|
 Son,
before we head to the city to sign your MLS Generation adidas XI
contract I want you to see this place. I want you to see the
Soccer Hall of Fame, so you can appreciate the guys who paved
the road for you today. I want you to start right here, with
this exhibit.
The Balboa Era.
See I was about your age, 16 or 17,
when this era was taking flight. I had no idea that at the time
I was witnessing a crucial, critical stage in the development of
American soccer. I just liked Balboa cause at the time he was
radical. Sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself.
Balboa is Marcelo Balboa. He
played Tenacious D … err… tenacious defense that is. He had the
technical skills of a midfielder and the ability to hit a bike
unlike any forward during his era. I asked him about the hall of
fame in early 2005. I wasn't certain whether he'd be on the
ballot or not that year, but I asked how he felt about guys like
Eric Wynalda
and
Paul Caligiuri from his era starting to get into
the hall of fame.
 “It's good,” Balboa said. “It's
better to do it like they're doing now where people actually
still remember who people are like Eric and those guys. If you
had to wait 10-15 years there's a good chance people would look
back and be like 'Oh, I remember him a long time ago.' ”
Speaking of a long time ago check
out that haircut ole' Chelo's sporting in that picture. We used
to call that thing a monster truck mullet back around 2005, but
in those days the 1990s and strangely here in 2015 that hair
style is “the style.” Funny how that stuff comes back around.
Anyway, I was
certain Marcelo would be a first ballot Hall of Famer. Of course, I though the
same thing about
Wynalda,
Caligiuri and
Michelle
Akers, but there
were about three hacks that left them off their ballots. Those
donkeys should have had their votes pulled, if you couldn't see
those three as no-brainers, well that's exactly what those would
be writers were… no brainers. But anyway I voted for Marcelo the
first chance I had. I'd asked him before I ever knew if he was
eligible if he'd given the Hall much thought.
“I don't think
about it at all,” he said. “As a kid I think once you started
playing soccer and starting watching the baseball guys, the
football guys become Hall of Famers you started wondering if there was a hall of fame
for soccer. When you find out there is; you start thinking that
would be great, but it's nothing I think about right now. I
guess once the nominations come out then I might start thinking
about it a little more. It would be a dream come true.”
The guy was an iron man; he
suited up 130 times for the U.S. National Team. He was a two
time U.S. player of the year and he earned the MLS goal of the
year in 2000 for one of those wicked bicycle kicks. He was
something else alright. He turned into a pretty sharp color
analyst after he hung up his cleats.
So you see son, guys like
Marcelo, who played for and then advised the Colorado Rapids
paved the way for you to become a player today. If it weren't
for them, the guys of the Balboa era, MLS may never have been
formed. You'd never be getting your small slice of that $3
million salary cap. If it weren't for the soccer hall of fame
caliber players you'd just as easily be competing in the
X-games.
Let's get out of here maybe we
can pick up one of the new Playstation 6's and the new FIFA 2016
holographic game disks after we get your juicy signing bonus.
You know that check they're about
to give you is worth more than I made in all my years as a
sports writer.
What's that you say? The Colin
Jose Media Award? Nah, I don't think about those kinds of things
at all.
Tobias Xavier
Lopez is a staff sports writer for the Fort Worth Star Telegram
newspaper. He writes a weekly soccer column during the Major
League Soccer season, serves as the FC Dallas beat writer and
reports on every other level of soccer from the U.S. National
Team to high school soccer.
Monthly
Column
This column is dedicated
to what is going on in and around the World of soccer today.
|
