Spring In The Ukraine, and A New Season of Soccer Tales

Quick. Shakhtar Donetsk. What country is the team from? More to the point, which part of the name is the name of the city? How many of you know?

I thought so.

The other night, I watched the Roma--Shakhtar Donetsk Champions League match on DVR from a couple weeks ago. It was not a pretty sight for someone who grew up fascinated by the glamour of Italian soccer names: Serie A, Roberto Baggio, Juventus, Inter Milan, AC Milan, Paolo Maldini. Names are a big thing in soccer. In all sports, really. Sports are about mythology. The Italian mythology was dragged through the mud once more in the game against the Ukrainian champions from Donetsk.

Daniele De Rossi of Roma, who elbowed Brian McBride in the face in the 2006 World Cup, got away with another such elbow against Darijo Srna. De Rossi is now my candidate for dirtiest player in Italian soccer. Then again, Gennaro Gattuso head-butted an assistant coach for Tottenham. So it's a tight race, which is appropriate wording, since Italian fans give us some of the worst problems with racism in the game.

It's a sad thing when one's sports illusions are tarnished. Baseball has felt the brush of steroids mar the legacy of the last two decades. Soccer is not immune to that humanizing touch of corruption.

When I was younger, I would invent soccer tournaments. I would go through World Soccer magazines and pick random teams from leagues around the world, sometimes by blindly opening the magazine and pointing my finger at an article or a list of standings for a country, sometimes with the roll of a die. I had rules, such as no more than three teams from one particular country. I had these teams organized into groups, with different rounds, set up just like the World Cup or the Champions League.

Matches were settled by a roll of a die for each team to determine how many goals were scored. For national teams, I went so far as to assign goals to players, by picking players from the box scores of international matches. Points were earned or lost with wins, losses, draws. There were consequences for poor performances: if a team went through a tournament and earned zero points, falling at the group stage, they were not allowed to be selected for a tournament for two or three iterations.

I took my soccer rather seriously, yes. Also, I lived in a small town.

My point is that I loved the big names of soccer, that seemed mysterious, evocative of powerful story lines, and Italian teams and players were among my favorites. With my quarter-Italian heritage, I've always followed this hierarchy for determining which teams to root for: 1) USA; 2) England; 3) Italy.

A few years after the height of my die-rolling soccer tournament heyday, I read The Miracle of Castel Di Sangro, which was an entertaining book, despite the smarmy self-righteousness of the American author. However, the indications of a lack of integrity in Italian soccer were disturbing, with reports of teams paying other teams for points to ensure safety from relegation or to ensure promotion. Then I read the absolutely outstanding A Season With Verona, which was engaging, but which pointed out some racist incidents with Italian fans, underscoring the rumors and reports I had heard elsewhere. These reports have only increased over the last years.

Then there was the match-fixing scandal of a couple years ago, which saw the might Juventus, the famous "Old Lady" of Italian soccer, relegated to Serie B as a punishment for malfeasance.

Sports are a business. I'm not sure whether I should be grateful or angry at Italian soccer for exposing the corrupt motivations to such a blatant degree.

But enough of the darkness.

Roma are guilty of hubris. When they were paired with Shakhtar Donetsk for this second round tie--a tie is a set of two games, one home game for each team--a Roma executive said that he was not going to lie; Roma were pleased with this draw.

Objectively, one appreciates the honesty, and one wouldn't have been surprised. There were other potential opponents with stronger pedigrees than that of the team from the Ukraine. But still, this is why we have cliches. The Roma team could have said that they had great respect for their opponents, that it would be a tough match. We might not have believed them, but the veneer of humility would have reduced the David versus Goliath factor for impartial fans.

As it was, I think it is great that Shakhtar Donetsk thrashed Roma quite thoroughly over the two legs, and is advancing to the quarterfinals. Underdog stories are the best part of sports, and it comes at a great time: the Ukraine is co-hosting the European Championships next year, and any publicity or momentum would surely be welcome.

I'll be interested to see how they do in the next round.

Speaking of names, the new season of Major League Soccer kicked off tonight, and I'm interested to see if David Beckham can win a title in what is likely to be his last season playing with the LA Galaxy. I think it could be a good year for Major League Soccer, with new teams in Vancouver and Portland, adding weight to the west coast balance. The three teams I'm most interested in this year are the San Jose Earthquakes for obvious reasons--and I will try to get to a live game this year--the Seattle Sounders, and the Galaxy. So many potential storylines. Let's kick it off.