No one took a bumpier, chillier ride through Major League Soccer’s inaugural year than the Denver-based owner of the Colorado Rapids.
Yet despite a season in which the Rapids finished with a league-worst record (11-21) and league-low attendance (10,276), Philip F. Anschutz decided to take the expansion plunge in Chicago.
Bob Sanderman, president of the Rapids and CEO of Anschutz’s other sports holding, the NHL’s Los Angeles Kings, said the spills the Rapids took last season will inform the decisions to be made here.
“We’re in huge trouble if we haven’t learned from the lessons we got in Denver,” Sanderman said this week.
“We learned our marketing people must know and love soccer. It’s harder to sell than football or baseball. I was new to soccer, and so was Mr. Anschutz. I made a couple of hires I shouldn’t have made.”
Competition for the sports dollar here is fierce, as it is in Denver. Last year, the Rapids had to contend with the popular Rockies and the Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche.
Sanderman said his first priority is to hire a general manager. Likely candidates include Columbus Crew marketing director John Borozzi, ex-U.S. national team GM Bill Nuttall and Cleveland sports promoter Paul Garofolo.
Player signings won’t begin until fall. Expect a Latin-style possession game–the Rapids’ experiment with long-ball was a dismal failure.
“We started the season without a Hispanic star,” Sanderman said. “The Hispanic community has shown us they’ll come out for their players.”
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Anschutz, an oil, railroads and real estate magnate, will make his presence felt, Sanderman said: “He has been anything but an absentee owner of the Kings. He sees half their home games. It wouldn’t surprise me to see him at every Soldier Field game.”
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Americans abroad: Ageless defensive midfielder Thomas Dooley, one of a handful of premier U.S. players remaining overseas, would be a logical fit to be assigned here. But Dooley’s Luxembourg-based agent, Michael Becker, said Dooley may not want to wait that long.
Dooley, 36, a regular for Schalke 04 of the German Bundesliga, wants to come back for personal reasons, even though it probably means a significant pay cut, Becker said.
Expansion could reel in several midlevel foreign-based U.S. players, such as two other Becker clients: midfielder Dario Brose and forward Chad Deering, an Indiana alum. Both play in Germany.
Club sandwich: Four of the world’s top club teams will play an exhibition double-header July 27 at Soldier Field.
The first Reebok Cup, a two-city affair featuring two European and two South American teams, will kick off in Miami July 25. A.C. Fiorentina (Italy), led by Argentinian striker Gabriel Batistuta, will play Borussia Mochengladbach (Germany), whose premier players include Swedish striker Martin Dahlin and German midfielder Stefan Effenberg.
The other match pairs, Palmeiras (Brazil), home to Brazilian defender Cafu and midfielder Freddy Rincon of Colombia, with Club Atletico Junior (Colombia) and homegrown star forward Miguel Asprilla.
The losers and winners of those two games will square off in Chicago two days later.
Is is any coincidence that the Reebok Cup will take place in MLS’ two expansion markets, where the league will want to rev interest this summer? MLS has no official connection to the event, but Reebok does supply equipment to two MLS teams.