Matt Fundenberger Bloomington, Ind. For MLS to be a long term success, it needs better players. These players have to come from the United States. As a college player myself, it is clear that playing only three months a year is not enough. A total contrast to this is in Europe, where players get only a month off, playing eleven months a year with competition year round. Furthermore, colleges have too many players on their teams. Why should players lose an entire year of improvement to redshirt? Players need to play all the time. What does the United States need to do, particularly MLS, to produce quality players at younger ages? Would it not be to the benefit of U.S. soccer to have players, instead of playing in High School and college, play club soccer for teams in the same way Europeans do? Why can’t MLS and A-League teams have their youth and amateur teams, even if their financial support is only minimal? Won’t soccer have to change to this system at some point? Paul Kennedy: Matt, I know you spent time in Germany before deciding on playing for IU, so you’ll appreciate that the German clubs have a lot of money behind them to fund such a system. The two major obstacles are cost and eligibility issues. MLS can’t justify the expense of the youth team programs that clubs in Europe have. It’s reached the point where clubs can afford to spent hundreds of thousands on dollars on setting up programs in Africa in the hope that maybe one player is produced. It’s a cost/benefit ratio they can afford. MLS isn’t there yet, which is why what Nike is doing with funding youth development is so important. Nike will pay for what MLS can’t afford. The question is coming up with a plan. Look for Carlos Queiroz, who’s here to recommend a master plan for U.S. Soccer and by extension MLS, to recommend that young players, especially immigrant kids, get placed in full-time regional training centers. The other issue is eligibility. Players will lose their eligibility if they are in a pro club’s system or they are paid above the reimbursement of expenses. Until now, few kids (or their parents) will have wanted to give up college elibility, but look for U.S. Soccer to take a more aggressive approach about player development. If it means 50 kids each year lose their eligibility to join a pro system at age 16 or 17, and 10 kids make it as pros and two or three of them turn into stars, it will have been, from MLS and U.S. Soccer’s perspective, worth the cost — all the other players who lost their college eligibility but didn’t make it as pros. David Benson Ann Arbor, Mich. I thought David Elleray did a wonderful job in the Brazil-Germany friendly. This new strictness raises a few questions: 1) Why does FIFA introduce rule changes at the World Cup rather than immediately following? Other sports introduce their rule changes as far away from their big events so that players and officials can become accustomed to the rules. 2) The severity of punishment for fouling will certainly encourage players to take dives more often. Would FIFA consider reviewing video replays of questionable fouls after games are completed and reinstating wrongly dismissed players and suspending players who take dives? Duncan Irving: Yes, David Elleray did very well in the Brazil-Germany game. 1) Your guess is as good as mine. I would hazard a guess that IFAB (the rules body) will trot out the usual lines about being for the good of the game (true) and to set an example for miscreants (also true).And, let’s be honest about this, this is a rule change that is way past due. Instead of coaches carping about this (to their credit, few have — it’s a bit like being for motherhood or against crime) some, like England’s Glenn Hoddle, have brought referees into training sessions to offer their interpretations about the difference between the legal and illegal challenges, rather than going on about the threat posed to soccer as we know it. Moreover, I’d rather the seniors try out a rule change, than using the youth competitions for experimentation — remember the kick-in and timeouts? These only serve to confuse young players who are still learning the game. And if the best of the best can’t cope with it — well, who can? 2) Let’s pose another question: How strictly will this rule change be enforced by referees? If they’re consistent, then there’s no problem. Trouble is, they usually aren’t. They’re prone to errors like everyone else. Alas, the perfect referee does not exist. Players may continue to dive, although theoretically the need to do so will no longer exist. But any ref worth his salt is empowered to dish out the yellow card for unsportsmanlike conduct. I can’t think of too many instances where a player would be completely “wrongfully dismissed” for a tackle from behind and I seriously doubt whether a player would likely be reinstated — for all player and coaching protests at a red card, how many times have we seen a ref say, “Yep, sorry, you’re right, back you come, son”? Video evidence is used in weighing the severity of an incident. At USA ’94, for example, referee Sandor Puhl missed Mauro Tassotti making pizza of Spain’s Luis Enrique’s nose during the Italy-Spain quarterfinal, but subsequent video review led FIFA to hand Tassotti an eight-match ban. Oh, and Sandor Puhl got to officiate the final. Go figure. And sometimes it’s used if the miscreant has been misidentified, but in the scenario you’re describing, that isn’t going to happen. FIFA is reluctant to get into instant replays — wisely so, I think — and for potential tacklers from behind,the best advice would be: DON’T. Scott Kennedy Hampton, Va. A recent issue of Soccer America noted that Cobi Jones broke the 100-cap mark during the Gold Cup. What other Americans have accomplished this? Pete Bailey: Cobi is the third American player to earn 100 caps. (He currently has 104.) Marcelo Balboa is the U.S. leader with 126 through the Paraguay match. He just moved past former England keeper Peter Shilton (125) into third place on the all-time list. Saudi Arabia’s Majed Abdullah is the leader with 147 appearances, and Thomas Ravelli, the former Sweden and current Tampa Bay Mutiny keeper, is second with 143. Paul Caligiuri is the next American, with 114 caps. Two other U.S. players are fast approaching the century mark. Eric Wynalda has 98 and Alexi Lalas has 97. With Wynalda out for the Austria match on April 22, there is a chance that the two could both earn their 100th caps when the U.S. faces Kuwait in Portland, Ore. on May 24. Edward Forbes New York, N.Y. Why do American journalists continue to ignore and underrate Caribbean players and teams? With players like Dwight Yorke of Trinidad & Tobago (Aston Villa for the past seven years), Russell Latapy (Boavista, Portugal), Frank Sinclair (Chelsea) and Marcus Gayle and Robbie Earle (Wimbledon) all playing at higher levels than any U.S. field player except Claudio Reyna, it is time to realize that Caribbean players are of very good quality! Ridge Mahoney: Steve Goff of the Washington Post raves about Andrew Williams, whom he saw play in college, and gives plenty of space to D.C. United’s objections that he go to Columbus instead of D.C. During the New England-D.C. United match on ESPN March 29, both announcers talked about what a good game Evans Wise was having. In our coverage of the Gold Cup and CONCACAF matches the past two years, Soccer America ran several stories on Yorke and Latapy, and we’ve been nothing but positive about recent MLS signings from the Caribbean like Stern John and David Nakhid. I thought Arnold Dwarika played pretty well at Gold Cup ’96,and said so. Ditto for Jerren Nixon this year. We also wrote that MLS should take a serious look at players like Ricardo Gardiner, and a few of those players might come to the U.S. after the World Cup. Until last year, Jamaica had never come close to qualifying for the World Cup, and T&T has yet to make it. I don’t think most American journalists believe there are no good Caribbean players, perhaps they’re looking more at the performance of countries rather than individuals. And until Jamaica came close to qualifying, Sinclair, Gayle and Earle hadn’t played for Jamaica, and surely were thought of as English players, which they are by birth. Derek J. McCracken Pittsburgh, Pa. Why is the U.S. and the international press always attempting to minimize the U.S. men’s national team’s accomplishments? When they beat Brazil 1-0, most articles pointed out that Brazil was not playing with its full team. When the Dutch beat the U.S., the press releases indicated that the U.S. finally played a good soccer nation which was using its full-strength team (nearly). What these articles failed to mention, however, was that for the Brazil game, the U.S. was also fielding a squad which was at about 50% strength (without Reyna, Stewart, Balboa, Dooley, Ramos, etc.). For the game against The Netherlands, the U.S. was still missing several starters. Can the press be a little more impartial in its reporting and give the U.S. the credit it deserves? Paul Kennedy: I’m not sure everyone minimized the U.S. win over Brazil. Players and coaches react to media coverage, and the view, say of the coaches and players of three U.S. teams it will face in the World Cup first round, has changed. They don’t underestimate the U.S. Indeed, the worst thing that may have happened is that Germany and Yugoslavia won’t take the U.S. lightly now. Forget the issue of how seriously Brazil or the Netherlands took their games, it would be true that Brazil missed its players — Ronaldo, Roberto Carlos, Cafu, Leonardo and Dunga — much more than the U.S. did its players, and the U.S. players missing from the Dutch game would not have changed the result. The U.S. is still several notches below a very good European team.