Get ready to dislike America (1 Viewer)

[Slagathor]

Get ready to dislike America

American soccer players should enjoy being ridiculed: soon enough they'll be boring world-beaters.

America is agog with World Cup fever. OK, let me refine that slightly. The vibrant slice of America that spends every weekend coaching or "scrimmaging" or glued to the Fox Soccer Channel or GolTV is agog with World Cup fever. The rest of the nation is dimly aware that something slightly bigger (but no less alien) than the Eurovision Song Contest is on the way.

Meanwhile, respected US sports journalists - having ignored the sport for the past four years - will Google like fury and emerge as venerable soccer experts, shoving aside those junior hacks who spend their entire working lives trying to squeeze a mention of the game into a monolithically monocultural sports press.

Long-time soccer bashers like Frank DeFord will dust off their tired complaints about how their beloved "American" sports fail to generate one tenth of the passion of international soccer. They might point to this year's hilariously spatchcocked International Baseball Competition and the sad fact that - as the US's Olympic basketball tournament proved - American sports have become so insular that US national teams can't even dominate those games that they (more or less) invented and which no other bugger really plays.

Meanwhile America's soccer partisans - like my team-mate who visited Highbury on vacation and now turns up to play every Saturday in a pristine Arsenal kit - will engage me in earnest debate about the merits of Theo Walcott, but I will have more conversations with my neighbours along the lines of: "Wait, so these teams are made up of people born in a country? So what are Liverpool then?"

The big US sports story this week isn't Wayne Rooney's metatarsal. It's not even alleged steroid user Barry Bonds passing Babe Ruth's 714 home runs. It's a horse, actually a super-horse - Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro - which broke a leg and (if you believe the TV news) in doing so won the heart of the entire nation. This is, of course, hype. The tons of Diana-style polythened flora dumped outside the horse hospital come almost exclusively from America's horsey set - one tiny piece of America's sporting jigsaw. But the reason it makes the national TV news night after night is that Barbaro the wonder-horse was a bore. But Barbaro the underdog - now that's a story. And that really tells us something about America and about America's World Cup.

We US soccer-bubbleheads are currently awash in Nike's Fatty Cantona-fronted "Joga Bonito" TV ads - and frankly, we're disappointed. And so we should be. Nike's previous US campaign was simply stunning.

It consisted of a TV ad where a droning anti-soccer radio shock-jock was drowned out by a go-go anthem called Tell It To The World and the screen rejoiced in shots of street kids and meat-packers and spindle-legged teens doing amazing things with soccer balls on basketball courts, tennis courts and baseball fields. It closed with the shot of the US team smashing home a goal against England in Chicago. And it felt good, dammit, it felt evangelical.

But there was more - a print ad that bordered on genius. Using the angry, relentless and irresistible diction of Thomas Paine's war-winning pamphlets and invoking the revolutionary image of the spitting rattlesnake with the 'Don't Tread On Me' logo, Nike's 'So Says This AMERICAN Game' manifesto pitted players plucked from "Texas trailer parks" and "Florida projects" against the snobby French, supercilious Brazilians and arrogant English.

Every time I saw these ads my jaded British heart pounded with pride. Why? Because some bright spark in Nike marketing had managed to hit an Anglo-American emotional nail smack on the head. Both cultures revel in inverse snobbery. We like underdogs. Give us a super-horse and we'll cheer. Cripple the bugger and we'll cry 'till Christmas. Invincible super-cyclist Lance Armstrong was a bit of yawn until he got cancer. America's endless legions of hypertrained Kryptonian super-sprinters and swimmers are forgotten almost as soon as they leave the winner's podium, but the 1980 'Miracle on Ice' - when a rag-bag US ice hockey team scored a Rocky-style famous victory over the allegedly invincible USSR - still brings a tear to American eyes.

More importantly, despite the fact that we've taken turns to run the world via vastly superior firepower, both Brits and Yanks desperately need to portray themselves as outnumbered and outgunned. We've got Rorke's Drift, Dunkirk and Arnhem. They've got the Alamo, Guadalcanal and dogfaces firing rifles at Tiger tanks during the Battle of the Bulge. Given the chance to be neutral in any sporting event, septics and limeys alike automatically try to sniff out the underdog. Which made the US v Mexico game (in which the US qualified for the World Cup) somewhat confusing for this citizen of the so-called anglosphere.

After the game the US players, the crowd and the commentators quite rightly went jingo-mental. And my stomach turned. I had really wanted the US to qualify - I intensely and passionately want this underdog sport to eclipse its lumbering, overblown and increasingly unwatchable inbred 'native' rivals.

But then came the sight of the slightly balding US player Landon Donovan effetely punching the air à la Tim Henman. Ticker-tape rained down and the air filled with that horribly familiar shrill American patriotism that makes us Europeans squirm so. And suddenly this seemed to be more about the US team's desperate search for a stadium where the gringos outnumber the Latinos; and the sight of armed vigilante "minutemen" patrolling the US-Mexican border. Through the grunting and the chants of "USA! USA!" I found myself humming Woodie Guthrie's Which Side Are You On? (the Billy Bragg version, naturally).

Sooner or later the US will get spanked in this World Cup. But we are not talking here about New Zealand or Australia. Or even Cameroon or Nigeria. The US men's team is an overdog in embryo. A glance at the stats (pro-soccer in the US is already better attended than in most European countries while the grassroots game continues to explode) tells you that the US will soon be a soccer superpower.

And when that happens this intensely patriotic country will - for the first time ever - have a men's sports team that can consistently kick international ass (the US women's soccer team has been doing it for years). And that's not going to be pretty. There'll be nothing 'plucky' about it. Just the brutal application of raw demographic power.

In the 1760s Britain emerged atop the imperial dogpile as the world's undisputed heavyweight champion. And it felt kinda odd. The seeds of arrogant, triumphalist jingoism existed alongside a gnawing nostalgia (among intellectuals and writers at least) for the cocky, outgunned but ingenious little England of Drake and Raleigh. Of course this reverie was rudely interrupted shortly after when the cocky, outgunned but ingenious citizens of a new country called the United States of America pluckily kicked Britain's enormous new imperial nadgers clean off - but for a while the sudden loss of underdog status caused real pain.

I suggest US soccer fans enjoy being underestimated, derided, mocked and written off while they still can. It won't get any better than this.

By Steven Wells
BBC World Cup Blog
June 6, 2006 05:02 PM

 

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[Martin]

I somehow doubt that it will ever get to the point of athletics or the sports that they really dominate, Brazil will continue to excel. But a permanent member of the top 4? Wouldn't rule that out, long term.

 

[swag]

The American public generally gets bored with sports it cannot dominate. Exceptions are the occasional freak success streak (1980 Olympic hockey ... though not unlike Greece in Euro 2004).

And there are many people in this country who are isolationists when it comes to sports. Golf, tennis, etc. -- American sports are seemingly suspicious of any sport with control outside of its boundaries, so they often fraction off and create their own leagues with rules and oversight independent from the rest of the world. Which is how we end up with things like the "World Series" (sic).

It's for these reasons why I think soccer will always be viewed in America as something foreign and something to be suspicious of.

 

[Rami]

Two paragraphs through Erik's article I find a certain "Frank DeFord" ...So I decide to see who is this fellow.....


And this is the result

Review for Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism

"Not Our Cup Of Tea ; Soccer will never thrive here, the author opines, because it's simply un-American."
By Frank Deford
From Sports Illustrated

It has long been a subject of fascination that the United States, virtually alone in the world, has rejected soccer. Andrei S. Markovits and Steven L. Hellerman, who have written a book called Offside: Soccer & American Exceptionalism (Princeton University Press), compare this phenomenon with another, more significant "American exceptionalism"--the fact that the U.S. has never embraced socialism. Messrs. Markovits and Hellerman even provide, on two pages, a cogent catalog of reasons why socialism hasn't found acceptance here. Unfortunately, in the next couple hundred pages, they don't explain nearly as well why we don't give a hoot about soccer. Oh, Markovits and Hellerman do a fine job of laying out how soccer missed the boat when baseball and football were establishing their hegemony here. Soccer did not get itself into schools and colleges. The sport's American organization, such as it was, proved to be inept. Soccer was stigmatized as a foreign game. Once it failed to find room in the U.S. "sport space" (schedules, newspaper coverage, etc.), its also-ran fate was sealed. The difficulties soccer faced here in its early years, however, don't begin to explain its current plight. Baseball, after all, has never been run by a Pericles, yet it prospered from the start. Basketball was largely played by immigrants but outgrew this stigma. Ice hockey didn't really exist here till half a century after soccer had arrived, yet hockey became the half in what the authors refer to, very nicely, as the "Big Three and One-Half" of American team sports. So we must come back to the seminal possibility the authors avoid: Soccer simply may be antithetical to the U.S. temperament and sensibility. It is not for us to feel guilty that we are out of step. Rather, it is for us to feel sorry for the rest of the world that it is not lucky enough to have games as good as the ones we have.After all, the authors ignore perhaps our greatest distinction. We don't import culture. The only two major foreign items America has accepted recently are water in bottles and the Wonder Bra, and these both relate to modern life's essentials--water and cleavage being as vital to our society as food and shelter. No, what we Americans do is we pass along our stuff to other, impressionable peoples: movies, music, Coca-Cola, the English language, basketball, bacon double cheeseburgers and what have you. For goodness' sake, though, soccer has had even more chances here than Hillary gave Bill. We are, to start with, chock-full of immigrants who grew up in countries in which the game is adored. Huge sums have been invested in a succession of professional leagues that have received inordinate amounts of Pollyanna publicity. Pele was brought here to troop the futbol colors. The authors detail, at length, how many American children now play soccer. (Yes, soccer is terrific exercise, almost as good as tai chi--and nobody wants to pay to see that, either.) See, there's the rub. If soccer had never had an opportunity here, one could argue that its time must surely come. But soccer has been jammed down our throats--and found wanting. The leagues fray, the TV ratings barely gurgle, and soccer kids can't wait for soccer moms to pick them up at practice so they can go home and watch true-blue 'Mercan games. (Participation never equates to spectator popularity, anyway. Twice as many high school kids are on track and cross-country teams as play soccer, and the last time I looked, Yankee Stadium wasn't packed for a track meet.) Desperately, soccer smug-nuts always fall back on accusing us American yahoos of failing to appreciate the grace and nuance of their superior game. First of all, any sport in which you hit a hard ball with your head is, ipso facto, neither graceful nor nuanced. Even ignoring that ugly idiosyncrasy, any run-of-the-mill 6-4-3 double play is more graceful than the most precious soccer maneuver. And nuance? For pete's sake, every sport has nuance. Hello. That's why Tim McCarver, John Madden and Mary Carillo have jobs. Nuance doesn't make people care. About 99.44% of NFL fans don't have the foggiest what nuances the nickel defense possesses. So what? It's third and three on the 36. Turn up the volume and crack another brewski. The authors also make a big deal out of how many Americans saw the World Cup when it was foisted on the United States in 1994. That argument is specious too. The World Cup has no more to do with ordinary soccer than the Kentucky Derby has to do with Wednesday at Suffolk Downs when 4,500 grizzled septuagenarians drag in off the streets to box exactas. Markovits and Hellerman also salivate over the Women's World Cup of 1999, when the U.S. beat China, 0-0, at the Rose Bowl. The 90,000 attendance is stressed. What is not dealt with is the score, of which there was none--excuse me: nil--till we got to the pinball finale. Why do you think the only image we have of that game is of Brandi Chastain ripping off her shirt? Because there was nothing in the game to remember. Sports authors, beware: Don't read too much into one-shot anomalies. The 1980 victory of the U.S. hockey darlings over the big, bad Commie bullies is, surely, the most lionized American game ever. It did nothing whatsoever for hockey (though it did make Mike Eruzione the Brandi Chastain of 1980). So soccer has been around these colonial precincts for something like 125 years. It has had its game of the century. It has borrowed the player of the century. It has been spoon-fed the globe's biggest tournament. It has had league after league, outdoor and in, bankrolled by well-heeled angels. It is blessed with legions of ready-made fans who immigrate here and millions of suburban children who are indoctrinated from kindergarten on. Still, it never catches on. At a certain point, Markovits and Hellerman, you have to accept the obvious. It ain't our cup of tea. Nothing wrong with that. There's no accounting for taste. The same British sophisticates who call me a parochial rube for not appreciating soccer prefer watching snooker to basketball. Fine. But here's the nasty down-home American reality: Far from being graceful, soccer appears, in fact, awkward. You can't sweetly control a ball using feet and head any more than you can drive a car fast with your nose and knees. We value efficiency in the United States. Soccer is inefficient. Remarkably, Markovits and Hellerman don't offer an in-depth analysis of how other American sports overcame integral problems of tedium. Football added the forward pass. Baseball souped up the old horsehide. Basketball introduced a shot clock. Soccer says bugger off, barbarians, and learn grace and nuance. We prefer offense in the United States. Soccer is defensive. It is not only that soccer lacks scoring, either. It also has no small victories, no cumulative successes. Baseball teams build rallies. Football teams drive down the field, even if they have to settle for a field goal. Soccer is the coitus interruptus of sport. Watching TV, I'm astounded how announcers ooh and ahh over some failed play: "What a magnificent run!" Only the player did not succeed. In the end, the ball was taken from him and he stumbled back the other way. Nonetheless, analysts keep praising pretty disappointment, raving about the glory of almost. We expect satisfaction in the United States. Soccer celebrates frustration. Soccer developed outside the U.S., and unlike most everything else in the world, it lacks our influence. In countries that care about soccer, the point is always made, ad nauseum, that soccer is not a game; it is a way of life. I'm sure that's true. That's the point that eludes Markovits and Hellerman. Ultimately, the reason that we don't care about soccer is that it is un-American. It's somebody else's way of life. So most American kids abandon interest in the game when they realize it's not consistent with what they are finding out about Americanism. The same with immigrants and their children--as soon as they discover more appealing games that reflect American spirit, American values. It's really very simple why most of us nonsocialistic Americans will forever reject soccer.

We are not amused.

 

[ßöмßäяðîëя]

I hope Frank DeFord dies.

 

[swag]

Frank DeFord is the reason why we have incest laws in this country.

As Burke might put it: he is DE GAY.

 

[Zé Tahir]

Frank DeFord is the reason why we have incest laws in this country.

:rofl2: +rep

 

[ßöмßäяðîëя]

DA!

+rep

 

[Bjerknes]

...and some people have trouble seeing why I hate baseball and its one dimensional fans. Frank DeFord is probably the prototypical baseball fan who, instead of just enjoying his own game, has to write shit about our's. The man probably grew up listening to his fat father's words about sports and now it's just a case of him spewing out his childhood for those at Sports Illustrated who I guess are stupid enough to employ this baseball clown.

People such as DeFord are the reason why many people hate us throughout this world. He certainly doesn't do much to improve our image and like Burke says I hope he dies.

 

[Bjerknes]

"Soccer is defensive. It is not only that soccer lacks scoring, either. It also has no small victories, no cumulative successes." - Frank DeFord

Oh Jesus Christ, this guy knows fuck all about soccer. Sports Illustrated is an absolute joke.

 

[Bjerknes]

Here's Frank DeFord.

 

[ßöмßäяðîëя]

He looks like a Frenchie.

You probably just can't see the snot on his shirt or how short his shorts are because of how close the pic is.

 

[3pac]

Sorry, the link I posted used to be an actual site. Apparently they converted to a porn site?

 

[GordoDeCentral]

i blame nixon's realpolitik approach when it came to foreign policy, that really alienated the sport in the hearts of the american public, and the scene in "full metal jacket" where they're playin soccer with a human head doesnt help either...

 

[Il Re]

he is gay

 

[/usr/bin]

Meanwhile America's soccer partisans - like my team-mate who visited Highbury on vacation and now turns up to play every Saturday in a pristine Arsenal kit - will engage me in earnest debate about the merits of Theo Walcott, but I will have more conversations with my neighbours along the lines of: "Wait, so these teams are made up of people born in a country? So what are Liverpool then?"

Here's Frank DeFord.

He looks like a washing machine salesman..

Rather, it is for us to feel sorry for the rest of the world that it is not lucky enough to have games as good as the ones we have.

:rofl2:
Right, we should be pitied because we don't have the wonderful game of baseball..

 

[Eddy]

This guy doesn't know anything about football or eh eh soccer! The US players in Germany are surely going to be frustrated about this.

 

[K10]

I am watching the World Cup on American TV and it's unbelievable how much they hipe up themselves.

They seriously think that they are a big footballing nation right now.

 

[swag]

I am watching the World Cup on American TV and it's unbelievable how much they hipe up themselves.

They seriously think that they are a big footballing nation right now.

You obviously aren't watching it on Univision, the Spanish-language network. It makes ESPN look like the complete wannabes that they are.

 

[Byrone]

Frank DeFord most probably see's Tommy Smyth on ESPN way too much.