The New Soccer Wars
Whenever I write about soccer, I inevitably write about loyalty. Now, I know I’m treading on obvious territory: a childhood in Texas and over three years in Pittsburgh have taught me that all sports are territorial and arbitrary allegiance-based battles waged by two sides differentiated by what appears on their shield or banner, as well as lines drawn on maps. I get it. Sports are like games are like war. Go, team, go!
But when I write about loyalty in soccer, in futbol (ahem), I am referring to the unique status of the immigrant in regard to their multiple and shifting affiliations when it comes to picking a side (so wordy!). Or, to be fair to other immigrants that are not myself, this immigrant has issues when picking a side. My parents, as good Latin-Americans do, watch futbol. I was raised in a household with a running gag (which I’m sure I’ve mentioned before on the blog or at some other time): a Colombian mother, a Mexican father, and a daughter raised in Texas are watching the World Cup. People ask about the tension in the room. Who would win in a fight to the death (my money is on my mother)? Who does the daughter root for? The answer, for me, was and is Mexico. But not without consequences.
Oh, I’m not talking anything too dramatic. Just my mother’s passive aggressive comments during the game about my ungratefulness to the Colombian side of the family tree (“guess you don’t like at least one of your X chromosomes”). Or my boyfriend’s textual anger. [A recent message after a crucial Mexican victory: "I hate you and your people." He's not really mincing words there.] Or my perpetual involvement in the debates about Mexican versus American futbol. I’m not suffering too much for my allegiance.
I like to think that I cheer for the US second. Mexico is number one, the US number two, and Colombia three. Having an order should simplify things. And I have good justifications for that order, justifications that appease everyone: I was born in Mexico and watched a ton of Mexican league on TV growing up. It makes sense that I would root for the guys I know first and best. I do live in the US and was mostly raised here. This is the country where I work and pay taxes. And, of course, My mother is Colombian, my father half. Number three is not as big of a slight as it could be.
I’m writing around my subject now. What I sat down to write about today, what I wanted to talk about was the game between the US and Brazil at the end of the Confederations Cup earlier this summer—a game between the gods of soccer and plucky “underdog” gringos. A game where I should have rooted for the US. A game where I had every intention of rooting for the US until they were winning, 2-0. Until the change arrived.
(June 28, 2009 - Photo by Gallo Images/Getty Images Europe)
Because I was once a poet (always a poet?) who read poetry, I like to think that everything is a poem. And in a way, this one has already been written. Tony Hoagland is right: there are moments when history passes you so close, you can not only smell its breath, but feel its sweat. And watching the US beat Brazil for thirty-six minutes broke something in me I wasn’t prepared to admit existed.
I could not, I would not, accept that the US was an underdog. Something about it rubs me wrong. There was a goodness to having our plucky little developing nations whoop the US, a country with so many resources and discipline, talent and privilege. Watching the US lose for years, although I rooted for them, made sense. Oh, I would say, we’ll do better soon. And then we did. And then things changed. Because I realized that I hated the US for winning when I felt they didn’t deserve it.
What a horrible thing to say! No student who’s ever had a scholarship is proud to say something like that—everyone deserves what they work hard to achieve. But I kinda believed the opposite here. The US didn’t deserve to win, because it doesn’t mean anything to win at soccer for this country. It maybe means something to the eleven guys on the field, and to the small percentage of the population who played as a child and thinks watching it is cool. But as Colbert put it… the average American sports aficionado believes soccer is boring.
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Is It Time To Care About Soccer? – Alexi Lalas | ||||
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The fact that not caring about soccer is such a joke in this country makes me angry when the US wins. Because a world in which the US is a dominant force in a sport they don’t even care about seems bullyish, reeks of colonialism and imperialism and other isms, although I’m not even sure I want to draw out those parallels right now. I’m not even sure I believe they hold up.
Think about it this way… If the hot quarterback tries out for the soccer team his senior year, and then earns not only the captain’s band, but the only scholarship to some badass soccer school, I bet the other kid on the team who worked his ass off for fifteen years and led the team to victory before, I bet that kid hates that quarterback. Maybe he wants his former teammate to succeed when asked, but also, deep in his heart, he wants that dumb quarterback to fail.
Now imagine that the quarterback is also pretty rich, good-looking, dating the head cheerleader, and valedictorian. Oh, and his family hates soccer and thinks it’s a dumb sport. In fact, they make fun of their son for taking that fancy scholarship.
Now imagine you, a casual observer, eat dinner in that household every night, and you’re related to the other kid, the one that worked hard at playing for years and developing his foot-technique.
Every time they open their mouths, you can’t help but want their child to fail. Just a little. Just to get them quiet. Now, imagine your joy when you hear that the quarterback got benched. But not only that, your kid walked on the team and took that quarterback’s spot. Victory! Sweet, victory!
For the petty. For me.
So when Brazil came back in the most beautiful second half of soccer I’ve seen them play in a while, soccer like they’re being chased by horses on fire, like the ball was another muscle, temporarily detached and fully under the player’s control, its sides rolling with purpose… so when Brazil came back, I couldn’t help but cheer, but pray, just a little, for the beach gods of soccer to reign a little longer. Just a bit. I wanted to hold on a little longer before the game changed.
Before caring about soccer means something new, something different, something American.
My cheers continued. Through the US’s loss to Mexico in the Gold Cup Final, although every US fan I spoke to afterwards pointed out that the “US played their B-team.” My hoorah deepened last Wednesday, when A-squaded and relentless, the US lost to Mexico 2-1, in a hard-fought World-Cup-qualifying match between two neighbors, not as friendly a game as it could have been.
And I watched it, in a friend’s living room in Pittsburgh, wearing my green and red jersey in a room of whites and blues, inadvertently yelling “ay!” when things got hairy. And, of course, my friends made fun of me.
But no one was angry at the end of the game. Because it was soccer, and really, who cares?
It will be a long time before the US is ever NOT the underdog in a major soccer match against world powers. You know why? Because the best athletes in this country don’t grow up wanting to play soccer. They don’t dream about scoring a goal in the World Cup. They dream about scoring the winning touchdown in the Super Bowl, hitting the winning shot in the NBA Finals or hitting a home run to win the World Series.
If they’re good enough to play another sport, they’re playing something else because there’s little to no benefit for a middle school or high school athlete to excel at soccer as opposed to any other major sport where they get more exposure for scholarship opportunities.
The quarterback will NEVER go out for the soccer team. (Not a good quarterback anyway. It would’ve been understandable with the quarterbacks WE went to high school with.)
When USA took a 2-0 lead over Brazil, it was Brazil’s A-athletes against the USA’s F-athletes. That’s why everyone’s so excited about Jozy Altidore. You almost wonder why this kid isn’t a running back/point guard/outfielder with some big time college program.
But you’re wrong about one thing. The average American sports fan doesn’t think soccer is boring. That’s an excuse people make. The average American sports fan is used to seeing the best players in the world, whether they’re American or not. The best in the world want to come here to play just about every sport except soccer because the best leagues are here and they pay better than anyone (with few exceptions).
Proof of that is the ratings for the two biggest soccer events of the last year: Euro 2008 and the UEFA Champions League Final.
With virtually no history with any team or player, nearly 1 million Americans tuned in to early afternoon soccer matches at Euro 2008. You had Americans jumping on the Netherlands bandwagon! I know I did. Then, with only a few stars recognizable to the average American fan, FC Barcelona’s 2-0 win over Man. U garnered nearly 1.5 million viewers.
I guarantee you, when ESPN starts showing Champions League games, more and more people will start watching. And they’ll latch on to whichever team has the best or most Americans on it. And maybe it’ll become part of the culture. And Americans will want to stay and strengthen the MLS and international stars will come for the money. And kids will have an emotional connection to the game and there will be more soccer scholarships at big schools establishing programs across the country…
But all of that is a long way off. And that’s why Americans will always be soccer underdogs.
Yes, you make a lot of valid points, Jav. But at the same time, your argument makes lot of assumptions.
First off, most countries don’t have the athletic infrastructure the US has, so athletic development doesn’t happen at such a young age, in such a controlled manner. Second, football, baseball, swimming, track, etc. are all played in other countries anyway, so it’s not like there’s only one sport someone can play in a place like Colombia and Mexico. They dream of being professional baseball players and marathon runners and cyclists as much as anyone else does.
Look at the olympics: the US manages to win more medals than most teams in the world in more sports (obviously China, Great Britain, Russia, etc. are competitors, but Mexico is lucky if they win one medal in the whole games). What does this signify to me? That the best athletes in the US are playing all kinds of sports. That there are enough A-grade athletes being developed in this military-industrial powerhouse, that we can sweep fencing as well as swimming as well as volleyball. So don’t tell me that you couldn’t win soccer because you are playing sub-par athletes.
I think that even if the beset athletes in Brazil and Mexico dream of playing soccer, there are so many developed and gifted athletes in the US that do, that critical mass doesn’t matter. You’ve met it. Enough kids with enough resources and enough talent play soccer. Yes, the high school quarterback in some places will play soccer. And in a country that is fairly large and populated, that should be enough.
You can’t say that the team that played Brazil are F-grade athletes. They aren’t. They simply aren’t. And the team that faced off against Mexico last week was not a team of weaklings. Not a team that couldn’t afford all the best training, equipment, and support.
The US are not underdogs. Guadalupe is an underdog. Grenada is an underdog.
I think that Americans who love soccer almost enjoy suffering and feeling “like an underdog,” because so rarely do Americans get that feeling.
But you’re not. You can’t be. What’s your big disadvantage?
Wah wah, the best athletes go to Football? Tell that to Michael Phelps. Tell that to Bocanegra. Tell that to Landon Donovan. I don’t necessarily think that Polamalu would play soccer if he’d grown up in Brazil.
Either way, the biggest underdogs in North American soccer are not the US. In fact… against who is the US an underdog? Oh, just the greatest team in the world. Against whom anyone is an underdog. Wah wah, we lost to Brazil? Well so does everyone.
And when the US is ranked 12 in the world (FIFA rankings) and Mexico 30th… Shut up. Get over it. You’re in this. And you’re not playing with any disadvantages.
There is no way that Landon Donovan is even in the top 30 (maybe he’s in the 40′s or 50′s) among athletes in the Unites States.
The US has a great athletic infrastructure for almost every Olympic sport… which is why we’re so good in the Olympics, yes. But NOT SOCCER.
Michael Phelps went to Michigan. Kevin Durant went to Texas. And Adrian Peterson went to Oklahoma. If they decided not to go to those schools, there would’ve been hundreds of other schools waiting to offer them one of thousands of scholarships.
There are less than 200 Division 1 men’s soccer programs. Not all of them offer scholarships and few kids on each team receive the full ride. And the number of camps and academies in other major sports dwarf the ones for soccer.
You talked about a “controlled manner” of sports infrastructure. In sports like basketball and soccer, you don’t need one. The best kids honed their games at an early age playing street ball and got exposure because they showed how good they are. The argument is always that more American kids play organized soccer than anywhere in the world. I guarantee you that the best soccer players in the world weren’t wearing uniforms while being driven to little league games by their parents. Just like the best basketball players, structure had little to do with their skill development.
The MLS doesn’t feature the best in the world, the US has only played well in one World Cup ever which proves that the best training and equipment only goes so far.
And yeah, compared to the worst teams in the world that have no shot at even qualifying for a World Cup, the Americans aren’t underdogs. But we’re talking big boy soccer on the world stage. USA soccer is like the Phoenix Suns of this decade or the Miami Dolphins of the 90′s (that hits home for both of us). On paper, yeah, they look great and beat most of the teams that they should. But when it comes to crunch time against the powers, the smart money is on them losing. There are a few exceptions, but not enough to curb anybody’s opinion.
If we’re just going to go by rankings, why even play? Let’s just award the World Cup title to Number 1 every four years. Or, since the US is 12th, guarantee them a spot in the knockout round at the next cup.
And Troy Polamalu grew up in a culture where the most fervor and highest rewards came from playing football. I wonder what popular sport a big and fast kid with great instincts would’ve been encouraged to play in Brazil. I guess he could’ve been a Brazilian swimmer?
I’m not sure Polamalu would have been a soccer player either. And most of the guys on the US soccer team aren’t playing in MLS (13/18 who were listed for the Mexican game play elsewhere). They’re playing in Europe. Like the good Mexicans and Brazilians and Portuguese are.
Look, I agree. The US isn’t champion of the world, nor are they likely to be soon. But I think in American culture we make a mistake of thinking that if there’s a chance we’ll lose, we’re the underdogs. But to me, underdog implies a severe disadvantage.
There are about ten teams right now that can realistically vie for the title of world champion. So maybe the US is 12.
I promise you that Cuauhtemoc Blanco isn’t even in the top 100 athletes in Mexico. Doesn’t mean he’s not on the team. Playing against Landon Donovan. Who is apparently twice as good an athlete as he is.
I mean, seriously. Mexico didn’t beat the US because of skill or discipline or general preparedness. Mexico beat the US because they were simply better soccer players that day. Like the US is better on other days.
My problem with US soccer is not the athletes – they are good enough to be internationally competitive. My problem is with soccer culture in the US.
And I don’t understand what the problem is with US soccer culture.
You’re saying that you’re sick of the way that US soccer fans embrace the underdog role even though they’re ranked 12th in the world.
This may just be a difference in our sports philosophies, but I think rankings mean little to a team that’s played well in one World Cup EVER!
Based on that ranking, you should be supremely confident that the US is going to make the elimination round in the next World Cup. But I’m betting you’re not. Why not? Because the US has played well in one World Cup EVER and has a grand total of three significant upsets in the past eight years: Portugal and Mexico at the ’02 World Cup and Spain in the Confederations Cup.
Like you said, American players are starting to get signed by big clubs in Europe, but that’s a new trend. And if the US has a good showing at the World Cup next year like getting to the quarterfinals, then yes, some high expectations in the future could be warranted.
But until then, we’re underdogs. And rankings aren’t good enough to take that label away.