Kenya Brown College Park, Md. The new format for the UEFA Champions League is rather confusing and unfair. First off, why do the eliminated clubs get a second chance for glory in the UEFA Cup? That seems unfair to me as clubs already participating in the UEFA Cup have to go through two grueling rounds just to face a club that could not hang around with the big boys of Europe. Second, why does it seem that UEFA always disregards the champions from Eastern Europe and smaller leagues? Wouldn’t it be fair if the champions from these leagues also get an automatic spot in the competition or is UEFA just trying to keep the bigger clubs from breaking away and forming a “super league”? Shouldn’t the financially inferior clubs be able to reap in the financial rewards of playing in Europe’s top competition without having to go through qualifying stages and playing clubs that did not even win their league championship? Ridge Mahoney: You’re right, Kenya, the system is quite unfair, and indeed it is designed to prevent the top clubs from breaking away to form their own league. Manchester United and Bayern Munich, the 1999 Champions’ League finalists, both finished second in their domestic leagues the previous season. By ranking the nations that have produced the strongest clubs over the past five years, UEFA awards automatic berths in the 32-team, round-robin phase of the competition. All other berths must be earned through qualification. It’s not just the Eastern European teams that are disadvantaged. There aren’t many clubs bigger than Glasgow Rangers, but their poor performance — and that of most Scottish clubs — the past few seasons forced them to enter the Champions’ League in the second qualifying round, which means they must play four games to reach the 32-team phase. Rangers ranks below the small Norwegian club Rosenborg. I agree that giving eliminated clubs a shot at the UEFA Cup is farcical, and makes it that less likely a club from Eastern Europe or a smaller country can go deep into the UEFA Cup. But UEFA felt it had to kowtow to the major clubs or face a massive battle. For the past two decades, UEFA has consisted of more than 32 nations, so qualifying rounds are nothing new. And it does index the allocation of berths by computing a nation’s success in European competition by use of a coefficient. By extending berths to runner-up clubs and prolonging the competition with round-robin phases, UEFA may have added some glamour, but all pretense of fairness and integrity have been trampled in the stampede for profits. Bob Hurd Alexandria, Va. Rumors continue about Lothar Matthaeus coming to play for the MetroStars. Press reports claim he’ll be paid upward of a million dollars a year. Isn’t this well above the salary cap for individual players? Or has Logan given the MetroStars special dispensation? Mike Woitalla: Even when Sunil Gulati and Doug Logan were working together — before Logan fired Gulati, then the investors fired Logan — they both were open about the fact that certain players earned more money than the maximum salary allowed — thanks to signing bonuses and sponsor-endorsement money. Logan once referred to a pile of money set aside “for a rainy day” in case Juergen Klinsmann wanted to play in MLS. Signing bonuses and money kicked in by sponsors allowed the league to lure players like Jorge Campos and Roberto Donadoni, who would never consider playing for only $250,000 a year. As far as Matthaeus goes, in the Aug. 9 issue of Soccer America, Ridge Mahoney reported that sponsors will pay a hefty portion of a reported salary of more than $750,000 a year. The league maximum is $247,000. A sponsor who believes Matthaeus is valuable to its product in the United States takes care of the rest. I am not sure what type of signing bonus Matthaeus will get. Tom Craig Asheville, N.C. Whatever happened to the Canadian midfielder, Angela Kelly, who played at [UNC] Chapel Hill under Anson Dorrance around 1994-1995? Why is she not on the Canadian national team? They sure could have used her! Dean Caparaz: That’s a good question, Craig. Angela Kelly is entering her fourth year as an assistant coach at the University of Tennessee. She’d like to be a head coach someday — she applied to the openings at Texas and UCLA, which were subsequently filled by Chris Petrucelli and Jillian Ellis — but loves working with the Lady Vols. “I’m in a fantastic situation right now at Tennessee,” she says. “The school is so supportive. It would be hard for me to leave here. But I definitely would love to go to a big-time program and see what I could do.” The veteran central midfielder has not played for Canada since 1995 or ’96 because she hasn’t been called in by the coaching staff. “The coach [Neil Turnbull] knew I wanted to play,” Kelly says. “He just didn’t ask me to go into camp. Obviously I want Canada to do the best that they can. If I get called in, I’d love to play.” Ron Szczybor Baltimore What is the logic behind the MLS’s decision to have a pay-per-view package? Is it generating a large sum of money for the league? Wouldn’t it be in the best interest of an upstart league with a stagnant attendance growth to showcase as much of its product as possible to attract and keep current fans? I’ve traveled to D.C. to see United on several occasions because I was able to follow the team via Home Team Sports. Several of the teams I was interested in seeing, I followed through my satellite subscription to several regional sports networks through the Dish Network. HTS no longer carries D.C. United and the Dish Network is blacked out of all regional telecasts. There is no pay-per-view available either on the Dish Network. Maybe the MLS should re-think its pay-per-view strategy if it wants to see its fan base grow! Ridge Mahoney: The pay-per-view package is really the only alternative for any fan who wants to watch a game not offered on his local network affiliate or local regional carrier. It is the same for the major pro leagues as well. If you’re a Ravens fan in Los Angeles, say, you will able to watch three or four NFL games on a given Sunday, but not necessarily the Baltimore game. So, you can go to a sports bar or buy the game as part of a small-dish package. Same for college football and NHL and NBA fans. MLS does have a rather extensive TV package on ESPN, espn2, ABC and Univision, but its broadcast partners cannot accommodate all 192 league games. Now, I’ll agree with a couple of your points. The package should be available to all small-dish systems, but the league is too timid to demand such an arrangement with ESPN and had to abide by an exclusivity arrangement with Direct TV. Primestar was added for this season, and Dish should come aboard by next year. It is not strictly up to MLS which small-dish systems carry its Shootout package; each deal is negotiated separately. The MLS pay-per-view package is a bust, with only 4,000 sales last year for the total package (I have no per-game figures available). I agree, it should have relied on the regional carriers to expand the league’s reach rather than jumping on the small-dish bandwagon. Somebody must have thought a pay-per-view package would sell well, and at $69 for 100 games, it should have. Yet there’s still a resistance to buying small dishes, which will only harden as digital cable expands. To work a small-dish deal, the league had to agree on regional carriers blacking out of MLS games. And you may know ESPN is launching an extensive pay-per-view system in September — ESPN Extra — on which it will offer many of the European games it has rights to via ESPN International. How many systems it will be able to clear, I have no idea. This is ESPN, mind you, launching a pay-per-view cable system. For a small-niche sport like soccer, this is a financially shrewd move. One of the problems is that many leagues have signed small-dish deals for their out-of-town packages, and those small-dish systems are trying to block the rapid expansion of digital cable systems. Once cable systems are fully converted to digital service, viewers will have hundreds of channels available, and I expect pay-per-view on digital cable will seriously impair the small-dish market for movies, concerts and other events, as well as sports. Leto Alibaruho Blacksburg, Va. This one is for Pete Bailey. I read the [July 16] Q&A session where a lady asked what caps were in soccer. At the end of your response you said that the tradition of handing out caps no longer exists. That part of your response confused me. English soccer magazines are included amongst my reading materials and I recall an interview with Lee Hendrie (young Aston Villa star) in the magazine 90 Minutes where he displays one of his most prized possessions, an England U-20 national team cap. The cap being his first if I remember correctly. I believe that the practice of awarding caps still exists, but I could be wrong. Since I often tell my soccer novice friends about this ritual in the present tense I need to know if I am giving them false information. Pete Bailey: You’re not giving them false information, Leto, caps are still awarded, but only on occasion. I was referring to the custom of awarding a cap for a player for EACH national team appearance, and that has not been done for some time now. However, English players are generally presented with a cap for their first game with the national team, and for milestones reached thereafter (i.e. 10th, 20th, 25th, 50th, etc.). And at the World Cup, a player does not receive separate caps for each game played, but rather a single one commemorating the whole tournament.