Offside Unleashed: On Horses and Big Kids and MLS

By: Laurie | January 25th, 2009

A long time ago, back when I was young, I used to ride horses. I didn’t have my own, so I rode the horses that belonged to my riding group, which taught kids up through high school. Some of the horses were amazing, some not so much. And the rule of the group was that older kids got first choice.

What this meant for the younger kids was that when we went to ride, all of the spirited and obedient horses would usually be gone, leaving us with a pick of the plugs, the skittish ones, and the ones who refused to take one lead. Even when they were making such a tight turn that being on the wrong lead would make them fall over. On their rider. In a show. In front of five-hundred people.

(Don’t ask me how I know that last part.)

So by the time I was twelve or thirteen, I was becoming an expert in picking the least worst horses. The ones whose flaws were fixable. The ones I could work with so that I’d have a mount who could get the job done. I’d work with a horse, and train him, and fall madly in love with him in that way only preteen girls can, at which point one of the bigger kids would be watching and would say, “Wow. I never knew that horse could do that!” And then my horse would be gone and I would have to start over again from scratch.

At first, I hated this. Eventually I came to see it as a challenge.

I was thinking about this the week before last, after the MLS Superdraft. Because MLS are kind of like the twelve-year-old riders of the footballing world — the littler kids in search of the horse who can get the job done, knowing that if they pick the right one and he’s really good, he’ll be snatched away and they’ll have to start over. And also knowing that sometimes they may end up with the less-than-best, but both sides will still end up better than they were. And all of this somehow becomes part of the challenge and excitement that defines the game.

The player who made me think of this was Steve Zakuani, the Congo-born, Arsenal-trained player who was taken by Seattle as the #1 draft pick. Zakuani was let go by the Arsenal youth system in 2003 after five years because he “didn’t have the physical attributes they were looking for.” Since Arsenal has a whole bunch of youth players in the pipeline, that was it for Zakuani, at least until he was “discovered” by University of Akron in Ohio, where he scored 20 goals last season. Yes, University of Akron. College. You remember college? The route to the pros that’s considered so inefficient that it’s been discarded by pretty much every league except MLS? That’s how this former Arsenal youth player came into the pros.

In general, players don’t come to MLS through the routes used by the rest of the world. This is changing, slowly, with the adoption of club youth systems. But they’re nowhere close to productive enough to provide the teams with all the players they need yet, and the pay in MLS isn’t enough to attract many players at the top of their games who have already made their names elsewhere. This means that MLS coaches and scouts are always on the lookout for that one good horse who’s gotten bypassed and overlooked. Which leads to things like open tryouts. Reality TV. South American scouting trips. All in the search for that diamond in the rough.

The funny part is that as an American fan, I love this. The same part of me that eventually came to love the equestrian process — finding and working with a horse whose value was invisible to others –also loves it when MLS is able to do something with and for the players everybody else forgot.

I think I’ve always been a little bothered by the American penchant for spending whatever it takes to buy the best, regardless, whether it’s baseball players or bombs. That — buying the best — is not an option in MLS, because the money’s just not there, and the current rules value stability over high-priced glamour. MLS teams can’t just wave a checkbook and buy their way to the top. (And even when they try for the high-priced glamour, it doesn’t necessarily work. See: Beckham, David.)

And so we have homegrown guys like Sacha Kljestan, probably soon to be Europe-bound, playing alongside Cuban defector Maykel Galindo who got his US start in the second division USL. And Arsenal reject Steve Zakuani will play beside French-trained Sebastien Le Toux. And former EPL and Championship player Darren Huckerby, who’s been playing professionally since 1993, was somehow last year’s MLS Newcomer of the Year at thirty-two.

Surviving on creativity and ingenuity instead of cash?

Makes this former horse person proud to be an MLS fan.

Video of Steve Zakuani, in college, below: