Tag: USMNT

Mexico vs. USMNT 2015 CONCACAF Cup Photo MEGA-POST!!

I am happy and very lucky to say that I photographed the Mexican national football team for the second time this year. This match, however, was more important than a friendly as Mexico faced off against their CONCACAF rival USMNT. At stake was the berth to represent CONCACAF at the FIFA Confederations Cup to be held in Russia 2017.

The weekend began with a visit to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena for pre-match day training photos and the press conference on Friday, Oct. 9th. Kickoff was at 6:30pm the following day at the same venue in front of a sold-out crowd of just under 94, 000 fans (75% Mex, 25% USA), many of which arrived nearly five hours earlier for the tailgate parties.

The atmosphere from both sets of fans was incredible and electrifying thanks to both teams providing an entertaining 120 minutes of football. In the end, Mexico sealed the victory at 3 – 2 thanks to a golazo from Paul Aguilar with two minutes left before penalties.

Complete photo album of pre-match day training & press conference for Mexico.

Complete photo album of CONCACAF Cup match day featuring USMNT (2) vs. Mexico (3).

A selection of photos from both albums is below. Enjoy!

Mexico’s pre-match day training and press conference at the Rose Bowl:

mex_training_004

mex_training_005

mex_training_009

mex_training_010

mex_training_012

mex_training_014

mex_training_016

mex_training_018

mex_training_019

Inaugural CONCACAF Cup match between Mexico and USMNT for CONCACAF’s spot at the Confederations Cup in Russia 2017:

mexico_usa_concacup_001

mexico_usa_concacup_002

mexico_usa_concacup_007

mexico_usa_concacup_012

mexico_usa_concacup_015

mexico_usa_concacup_018

mexico_usa_concacup_019

mexico_usa_concacup_021

mexico_usa_concacup_022

mexico_usa_concacup_025

mexico_usa_concacup_026

mexico_usa_concacup_029

mexico_usa_concacup_032

mexico_usa_concacup_038

mexico_usa_concacup_042

mexico_usa_concacup_045

mexico_usa_concacup_046

mexico_usa_concacup_051

mexico_usa_concacup_056

mexico_usa_concacup_059

mexico_usa_concacup_065

mexico_usa_concacup_066

mexico_usa_concacup_067

mexico_usa_concacup_068

mexico_usa_concacup_072

mexico_usa_concacup_074

mexico_usa_concacup_076

mexico_usa_concacup_079

mexico_usa_concacup_081

mexico_usa_concacup_082

mexico_usa_concacup_084

mexico_usa_concacup_087

mexico_usa_concacup_089

mexico_usa_concacup_091

mexico_usa_concacup_092

Fans Irate After ESPN2 Misses USMNT’s Opening Goal Against South Korea

The US national team started 2014 with a bang as forward Chris Wondolowski opened the match with a goal at the four-minute mark. Unfortunately, Team USA fans watching on ESPN2 missed it. The station continued to show the final minutes of college basketball match between Clemson and Florida State.

Seven minutes into the game and the station finally switched over. As you can expect, this didn’t sit too well with USMNT fans who watched the game on ESPN2.

https://twitter.com/lukeicejones/status/429745280268128257

https://twitter.com/deepblueseahors/status/429741056481964033

The game wasn’t a official FIFA matchday and not an incredibly important one in general besides it being a warm-up/team tweak for the World Cup. However, it’s a sad state of affairs at ESPN when a college basketball game is considered more important than a soccer game featuring the national team, especially in light of the team’s very successful 2013 campaign.

What does it mean when Spanish-language UniMas shows the same game from beginning to end when English-language ESPN doesn’t? This on top of the fact that ESPN/NBC lost viewers in its MLS coverage while UniMas actually gained viewers:

The Spanish-language audience on UniMas increased almost 6 percent from last year’s audience to 514,000 viewers, more than double what they were only three years ago on another Univision network, Galavision.

The numbers are consistent with the trend during the 2013 regular season. Univision reported that the average viewers on UniMas’ MLS regular-season broadcasts (223,000) topped those on ESPN2 (181,000).

Sports Business Daily had reported that the average viewership dropped 29 percent on ESPN/ESPN and 8 percent to 112,000 on NBCSN (which had benefited in 2012 from usually high viewerships due to lead-ins from its London Olympics coverage).

Courtesy Soccer America.

The Soccer Reform Trilogy

Soccer in the USA is a little different compared to other countries for a variety of reasons including its closed-league system. Major League Soccer operates in the same manner as the National Football League, Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League with only bankruptcy forcing teams out of the league while the rest of the world (sans Australia) follows a multi-league system that promotes and relegates teams between divisions depending on their performance.

Enter Ted Westervelt, founder and head honcho of Soccer Reform. Westervelt has been fighting the good fight for years to bring promotion/relegation to MLS. He’s not alone in this fight and, as much as MLS and the US Soccer Federation try to drown Westervelt and like-minded individuals out, his voice continues to be heard across the nation.

I had the opportunity to interview Westervelt a few months ago. Our hour-plus long conversation covered numerous enlightening topics into the history of US soccer (all 100 years of it!) and the forces at work in the US soccer federation and in the business interests who have deep hands in the sport that are preventing MLS from switching to an open-league system similar to that found in countries around the world.

“Soccer was a global market before there were a whole lot of global markets,” said Westervelt, “but here we are still pretending that it’s not a global market.”

The interview was published in Voxxi in three parts:

Centennial: Filling The Gaps In U.S. Soccer History

Soccer Reform: Building A Better Soccer League In The U.S.

Soccer Reform: Barriers To Promotion & Relegation In U.S. Soccer