Soccer



May 18, 2011, 7:56 pm

Notebook: The Americanization of A.S. Roma

7:16 p.m. | Updated On Friday Landon Donovan dismissed any suggestion that he is interested in a move to Roma.

Thomas DiBenedetto’s brief tenure as the new owner of A.S. Roma of Serie A is already raising some hackles in Italy.

DiBenedetto, a Boston billionaire who purchased nearly 70 percent of the club last month, has designs on making Roma a global brand. Many in Italy fear he has designs on Americanizing the operation. [Full disclosure: DiBenedetto is a partner in New England Sports Ventures, which owns baseball's Boston Red Sox and Liverpool of the English Premier League. The New York Times also holds a stake in NESV.]

Roma has said it is interested in signing an American player and, according to a report in The Boston Globe (also owned by the New York Times), DiBenedetto’s representatives have made contact with the agents of Landon Donovan and Michael Bradley. Rules that govern how many non-European Union players can be on a Serie A roster could have an impact on his plans, however.

 

In addition, there are also reports that DiBenedetto has plans to redesign the Roma logo, but perhaps not the one at the top of the posting, but the one at right, which some might consider a bit on the strange side. (There is a larger version here.)

Di Benedetto is an Italian-American, but that hyphen probably will do little to assuage the Roma fans who have little use for the American approach to the game.

Concacaf Champions League Draw

The five M.L.S. teams that qualified for the 2011-12 Concacaf Champions League found out who and when they will be playing when the next edition of the tournament begins this summer.

Three teams — defending M.L.S. champion Colorado, Supporters Shield winners Los Angeles and Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup champion Seattle — all drew direct entry to the group stage.

F.C. Dallas, the loser to Colorado in last year’s M.L.S. Cup, will play Alianza of El Salvador (home and away) in the qualification round, with the winner advancing to the next stage in Group C. Either Vancouver or Toronto, who are involved in the Canadian championship, will advance to face either Real Esteli or Walter Ferreti of Nicaragua. That winner will also land in Group C, setting up a possible clash between M.L.S. clubs.

Real Salt Lake, this season’s runner-up to Monterrey of Mexico, did not qualify for next season’s tournament.

Preliminary round games will be played July 26-28 and Aug. 2-4, with the group stage scheduled to begin in mid-October.

The tournament winner will advance to the 2012 FIFA Club World Cup. The event has taken on added importance to M.L.S. as the league tries to raise its profile and reputation around the world.

Is it important to you?

FIFA U17 World Cup Draw

The United States was drawn into a first-round group in next month’s U-17 World Cup in Mexico with the Czech Republic, Uzbekistan and New Zealand. The American team is coached by the former Colombian international Wilmar Cabrera.

The U.S. opens play in Group D against the Czech Republic on June 9, then faces Uzbekistan three days later. Both games will be played in Torreon. The Americans will close out play in the first round against New Zealand in Pachuca on June 25.

The American team has qualified for all 14 tournaments in this age group, with its best showing coming in a run to the semifinals in New Zealand in 1999, with players named Donovan, Beasley and Onyewu on the field.

“It is exciting to learn our opponents,” Cabrera said on the U.S. Soccer Web site. “We don’t know anything about them right now other than they are going to be good and motivated, but I imagine they might be thinking the same way, and maybe they don’t know too much about us. It’s an exciting group. It looks like all four teams have done well in qualifying, and that’s why they’re in the World Cup.”

Notes

The M.L.S. championship game will return to the Home Depot Center in Carson, Calif., on Nov. 21. The match will kick off at 9 p.m. Eastern. It will be the fifth time the league’s title match will be played at the stadium shared by the Galaxy and Chivas USA. … Various wire services carried a report on Wednesday saying that the Red Bulls’ Thierry Henry is trying to entice his former Arsenal and France teammate Robert Pires, 37, to jump to M.L.S. Pires is skillful and stylish, but is he too old? … With few international matches played over the past month or so, there was little change in the May rankings that FIFA released on Wednesday. The United States remained at No. 22, behind Ivory Coast and ahead of Paraguay. … With all the hoopla surrounding the expansion of M.L.S. in the Pacific Northwest, it is a bit hard to understand how and why Vancouver and Portland play their games on artificial turf in a moist climate conducive to growing the real thing year round. Seattle may be another story, since it shared Qwest Field with the N.F.L.’s Seahawks. If you ask players which they prefer, what do you think — to a man — they would say?


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