On Will Wilson and the Things He Could Do Which I Would Not Be Upset About
A non-exhaustive list.
The kings and queens of slow-movers, USSF named SUM/Wasserman alum Will Wilson the next U.S. Soccer CEO, over a year after Dan Flynn announced his intention to step down as CEO and six months after he actually went and did it. The reasons to hold optimism within your fragile body for Will Wilson’s tenure seem to be as follows:
He’s not Jay Berhalter.
His primary experience and reason he got the job is his role with Soccer United Marketing, an organization that might as well be the actual Illuminati for American soccer fans. And have you looked at the picture of the guy? He is a spread-collar, four-in-hand-tie-knot money guy. That is it. He might not be the actual bogeyman, but the bar was so low after the couple years of the mere notion that Jay Berhalter would be getting even more power in U.S. Soccer, living out a conflict of interest the size of whatever they’re calling the Sears Tower these days. U.S. Soccer literally just needed to place a Rue 21 mannequin in that position and provided the name “Berhalter” wasn’t on the back of it, they would be more or less fine.
This was never going to be the big, important PR hire for USSF, and it shows. This guy’s name is Will Wilson. His conception was so uninspired that his parents just gave him his last name for his first name. He’s an insider guy who will probably be on board with a lot of what the Fed was already doing, and the most we can hope for is that he wouldn’t push into actual soccer matters nearly as much as Jay Berhalter did, according to so many former U.S. coaches.
But Will Wilson (you must refer to him by his full name or else he starts to fade from memory, like in Coco) can do one particular thing that will earn him buckets of goodwill: pay the USWNT.
I know he will not be directly responsible for it, but Will Wilson can take a lot of credit, coming into a company in the middle of a Public Relations horrorscape, if he can steer the Fed into cutting some sort of deal with the USWNT. What will that credit buy him? The ability to do nearly whatever he wants without raising the ire of the vast majority of American soccer Twitter, a group well-versed in digital torches and pitchforks. This list of acts, which is by no means exhaustive, includes:
Take off his shoes and socks in an airplane, and place them on the back of the armrest of the seat in front of him.
Declare himself lord of some minor principality within the Continental United States, and attempt to secede from the Union.
Summon the demon Mephistopheles accidentally while doing a dance workout routine in quarantine, which happens to be incredibly close to a series of rhythmic dance rituals that were specifically designed to lock the destroyer away for the safety of heaven and earth, but instead his convoluted motions set to the beat of Dua Lipa are the exact inverse of those rituals, unleashing the demon and ushering in a reign of destruction never seen by human eyes.
Not take the trash out when this week was his turn.
Trust me, Will Wilson. Pay the women. You will basically never be questioned in this job again if you do it.
A Note on Poetry
Here’s a link to a poem I think about a lot these days, titled “It’s Not Like Nikola Tesla Knew All Those People Were Going to Die.” It’s by one of my favorite current poets and noted Columbus Crew fan, Hanif Abdurraqib. It’s a wonderful example of a poem you can dive into for meaning for hours on end, but the best experience I’ve had with it is to simply read, and let whatever feeling comes for you while reading swallow you whole. Or, as Billy Collins once put it,
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.
Trivia: Math Stuff
The most red cards ever given out in one game MINUS the number of seconds it took to score the fastest MLS goal ever PLUS the number Andres Iniesta wore before he became Barcelona’s No. 8 EQUALS this number, which, when multiplied by a thousand, is the number of people who came to see the Dick, Kerr Ladies FC in 1920, prompting the FA to ban women’s soccer in sanctioned stadiums for around fifty years.
Yesterday’s Trivia Answers:
Will Grigg is on Fire
The Principality of Sealand had a soccer team for a decade, despite living in an old army gun dock completely surrounded by Water
Harmony Korine directed those movies.
Messi, according to his awards, is currently the best soccer player on Earth.
Nike’s lightest shoe tech is Nike Air
What do those things have in common? The opening sequence to the animated television series Avatar: the Last Airbender.