2009 Best of US Soccer Awards – Let’s Get Busy Voting
The annual Best of U.S. Soccer Awards is back again for the 8th year. This is where you, the U.S. Soccer fans, vote in 12 categories recapping a busy 2009 crammed full of action, which included FIFA World Cup qualifying, the FIFA Confederations Cup, Abby Wambach’s 100th goal, another Development Academy season and the CONCACAF Gold Cup.
You can cast your vote in each of the categories, and there are videos and pictures to help you remember some of the big events throughout the year. You can only vote once a day in each category but that shouldn’t stop you from coming back again from now until the voting ends on Dec. 13.
This year IMS has lots of friends in the category of Best Blog. I always feel like US Soccer should separate this category into professional journalists and amateurs. Every year it seems the pros come away with this one and yet year after year people like my good friend Bruce McGuire of du Nord Futbol are up on the ballot, putting in countless hours to the benefit of the game here in the US with no real pay for his work. Bruce is a tireless regular on the Best US Soccer Blog voting category. He’ll be receiving a bunch of my votes. As my friend Kartik Krishnaiyer and I have said, there may not be any other blogger in the US who has done as much as Bruce for publicizing and supporting the US Men’s Soccer program.
Another friend of IMS is Adam Spangler of This is American Soccer. Adam is a professional writer but is not paid for the work he does on his blog. Adam is one of the most intelligent and well written soccer writers in the US. No one else does the in-depth articles that Adam does covering the more human side of the game.
This past year has also allowed me to get to know Jason Davies of Match Fit USA who has only been around for about a year but has done a nice job with his site and excellent job with his podcasts.
And another excellent choice would be from Tom Dunmore’s Pitch Invasion. Again, no doubt one of the better blogs covering all soccer in the US and the rest of the globe. Tom has had some really excellent stuff this past year and his addition of Peter Wilt to the writing staff has been a gift to us all.
So get on over to the Best of US Soccer’s 2009 contest and get busy. You can click here or on the logo to start voting.
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Read this article today. I thought it was interesting and and shows the attitude of a veteran pro when it comes to MLS, USL, and the country’s soccer set up.
http://soccernet.espn.go.com/columns/story?id=702921&sec=mls&root=mls&cc=5901
I can’t say that I agree with a lot of what Conrad is saying. I don’t have time to fully respond now but there are a lot of pieces missing here.
I like the concept, however, i think some real life lessons are the cost of travel, which seem to plauge US teams. I do not claim to be an expert, but I highly doubt that those teams do a ton of air travel. (If I am wrong on this, please let me know.) To me, geography (the size of the US) is a real barrier to expanding soccer in the US.
I am thankful I made it through the Thanksgiving holiday and not dying due to lack of soccer talk. I do think IMS should take steps next year to help support the addiiction some of us have by hosting a “soccer roundtable” Thanksgiving evening.
Cheers!
Good idea. We will solve all the worlds footy problems and solve world hunger at global warming while we’re at it.
Great piece by Conrad! My only suggestion, have USL (or TOA) become MLS 2 or 3 and why not just call it promotion relegation – that is what he’s advocating for!
Question – couldn’t USSF basically do this if they wanted? Couldn’t they force the leagues into one tent with promotion/relegation if they wanted to? (I realize this may be very, very, very unlikely, but just wondering if it is possible, at least in theory)