Soccer Chief Sees Re-Launch of Women's League

BOCHUM, Germany, March 22 -- The new president of the U.S. Soccer Federation said Wednesday that he is optimistic a women's professional league will be re-launched in the United States in the near future.

"I don't want to put a time period on the word 'soon,' but everything we've seen out of a number of meetings [is that] things are moving in the right direction," Sunil Gulati said in his first news conference since being elected on March 11 in Las Vegas.

Gulati, a Columbia University professor and a former MLS deputy commissioner, was in Germany to attend the match between the U.S.-German national teams in nearby Dortmund. He touched on a number of issues facing the Chicago-based federation, the governing body for soccer in the United States, and was willing to discuss the future of women's pro soccer at length.

The Women's United Soccer Association, launched following the wildly successful 1999 Women's World Cup in the United States, lasted only three seasons because of financial troubles. Discussions in recent years about reviving the league had not progressed very far.

But Gulati said that he is "optimistic we will see a women's professional league return to the U.S."

"As was the case in MLS, they are being very careful about timing versus structure," he continued. "By that, I mean simply rather than pushing to start more quickly than they might be ready, [organizers want to] make sure everything is correct in the fundamentals, organizationally and financially. They've clearly read the very recent history books carefully, like MLS did with the [defunct] NASL, and try to avoid some of those mistakes of the predecessor."

Gulati said some MLS investors would likely be involved in the women's league, particularly those with access to new, medium-sized soccer stadiums used by MLS, such as those in Los Angeles, Dallas, Columbus and, this summer, Chicago.

On other topics:

· Gulati said he and USSF Secretary General Dan Flynn have had discussions with men's national team coach Bruce Arena and Arena's agent, Richard Motzkin, about Arena's future with the national team, and that they will meet again following this summer's World Cup. Arena's contract will expire on Dec. 31.

"The discussions have been positive, and that doesn't mean positive about a particular course of action, but they've been very amicable," Gulati said. "We don't want to have a distraction between now and the World Cup, but Bruce has done an extraordinary job in virtually every area. His record of success at all levels is incomparable -- in American soccer certainly, and in overall sports in the United States. It's pretty hard to find too many people who have succeeded at those three levels -- university, professional and in international.

"We will take all of that into account."

· Gulati said he didn't want to make any predictions about the men's team at the World Cup, which will begin June 9.

"Brazil comes to the World Cup expecting, needing, wanting to win the whole thing. Everyone else comes hoping, praying, scratching, crawling to get out of the first round and see what happens," he said. "It would be incorrect and inappropriate to say if we don't get at least as far as the last time [the quarterfinals], it's failure. It's a tough [first-round] group, expectations are higher, the program is better."