Evidently, that is the thinking of the English U-20 team, which departed for the Rocky Mountains today. The U-20s are training for the U-20 World Cup, which opens on July 29.

The Young Lions squad met up in Hertfordshire on Thursday before traveling Friday to spend 10 days in Commerce City using the Colorado Rapids facilities in order to help acclimate to the conditions they will face in South America.

Brian Eastick’s side face their first two World Cup group games against North Korea and Argentina in Medellin, which is about 4,800 feet above sea level. To put that into context, the highest football stadium in England is West Bromwich Albion’s Hawthorns at 550 feet, compared to Denver’s 5,280 feet.

“Having spoken to the sports science people, it’s clear that we need a minimum of about eight days to acclimatise, so we’re going to Colorado for 10 days,” revealed Eastick ahead of the trip.

“The Colorado Rapids Head Coach Gary Smith has been really helpful to us and I’ve been over there to speak to him and do the recce, so we will have some great facilities to work in.

“The altitude in Colombia for our first two games is roughly 1500m above sea level and that is almost exactly the same altitude as Denver, so that’s worked out quite nicely for us.”

After those first two games, it’s back to sea level for the final group match against Mexico in Cartagena, a city on the northern Caribbean coast of Colombia.

 As the scars on my knees attest, injury is a part of soccer. Friday night, this point came home in an excruciating instant when  Colorado Rapids midfielder Brian Mullan tackled Seattle’s Steve Zakuani.

The collision came in the third minute on the west sideline near the Rapids bench. Mullan, fighting for the ball, went low. He swept the ball and Zakuani’s leg. It was a tackle Mullan has made thousands of times, but the result was much different.

Mullan was ejected for breaking Zakuani’s leg. After the incident several people, including Seattle coach Sigi Schmid, said they could hear the leg break. I was on the west side, 30 yards away, and I didn’t hear a thing. In fact, I was surprised Mullan got a straight red for the sort of tackle that gets made every day.

It was only several hours after the game that the magnitude of what happened emerged. It was then that I saw photographs my crew from ColoradoSoccerNow.com shot at the game.

The image of impact churned my stomach. In 1/100th of a second, a photograph had captured the tackle in its perfect awfulness. I have been flinching since then as I have debated what to do with this image. I decided not to include it in the game coverage, which can be read here.

Instead, the injury and what came next can be found at the end of this post. It’s here so readers, like you, can see why Mullan was sent out, and why he will face additional penalties. I only understood it after I saw the first image.

Sport involves injuries and milliseconds can determine the difference in any match. This was one of those moments.

In the minutes that followed, we also got to see some of what makes sport special. The image of Drew Moor as he hold’s Zakuani’s hand in comfort lingers with a poignancy that nearly overwhelms the shock of the tackle. It’s the image I hope stays with me in the coming weeks and months. Combined, it’s a reminder that it may be “just a game,” but it comes at a cost. And, even in the middle of competition, we retain our humanity. Hopefully. 

Steve Zakuani's leg buckles and breaks under the pressure of a tackle from Brian Mullan. (Photograph by Jessica Taves/ColoradoSoccerNow.com)

Trainers and players surround Zakuani after the collision.

Drew Moor offers comfort to Zakuani.

An exclusive online pre-sale starts Monday at 10 a.m. for Colorado Rapids and Denver Broncos season ticket holders by visiting Ticketmaster.com. Ticket sales to the general public will begin a week from today, on Friday, April 22, via Ticketmaster.com, 1-800-745-3000, all Ticketmaster locations.

This match, which is four days prior to Mexico’s opening game in the 2011 CONCACAF Gold Cup, marks El Tri’s first visit to Colorado since early 2009 when they defeated Bolivia 5-1 in front of a standing room only crowd at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park in Commerce City, the home of Major League Soccer’s Colorado Rapids.

In their latest meeting against the “All Whites,” Mexico defeated New Zealand 2-0 in front of a crowd of more than 90,000 fans at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California in March 2010. The June 1 match marks the return of Mexico to INVESCO Field at Mile High since their 1-0 exhibition loss in 2002 against the United States in front of a crowd of almost 50,000 fans.

New Zealand has qualified for two FIFA World Cups (1982 and 2010) and was the only undefeated participant during the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. New Zealand bowed out in the group stage, but remained undefeated in three matches against Paraguay, Slovakia and Italy. New Zealand is led by head coach Ricki Herbert and captain Ryan Nelsen. 

Prior to the match in Denver and as part of their U.S. Tour, the Mexican national team will face Ecuador in Seattle on May 28.

The schedules are set, and the first games of the season are imminent. A national champion readies for a title defense, a few perennial cellar dwellers look for a better finish, and a host of new coaches and players ready to take the field.

First: Northern Colorado became the first Colorado institution to kick-off the fall soccer season with a Friday trip to Norman, Oklahoma.

The Bears exhibition against the Sooners is one of many preparation games ongoing for the coming season. During the next two weeks teams from Greeley to Grand Junction, Durango to Denver and Alamosa to Golden, will be running through the rituals of alumni games and preseason exhibitions.

Below are just some of the things to watch for during the coming season.

Plum Games: With 26 men’s and women’s teams taking the pitch, it’s easy to find an entertaining contest every weekend. There are some dates, however, that really stand out as I look at the fall.

Sept. 4: Colorado faces Denver at the DU Invitational in Denver. It’s nice to see two of the Division I squads get together early in the season. It will be intriguing to see the Buffs and the Pioneers collide, and the sort of matchup that builds local rivalries.

Sept. 24: Metro State women vs. Colorado School of Mines holds a lot of promise. Both teams are ranked in the NCAA Division II preason Top 10. Metro State has won eight straight Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference titles, but Mines knocked off the Roadrunners 4-3 on penalty kicks in the 2009 NCAA tournament. This promises to be an entertaining time on Auraria Field.

Oct. 8: It’s a return trip to downtown Denver as the Fort Lewis men visit Metro State. The defending National Champion Skyhawks and the Roadrunners are among the few teams that generate a true distaste for one another. These two teams don’t get along, and last year’s clash at Auraria produced a flurry of yellow and red cards. The return engagement in Durango wasn’t much better.

Seriously, I’m taking 25 minutes on the over/under for the first card in the game when these two meet.

If this doesn’t produce enough drama, the two clash again a week later in Durango.

Oct. 22: All right, this is entirely so I can mention the clip from last year’s New Mexico-BYU showdown. The women at the Air Force Academy host New Mexico. If ever there was a squad trained not to tolerate out of control Lobo defenders, this would be the team. The trip to Colorado Springs seems that much more entertaining.

Nov. 3-7: The men’s and women’s RMAC tournaments will be unfolding on these days. Odds are excellent games will be played (1) in Colorado (2) on campuses in the Denver metro area and (3) on Dirks Field in Durango. I’m in for all of it as teams scramble at the end of the regular season.

Away and Home: The Mesa State women win the prize for the split personality schedule. They open the season with six consecutive road games. While they rack up the road miles, they get a reward at the end of September. The Mavericks start a six-game homestand on Sept. 22, just as the RMAC conference schedule gets under way.

Road Warriors: CSU-Pueblo’s women and the Fort Lewis men will also be collecting miles in the first part of the season.

The Thunderwolves women play three exhibition games on the road, followed by three of the first four games on the road.

The Skyhawks open with a road exhibition game at New Mexico before playing seven of their first eight games on the road.

Aloha Rangers: The Regis women travel to Honolulu to take on BYU-Hawai’i and Hawai’i Pacific on Aug. 26 and 28, respectively, to start the Rangers’ season.

Yes, there will be the challenges of travel and time changes, but doesn’t this sound like the perfect cap to a summer?

Suddenly, all the photographers and every writer at ColoradoSoccerNow.com were ready for an out of town trip.

What Time?: If you are going to a Fort Lewis women’s game and forget the start time, gamble on it being 1 p.m. The Skyhawks play 10 of their 18 games at 1 p.m.. Throw in the Aug. 23 exhibition against Colorado College, and 11 of the team’s games start at 1 p.m.

No other Colorado team comes close to such consistency.

And with that, we begin.

I’ll still be chiming in from time to time. C’mon, the World Cup is coming up! And who knows? Maybe I’ll be able to secure a day off when the Rapids head to Houston or Dallas. … But as far as being able to comment on the day-to-day goings-on in the soccer world of the Centennial State, it’ll be difficult to do so from more than 1,000 miles away.

I’m handing control of the site over to Metropolitan State College of Denver and the capable hands of Shaun Schafer, whose byline you’ve no doubt already noticed. Shaun is a Metropolitan State College professor and a Rapids season ticket holder who often commented on my work since we started the site a year ago. Yes, it was slightly more than a year ago when the Rocky Mountain News folded and I made the transition from FC Rocky to ColoradoSoccerNow.com. It’s extremely difficult to give up this venture; I learned much from 12 months as the editor, and I hope I was able to pass along some of that knowledge to my students at Metro State (another part-time position of mine that it’s hard to leave).

Donating the site to Metro accomplishes two goals for me.

First, the site lives on. Had I just turned off the lights and tacked a note on the door as it closed behind me, I would’ve been disappointed. I worked very hard to create a Web site from scratch, and I was proud of the site each and every day. You can tell I’ve been uber-busy the past month or so because the number of posts dropped dramatically. Even when I was busy working two other jobs, posting to the Web site was a pleasure. So to those of you who have enjoyed reading, give Shaun a chance. There’s more to come, and the content will head off in crazy new ways that I am incapable of predicting. That makes me happy.

Secondly: Although the site does have a loyal following, the real losers would’ve been a small group of local journalism students. I had three interns in the past year, and more are lined up for summer and fall. And if Shaun can swing it, many journalism students at Metro will have the opportunity to learn from their experience covering soccer for ColoradoSoccerNow.com. That also makes me happy.

Shaun will be the gatekeeper of the Web site, and he’s already got a talented crew preparing to go to work. The first new name you’ll notice should be that of photographer Jessica Taves. She’s got her cameras and lenses ready, and I’m very excited to see the work she produces.

So I’d like to thank everyone who had a hand in the creation and success of ColoradoSoccerNow.com (there are so many of you that I’m positive I would overlook someone if I were to try to list you all). And good luck to all future crews of this online soccer magazine. Journalism is alive and evolving on the Internet, and this little corner of the Web serves a precise focus and audience. Those are its greatest strengths.

He is a former Chicago Sting and Montreal Manic defender and was MVP of the 1981 Soccer Bowl, the championship game of the North American Soccer League.

Clavijo has tracked down members of the team and many survived. He told Michael Lewis of MLSNet.com: “I’m trying to reach more people. The one that concerns me the most is Frantz. He was right in the middle of the devastation. I pray to God he is OK.”

Read the whole story here.

Denise says the games are available online at MyAfricanFootball.com, but she’s looking for a place to get together with other soccer fans to watch in a festive atmospher.

Any help? Any ideas? Know of any place that’s either planning to show the games or might be receptive to a suggestion (and a room full of rowdies)?

The tournament starts Sunday with host nation Angola taking on Mali. The final is January 31. Here’s a link to the official Web site.

If anybody has an answer, shoot me an e-mail, and I’ll forward your results to Denise.

As for the different logos (one on the homepage and one on this post), I’ve seen three logos that look like the official logo. There’s a different logo on the official web site, and there’s also information about the mascot, the Palanquinha, inspired on the giant black antelope.

My wife has all the Rapids gear and U.S. soccer gear that a wife could ever wear, so I limited this exercise to my two kids.

My son just turned 18, and his high school playing days are behind him. For his gifts, I focused more on soccer apparel than soccer equipment. His favorite team is the Rapids, of course, but once again his closet is full of Rapids gear. I decided to get a bit more exotic for him. His favorite Premiership team is ManU, so I started with a search at SoccerPro.com limited to Manchester United items.

The first item that jumped out at me was this T-shirt. I liked the graphics,
and as it turned out they offer the same design for a variety of teams. I like it, but it’s winter here in Colorado. (On Christmas Day, the weather outside was frightful: The thermometer didn’t get above freezing, and the wind was crazy.) I also didn’t want to get him a jersey. He has many jerseys, including one of the most beautiful kits I’ve ever seen, the Manchester United long-sleeve third jersey from 2003, pictured at right, which is surprisingly difficult to find a picture of online. (He has the Giggs long-sleeve version.)

I kept looking, and I found this Manchester United line up jacket. He likes track jackets, and this would be a good choice. They also had this one, and this one. But I decided on the red-and-black jacket because it struck the right mix of color and design. He’s 6-foot-6, which meant I went with the extra large. He’s rail-thin, and I was nervous that XL would be too loose on him. But I had to make sure the sleeves would be long enough. It turns out that the XL fit just fine, and he loves it. It was a good choice.

I didn’t want it to be only a ManU holiday, thus I turned to his second-favorite foreign club. When Celtic came to Colorado for the 2007 MLS All-Star Game, we took a real liking to the squad. We met some of the players and staff of the team in Denver, and we met a ton of fans. The fans were terrific, and we were impressed how many came to Colorado to see the Hoops play a rag-tag collection of American-based players. The game and the whole experience were wonderful, and the experience was something the Tanner family will never forget. I even took the night off from writing the FC Rocky blog so we could all just enjoy the match. I did publish a few thoughts a few days later, after Celtic finished the second game of its visit to the States. You can read that here.

I did another search, this time just on Celtic gear. SoccerPro.com had that same T-shirt that I liked in a Celtic green version, but he’ll be wearing cold-weather clothes for the next few months. So I went that direction. I also loved this track jacket, but I wanted something different. I decided on this Celtic hoodie. And when he opened the present, he let out a big gasp and said, “Best hoodie ever.” Another direct hit.

For my daughter, who is almost 20 and is a sophomore at the University of Colorado, I went in the social consciousness direction.

First, back in the spring, the men’s soccer teams from the University of Denver and Regis University played a fund-raising exhibition, and DU held an auction to generate some funds for the program. My wife and I covered the event, which was the first college soccer game we did for the ColoradoSoccerNow.com.

Our daughter’s favorite player is Nat Borchers, even after he left the Rapids for Norway. And, yes, even after he returned to Major League Soccer and was allocated to Real Salt
Lake. Borchers, a native of Pueblo and an alumnus of DU, donated a couple of his RSL jerseys for the auction. For our daughter’s main gift this Christmas, we broke the bank bidding on the long-sleeve dark jersey, pictured at right, which Borchers autographed. We also bid on a team-autographed Seattle Sounders goalkeeper’s jersey, which went for more money than we could afford, and I have kicked myself numerous times since that day for not bidding on a Columbus Crew jersey that was autographed by Guillermo Barros Schelotto and all of the 2008 MLS champions. But we won this RSL jersey, which became the second Borchers-autographed jersey she has; she also owns the white road jersey from the days when the team wore black and blue. She got Nat to sign it after a match. “I don’t like primary colors, but I will wear this jersey,” she said. She wore it Christmas Day, and she was wearing it the day after, as well.

In addition to that, we got her a T-shirt promoting the Homeless World Cup, an annual international soccer tournament consisting of people who are homeless. They take a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to represent their country in this event, which has triggered grass-roots football projects in more than 70 nations that work with more than 30,000 homelesspeople throughout the year. The first tournament took place in 2003, uniting 18 national teams. Six years later, 56 nations were united in Melbourne, Australia, in 2008, which included the first women’s cup. The next tournament is in Rio in September 2010, and 64 nations are expected to participate. Learn more about the tournament here, and see who will be representing the United States here.

The Homeless World Cup supporters include UEFA, Nike, the United Nations, Manchester United, Real Madrid, Ambassador Eric Cantona and international footballers Didier Drogba and Rio Ferdinand.

On three gifts at SoccerPro.com, I spent $130, and I and bid roughly the same amount of my money at the DU auction. Each gift was a hit, and I would like to thank one of our site’s first sponsors for suggesting this creative idea.

Almost 30 years ago, a group of Manitou Springs High School students including me, Cole McGinnis, Brian Otte, Mark Young and others tried to form a varsity soccer team at the school. We were told by the administration that we needed to find a coach and a faculty sponsor; if we could do that, then the school would be willing to discuss the next step.

We found a coach, and we even organized a scrimmage against a local men’s team, which we lost 1-0 in the fall of 1981 on the varsity football field.

But no one on the school’s faculty would sponsor us. Their commitment was to be minimal; all they had to do was declare that they would be the faculty sponsor. The coach would be in charge of all operations of the team. But nobody on the MSHS faculty would sign the paperwork.

It was a tremendous disappointment for a group of kids who showed leadership and initiative in following their passion: soccer.

In the years since, we’ve seen the popularity of boys and girls high school soccer explode in Colorado. Some of the finest American collegiate players have come from high schools, small and large, in this state. And now it’s come to my attention that a group in Manitou Spring is trying to start a team at the middle-school level.

I graduated from Manitou Springs High School in 1983, and now I live in Greeley. I coached my son and daughter in Greeley-sponsored leagues until they reached junior high. That’s where city leagues stopped in Greeley, and the local school district does not offer soccer until high school, leaving a three-year gap. The only option for kids that age is club soccer, which can be very expensive.

So the choices are pay up or sit out. My daughter sat out; she stopped playing soccer when she reached the sixth grade. My son sat out for those three seasons. He didn’t compete again until he reached Greeley West High School, where he played for the varsity as a freshman.

Finances are costing many kids to sit on the sidelines. Only a very focused child will nurture that desire to play for three years and resume the sport after reaching high school. And three years of sitting idle does not improve a teen or preteen’s skills.

I think offering soccer in middle school or junior high is a no-brainer. The benefits to the student, the school and the school district are obvious. So are the costs. But from what I’m told, a dedicated group of parents has been working on ways to defray many of those costs.

I would like to suggest that Manitou Springs schools do not say no again to children who want to play soccer. Do the right thing here, and help these kids get this program off the ground.

Sincerely,

George Tanner
Editor
ColoradoSoccerNow.com