop over time. One of the key things is connecting better with our soccer audience. One of the ways we can do that is through developing youth players. What we do with those players once they come through our youth systems is a league matter. Each team runs its own youth program the way they see best. There are many questions about how those players are distributed.” Gazidis on the recent attendance numbers: “The numbers are up, but I don’t know how much of a conclusion you can draw from the first couple of weeks. We feel good about it. Our aim is to be accepted as a league that has been here for five years and is entering its sixth season and is going to be here 20 years from now. We prefer to get away from a weekly focus on attendance. The most important thing is developing our product and having things flow from that. I won’t pretend that attendance isn’t one of the factors when we look at how we want to build the league and how we want to progress. I think it’s a little counterproductive to spend a lot of time looking at week to week comparisons for many different reasons at this stage in the season. We have a different start date to last year and we have different matchups.”