Glenn Davis Interviews Gordon Jago of the Dallas Cup

Interview with Gordon Jago

Glenn: With that we welcome in Gordon Jago.

Gordon: Hi Glenn, it’s nice to be with you.
Glenn: Its nice to hear your voice again, you and I haven’t talked for quite awhile have we?
Gordon: Correct and that is bad on my part.
Glenn: Well my part as well .
Gordon: I intend to rectify that .
Glenn: We should had you on this program a lot earlier than now, but when we talk Dallas Cup we think of you quite a bit, and this year Gordon it seems as though there’s a lot of attention always on the Super Group. What a line up you have got here. I see Sao Paulo from Brazil and of course there’s Liverpool, and Tom Hicks who’s a Dallas area guy, is obviously connected as an owner with Liverpool. How has that affected you maybe bringing them over here?

Gordon: Well to be truthful, we were already in negotiations before Mr.Hicks purchased the club, and we were very close to getting them , but of course once he came on board and being the owner of the club, and this being his home town, then there was no problem at all. And so they came on board and they come in with a very strong side Glenn and I think naturally because they want to play well because it’s Mr.Hick’s team and Mr. Hick’s town here in Dallas.

Glenn: Gordon Jago joining us here with the Dallas cup, and Gordon you know if I look over brackets here, I see Benefica, and Eintracht Frankfurt from Germany, there’s Chivas from Mexico. We’ve got a team from Canada, the Whitecaps, FK Slavia from Bosnia. How do you go about picking the international teams for the super group? I know you like to attract diverse teams.

Gordon: Well that’s the case actually Glenn. In the future we’re going to have three United States teams in the competition. We’ve had one year with two but such is the improvement in our soccer now, I think that super group level our top teams can now hold their own. At one time of course, as we might say in their infancy, it wasn’t so. It certainly isn’t that way now and so we’re looking at next year which is our 30th anniversary that we’ll have 3 United States teams. But we’re trying to balance it as you can see. We have the United States, Canada, with Japan there. Then we have the 3 Mexican side so we have got CF Monterrey, Tigres, and Guadalajara. Then we went to on the Bosnian side, that was a new one to us. I got word that they were interested, and we had not seen a team from that part of the world for some time so we brought those in with Eintracht from Frankfurt which gave a strong European aspect. We have Sao Paulo coming back, great side of course. They won it last year. If they win it this year then of course they will create history because no team has won the Super Group three times. This would be the first team to achieve that. Then of course, we have that opportunity with Liverpool, and Liverpool being an Adidas team, and our sponsor being Adidas that was an easy one, and of course Adidas brought me Benfica. It’s a very nice balanced Super Group there in every respect internationally.

Glenn: Gordon, what an amazing opportunity with this, because when you’re mentioning a lot of these teams, the ability for the kids playing in this tournament, they’re familiar with these names. They know that Freddie Adu plays at Benfica, they know that Omar Bravo plays at Guadalajara and for Mexico. They know that Steven Gerrard play for Liverpool, so television is a connection with these clubs in your Super Group and the ability to catch these games on TV and see the big club’s playing it’s got to have helped the tournament’s awareness, right?

Gordon: Oh, undoubtedly and of course the key thing that you mentioned Glenn is the young American’s playing soccer now, he’s watching all they games at the weekend whether they come from Mexico or United Kingdom, Italy…they’re aware of the top international stars in those teams and of course in this instance you know we’ve had Rossi was playing for Manchester United here two years ago, within two weeks after the tournament, he was sold for $10 million dollars. We’re delighted that the top teams around the world have been coming here They know that they’ve got to bring a competitive team and at the same time it gives our fans, boys, girls and the grown ups the chance to see stars that some are already there and many of them are going to be stars of the future as were the David Beckham’s of the past.

Glenn: Gordon, I know Houston area teams.. there’s always a lot of disappointment about not getting invited to the Dallas Cup this year there are six area teams that will come from Houston to participate in the tournament. How does the selection process work and what is the criteria?

Gordon: Well, the major criteria is on the basis of their record within the United States. And of course they’re judged in terms of national competition, whether they made it to the national final four, or regional champions or state champions in that respect. And of course there are some teams representing MLS and we are working hard with them to give their players a chance to play in the tournament and come up against top international teams but primarily it’s always selection goes basically on the record that they’ve achieved in the past two seasons. It’s very difficult because now you’ve got some strong spots now. Houston’s developing fast. You go to Southern California, Glenn, you can get seven or eight really good teams applied for one age bracket but you can’t take those seven or eight teams because it would be too many teams from that area. As they’ve drawn against each other, they say well why did we go all the way to Dallas we could have played each other in California regularly. So for selection purposes, it’s becoming increasingly difficult and there is alot of disappointment. We turned down 167 teams this year. We took 180. Which is 51 international and 28 local and 91 USA teams from 27 states.

Glenn: Dallas Cup International Tournament opens up on March 16th. Many people love the Super Group, but I can tell you all the different age levels under 13, under 14, under 15, 16, 17, you see a lot of tremendous games. A lot of international relationships created and built. It’s a great community project. You mentioned MLS Gordon, how involved is FC Dallas of MLS with this tournament ? Are they involved?

Gordon: Well, of course we have a 7 year contract with them, with Hunts Sports Group to utilize the Pizza Hut Park Stadium and the Complex and we try to work with them for example this year, because they’ve got a chance to play the Brazilian team, Palnincy, in their final exhibition game before they start the season. We have kindly agreed with them to put that game on Saturday the 22nd, which is normally out for the Super Group and we’ve done away with that this year because we thought it was a great opportunity to help FC Dallas and more importantly all the boys and girls that are in town particularly the girls tournament, the Spring Girls Classic, they can come over to Pizza Hut Park on Saturday night and see top professionals, so during the course of the week, we bring the top international youth tournament and then on Saturday night FC Dallas can play Paranaese from Brazil. So we work very closely with FC Dallas because we want to help the youth, players, and to bring the best possible soccer to Dallas during the course of this week.

Glenn: He’s Gordan Jago, one of Directors of the Dallas Cup also a great coach in his day with the Dallas Sidekicks with the Major Indoor Soccer League with the Tampa Bay Rowdies going back to England and Queens Park Rangers and Gordon, I guess you had an eye on the England FA Cup this weekend, how amazing was that? Some of these results.

Gordon: It’s unbelievable. Where’s Liverpool? Where’s Arsenal? Where’s Chelsea? Where’s Manchester Unoted? They’ve all gone by the bull which shows you what a great competition it can be.

Glenn: Gordon, what might have been one of your greatest memories from your participation as a coach in the FA Cup?
Gordon: Possibly playing against Everton in the 3rd round in the 3rd round or 4th round of the cup with my club at the time Charlton Athletic and it was, I was a young player at the time and I hadn’t been in the side long and we played at Everton and there was 74,000 people at that game. And it went to overtime it was a replay and we lost 4-1 in overtime but unbelievable experience in terms of the FA Cup. As a manger the greatest disappointment. We got to the quarter finals twice and both times hoping to get into the semi-final and one game away from the final and both times in the quarter final we got beat unfortunately. It’s an unbelievable tournament. Very quickly Glenn, when you’re a big time as we were as Queenspark Rangers, and you draw a non-league team, you know one of the teams that’s not even in the four divisions or you draw a lesser team it’s terrible because you have everything to lose and nothing to gain. And I remember at Queens Park Rangers in the 3rd round we drew a non-league team Barnett and we struggled at home to draw 1-1 and should have got knocked out. They hit the bar 5 minutes to go and again another big upset and we go into the reply and we win 5-2 but that shot goes 6” below the bar and you’re out of the cup. It’s just an incredible tournament…any given day as we’ve seen this year smaller club in terms of position within the league etc., can knock out the big club and go into the next round
Glenn: Gordon, Thank you very much for you time and we wish you great success again with the Dallas Cup. It’s a great tournament. It’s opening March 16th. Gordon Jago, thank you.
Gordon: Hey, Glenn, Thank you for all you do and good luck to all the people down there in Houston and congratulations to the Dynamo on two magnificent seasons. Hope it continues to make it three times. But again, appreciate all you’re doing for the game of soccer, Glenn.
Glenn: And likewise Gordon. That’s Gordon Jago of the Dallas Cup and again it opens March 16th. A number of Houston area teams will be involved in that tournament. David Beckham of Manchester United, Harry Kewell of Liverpool, Jaime Moreno have all come through the Dallas Cup as young players.