Soccer, football, footie from an American perspective by kaidez

Hi there. If you would like to contact me, please fill in the form below. Sorry for the form but it keeps the spam to a minimun and the less spam in my life, the better.

If you would like to send me a tip, please send it to the email address in the grey box in the sidebar on the right.

THANX!!!
kaidez

Welcome to kaidez!! Now about me and this blog:

How do you pronounce "kaidez"?
It’s pronounced "kai-dez", just like "sky-dez".

What made you want to do the blog?
Good question. The overall point of the blog is for me to learn about things, especially soccer (or “football” or “footie” as it will be mostly pronounced here). I was really influenced by folks like the ones at Consumerism Commentary, Toddlerspit, and others that track their personal growth via blogging (the former tracks how they handle their personal finances while the latter tracks their adjustments as they grow into parenthood…both are great so check ‘em out). I liked that these guys were willing to live a certain aspect of their life online and was more impressed how much feedback they were getting so I wanted to do the same thing online, but with footie.

My goal is to learn how the beautiful game works and to post my opinions from an American perspective while I learn. I want to be that soccer maven that can recite games and stats and player histories at the drop of a hat. This blog will play an important role in that learning process.

So you’re not a football expert?
Nope, not yet and I feel the need to make this clear as there are many out there who love football and are VERY possessive about it when new fans pop up and claim the game as their own.

The first soccer game I saw was when I was a kid in D.C. The North American Soccer League was still going and my dad took me to see the Washington Diplomats play the Pelé-led New York Cosmos. I was around 10 years old when I saw the game and didn’t appreciate at all and I regret that to this day. But I can say that I’ve seen Pelé play live and that alone makes me proud.

Past that, I’ve never seen George Best nor Eric Cantona nor Diego Maradona play. I’ve watched many games from the Seventies on Fox Soccer Channel and there are some nice old school football clips on YouTube. And now with the Internet and a nice Dish package, I have access to a decent amount of live games and information and am enjoyably gaining a whole lot of football knowledge.

But I don’t think that all of the above makes me the end-all-be-all expert on anything, except for my opinion. There are many MANY others out there that know more about football than me and I knew that when I created this blog.

Any other reasons that you’re blogging?
Yes, to keep my front-end web development skills up to date (especially CSS) and learn more back-end development (specifically PHP/MySQL). To do that, I’m using the Wordpress system.

(A quick note to all burgeoning web developers: if you want to learn CSS and/or PHP/MySQL, playing around with Wordpress is a great way to do it. The best way to do this is to create a Wordpress site on a webhost of your own choosing instead of creating it on wordpress.com. Then start playing with the files BUT MAKE SURE THAT YOU BACK UP THE ORIGINAL FILE FIRST!!!!)

Why did you choose soccer?
I’ve always been curious about it but I think what sealed the choice was a trip to Madrid and Marrakesh that my wife and I took in 2007, especially Marrakesh. Deep in the Medina, I saw kids playing footie 24-7 with the same passion and enthusiasm that American kids play football in the street or play black-top basketball. And I will always remember that everything in Marrakesh pretty much stopped during the Saturday night Chelsea/Arsenal game. Shop owners were hooking up crappy black-and-white TVs to get a glimpse and customers were practically ignored

All this made me more curious so when we got back to the States, we watched the FA Community Shield and ordered both Fox Soccer Channel and GolTV, all in one day. We have been religious footie fans ever since.

Hmmm. Since your an American, it would seem that all the David Beckham hype would have gotten you into soccer (sorry, football).
Yeah, if your an American football fan, you have to address Becks a bit.

I knew who David Beckham was WAAAAAAAAAAY before he came to the States to play for the LA Galaxy. I started to hear his name in the mid-nineties and finally saw what he looked like in either ‘97 or ‘98 when he appeared in The Face magazine. I finally saw him play for Manchester United in 2001 when during a trip to London, I watched a Man U game in a West London pub (don’t remember who they were playing but since this was West London, I’ll assume that it was either Fulham or Chelsea). I also remember arriving in Greece on my 2003 honeymoon, checking into my hotel. and turning on CNN International while they were in the midst their around-the-clock coverage of Beckham’s move from England’s Man U to Spain’s Real Madrid. And speaking of Real Madrid, when we got GolTV in ‘07, it was just in time to see his last six or seven games with the club. Real won the league championship that year and I’m positive that they could not have done it with out David Beckham.

At the creation date of this blog, it’s been a little over a year since the Becks left Spain for LA. He hasn’t played as many MLS games as he should have for being here that long, and the MLS games that he has played are nowhere near as competitive as the ones that he played in both the Premier League and La Liga, so it’s not clear to me how sharp is pitch instincts are right now. As far as the promotional push that he’s gotten in the States, it was a bit too much for me and I can’t really say that his being over here has raised the American public’s awareness of European Football as much as many desired. Personally, I would like to have seen him finish his career either at Real Madrid or at one of the top Italian teams.

Regardless of all of this, I have the utmost respect for David Beckham’s game because the man can play…well!!! If I had to pick my Best 11 of currently active players, Becks would be in the midfield. End of story.

What teams do you support?
Chelsea and Real Madrid as of right now and I don’s see this changing any time soon, especially with Chelsea. I’m immediately looking for teams to support in the MLS (leaning towards D.C. United because D.C.’s my hometown), Serie A (leaning towards Roma because the pummeled Real Madrid in the ‘08 Champions League and that makes me curious), and the British Coca-Cola Championship League (no idea who to pick there yet). Eventually, I’ll look for teams I like in Germany’s Bundesliga, the Ligue 1 in France, and the Scottish Premier League, but right now I have a full plate of teams that I support and games that I watch.

(Note: I really like Shunsuke Nakamura and his game so I’m leaning towards supporting Celtic in the SPL).

I will always strive to blog in way that isn’t biased in favor of the that I support but I expect to slip up here and there.

How do you research football?
My Dish package comes with Fox Soccer Channel and GolTV. Also, I signed up for the Setanta Sports Network when we brought a house. In order to watch as many games as possible, our system is outfitted with a DVR for our time-shfited viewing pleasure.

I also use the internet (obviously) to keep up on things. Goal.com is pretty much the best resource for all things footie-related. The sports section of CNN’s International page is a good source. And Sports Illustrated’s Soccer page is decent. It may not be the freshest source for football info, but it’s worth going for the punditry from folks like Tim Vickery, Grant Wahl, Greg Lalas (Alexi’s younger brother) and Ives Galarcep. And of course, I check out other blogs that I like.

What other blogs do you like?
Speaking of Ives Galarcep, respect is DEFINITELY due to this man and his Soccer By Ives blog. Great writing style and unwavering support of the MLS…I hope my perspective can be half as good as his. Also, the World Football section of the user-powered Bleacher Report is nice. And while I’m not a fan of football gossip and WAG-culture, Kickette is very good at what they do as they’ve got a great team of writers, an awesome sense of humor, and a well-designed website that I check out at least once a day. More blogs that I like will always be found on my Blogroll at the right hand side of the page.

What do you do besides watch football and blog?
Work at my day job. I’m a front-end web developer for Revlon Cosmetics, which I thoroughly enjoy! I also hang out my wife who love much much more than my job! We travel when we can, go see bands as often as we can, and enjoy a good tapas bar when we find it.