USMNT manager Gregg Berhalter made the rounds
Soccer really does matter - and it could matter even more
Mar 7, 2019, 7:04 am
U.S. manager Gregg Berhalter. Getty Images.
We had the USMNT manager Gregg Berhalter on the show Wednesday morning. What a great guy and get for the show. The U.S. team will be here taking on Chile on March 26. Hopefully it will go better than the last time they were here.
Houston's soccer ambassador Glenn Davis opened a press conference later that day by saying that it was an historic morning. Never before had a Houston sports radio show done three straight segments on soccer. Glenn called me that night and was gushing about how great it was. There may not be a nicer guy in the sports world.
My soccer knowledge is extremely limited and you have to be very careful around soccer guy (not Glenn Davis. He's too nice to be a jerk. I'm talking about soccer snob) because he will light you up if you take the tiniest misstep. Do not call it a field or a game or ever say zero. Soccer snob hates zero. Zero must have done something ugly to his sister because he doesn't want anything to do with zero.
My knowledge of the game is basically 5-year old soccer. My son JT played it then but the other parents asked us to stop bringing him because all he did was run around and knock over the little girls. That is not an exaggeration.
He did grow up on the video game FIFA though and became a huge Cristiano Ronaldo fan so we watched a bunch of Real Madrid games. We also get into the World Cup every four years.
I've been to a few Dynamo games. BBVA is one of our best stadiums. Their first manager Dominic Kinnear was a great guy. He was on the show a bunch and liked to give us the business. Then we had their next manager Owen Coyle on on a weekly basis. His Irish accent was so thick that I couldn't understand anything he said. Our producer Del wrote the questions for me. I'd ask a question then wait until he finished and ask the next. He could have threatened to kill me for all I knew. Couldn't understand a word.
I went and watched our national team play Argentina at NRG a few years ago. That wasn't very exciting. We didn't stand a chance. The difference between the two programs was obvious even to a soccer moron like me. It really wasn't all that surprising that the U.S. didn't qualify for the World Cup. We weren't very good.
And here we are: a new coach and a couple of good young players. Will it make a difference? I hope so. Every four years when the World Cup comes around I hear how soccer is going to take over the States; how baseball and basketball need to step it up or soccer will pass them in popularity. And then the World Cup ends and we're back to watching baseball and basketball again and soccer takes its place in the background.
That the MLS is more or less a second division for soccer doesn't help. We are a major league country. Don't ask us to watch minor league anything. We won't.
We did watch the Dynamo when they were winning titles but they haven't been doing that for a while. They sure could use a star or two. They haven't really had anyone recognizable since Brian Ching. They had a full house for the Tigres game this week. Unfortunately they were mostly all Tigres fans. That's got to change.
A really good U.S. team can change that. We're waiting for soccer to explode here but the only way that's going to happen is if our team makes a deep run in the World Cup. Give us something to cheer about and we will. Soccer guy might not like us all jumping on the bandwagon but I know Glenn Davis won't mind. He works tirelessly to promote the sport he loves in a city that just hasn't been all that receptive lately.
We will be though if Gregg Berhalter just gives us a reason to.
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There was a conversation Cleveland guard Donovan Mitchell had during training camp, the topic being all the teams that were generating the most preseason buzz in the Eastern Conference. Boston was coming off an NBA championship. New York got Karl-Anthony Towns. Philadelphia added Paul George.
The Cavs? Not a big topic in early October. And Mitchell fully understood why.
“What have we done?” Mitchell asked. “They don't talk about us. That's fine. We'll just hold ourselves to our standard.”
That approach seems to be working.
For the first time in 36 seasons — yes, even before the LeBron James eras in Cleveland — the Cavaliers are atop the NBA at the 25-game mark. They're 21-4, having come back to earth a bit following a 15-0 start but still better than anyone in the league at this point.
“We've kept our standards pretty high,” Cavaliers coach Kenny Atkinson said. “And we keep it going.”
The Cavs are just one of the surprise stories that have emerged as the season nears the one-third-done mark. Orlando — the only team still unbeaten at home — is off to its best start in 16 years at 17-9 and having done most of that without All-Star forward Paolo Banchero. And Houston is 16-8, behind only the Cavs, Boston, Oklahoma City and Memphis so far in the race for the league's best record.
Cleveland was a playoff team a year ago, as was Orlando. And the Rockets planted seeds for improvement last year as well; an 11-game winning streak late in the season fueled a push where they finished 41-41 in a major step forward after a few years of rebuilding.
“We kind of set that foundation last year to compete with everybody,” Rockets coach Ime Udoka said. “Obviously, we had some ups and downs with winning and losing streaks at times, but to finish the season the way we did, getting to .500, 11-game winning streak and some close losses against high-level playoff teams, I think we kind of proved that to ourselves last year that that's who we're going to be.”
A sign of the respect the Rockets are getting: Oddsmakers at BetMGM Scorebook have made them a favorite in 17 of 24 games so far this season, after favoring them only 30 times in 82 games last season.
“Based on coaches, players, GMs, people that we all know what they're saying, it seems like everybody else is taking notice as well,” Udoka said.
They're taking notice of Orlando as well. The Magic lost their best player and haven't skipped a beat.
Banchero's injury after five games figured to doom Orlando for a while, and the Magic went 0-4 immediately after he tore his oblique. Entering Tuesday, they're 14-3 since — and now have to regroup yet again. Franz Wagner stepped into the best-player-on-team role when Banchero got hurt, and now Wagner is going to miss several weeks with the exact same injury.
Ask Magic coach Jamahl Mosley how the team has persevered, and he'll quickly credit everyone but himself. Around the league, it's Mosley getting a ton of the credit — and rightly so — for what Orlando is doing.
“I think that has to do a lot with Mose. ... I have known him a long time,” Phoenix guard Bradley Beal said. “A huge fan of his and what he is doing. It is a testament to him and the way they’ve built this team.”
The Magic know better than most how good Cleveland is, and vice versa. The teams went seven games in an Eastern Conference first-round series last spring, the Cavs winning the finale at home to advance to Round 2.
Atkinson was brought in by Cleveland to try and turn good into great. The job isn't anywhere near finished — nobody is raising any banners for “best record after 25 games” — but Atkinson realized fairly early that this Cavs team has serious potential.
“We’re so caught up in like the process of improve, improve, improve each game, improve each practice," Atkinson said. “That’s kind of my philosophy. But then you hit 10-0, and obviously the media starts talking and all that, and you’re like, ‘Man, this could be something special brewing here.’”