Over the course of 466 first team games for Liverpool, Scottish International Steve McNichol scored 46 goals despite primarily being a defender, and won the 1989 English Footballer of the Year award, in addition to winning a European Cup, 3 FA Cups, 4 league championships, and a Charity Shield for good measure.

Never heard of him? Neither have I, but you may have heard of his doppelgänger, New England Revolution coach, Steve Nicol (Liverpool FC profile).

Anybody ever wondering why soccer fans question the credibility of American soccer media have to look no farther than a recent column from The Salt Lake Tribune’s soccer columnist, Michael C. Lewis. It’s hard to quibble with someone who writes as many column-inches about soccer as Mr. Lewis does, especially when he has to cover perennial cellar-dwellers ReAL Salt Lake, but quibble I must (or maybe that’s "nitpick").

The New England Revolution has had only one coach in the three years Lewis has been covering Major League Soccer, the previously mentioned Steve Nicol, who also happens to be the coach of the MLS All Star team versus Glasgow Celtic this year, and the Revs were in the MLS Cup Final the last 2 years running. The All Star Game was the subject of Lewis’s article, yet that minor detail didn’t prevent him from mis-identifying Nicol as "McNichol," not only mis-spelling the primary part of Coach Nicol’s name, but somehow adding a prefix to it as well. And not just once as a typo/accident, but twice to make clear that’s honestly what he thought the Revolution coach’s name was. (RSL Again Shut Out Of 'First XI')

What if the Washington Post Nationals’ sportswriter, Thomas Boswell, decided that Red Sox GM Terry Francona’s name was actually Terry Franchione? Can you imagine the flame-o-grams Boswell would be receiving from enraged baseball fans?

Combine Lewis’s gaffe with a recent erroneous Associated Press/SI.com photo caption from Copa América accompanying a picture of African-American and Toronto FC defender Marvell Wynne that identified him as Caucasian-American and Watford FC defender Jay DeMerit (since corrected), and you get a pretty accurate picture of well-meaning people half-asleep at the switch, because Sports Illustrated also has several good writers covering the MLS and American soccer in general, particularly Grant Wahl.

If these were the exceptions to the rule, it would be one thing, but feel free to browse Big Soccer’s "USA Men: News & Analysis" forum (link opens in new window) and on almost any day you will find knowledgeable amateur soccer writers (with a few professional writers and lurkers thrown in for good measure) railing about various inaccuracies and mis-representations that remain all-too-frequent a part of our soccer media diet. Some are a bit histrionic, but the "dis-honor" roll of gaffes and mistakes is pretty long, with Jamie Trecker of Fox Soccer Channel (!!) and the Chicago Daily Herald’s Kent McDill, snarkily referred to on the boards as "McPickle", among the more noteworthy repeat offenders (they’re both Chicago-based, so maybe it’s something in the Windy City water).

For example, see Trecker’s recent preview of the CONCACAF Gold Cup tournament: ((Americans Have A Lot To Prove At Gold Cup) ). The Big Soccer-heads called him out here for declaring Eddie Johnson as having scored in a "rather useless friendly against China", which would have been June 2, merely days before the column was written. That game was a 4-1 victory for the US with DaMarcus Beasley, Benny Feilhaber, Clint Dempsey, and Oguchi Onyewu finding net, but no Eddie Johnson (USA Cruises To 4-1 victory Against China In San Jose In Final Preparation Before 2007 Gold Cup) .

As a matter of fact, Johnson hadn’t scored AT ALL in 2007 at the time the article was written (2007 Mens National Team Results), though he did finally net one in the Gold Cup, June 9 versus Trinidad and Tobago that helped secure our spot in the Quarterfinals of that tournament: (Ching, Johnson Put U.S. Into Quarterfinals Of 2007 CONCACAF Gold Cup) .

As a long-time follower of soccer in American newspapers and magazines, the so-called "mainstream media" (MSM), I have become used to such indignities, which actually used to be far worse understandably because there simply wasn’t a pool of informed, capable soccer people who could also write. But those days are long since past, and the writers I’m calling to task here are people who make their living one way or the other as professional soccer writers. These are not sportswriting newbies who really want to cover baseball but have just had the soccer beat dumped on them, nor are they writing in 3rd tier, backwater newspapers without any local soccer.

That’s embarrassing, and frankly it’s long past time for it to stop. Whether the problem actually lies with the writers or their editors/producers, it doesn’t matter. The result is amateurish, and hardly what would be accepatable in any of the "Big 4" sports, so why should American soccer fans be expected to accept it?

All Articles Indexed for the Updated Topic: U.S. vs. T&T
Ching, Johnson Put U.S. Into Quarterfinals Of 2007 CONCACAF Gold Cup | USSF Jun 9, 07 | go to article
All Articles Indexed for the Updated Topic: US MNT vs. China (June 2, 2007)
USA Cruises To 4-1 victory Against China In San Jose In Final Preparation Before 2007 Gold Cup | USSF Jun 2, 07 | go to article
Quote Sheet: U.S. MNT Discuss The 4-1 Win Against China | USSF Jun 2, 07 | go to article