Answering the Alexi Lalas Troll Job and Request for Attention
Former United States international and current analyst Alexi Lalas:
Ok, I’ve reached my contractual limit of saying nice things about @PhilaUnion. So, for some balance: While I respect the identity they’ve cultivated, it doesn’t make me care. Also, the stadium location remains a bummer. Finally, that #Doop song is just bad.
— Alexi Lalas (@AlexiLalas) September 1, 2022
Okay, I’ll bite, because these are actually interesting topics:
1) You don’t have to care about the identity the Union carved out, but the respect obviously has been earned. They are winning with academy kids and Moneyball signings. They don’t spend millions and millions of dollars on big name players, and while that would be great, they’ve got a Sporting Director who identifies talent better than anyone in the league. He goes out and pulls guys from the Hungarian league, the Venezuelan league, and the German third division. Nobody has done more with less than Ernst Tanner. It doesn’t necessarily culminate in super-exciting soccer all the time because they are still a gritty and blue collar defensive squad (despite piling on goals recently), but they play the ultimate team game and aren’t a bunch of selfish individuals.
2) The stadium is beautiful but there’s very little around it. Alexi isn’t wrong here. For 10 or so years, there was absolutely nothing, then the brewery opened up on Engle Street. Mass transit was a challenge down there and traffic getting out is pretty rough. Maybe Union originals even remember that the first game at PPL Park took place under curfew after a rash of violence. There were obvious challenges with building the stadium in Chester vs. having the Union start out in Philadelphia proper.
However, there’s a very ambitious waterfront revitalization plan that just started in recent years, so once they complete that it’s going to be a pretty gnarly place for a game. Even now, the atmosphere is great and the gameday experience is fantastic, but the land around the stadium needed to be developed, which has been a lengthy and complicated process. They had to purchase it from all of these individual owners, jump through a lot of hoops, put together the master plan, and then get cooking. All of this takes time and patience and they’re on the right path:
3) DOOP is a good song, but it was lifted from Europe. Peter Nowak stole it from Borussia Monchengladbach. I know people “borrow” things all the time, but it would be nice if DOOP was authentic instead of being taken from another team. This is the defining team brand and it was a steal job from a disgraced former coach.
Anyway, Alexi gets a lot of shit, I think because people think he’s a Republican or something? I’m not totally sure, but I get the sense that there’s some kind of cultural/social/political thing going on with him. Soccer Twitter is very progressive and he does not appear to be, so I think that’s what the conflict is. I think it’s like a Carli Lloyd type of thing, but you can follow his account and maybe it’ll make sense.
Otherwise, the Union remain in first place and continue to hammer teams. Doop.