Having a pretty full agenda of events, I got up yesterday, packed up my gear and headed to Toyota Park to check out the MLS All Stars practicing and catch the Commissioner’s State of the League Address.
Following the instructions provided to me by the league, when I arrived located the gate they told media to use to enter. Unfortunately, when I got when I got there at 10am, an hour into the day’s events, the gate’s fence was shut and there was no way in. I turned my car around and searched for another entrance that was open. Luckily a guard was posted at the VIP entrance and I was able to enter.
Unfortunately the entrance was on the other side of where they were letting media into the stadium, so I had to take a long walk around the outside of the stadium.
One thing that was very noticeable was the amount of work still being done to the recently opened stadium. There were gardening and construction crews all around busily preparing the stadium for the big game.
The players hadn’t made their way on to the field yet, so I headed up to the press box. The press box didn’t have a lot of people, but construction and wiring crews were busy enhancing the space with plasma TVs and all sorts of new cabling.
I met about a bunch of local media and we chatted about the soccer, the previous day’s MLS All Star practice at University of Illinois Chicago (which lasted about 30 minutes), the fact the almost a large majority of the All Star team was made up of D.C. United players and the Wednesday’s nightmare Open Cup game at Toyota Park which got canceled after a 4 hour rain delay.
Around 10:30, the team finally made its way onto the field, so we all ventured down as a group.
For the next hour, I took pictures of the team’s training session, which include different drills and workouts. Afterwards, several players signed autographs for local kids, while Peter Nowak answered reporters’ questions. Eventually ai players, including Freddy Adu, Jaime Moreno and Jimmy Conrad came over and took part in one-on-one Q&As with reporters.
After the training and Q&A ended, we headed up to the Stadium Club for lunch, which would be followed by the Commissioner’s State of the League Address.
During lunch, I had a chance to talk to Matt Chmura of the Red Bulls. Although no Red Bulls were in the All Star roster, he told me Bruce Arena and [Managing Director] Marc De Grandpre were in town for the day attending league meetings. Seth Stammler would be at the game today during league public relations, though.
Before the Commissioner’s State of the League Address, MLS held a press conference with John Skipper, Executive Vice President for Content with ESPN to announce a long rumored deal between the league and the network. For the first time in league history, ESPN will pay for the rights to telecast MLS games. Starting with 2007 to 2014, ESPN will broadcast 26 regular-season games on Thursday nights. (Fox Soccer Channel will have a national game each week on Saturday nights). The first game of the season, the All Star game and MLS Cup game will be shown on ABC. Skipper, who is a big soccer fan, believes strongly in the sport and its growth in the United States.
"I'm the ... latest knucklehead that thinks soccer is going to work in the United States," Skipper said. "Fortunately, if I'm a knucklehead, I'm a knucklehead at ESPN. If we get ESPN behind soccer in this country, it is almost impossible for me to believe that we can't move this forward.
Skipper said ESPN was taking the coverage very seriously and was working on different production ideas, including a skycam, and providing viewers with different stats throughout the game, both ideas being similar to how they do it with NFL broadcasts.
Garber’s address on the State of the League was extremely positive. Good news for the Red Bulls was announced when Garber informed the media that the league was weeks away from finalizing a plan that would allow teams to sign players on their youth teams without them having to be placed in the draft.
MLSNet has a good recap of his comments and commissioner’s State of the League Address.
After the State of the League address, the next scheduled event was a 20 minute Chelsea press conference and followed by a 2 hour training session on the field. Unfortunately though, those events didn’t start for another 2 and half hours, so I decided to call it a day.
I’ll be heading to the stadium pretty early this afternoon to catch both teams warming up and stake out my position on the field for the game.
I’ll post more tomorrow.