SALT LAKE CITY – Most of the United States players were still hunkered down in the Rio Tinto locker room more than an hour after Tuesday’s match, leaving groups of reporters, bloggers and TV crews to wait and worry over deadlines. Reason: The players were watching the Spurs-Heat game as it went into overtime.
Generally speaking, access around the U.S team is adequate and obliging players do their part for media – so no reason to make too big a stink about this one. BUT…
Let’s hope all that access and media accord stays in balance and that recent signs of slippage in the players’ publicity and communications responsibilities are more hiccup than trend. Jozy Altidore has (mostly) stopped talking to media – although he has traditionally been so accommodating with media that it’s hard to ding the young striker for a month of saying no.
Same for Geoff Cameron, also politely rejecting requests lately. These are always individual choices, and temporary, self-imposed media exile is never a problem for me personally. (So long as it’s temporary and players don’t decide to permanently defer media responsibility to their teammates – something I typically equate to this: someone who always enjoy eating but never offers to do the dishes.)
Last night’s choice to stick with a basketball game rather than perform routine media chores – and make no mistake, it’s part of the job for a bunch of soccer players who still have a stake in growing the game here – was atypically unprofessional from this group.
I know it sounds like sour grapes from (a fairly privileged) chattering class here, but I always say this: if people aren’t around to write about it, broadcast it and generally contribute oodles of free advertising for it, then these guys are just playing Sunday afternoon soccer with the rest of us, and certainly not earning bank for it.
Content producers have jobs. And deadlines. And thankfully, U.S. Soccer supporters thrilled about yet another step toward Brazil 2014 want to read about it and hear the players talk about is. So, leaving it all to wait while watching a basketball game? Hmmm.
Consider this, perhaps, not even a yellow card – but let’s do see it as the referee calling a player over and telling him to “knock it off, already.”
