I was thinking about a huge post on English and American soccer culture, ESPN, Ian Darke, Hicks and Gillett, the Red Sox, barristers in powdered wigs, Steve McQueen in a Mini Cooper, teenaged Beatles, and Bristol Rovers fans lying down in Leadbelly’s graveyard, but the concept got too unwieldy: Make a list of the places where American culture and English culture intersect, even one that includes only the most striking or the weirdest or the most iconic vertices, and pretty soon you wind up with a galaxy instead of a blog post, and you spend an hour debating whether Edmund Burke gets photographic sidebar representation. So now I’m thinking about a medium-sized post on all that stuff, and Steve McQueen waits for another day.
The question is: What’s happening to the relationship between English and American soccer culture? I’ve been thinking about this for a few weeks, since ESPN announced that they’d hired Ian Darke to be their new lead soccer commentator, thus tasking a certified chip-eating Englishman to wield adverbs and control John Harkes during U.S. national-team games. As you probably know, the move was widely applauded by American fans, who, whether as a result of unhealed Dave O’Brien scarring or Pavlovian deference to a domineering mother-culture, tend to see English announcers as a step up from the stable of American alternatives. (That includes ESPN’s own JP Dellacamera, who’s never going to retire as the commandant of West Point if he keeps getting passed over like this.)
Among the cheering Americans in Arsenal track jackets, however, there were a few serious dissenters, including some prominent writers and bloggers who felt that the move was not just a mistake for ESPN, but actually harmful to the development of American soccer. Right after the announcement, I wound up in a really interesting Twitversation with Jason Davis from Match Fit USA—who, along with Brian Blickenstaff and a few other writers, has argued that American soccer culture in general is too in thrall to England, that we give English authorities too much credit for their accents, borrow their terminology rather than using our own (“pace” vs. “speed”, etc.), and essentially risk morphing into a nation of twee scarf-wearing copycats having weekly dress-up tea-parties at boutique theme-park pubs. (I’m paraphrasing.) Importing an Englishman to call national-team games appeases Anglophile fans, but it also reinforces the idea that soccer is an essentially foreign sport. And that, in turn, repels the winnable Todd Palin demographic and risks giving American kids an inferiority complex.
At the same time, of course, Liverpool fans were burning American flags, Manchester United was somehow losing vast piles of money while similarly shaped piles mysteriously turned up in a bank account in Florida, the Premier League was in year five of an unbroken gaze of admiration directed at the cut of the NFL’s jib, and a general feeling was at large among a subset of English supporters that the word for what was going wrong in their game was “Americanization.” Just as some U.S. fans felt that England’s role in the game’s past was dominating the American present, in other words, some English fans felt that their domestic leagues were sliding down the cliff of a commercialized American future. They think we’re trying to colonize them, and we think they never stopped colonizing us. If this were a New York Times piece, which, praise Cruz Beckham, it isn’t, this would be the moment when I’d grit my teeth and write “two countries divided by a common sport.”
The weird thing is that there’s a lot of truth to both these critiques. My attitude toward other soccer fans is, I hope, pretty live-and-let-live—the game is vast, exists for pleasure, and can accommodate any number of styles of engagement—but even I find it off-putting when a guy from Kansas can name-check Herbert Chapman but doesn’t know who Stuart Holden is. (American soccer history is interesting, loser.) And while some of the anti-modern, terrace-throwback panic burbling through the English game strikes me as misdirected and Luddite, I realize I might feel differently if it were my medieval folk traditions that were suddenly being entrusted to the safekeeping of Richard Scudamore. I love TV, but it’s not like I trust these people.
What I wonder, though, is whether this mutual sense of hostile cross-colonization is a sign of real conflict, or whether it’s simply a sign that our two soccer cultures are growing closer together and struggling to get used to the change. That is, absent some fantastic Trading Places scenario that no one told me about, America can’t dominate English soccer culture and be hopelessly ground beneath its heel at the same time. What we could sloppily call globalization—meaning, roughly, access to one another’s media, economic interpermeation, and easy movement of players, among other things—has obviously and overwhelmingly shrunk the world and made the soccer scene more transnational over the last decade. Doesn’t it stand to reason that two English-speaking countries with volumes of shared history but not much previous sports overlap would suddenly find themselves exerting a far greater mutual influence?
I’m not saying that the consequences of that influence would necessarily, on either side, be entirely good. It might still hold back American youth players not to have more independent soccer traditions, and the word “franchise” might still set fire to Blue Square Bet South. But at the moment, David Beckham and Thierry Henry play in MLS, Fulham fans cheer Clint Dempsey from a pub named after Brian McBride, the Red Sox and Liverpool are trying to have the same owner, Sky Sports feeds show up on Comcast channels, ESPN is broadcasting soccer games in the UK, American presses are co-publishing English soccer books, Jonathan Wilson is writing for Sports Illustrated, the Mail is running Grant Wahl excerpts, Ian Darke is calling Premier League games for ESPN, and a multinational English-language blog culture is thriving among writers who, at least as far as I can tell, don’t give much thought to one another’s accents before arguing or agreeing or extending each other’s points on Twitter. Ten years ago, much of that list would have seemed incredible. So even if cultural proximity means we’re all saying “pitch” instead of “field”—in the same way that we all say “love” in tennis—I think it might also mean that we end up with something more genuinely complex, co-created and shared than the model of joint unilateral invasion would imply.
I’m sure the era of trans-Atlantic sports culture, if it ever comes to exist, will have its own problems. Tom Hicks continues to speak English and can more or less afford a plane ticket. But it sounds really interesting, too. I’m not dreading it.
He would, but only as a representative of paleo-Whigdom in general.
Read More: American Notes
by Brian Phillips · October 13, 2010
You know, having just started playing rugby I never really thought of this until now, but so much of the Anglicized vocabulary of that game goes down in the States without even a trace of a hitch. This is a sport that’s played in the US almost exclusively by bored frat guys who only found rugby because they’re no longer good enough to play organized football, but 275-lb. good old boy props at Ole Miss have no problems calling the grass a pitch, pulling on boots, or wondering where the damn kitbag went this time. I also have yet to experience a tournament where at least one of the refs wasn’t sporting a Home Nations accent of some kind, especially at the U.S. MILITARY national tournament in May. I guess maybe it’s just too small-time for anyone to care, but it’s hilarious that no one ever rants about the English conspiracy in that context, but that Ian Darke and his really pleasant commentary are a fifth column.
I wish for the adoption of “gooooooooolllllll” across cultures, along with the quick gasp before it is repeated. Spanish speaking giddiness extends across each letter, its utterance breaking from effort into celebration (for one side, at least). Strong lungs and a single stretched syllable are in keeping with Nair calling football a comedy and this post reminding us that “the game exists for pleasure”– it is a “game” and a “work”. If the vuvuzela can be harshly tooted, than hopefully, in this global meshing of the sport, “gol” can be sung.
Great post. I think that in general the U.S. players/fans I see tend to pick up British terminology to differentiate themselves from those who are seen as neophytes or just skirting the surface of the game. It definitely helps that it’s easier to pick up English terms such as boots, pitch, etc rather than Italian, Dutch, German, or Spanish phrases.
One dissension though. As an Englishman who has lived in the U.S. for 13 years this World Cup was the first time I had heard Ian Darke and he annoyed the crap out of me. Not as much as Tommy Smyth, but pretty close. At least ESPN has signed up Steve McManamanamanaman to go alongside him, as he was godlike.
I’ve always felt defensive (guilty?) of being one of those cheering Americans in an Arsenal track suit and only this year going to my 1st MLS match. One of the things that turns me off about the MLS has been a supporters culture that has seems like a group of people playing dress up. Look at a list of descriptions of the supporters groups of the Chicago Fire, you see things like “A Polish style”, or a “Latino style” group. If I want to be a part of a culture like that, why not just be a fan of Legia Warsaw or Club America? I love Arsenal because of their history, Arsene Wenger’s Quixotic campaign against Oil Sheikhs and Russian Oligarchs, and (*sigh*) Dennis Bergkamp. In a world where I can now watch every Arsenal match played (Whether legally or *cough* other means), why dismiss that love, as some MLS supporters have told me I should do, for the good of my own country?
What’s interesting is how the US anglophilia reflects an intriguing fact – the Hispanic Catholic population is rapidly outreproducing the WASPs, with implications for the US writ large and also for the kick & chase anglophiles that hold power at all levels of US Soccer (from the ODP through the college ranks). In a sense, the US-UK soccer cultures are merging, “consolidating power” or “seeking refuge in an illusory past heritage”, but will ultimately (probably) be superseded by Univision.
The only question is – how will they fit futbol matches in between the commercial breaks for Dozen Corazones? And how come Virgo is always the first one to get rejected?
@Phil K I think very few American supporters would tell you dismiss anything, starting with MLS.
The increasing influence of North American sports is something that worries a lot of people over here. This clip (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EW2d-QrnFgA) did the rounds over here as a bit of a laughing stock of soccer in America, and advertisements like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOG5V8PWCyM didn’t do anything to help misrepresentation either.
Don’t get me wrong, the last thing I want is the tradition’s I enjoy to get trampled on and some North American terminology will always be greeted with a smirk over here. But as someone who play’s ice hockey in UK and having role-reversals with Canadian’s who I play with in shock of how we have imposed our own stamp on their sport – there’s certainly wiggle room to incorporate different countries cultures in sport.
You’ve definitely pointed out where this relationship is going, but this culture I think leaves something like MLS in the lurch. I await that glorious day when a Guardian staff writer does a full match report on the MLS Cup, and suddenly everyone in England turns into Christ Nee, i.e. starts talking about MLS like it’s not a great big giant turd.
@Richard Whittall Yeah, MLS’s place in all this is hard to pinpoint, I agree. To take the positive view, I do have the impression that more English coverage has stuck to the “it’s getting better” line recently. And I’d like to think it will eventually make a difference that more and more players are moving between the two leagues. Obviously, for the foreseeable future, more American fans are going to follow the Premier League than vice versa, but I can imagine a future in which MLS has a recognized place in the global soccer ecosystem, and who knows what could happen from there? (Whether MLS wants that for itself is a separate question, of course.)
I interrupt this utopian fantasy to point out that, at this moment, while a High Court judge decides whether to hold Tom Hicks and George Gillett in contempt of an English court, Hicks and Gillett are arguing in Dallas that the Liverpool board are in contempt of a US court. These events will one day be related in hushed tones during the Trans-Atlantic Major Premier League Soccer Headquarters tour.
Edmund Burke was Scottish.
@DingDong He was Irish. It was a complex debate.
@Brian Phillips Not English, in any case.
@Brian Phillips Never mind, I read up on this and I see your point.
Although some British commentators may indeed wield adverbs, the tradition among the punditerati is to eschew them at every blood-twisting turn. “Ooh, yes. The way he drilled that through ball clinical at Van Persie’s feet? Legendary. Shame the shot trickled so weak into the keeper’s hands, true, but still.”
Other than that, Brian, you done brilliant.
@Phil K “”This clip (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EW2d-QrnFgA) did the rounds over here as a bit of a laughing stock of soccer in America…”
Maybe you and your pals should learn Spanish, then, so you can all sit around mocking Mexican and Hispanic match commentary — because that is *precisely the template being used by the American commentator in that clip.*
Somehow I don’t think you’ll be spending your afternoon clicking around YouTube looking for Latin American futbol clips to snicker at.
That commentator, Max Bretos, has an ex-colleague (Christian Miles) who DOES strictly adhere to the traditional English-style commentary style, only with his American accent… and he sounds like a goofball. It just doesn’t work.
If there is indeed to be some Great Cross-Pollination of Yank and Limey Soccerball, the English had better be braced for a healthy dose of Hispanic in their diet. Because it’s part of our soccer culture. What’s sad — and kind of irritating, to be honest — is how many U.S. fans fail to get that too. There are probably as many clueless Americans knocking Bretos’ goal call in those YouTube comments as anyone else, because they don’t grasp that his work was an Hispanic-English style hybrid — in other words, a perfectly *American* way to call a football/futbol/soccer match.
Ummm whose “American” soccer culture? Most fans I know, of American soccer follow Mexican soccer more closely.
Interesting post. It reminded me of Rodney King asking America: “Can’t we all just get along?”
Great post, man. Growing up in Texas and being Salvadoreño I grew up idolizing South and Central American players because of channels like Univision, Telemundo (which would air Bundesliga matches), and, later Galavision and Telefutura. As a Spanish-speaker looking for a source of information about the game I loved, I had to make due with the Spanish networks which catered to, well, Spanish-speakers. But, as I grew older and the information age took flight I learned more about Europe and the rich history of football that existed there. Previously, I had only really thought of Europe as the parasite that took the talents of the host and profited from the beauty of our game thanks to my father’s understanding. As I grew older, I became enamored with European football because it was new to me. Learning about Europe and synthesizing that knowledge with what I learned in my upbringing made me a better football fan. I am so grateful that I as a person in the 21st century can spend hours of my weekend watching Serie A, Bundesliga, La Liga, Liga Mexicana, MLS, and the Campeonato Brasilero from the comfort of my living room. I no longer have to READ about the events and matches around the world.
As for mono-lingual/cultural American fans, I believe it’s a great thing that the two English-Speaking nations are sharing information and spreading the game. Unfortunately, when speaking with my white friends, they seem to talk down the South American and Central American modes of approaching the game, history, and traditions. I think that we can learn a lot by just looking at our own hemisphere and appreciating the vast amounts of knowledge here. I don’t want to believe it’s a prejudice on their part, be it derived from racial bigotry, but I believe that the gaze over the Atlantic has some racial undertones. Why ignore the beautiful game and approach of brown people closer to our own borders when there are pasty oafs running into each other with no regard for the game? I want to believe it’s the language barrier, but that barrier, I believe, isn’t organic. It’s a consequence of the anti-Latino, socially discriminatory and exclusionary traditions in America. I think I just said something I shouldn’t have said, but I’ll just leave it here.
@Dan Lol, but seriously “everyone” can get along if everyone is respected, meaning every person, community’s voice and presence is respected.
@Luna “Ummm whose “American” soccer culture? Most fans I know, of American soccer follow Mexican soccer more closely.”
Luna, there are a whole lot of comments here. It’s not clear who you’re responding to.
This article was a really good read, but I’m with a couple other people who commented. You can’t really talk about American soccer culture without mentioning it’s ties to hispanic/Latino soccer culture (particularly Mexican). At least in California, you’ll see Brazil/Argentina/Mexico/Mexican league jerseys way more often than anything else. I’ve played in youth leagues here, and plenty of teams use Spanish terms rather than American or English. I grew up watching Primera Division, and internationally, my family cheered for Mexico and USA. We didn’t start following MLS closely until Chivas USA came around. I started following EPL just a couple years ago, and my dad only just took an interest in EPL recently because of the Mexican NT players in it now. I guess this stuff is just another huge chunk of that galaxy.
Ian Darke? no offense but he doesnt hold a candle to Martin Tyler…
@ThomasFD I think you may have meant to quote me in regards to the youtube clip of American football commentary. Forgive me if I’m wrong. I didn’t sit around trying to find clips of it to laugh at, my point was that that clip was the kind of thing that was sent around offices here as people found it amusing someone saying ‘Release the Kraken’ after a goal as it’s not something that would be heard here.
Since then we’ve had a show called ‘David Beckham’s Soccer USA’ which has done more to show coverage of the US, and expose more people to MLS. I wasn’t saying one style of commentary was better than another, just more how it is viewed here. I have to admit I haven’t heard Mexican or Hispanic match commentary, but I’ve heard Spanish commentary and been to Spanish matches and the culture is equally different to that in England, but we’ve been exposed to it for far longer times so it doesn’t seem so different any more. And in time I’m sure that’ll be the same with the MLS.
Great points all, particularly those of you who brought in the Hispanic aspect of American soccer culture. That’s a huge, and fascinating, part of all this that I didn’t bring into the piece because, well, no one’s complaining that the U.S. is in the shadow of Latin American soccer culture, and ESPN didn’t hire Andrés Cantor to be their lead soccer commentator. (Though that would have been really outstandingly cool.)
Short-term, as long as English remains the dominant language in the U.S. and the Premier League stays more popular worldwide than the Mexican and Brazilian leagues, I don’t think the U.S.-Latin America axis is going to make the U.S.-England axis obsolete. What I do think is that it adds another line of cultural exchange with the potential to enrich and complicate things—which I’d like to think of as in the best American tradition.
@Phil K: Uh, because we celebrate cultural diversity in the US? Last time I looked, I didn’t see too many black or any other minority folks in the stands at Emirates Stadium except in the high priced seats where the owner sits.
@James But you have no problem with middle eastern investment? Wait a bit and the Chinese will be buying EPL teams.
@Dagoberto: Non-European rooted white Americans who’ve followed international soccer for some time have looked to Brazil and much of the rest of Central and South America as the epicenter of “the game,” especially since the advent of Pele playing for the Cosmos.
And I gotta ask, since you wrote it, who are the “pasty oafs running into each other with no regard for the game”?
Listening to American commentators, talking to you JP, try to turn every run down the pitch into an event–annoying as hell. You would think there were a 100 goal scoring opportunities just missed. But I will say that JP brings better knowledge and insight than John Harkes, whose voice makes my skin crawl.
@Richard Whittall
Unless the quality of MLS play improves exponentially, I doubt that day will happen in our lifetimes.
@Brian Phillips
The MLS has a recognized place in the system now: it’s where European players go to die.
@Macca
True, but he’s still vastly better than any US announcer I’ve ever had the displeasure of hearing. (I actually have a friend who prefers Ian Darke to Martin Tyler, though, so there’s no accounting for taste.)
@Jennifer: Regarding turds, how many teams in the EPL could, let’s say, the LA Galaxy regularly defeat? More than a handful, I’d wager.
Me, I’d rather “die” in LA, than live the highlife in beautiful Blackpool.
For me, the point about how everyone says ‘love’ in tennis is what rings truest when I hear American commentary.
Hearing overtime instead of injury time, cleats instead of boots and give and go instead of 1-2 just makes the commentator sound illiterate in the language of the game to me. Then again I live in a former Brit colony so what do I know?
@wango tango John Terry.
!
@wango tango I have no problem with investment from any nation if it’s in the best interests of the club and the game. So far any Middle Eastern investment has been well received – and they’ve not only done their best to embrace the culture of the game here, but has acted on fans requests for improvement in match day facilities, ticketing, and have greatly increased the clubs interaction with the fans. I certainty haven’t said at any point I don’t welcome investment from America in the Premier League. I just said that culturally it may take a while for the English game to embrace the MLS and how it goes about Football.
I was definitely of two minds when I first heard of the Ian Darke hire. I experienced a bit of jingoistic disappointment mixed with a bit of excitement about getting some “good” commentary. After a bit more thought, it became a question of why hasn’t America produced a top level football commentator yet. American football, basketball and baseball all have any number of quality broadcasters and have for ages.
We need a hero, and I don’t think it’s going to be any of the American commentators. Lingo aside, calling a soccer match is quite different from American sports. The closest equivalent I can come up with is a baseball radio broadcast and that’s really not the same at all. I think every American fan should be required to audition until we find our own Martin Tyler. Excitement, passion, knowledge are the required ingredients, I think.
@Dustin I think “give-and-go” might work, actually. I’d actually kind of like to hear what a commentary without any Anglicisms sounds like. Probably pretty jarring, now that I think about it.
Also, I have never been to this website before but the quality of this article, plus the thoughtful discussion afterward, will have me coming back for more. You must give credit to Dirty Tackle for sending me here in the first place.
@James : Well, it seems that you have a problem with American ownership when you offer youtube comic parodies to back up your statement: “The increasing influence of North American sports is something that worries a lot of people over here.” It sure seems you share those worries. Also, you didn’t have anything good to say about any American owners while you specifically noted your satisfaction with Middle Eastern owner(s). Consider this article about American ownership which I think is a bit more balanced than the argument you bring to the table:
http://www.epltalk.com/american-ownership-in-the-english-premier-league-is-not-necessarily-a-bad-thing/6513
@wango tango You picked the wrong target in Arsenal, they’re one of the grounds who have a healthy number of black spectators. I’ll quite happily admit to being against American ownership of PL clubs, it’s been a freakin disaster on the whole. England is unusual in Europe in allowing foreigners to come in and economically screw our clubs, most countries are as protectionist as America in this respect. And Ian Darke is rubbish.
@Dustin Us Brits reminding the world at every turn that “we invented it” can get a little tired, especially when we demand that our proprietary remit must include the style sheet for the terms used to describe the game wherever it’s played – “it’s my ball so my rules”. A parallel situation occurs in Spain, where Argentinian players “talk funny” compared with the locals, but I’ve yet to hear anyone mock or berate Leo Messi for still referring – even after spending half his life in Spain – to the “cancha” instead of the “campo” (pitch/field), the “arquero” instead of the “portero” (goalkeeper) or a “penal” instead of a “penalty”. If anything, the exotic terminology is seen as being rather cool, rather than the colonials getting it all wrong.
That said, something really does need to be done about “offsides”….
@kt Yah, yah. “Arsenal for everyone. Embracing diversity and equality.” Still when I look in the stands on TV, the vast, vast majority of fans look mighty “pasty,” as Dagoberto puts it. And I was responding to Phil K’s commentary about ethnic supporters in Chicago more so than trying myself to single out Arsenal (it just so happened he id’d himself as an Arsenal fan).
@wango tango Well in the first instance I wasn’t really talking about American ownership, more the influence America is having on the sport over here. You questioned me on middle eastern ownership so I gave my opinion – had you asked about American ownership I would have done likewise, but you didn’t. I have no problem with American ownership, nor have I said otherwise. There are good owners and bad owners, irrespective of nationality. I think Randy Lerner is a good owner and I’d much rather have him in charge of my football club than say Gold and Sullivan. On the other hand I was at Old Trafford today and there’s no doubt in my mind what the fans there think of their American owners. How I value a clubs owner has nothing to do with nationality.
The point I was making with the youtube video’s is how American soccer is represented here, not what I think of it. Surely in a discussion of how the culture of the sport differs in two countries, it’s fair of me to show how American soccer is represented (or misrepresented) to show why some people maybe sceptical of it? That doesn’t mean to say I’m condoning it, I’m just showing that that is one of the way’s American soccer is represented, and I thought that might be of interest in this discussion.
Great post, although I suspect much of the humbugging is nothing more than knee jerk nativism or reflexive contrariness for the sake of being contrary, like the grumbling that accompanied the superlative (and omnipresent) ESPN coverage of the 2010 World Cup. Speaking as a soccer fan in a city without a professional team (Buffalo NY), I love wearing my Arsenal jersey to Toronto FC games because I always run into Arsenal fans and that’s good for the soul, and frankly I enjoy the occasional trash talk with TFC fans who also support their EPL teams. Thanks to modern technology I (we) support both of my (our) teams, and it’s ALL GOOD.
@James Do you really think that America per se has all that much of an influence on soccer, ahem, over there? It seems to me that the *parodies*were more of how sport is commericialized and mediated in the US more so than they were *truly indicative* of the influence of the US over what goes on in the EPL. And if you folks so easily succumb to the temptations of the the American style, well what can I say? But you sidestep taking a stand on the matter and so it goes. ISTM that we are much more so bombarded by English influences over here than vice versa. That’s certainly the case as long as English commentators seem to be a requirement for all soccer media presentations. And folks from Buffalo go to Toronto FC games wearing Arsenal shirts. Not that there’s anything wrong with that! Next thing you know, Americans will be watching Adam Smith play soccer on Monty Python again.
These situations seem to crop up more and more frequently these days, distinct cultures mashed together uncomfortably closely, like some sweaty ride in the elevator of globalization/technocratization.
I wholeheartedly agree with the increased inbreeding of US and UK football cultures (soccer?) and @Brian Phillips general thrust here, and believe the phenomenon of the “pitch/side/kit”-spouting morning pub-goer is just one of the many unique sub-cultures that are growing amongst American-based fans of the beautiful game.
I’ll offer two points that stick out in this soccer-soup:
1. Global fans of sport will flow more and more to the top leagues, regardless of country. While the Premier League is the top English-speaking league in the world, I’d expect that English terminology and personalities will continue to seem “expert” in the shorter term.
2. The biggest bummer for me of the US-UK footballing culture comraderie (I am all for it in general) is I feel like it guides US fans and MLS bigwigs’ focus away from the SINGLE MOST AWESOME THING THE MLS COULD DO: Merge with the Mexican League. Think about it: A top-level North American league would become a trophy worth winning on par with perhaps the Argentinian or Brazilian league, and would harness the undoubted passion in the US/Mexico rivalry on a regular basis.
I too can see both sides as you point out Brian, but maybe to some extent the embrace of the English cultural influence is not a rejection of American “soccer” culture. As, to a large extent – your excellent piece on the forgotten history notwithstanding – American “soccer” culture doesn’t really exist.
It is borrowed American sports culture (piped music, ceaseless hype, obtuse commentators – all the things the English refer to as “Americanization of their game, over there) melded with English “soccer” culture.
I think, those that tend to adopt more of the English side, are really running away from the American sports culture, rather than really running to English. For many fans, I think, especially those Americans who do follow European leagues, while ignoring the MLS & the USMNT, I think the act of following soccer at all is a rejection of American sports culture, if not American sports.
There are American sports I still love, I just don’t like to actually watch them.