I defend myself (and other soccer writers) re Harkes, Wynalda, etc.

Also file under: Why journalism will always be an inexact science

I’ve gotten a couple of dirty looks and shamey fingers, figuratively speaking, from readers over yesterday’s missive about journalists who knew about the sordid Wynalda-Harkes tangle, but didn’t write it. All three were respectful expressions of disappointment. (Two were in email form. Thanks, guys, for not wanting to call me out in the public comments area. But I’m a big boy. I can take it.)

You have every right to be upset / disappointed at not knowing the entire truth. You are absolutely correct that it wasn’t totally fair to Steve Sampson, nor that fans were deprived of the full explanation for such a miserably failed bit.

But it’s inaccurate to say that I “withheld” information. Nor did anyone else. Click forward for my revisionist spin thoughtful explanation:

Morally, ethically and professionally, that’s the right thing to do unless you A) are sure that you’re right, B) are DAMN sure that you’re right, and C) can make it relevant to something bigger and not just some headline grabber, a titillating detail more fit for E! Online and such.

As for Harkes and the birthday bender, same thing. Until someone goes on the record, you just can’t write it. (Believe it: journalists right now know crazy-whack stories that would curl your nostril hair about athletes you know and love. And these secret-keepers would love to break those stories – alas, they just don’t have enough solid info to splash the unflattering pooh on public walls. Yet.)

Besides, when the Harkes mortar dropped that April, there was reason to wonder if perhaps Sampson’s decision wouldn’t actually be good for team accord and, therefore, better for the World Cup initiative in general. So, to press the principals to give up the goods didn’t seem quite as important at the time. I mean, it was 1998. It was soccer! In the United States! It was guys named Harkes and Wynalda. We weren’t exactly talking about Tom Brady and Peyton Manning, now were we?

The bigger point is this: until the 90^th minute of the loss to Iran, the train may have been rounding the bend at unsafe speed, but who really knew it was all THAT bad? Further, could Harkes have fixed all that was wrong? I doubt it, but I really don’t know. We can ask that question now and factor in all the layers for proper, thorough examination. It was all happening too fast at the time for such careful introspection.

After the loss to Iran, with car parts flying off the vehicle at cartoonish speed, no one was really thinking: “Boy, now is the time to press Eric Wynalda to tell us his wife was carrying on with the former captain, and that’s where it all started to fall apart.” Maybe we should have, to be honest.

In my case, once the Americans lost to Iran, my editor told me to concentrate on Mexico and on the World Cup in general. That was back when Zinedine Zidane was merely an other-worldly soccer player, not an other-worldly soccer player and a global punchline, so there were other quality story lines to chase. And I was more "one-man sniper squad" than "heavy weapons platoon." In other words, I was the only reporter there for my paper, and many reporters were similarly limited. With one more poison pen journo available, perhaps then we could have chased the story properly.

As it was the American collapse wasn’t a story my editors were intensely interested in. (I was a little disappointed in that, but not enough to go to the mat with my argument.) So I wasn’t around the team after the match in Lyon. I didn’t even attend the final group-play game for the United States. Come to think of it, the interview area that night at Stade Gerland was the last time I saw some members of that team. Ever.

Hell, to be honest, as I left the grounds late, late that night in Lyon, I was just happy to still be writing about soccer, not about c-4 blasts or terrorism or other horrible things. (I have covered Super Bowls, Final Fours, national championship college football games, etc., but I have never felt a more palpable, overreaching concern over security. That was tense, tense night for a number of reasons.)

As I said yesterday, the best we could do as responsible journalists was not join in the dog pile on Sampson when it came specifically to dropping the captain. (Now, reinventing the wheel with the ol’ 3-6-1, that was another matter … )

And as I’ve written before (but can never recall the origin of this great quote – sorry about that): “Journalism is more art than science, and on our best days we still get some things wrong.”