The following are quotes from the March 23 MLS media teleconference that featured MLS commissioner Doug Logan, MLS executive vice-president Ivan Gazidis, Chicago coach Bob Bradley and Kansas City coach Ron Newman. Doug Logan Opening Remarks “We’re generally pleased with our First Kick ’99 … The average attendance of 16,000-plus was good … We’re also pleased with the quality of play and the number of goals scored [21 in five games for a 4.2 average] … We ran into a couple of refereeing controversies, including a blown offside call in the MetroStars/Miami contest … When we spot those types of errors we will admit it … Also, the third goal in the Chicago/San Jose match is something else we’re looking at.” “We’re also pleased with our first game on ESPN2 … The game drew a 0.4 rating, which is identical to last year’s … However, there is a 7% increase in the number of households, which translates to about 16,000 homes … That rating was nearly identical to the opening game for the NHL on ESPN2 back in October, a Boston at Colorado game.” “I was in Los Angeles last weekend, and I’m pleased that Raul Diaz Arce and Mauricio Cienfuegos are respecting the contracts which they signed and we will continue to discuss with their business representatives their future with the league and perhaps a restructuring of their contracts, which could include additional years.” Ivan Gazidis Opening Remarks “We’ve all been pleased with how teams have come out of the blocks, and particularly the performance of young American players … International players, especially those in Colorado, have shown that they will contribute significantly as well … Once they integrate into their teams, we will certainly see more exciting play from them in their first years.” “On the referee side, we asked that the officials take a close look at players who dive … Our objective is to address the problem head-on.” Ron Newman Opening Remarks “We don’t share the optimism that Mr. Logan has since the beginning of the season went poorly for us … The first half went great, we had two very good chances created by Chris Henderson … We had a rookie goalkeeper, a young kid who was playing his first game due to injuries to Snitko and Meola … Suddenly we had to trust a young ‘keeper and tried to keep the ball away from him … after Dallas scored the first goal, the jitters got to him.” “Chicago is a very well-organized team, they haven’t missed a beat … I predicted last season that they were the best team in the league … The continuity of them playing together is going to make them even stronger than they were last year.” Bob Bradley Opening Remarks “San Jose came out with a lot of energy particularly in the first half, and that made it difficult to string together a lot of passes, but they pushed the pace and for an early-season match the game was pretty well-played and had a lot of pace … In the second half they slowed down, we got back into it early and then we wore them down.” “Our team continues to have a great deal of respect for Kansas City … They played us tough last year, and Saturday will be a difficult match where we hope to improve on last week’s performance.” Bradley on the biggest difference from last year’s Fire squad “We’re trying to re-establish things that happened last year … We need to come together and make a lot of those things happen … Last year we didn’t have national team call-ups, so that has made this preseason different, but it’s a plus for those players and that’s one of the things the league is trying to develop.” Bradley on last week’s team performance and that of Jerzy Podbrozny “The game took a while to settle down … Whether that’s the field being tight or guys being nervous or their guys preventing us from getting in control, I’m not sure, but that’s the way soccer is … Jerzy is definitely more comfortable this season … Wherever he’s gone in his career it takes a while to settle in … I can always tell he’s feeling good when he’s calling the coach a bunch of names that I can’t understand.” Newman on the level of play of the young American player “The American boys are improving by leaps and bounds … MLS has improved at least 10% each season, and the American boys are the ones that are responsible for this improvement.” Bradley on the advancement of players coming out of college “It’s much easier when a college player comes in and joins a team that has been up and running for a year and he can fill a role … Bruce Arena’s player pool has grown so much due to the development of such a great group of young players.” Bradley on Chris Armas’ improvement “Chris has been a very good player for a long time … I think that the qualities that Chris has as a player [his alertness, ability, anticipation and defense] have gotten much sharper with his feel for the game … When he’s on the field he’s constantly trying to figure out how to win the ball, and when he has the ball, he is figuring out how to get it into a scoring position … He’s a very good player and it’s good that people are starting to recognize that.” Newman on Tony Meola’s injury “Because he got 40 stitches in his mouth during the national team game he was playing in the field during a light scrimmage … He was not at keeper and he was with the boys and he took a shot and went to the ground calling for the trainer … We all thought he was joking … I’m going to keep my fingers crossed, my legs crossed and everything I have crossed for him to get better and get into the lineup … He’s seeing the U.S. Soccer doctors tomorrow and we just want him to get better.” Bradley on Josh Wolff and his change of pace “We haven’t lost our tactical advantage with Josh Wolff … He gets into space and gets behind defenders and that makes any team better … Josh is coming off minor surgery for an abdominal hernia … I have to remind myself to be patient with him, but that’s tempting considering what a great player he is.” Bradley on Ante Razov and his qualities “Ante’s trying to grow in his play and get more mature … Ante is a talented player who can be inconsistent at times and he came to our team with his head down after his U.S. training camp performances … We reminded him that players all over the world have to play their way onto their national team through their league competition and we’re happy he had such an explosive half against the Clash.” Logan on the decline in Hispanic attendance “One of the big differences from year one to this year has to do with doubleheaders … I was pleased with the attendance in Los Angeles since there was a downpour earlier in the day and that was the first Saturday night opening for the Galaxy … There was also a lack of communication with regard to Mauricio Cienfuegos’ playing situation … I think it was unwise to move the game so that we didn’t go head to head with the Oscars, since I don’t know what the relevance was.” “In El Diario this morning there was a game-by-game and player-by-player rundown of each Hispanic player’s contribution to his team this weekend … The Hispanic fan in this league represents one-third of our total fan base … The Hispanic fan is an important part of our plan, they are important to us and I don’t think they are diminishing.” Logan on Univision’s 1999 plans “Fifty-percent of the Univision audience comes from California … With games beginning at 1 p.m. ET and 10 a.m. PT, the time period that the Mexican first division is currently in, is also the optimum for us since later in the day people are conducting family outings, etc. … The 16-game Univision schedule begins on June 20 after the Mexican league season is over.” Gazidis on the MetroStars’ upcoming foreign acquisition “This being a single entity, the team doesn’t have an unrestricted choice … Bora wanted to look at the team this weekend, and later this week we expect to move forward in one of the directions that they want to go.” Logan on soccer-specific stadiums being built in the future “We’re very excited about May 15 in Columbus … We hope to open another stadium each year and we have 5-6 projects at various stages … We think that it is encouraging about the great leap of faith from Lamar Hunt and the Columbus Crew, and it is something we will look to do each year in the near future.” Logan on the blown offside call “We want better judgement … We take the quality of the refereeing in the league very seriously … We have removed the individual involved from his assignment this week … The difference this year is that we’re publicly acknowledging that the wrong call was made.” Logan on refereeing policies “We try and review all the games by Tuesday night … Each situation is looked upon independently on the merits of that case … I don’t want to prejudge what we would do in a specific situation … Our policy is the same as FIFA’s.” Logan on Sunil Gulati’s new role with MLS “Sunil will be a consultant to us for the next year … The nature of the consultancy is of a private matter.” Gazidis on Raul Diaz Arce and Mauricio Cienfuegos “The fact that they’ve reported to camp means that we can have constructive conversations … There is unnecessary pressure if there is wrong information in the papers … We’re interested in a longer-term agreement with both parties.” Gazidis on Project-40 signee Sergi Daniv “Sergi is from the Ukraine and he’s made a commitment to becoming an American … At the same time we’re signing younger players, in fact 16-year-old DaMarcus Beasley is the youngest signee ever … We felt that we were missing opportunities to develop players who are committed to making their homes in the United States not only for MLS but also for the national team.” “We’re not aggressively pursuing college players after Feb. 1 or Under-20 players after Nigeria … In the year 2000 most of those guys will probably sign … There are a handful more players who will sign this year.”