Every four years, countless U.S. citizens decide to jump on the bandwagon that is international soccer. Plenty of the U.S. sites I read, such as Bill Simmon’s sports blog, Sports Guy’s World, have given their opinion on a sport the majority of U.S. citizens know little about, for an example check out Bill Simmon’s 2009 article on Mexican soccer. Others people have noticed this trend as well, such as The Onion’s website Stuff White People Like which has humorously come up with reasons why people in the U.S. say they like soccer, for a quick and funny example of this I refer you to #80 The Idea of Soccer.
This sudden “soccer mania” is heightened every four years, during World Cup, when just about anyone with a computer feels like they can just rant about a sport they know nothing about. With that said: Here are some thoughts I’ve had on soccer.
Let’s just start off with a very basic statement. I enjoy the World Cup. I enjoy the atmosphere it creates, I enjoy the conversations that it produces and I really enjoy the ridiculously over-nationalistic sentiments it inspires. This has little to do with my relationship to the game. I’ve never really played soccer all that seriously, and I could probably go the rest of my life without doing so. However, I really like cheering for a team.
For example, when I was 21 years old my buddy Mike Graham played bass for a band called Satellite Season. They were cool. Well more like decent. Actually, I would probably have hated them if I wasn’t friends with Mike. Satellite Season was a depressed grungy rock band that came a few years too late to the party that was grunge rock.
But you couldn’t tell me that they weren’t the bee’s knees. If they weren’t all that great then why did I become their super-fan? Well, it’s because I like cheering for a team.
This sentiment towards wanting to cheer for a team, is compounded when you add it to the fact that I’m also an awfully loyal guy. Of the teams I root for: 1) Texas Longhorns, 2) Houston Rockets, 3) Tina Fey, 4) Chicago Bulls, 5) Tennessee Titans, 6) Houston Texans, 7) Houston Astros, 8) Texas Rap, 9) Speedy Gonzalez, 10) People that are 5”8 ¾, 11) Lindsay Lohan, I could probably knock off the last six if it weren’t for loyalty. I’ve been sticking with Lindsay Lohan since 2004 simply because she came out in Mean Girls, a movie that Tina Fey wrote. That is quite a stretch, however that is how my mind operates.
Which brings me to U.S. soccer. I have become a super-fan of U.S. soccer because I have plenty of reason to be loyal to this team and therefore can really enjoy rooting for them.
What I liked most about our team this year is that we were tough. This characteristic is especially noticeable in a sport where there is a lot of… hmm, what word should I use? There is a lot of “acting” going on during play. Due to the prevalence of this un-attractive quality, I have come to view “toughness,” above many other characteristics (ball control, defense, attacks), as the main thing I look for in my favorite soccer teams.
I came to this realization a couple of years ago while watching an English Premier League game. I can’t remember the exact details, but the match featured Manchester United versus some other team. I remember seeing Wayne Rooney get slide tackled hard, but instead of grabbing his ankle and trying to draw a foul, he quickly popped up, and tried to keep playing. The whistle blew because the foul was obvious. And while the referees were assessing what happened the camera quickly panned over to Wayne Rooney, who was un-phased waiting to see what was about to happen with blood coming down his knee. This guy is tough and that to me was the way I thought soccer should be played.
From then on I began to have this dream about U.S. soccer. I figured we weren’t going to be the best any time soon. We don’t have a good enough league, and all though more players are starting to go over seas to play, we still don’t have enough people playing against the best in order to bring U.S. soccer up to that next level. But, what we could become, is soccer’s blue-collar team.
This actually was very much how the U.S. played. In almost every game, Clint Dempsey was being killed, but he didn’t dive. I found further evidence on the U.S.’s toughness when this interview aired on U.S. coach Bradley’s views on diving.
Overall, we had a really good tournament. And I know that even though I knew a lot less about the game than a lot of my friends, they had to agree with me that the U.S. looked pretty good this year.
Sample Conversation:
Friend: “Ricky, you know nothing about soccer.”
Me: “Yeah, dawg I know, but did you see Landon Donavon’s goal against Algeria? Tell me that wasn’t good soccer.
Friend: “Whatever man.”
You see, if Friend hadn’t agreed with me, he would have kept arguing. This dismissal felt like a win for me.
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