My Issue with the American Soccer Fan

My Issue with the American Soccer Fan - August 18th, 2009

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Recently a friend of mine and I got into a little verbal spar as to why soccer and soccer fans are different than American sports fans. The simple point she was trying to make was that soccer (or football) fans around the world have such an elated sense of pride in their national and local sports team that experience eclipses anything we have over here.

I conceded that this is true. I noted that the rest of world has very few major sports, so throughout the world soccer (or football) fans have a small window of time to show their team pride. I noted that sometimes this releases itself as hooliganism because there is such short time to celebrate the sport. I noted that I do not have time to fit soccer into my sports obsession because I already have three sports (football, basketball, and baseball) that collectively last the entire year. I could add soccer to the list, but then when would I have the time for a girlfriend and sex (except in my fantasy scenario where I find a super model that loves sports and sex during commercial and half time)?

She agreed to every point, but then she uttered something that instantaneously altered my consensus building to a polarized hypocritical rant. She said that I did not understand the love for soccer because I was not worldly.

It is true that life and quite a few awful life decisions have created a number of circumstances that have kept me in Chicago for just about all of my life. However, this does not mean that I am incapable of understanding concepts beyond that of meat, cheese, and God (I am liberal communist bastard by most Christian Conservative standards).

She was talking about sports. Sports know no international boundaries. Furthermore, she was no sports fan and only romanticized the act of being a soccer fan because she wanted to sex up a particular soccer fan (which she zealously denied despite the previous half hour in which she counted the ways she loved him so).

A few days later I tried to pinpoint exactly what it was that set me off in such a tyrannical denunciation of the very points I had just agreed were true. I have met quite a few sports fans from Europe and the Latin America and we are generally able to agree that our countries have our own sports. I have even stayed up late to watch the World Cup because the atmosphere is electric and makes it worth watching a game that would otherwise put me to sleep.

It dawned on me that what set me off was the idea of an American soccer fan. Specifically, it was the American soccer fan who denied the appeal of mainstream sports here. Soccer is a sport and like all other sports it is a game. All these games are by nature a little silly and they all have flaws that open them to ridicule by people who are not fans.

Football is a battle of gladiators ripping each other apart on the field, but it has long periods of inactivity between plays. Basketball is a high-scoring game with flair and flow, but it can also be painfully slow to watch if one team is turnover prone or feels like hacking.

Baseball is a game with a pace that fits the summer season, but is a game that pays some guys with the athleticism of a bowler millions of dollars. Soccer is game loved by the world that at its best can display the best in pinpoint passing and shooting, but at its worst and even its norm it involves players trotting in the middle of the field as neither side advances for minutes at a time.

So why would certain American soccer fans condemn the sports they grew up with and cling to the idea that soccer is the “beautiful game”? That is what confounded me. Why not love soccer and then a couple of other sports? We have the luxury of that option here it seems ridiculous not to take advantage.

If an American soccer fan were to simply say that they like the game, but have no issue with the other sports that dominate over here that would be one thing. When I hear American soccer fans speak of these other sports like they are lesser gods in comparison that is where I get annoyed.

Of course, the other issue is that they may have been moved to take such a defensive stance because of the absolute initial rejection of soccer by the typical American sports fan. A middle ground can be reached though.

This would require sports fans like me to be willing to admit that soccer has an electric feel in the crowds. It would also require soccer fans to quit beckoning the “world’s game” line. That line opens up a whole new debate where somehow my friend confuses sports rivalries between nations as worldly with truly being a citizen of the world (I doubt the insults hurled by opposing fans rise above stereotypes and begin to touch on the other nation’s GDP and labor laws).

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