Catching up: some sad news, and U.S. analysis

I talked to Alexi Lalas the other day for an SI.com piece, a state of the union-type article on the U.S. national team. Funny thing, I told Alexi, I had this strange feeling that we’d done all this before.

And we had. About this time last year, I talked to Alexi about a similar piece – and the conversation went about the same way. Or, wait. Was it the year before? Or both?

Because I seem to write the same thing every year, that the U.S. program is in adequate shape, but that it has probably reached a plateau. The answers, rooted in the player development, won’t come easy. Which is why we keep having the same conversations.

When answers are complicated, the status quo is always a little easier. Here, as in life, inertia can be difficult to overcome. So we reach the same conclusions and, in the absence of simple solutions that satisfy our need for immediate gratification … we shrug our shoulders, tweak things here and there and then check out for lunch. And we just hope against hope that we aren’t here next year having the very same conversation.

The SI.com piece is here.

For the sad news of the day, read on...

I saw in the New York Times yesterday where Jan Van Beveran, a famous Dutch goalkeeper, has died. He was 63.

I wouldn’t call Jan a good friend, necessarily, as I didn’t know him that well. But I sure liked the guy and had the occasion to spend some time with him a few years back, when he was a part-time goalkeeper coach for FC Dallas. Back then, I spent more time with the team as a beat reporter.

I always enjoyed saying hello to Jan. I was always a fan of Dutch soccer, even as a kid. So it was interesting to hear Jan’s stories of the KNVB politics, of Johan Cruyff, who was an amazing player but also a mischief-maker and something of a prima donna. You can read a little more about it in this discussion.

I was speaking to Jan on the sideline during one practice 10 or 12 years ago. He reminded me that members of his own family had been journalists. And then he asked if I knew about his father?

I told him I didn’t. So he told me something extraordinary, that his father was a prominent Dutch sprinter who ran in the 1936 Olympics. Those were amazing and ominous times, as Adolph Hitler exploited the occasion as a propaganda tool for his sorry agenda.

Jan told me that his father, who ran in those games against Jesse Owens, would later tell his children stories of those notorious ’36 games, of the terrible war machine being revved, of the dark clouds that were so obviously gathering.

That’s just something interesting I once learned about a guy with a pretty interesting history. You can read a little more about Van Beveren here.