The German soccer legend Uwe Seeler once told us: "The secret of soccer is the ball." It's pretty clear what he meant -- even though I think he got the wrong word. I'm not a believer in a soccer "secret" -- just one? -- that, once discovered, will presumably allow everyone to understand everything about the sport. Seems unlikely.

Two individuals long prominent in American soccer have been hit hard by the USA's World Cup fiasco -- Bruce Arena and Sunil Gulati.

The death of Clay Berling stirs up memories of my first days in the USA. Way back in the early 1960s I used to sit around with little groups of soccer people in New York as we discussed the sport's problems. Not enough publicity, hardly any really, ignored by the national press and television ... soccer desperately needed someone of influence, preferably with money -- a multi-millionaire or a politician, someone with clout who could get publicity for the sport. That was how we thought.