But no cigar

January 25 - 2007

Last year, the go-to public relations maneuver for MLS teams was “we’re in talks with (insert major European club here) to work out a partnership.” Of course, this allowed teams to get their name in the papers alongside the Barcelonas and Real Madrids of the world, who themselves probably didn’t mind a little American ink.

The PR move of du jour, however, is the “trying to agree terms for (insert name of player the league has no hope of attracting here).” The signing of Beckham initially made this move plausible, but it’s being taken to the illogical extreme. Feast your eyes, for instance, on the Soccernet piece titled Chicago miss out in Zidane Swoop:

Chicago Fire general manager John Guppy has confirmed the franchise made an unsuccessful attempt to lure Zinedine Zidane out of retirement…Guppy told the Chicago Tribune: ‘We reached out to Zidane. But so has every other MLS club. The feedback we’ve all gotten is that he’s retired.’

The Fire also enquired about Swede Henrik Larsson, currently on loan at Manchester United from his hometown club Helsingborg…’We were very interested in signing him,’ Guppy said. ‘But he made it clear that he wanted to return to his hometown.

Furthermore, Guppy made an approach to sign the Horn of Salvation himself, Jesus Christ*. The very existence of the savior remains contentious and, at any rate, terms could not be agreed. Says Guppy, “We were quite serious about the approach, but negotiations stalled when he asked the club to ‘lay down our worldly ambitions,’ or some such shit. We’re a competitive organization, and we only want players here who are committed to success. We’ll now turn our attention to signing either Cristiano Ronaldo or the Chinese concept of Chi.”

*Clearly, that is untrue. Everyone knows JC wants to play in Salt Lake anyway.