Soccer Fan Pro

A video filmed in South America showing a soccer player that would make many coaches very happy.

Today I had the privilege of interviewing Jon Carter, a sports writer for www.espnsoccernet.com. Because Mr. Carter lives in London he agreed to answer the questions via email. He offered excellent advice for aspiring journalists and insight into the soccer world. Below is the transcript of the interview.

1) When did you figure out you wanted to be a sportswriter?

I always knew that I would want to do something involving sports, writing and a computer. I loved watching soccer as a kid and writing about it seemed the natural path for me, so from the age of about 15 I did everything I could to try and make that happen.

2) Did you play sports in high school/college?

Growing up in the UK, I played rugby and cricket at school, but also enjoyed basketball and tennis too. I went to a school that didn’t play soccer, so cricket was my main sport. Like many journalists, I was never good enough at any sport to think about playing professionally but I still enjoy it as a hobby and stil like to play the odd game of 5-a-side.

3) Where did you work before ESPN? How do you feel those jobs helped you develop as a writer?

I came straight out of a Masters course in Journalism to work for the Extreme Sports Channel. Primarily doing stuff for their website, it gave me a good chance to see the inner workings of a TV channel and also enhanced my skills in writing and creating pictures and video for the web. I also did a brief stint for the sports section of a magazine called ‘Soldier’ which is the armed forces mag for the UK. There’s nothing like learning on the job, though, and I feel my writing skills really took off when I joined Soccernet.

4) What has your experience been like working for ESPN?

A dream come true. ESPN’s passion for sports is something I could identify with and I feel very privileged to be doing something that I consider fun, while getting paid at the same time. I have learnt a lot from working with established soccer journalists such as Phil Ball and Richard Jolly; while the acquisition of cricinfo.com, racinglive.com, and scrum.com have broadened my experience of other sports and the talented writers who work on their sites.

5) Did you always enjoy writing about soccer, or do you write about other sports as well?

Soccer has always been my main passion, but throughout my school years and with work experiences I have covered a vast array of sports from cricket to Taekwondo. The Extreme Sports Channel had me writing about skating, bmx, and winter sports and I still keep an eye on the sports that interest me (which is pretty much everything).

6) Did you intern at any big media outlets during college?

The sports journalism field is exceptionally hard to get into, so I was unable to do any internships. I knew people who had worked for free for a year just to get their foot in the door, and sometimes they would still not get the job. So instead I focused on writing as much as possible during university and took the decision to get a Masters degree to enhance my employment skills afterwards. Sky Sports were kind enough to give me a tour of their offices for a day or so, and I was hired by ESPN soon after.

7) Do you have a particular team you follow or enjoy covering?

Arsenal, although it’s hard to say I ‘enjoy’ covering them sometimes. My first game ever was watching David Rocastle (sadly no longer with us) and Ian Wright play for the reserves in a mach against Aldershot Town. David Seaman was my big hero as a kid, as I had always wanted to be a goalkeeper.

Have you ever had the opportunity to interview any famous soccer players or managers?

There’s been a few over the past few years, but new Thailand manager and Man Utd. legend Bryan Robson, Argentine her Ossie Ardiles, and Arsenal stalwart Ray Parlour are some of my personal favourites. Nothing will top the moment I met Dutch superstars Dennis Bergkamp and Johan Cruyff though.

9) Is there anyone you consider to be an influence on your career as a writer?

Henry winter, one of the most well-respected journalists in the UK. He writes for the Daily Telegraph mainly, but also has columns in magazines such as Four Four Two. I had the chance to meet him as we were both interviewing former referee Graham Poll a few years ago and he was able to offer me some age advice. I read his work almost every day.

10) Any advice for aspiring sportswriters or journalists in general?

Just write as much as you can. Newspapers, websites, blogs, magazines, anything. Seeing your name in print is the best thing you can do and it will give you a great feeling when it’s there in black and white. Anything you can do to build up a portfolio of material to show off your skills is important and don’t give up. It’s a tough profession to get into, but everyone wants to see passion and if you show how mch you care about the subject you write about then you’ll go far.

11) How do you feel about the English Premier League’s rule about keeping at least 8 “homegrown” players on a roster, and do you think other leagues should adopt the same policy?

I’m not sure quite how much difference this will make in the long run. None of the current Premier League sides suffer, as they all have at least eight. Also, it’s hard to call them “homegrown” as you have someone like Spaniard Cesc Fabregas who qualifies because he signed for Arsenal at 16, and Owen Hargreaves (and English international) who doesn’t because his footballing education was completed in Germany. We might see more young foreign players joining at 17, so they can count as having played for the club for three years before they are 21. It won’t help English players come through.

12) In the wake of the controversy surrounding Lionel Messi’s performances for Argentina versus FC Barcelona, do you think the success or failure of a team rests with a team, the trainer, or a mixture of both (and along the same lines, do you have a team to win the World Cup)?

It certainly is a mixture of both, although the manager is the man whose job is on the line. The players have to take responsibility, but at the end of the day it is the boss who is a key part in making them perform. Teamwork is key, as you can see with the way Barcelona play, and the impact of someone who doesn’t know how to bring it in (like Diego Maradona) can upset that balance. You can have the most talented players in the world, but they still need guidance on the pitch. Spain looks comfortable with each other on the bitch and they would be my tip for the World Cup, even if I’ll only be covering them from my London base for Soccernet.

Great advice and insight from an experienced sports writer. Again I thank Mr. Carter and hope to be able to speak to him again in the future.

This is the flip side of the previous post, about countries with tiny populations getting to the World Cup.

Let’s spend a bit of time, in the next few posts, contemplating why several countries with enormous populations not only won’t be making the World Cup, they didn’t get close.

Take India. Please.

A country with 1.17 billion people went out in the first round of Asian qualifying for South Africa 2010. India lost a home-and-home series with Lebanon by an aggregate of 6-3. That would be the same Lebanon that has been racked, off and on, by internal violence the past few years. Yet India was swamped by the Lebanese, and it wasn’t an upset. Lebanon was seeded 13 from among 43 Asian nations; India was seeded No. 28. Just behind the Maldives, just ahead of Singapore.

How it that possible? The subject is a big one, and we won’t get to the bottom of it here, but we can skim over the salient points.

–Soccer is not the national game. That would be cricket, a sport at which India is among the world’s elite. Field hockey, despite a decline in interest, probably ranks ahead of soccer, too. Two authors look at the phenomenon in a book entitled “Goalless: The Story of a Unique Footballing Nation” … and here is a link to a review of that book.

–A perception that Indians are not interested in a sport in which they are awful. India is 149th in the world in the most recent FIFA rankings.

–Television. In this blog post, a writer from India suggests that successes in cricket and failures in soccer occurred at a critical point in India’s television history, in the early 1980s, and that the subsequent TV-generated reinforcement boosted cricket and disappointment crippled soccer.

–A bad and ineffectual domestic soccer league. The National Football League (the other NFL, that is) features teams that play to small crowds and uses players who are, as one local critic put it, “third-tier Nigerians and fourth-tier Brazilians.” The local league, then, does little or nothing to foster enthusiasm for the game.

–A thoroughly inept national soccer federation. The results would seem to be enough to bear out this contention, but in this rather unwieldy essay, the author seems to suggest India, as a country, does a poor job of organizing sports of any sort. (Having seen Indian track athletes finish far behind in preliminary heats at the Olympics, I can vouch for Indian failures in the Olympic movement, at the least.)

Twenty or 30 years ago, it was possible to argue that India’s ineptitude on the athletic field was a function of its grinding poverty. But now, with estimates that as many as 300 million Indians recently have climbed into the middle class, that “too poor to play” analysis seems inoperable.

For whatever reason, or reasons, India is not producing elite players. Check this wikipedia entry on Baichung Bhutia, considered the best Indian soccer player of the past generation. Bhutia, however, has played very little outside India, and when he went to England to try his luck with third-tier club Bury … he didn’t exactly shine, scoring three goals in three seasons. Then went back to India.

What makes India and soccer a more perplexing issue are claims that India actually was semi-competent in the sport a half-century ago. Its “golden age” typically is described as having occurred in the 1950s and 1960s. That would include gold medals in soccer at the Asian Games of 1951 and 1962, and a runner-up finish (to Israel) in the Asian Football Confederation championship of 1964.

India has never done anything to qualify for a World Cup, though it was invited to the 1950 World Cup when its regional opponents decided not to field teams. However, FIFA required Indian players to wear shoes, and India pulled out of the 1950 World Cup because, apparently, several of its players insisted on playing barefoot.

Thus, India is perhaps the only country in soccer history to lose interest in the sport. Several countries came late to the sport — the United States and Japan among the most prominent — but India stands almost alone among countries that were at least passably competent once upon a time … and now are not.

And no one seems to care. Which probably is the bottom line of the entire discussion.