“Soccer is the elusive, almost illusive woman you have taught yourself not to chase.”
—Me, right now, before I change my mind.
I’ve identified three problems with the American soccer missionaries.
1. Rarely—so rarely—have they been converted from Our Sports. I’ve never 
heard anyone talk about how they used to be a football fanatic but have decided soccer is the better game.
Instead, you get the sense that ardent soccer fans in America have always felt alienated by the sports we love. Particularly football, and I say that because football seems to be soccer’s most direct competition—the bloodiest theater of the war. The missionaries will tell you about football. Football is slow and littered with interruptions. Football has about 12 minutes of ball-in-play action in any given three-hour game. Football is regimented, restricted.
But the lack of love weakens their credibility. If I’m a drug addict seeking redemption, I want to hear from the addicts who have recovered, not from the righteous Mormon at my door who’s never touched a drop of alcohol. If Terry Bradshaw phoned me up and spoke about his conversion to soccer, I’d be interested. Less so for the self-assured hipster who never succumbed to the old gridiron faith.
If you missed that magic, how am I supposed to trust you?
2. The missionaries say that soccer is the world’s most popular sport. And, to be fair, they’re 100% right. It’s so far beyond dispute that you can be institutionalized for disputing it in states where they care about mental health (California, Minnesota, maybe Wisconsin?).
By using this argument, though, they ignore the impressive American capacity for believing in our own superiority. And I’m not targeting some type here; I’m not pointing a finger at Tea Party hicks from wherever they’re from (Kansas, Texas, maybe Missouri?). I’m also including myself.
Take an example: as a younger person, I kept hearing that NASCAR was the fastest-growing sport in America. It was said in such a way as to seem meaningful, as though pretty soon every baseball stadium in the country would be converted to a racing oval. I stopped hearing it a while ago, for whatever reason, but at the time, that’s exactly how it was phrased: ‘fastest-growing sport.’ This spawned two reactions from me:
a) It must be bullshit. ‘Fastest-growing’ must be a weird language trick designed to disguise that football, baseball, and basketball are already huge and can’t actually grow much, percentage wise.
b) Actually, who gives a fuck? It’s NASCAR. It can grow as fast as it wants. I’m positive, smugly so, that nobody I ever care about will like NASCAR. The entire state of Alabama could change its name to NASCAR, and I still wouldn’t talk about it with my friends.
And that was with an American sport, mind you. My own countrypeople. If you told me that young men in Azerbaijan were going nuts about a game where you throw a machete at an old tractor tire, I would care even less.
So when the missionaries talk about soccer’s popularity, they believe they’re presenting a compelling argument. Hey, morons, listen: a whole world of humans is in love with this game. And for all we know, Earth is the only place in existence with sentient beings. So what we’re really saying is that, quite possibly, this is the most-loved sport in the entire universe. And not just now, but ever. In the whole expansive history of space and time, soccer is number one.
The logic seems sound. But what they’re doing is giving Americans an easy excuse to dismiss soccer and believe more fully in our own ignorance. We’re quite comfortable with the idea that we’re wiser than the rest of the world, and, by extension, the universe. By telling us that everyone else disagrees, the missionaries confirm an existing prejudice: everyone else is kind of an idiot.
3. They talk about soccer as ‘the beautiful game.’
I’ve come to the conclusion that soccer is, in fact, beautiful. But it’s beautiful in the way that life is beautiful, which is to say: not very often. Only in fleeting moments that vanish almost before you understood they were happening.
Imagine a friendly alien comes down to Earth. You’re eager to show him around, because, sure, we have our problems as a human race, but look at all the civilization! Look at the great buildings, and the great cities, and the picturesque countryside, and the thriving culture, and everything!
So you take the alien to New York City. You land just about dusk, and there, sitting on the sidewalk, is a homeless man. And not some profound, sagacious homeless man who dispenses pearls of wisdom; no, this is a homeless man who—bear with me—has just lost control of his bowels. And he’s kind of moaning in this awful, suffering way, and there are flies buzzing around his head. Then a woman walks by with her kid. She’s wearing a red business suit, and her black pumps are clacking on the concrete, and she says, “oh, that’s disgusting” loud enough for the homeless man to hear. “Come on, Jeremy,” she commands her child.
The boy is about 9 years old, and he’s just as fat as can be. He seems totally unaffected by the homeless man, and he giggles like an entitled little bastard just before he shoves fistfuls of candy into his mouth. The two leave, and the homeless man continues moaning, sitting there in his own waste. Just then, a car full of construction workers races past. One of them leans out the window, screams “get a job!”, and throws an empty whiskey bottle at the homeless man’s head.
You turn to the alien. “I swear,” you say, “that’s not what it’s like here.”
“No, I’m sure it’s great,” says the alien. “Still, it’s getting late…”
It’s the same story with soccer. Someone preaches about how, despite the scarcity of goals, the flow of the game is beautiful, even sublime. So you finally watch a match, and…
80 minutes pass with no goals. Both teams play cautiously, and the few offensive advances are snuffed out. In the 85th minute, the most annoying player on the team you like less pretends to be tripped in the penalty box. The replay shows he wasn’t touched, but he rolls around holding his knee, face contorted in agony, his free arm shaking in a gesture of dramatic supplication, exhorting God or the referee to answer the injustice. The referee, if not God, is fooled. Penalty awarded. The player pops up as though he’s never experienced anything less than perfect health. He buries the penalty, and the match ends 1-0.
Here’s the point: you can’t talk about the beauty of soccer. It will undermine itself every time.
Let me tell you two stories about small personal epiphanies that will bore you to death.
First, I was driving north on I-85 from Charlotte to Chapel Hill on a Friday evening. I had The Shins on the auxiliary iPod feed, and the song, “Mine’s Not a High Horse” came on. It’s a pretty good tune with a nice breezy feel and a good melody, but nothing noteworthy, at least as far as The Shins are concerned. It’s not fun like “Know Your Onion,” it’s not haunting like “Phantom Limb,” and it’s not gorgeous like “Saint Simon.” But ever since I discovered the song, sometime around 2004, one element of the chorus puzzled me:
You’ve got them all on your side
That just makes more for doubt to slaughter
“I never knew he thought that!”
I heard you say falling out of the van
“Don’t ask for his opinion
They ought to drown him in holy water!”
Will you remember my reply
When your high horse dies?
What bothers me is that he never clarifies the ‘reply.’ He builds it up into the climax of the chorus, this incredible reply that becomes the basis of the song, but he never says what it was! It struck me for so long as this great tease, something you could only ever know by asking James Mercer, and he probably wouldn’t tell you because musicians are mysterious like that.
But Friday, in the car, it hit me: the reply is the title of the song. THE REPLY IS THE TITLE OF THE FUCKING SONG! “Mine’s not a high horse.”
I almost drove into a ditch, I think. I blacked out and woke back up around Greensboro. A woman named Lucinda was in my passenger seat, smoking a cigarette and saying that if it were up to her, every golf course in America would be converted to low-income housing.
Second epiphany: 2007. Maybe 2008. No. Definitely 2007. I’m on the lunch break of a job I hate. It’s fall. There’s a nice cool wind blowing. I’m walking around the Tudor City, which is this little neighborhood for rich people in Midtown East sort of elevated above the city right next to the United Nations. There’s a garden there, and while I’m walking around, I see a dried maple leaf drifting down, making its only journey ever from branch to earth.
At the same exact time, the chorus of a song called “Women’s Realm” by Belle & Sebastian came over my headphones. (I thought so much of this song at the time that I later included it in the climactic scene of a screenplay I wrote called “The Carnival” about a lovelorn, semi-pathetic young white male who lived in a city and didn’t have much money and made some bad choices. Funny how that works.) Anyway, the breeze and the music and the maple leaf collided in a sort of perfect-storm moment, and I felt an inner rush happening. Without knowing why, my limbs grew goosebumps and my eyes filled with tears.
In my life, these two moments had their power. They happened in a way that was significant for me. But telling you about them? That accomplishes nothing. It doesn’t let you feel how I felt, just like if you explained your moment to me, I wouldn’t get it at all.
This, too, is the essence of soccer. I can’t tell you that Barcelona’s passing really was an elevated art form two Saturdays past; that they played like the whole match was choreographed and they could choose when to score, but that the ballet only called for three goals. That even the player I profess to hate, based on the automatic vibes cultivated from three decades of judging faces, scored the most beautiful goal of all on a curling kick to the top right corner.
With soccer, the experience is everything. The words accomplish nothing. I might as well try to explain the feeling of laughter, or bore you with the ridiculous plot of a dream that shook me to the bone.
Soccer is the elusive, almost illusive woman you have taught yourself not to chase.
Here I use the word ‘woman’ loosely, to mean any soul of any gender who spent a year or a decade sending us in loops. The Emblematic Woman. We’ve all been there. Maybe it took years for us to realize the loop was recursive. That even though the highs and lows feel different every time, they’re actually a place we’ve visited before.
Here are the plain facts about that Emblematic Woman:
Which is why your friends and loved ones look at you like an idiot every time you try again. They’re able to see the ungarnished narrative, the never-ending pattern, the tale of hurt and impossible hope that has marked your entire history.
What they can’t see, and what kept you coming back, were those ephemeral moments of transcendent feeling that seemed to come from nowhere and represent the light side of the pain.
It takes time to understand that this momentary transportation isn’t worth the wind it’s carried off on, and that pain isn’t a prerequisite to the intense highs of love. But even stupid young people can be cured by time, and if we’re lucky we teach ourselves to stop chasing a future that plainly does not exist.
Soccer, though…well, let’s return to the facts, and replace ‘she’ with ‘soccer.’
A rule of thumb is that when you expect electricity, you will be disappointed, and when you expect to be disappointed, the current will set your hair on edge. This is true of the Emblematic Woman, and it’s true of soccer. I remember waiting in front of a comedy theater once, expecting the night that would turn everything around. I thought I was older, that the same old story could be changed. But the girl didn’t care, and I spent the night in a petulant coldness. As usual, I’d expected too much. Before that, though, there were down times when I expected nothing and instead got the jolt of ecstasy that kept me in the loop. This is why it’s so easy to return.
I expected World Cup 2006 to be amazing. Instead, I got mononucleosis from a Bulgarian girl, and the referees ruined everything and the Italians won because they were the most convincing at falling when nobody touched them. I don’t necessarily blame soccer for the viral disease that ruined my summer, but the rest was squarely on its shoulders.
I expected the final in 2010 to be amazing. It wasn’t.
I expected the four matches between Real Madrid and Barcelona this year to be classics, due in no small part to the fact that the game itself was dubbed “El Clasico.” This was the worst kind of false advertising. The games I saw were boring and plodding and kept turning on a referee’s decision.
I didn’t expect much of World Cup 2010. But it had its wonderful moments, and I experienced a few of them (Germany’s awesome destruction of Argentina, Suarez’s Hand of God Part II) in unlikely bars in Ocean City, Maryland, with my stepfather.
I didn’t expect much of this year’s Champions League final. But there it went, crafty soccer, pulling a ridiculously good match from its bag of tricks and leaving me with my jaw on the floor.
Not even the most trifling, trace amount. I catch myself griping a lot about soccer in the aftermath of the disappointments. I even threaten to swear off the game entirely. This is not materially different from how I reacted to the Emblematic Woman during the bad times, grumbling about the lows, trying to recover some of the dignity so thinly spread in the aftermath of failed expectations, and vowing to end things completely.
The Emblematic Woman didn’t care. She felt little enough that her life would go on. Ditto for soccer. It will continue being the world’s most popular sport regardless of my condemnation.
Oh God, yes. And I’m not just talking about the heartbreak. There will also be long, boring stretches where you don’t really know what’s happening and fall into a stupor. It’s like war, or a murder trial in real life.
If the referee hadn’t made that terrible decision, if Holland could have scored an early goal, if it wasn’t so smart to play a defensive style, if a few of the open chances had been converted…
This one might be a stretch, granted. But I wonder, at times, if I’m not quite sophisticated enough to appreciate most professional soccer, or if I’m an idiot for watching matches when I know the chance of disappointment is well over 50%.
Soccer is going to let us down. But unlike the Emblematic Woman, I think we can afford to have soccer in our lives. I don’t think it’ll wreck us or lob constant grenades at our self-esteem. It may drive us crazy, but, since this is America, it will be a safe kind of crazy.
Mind you, there are some concrete problems buried deep in soccer’s enigmatic heart. The first is that the nature of the game makes it very difficult to appreciate good defense. This isn’t true with other sports. In football, there’s something gritty and awesome about a stalwart D. In baseball, great pitching is a thrill and great fielding can be spectacular. In basketball, good defense is relative; there’s still an awful lot of scoring. And I think LeBron James proved against Derrick Rose this year that once in a while, great defense can be profound on the hardcourt too.
But in soccer, unlike those sports, the defense begins at an extreme advantage. It’s fucking hard to kick a soccer ball into a net. Especially when you have people getting in your way, and especially when the last guy in your way is allowed to use his hands. Defenses in soccer are “good” by default. When they’re good by comparison, it can be kind of a bummer. Maybe it’s my naïveté, but I find it difficult to actually appreciate a defender accomplishing the feat of preventing a goal. It’s too easy, at least on the surface. Goals are a fucking miracle. Good defense? That’s just doing your job.
Also, soccer is predictable while seeming unpredictable. In the grand scheme, upsets don’t actually happen. The best club teams earn financial rewards to ensure that they stay the best club teams. In the World Cup, the home team wins a lot, and when they don’t, a powerhouse wins. The only traditionally “good” soccer team to never win a World Cup is Holland (and that’s only because, as David Winner points out in “Brilliant Orange,” the entire country is psychologically predisposed to being arrogant, underachieving fuck-ups), and a traditionally “weak” soccer country has never won. Ever.
And check out this excerpt from the book Soccernomics, by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski, where they talk about the eight phases of how England loses the World Cup every four years:
Phase 2: During the tournament England meets a wartime enemy.
Phase 3: The English conclude that the game turned on one freakish piece of bad luck that could happen only to them.
The book was copyrighted in 2009. In 2010, England met Germany, a wartime rival, in the round of 16. Trailing 2-1 in the first half, Frank Lampard scored a goal. Very literally, that is—he kicked the ball, it hit the top of the cross bar, and bounced in the net. England was back.
Except the refs didn’t see it. The ball bounced out of the goal, the Germans continued play, and England had been screwed again. Germany went on to win 4-1.
(Also, not to flog the metaphor, but a predictable outcome masked in a veneer of unpredictability is not atypical of the Emblematic Woman.)
Truthfully, a defensive sport with a dearth of upsets and a stagnant upper tier will always be hard for Americans to fully embrace. We’ll come to terms with it for short stretches, maybe, but it will frustrate us time and again. The thin white line between the scars of repeat disappointment and the allure of rare euphoria will become the dominant conflict motif as soccer tries to establish roots in our country.
What can I say about the Champions League final? I sat with some friends at a bar called The Crunkleton in Chapel Hill. My girlfriend and I drank mimosas because it reminded us of the morning World Cup matches last summer in New York. The bar was full in a very loose sense; the seats were all taken, and there were some (mostly Barça) jerseys giving the place color, but it was far from packed. This is North Carolina; even in a liberal Euro-friendly enclave like Chapel Hill, people don’t really care.
I bet my friend Andrew $5 that there would be a goal before halftime. Essentially, I was gambling on a good match. That day, soccer and I both won.
My resume is sadly thin, but along with Germany-Uruguay in the last World Cup, this was one of the two best matches I’ve ever seen. I enjoyed all 90+ minutes, including Rooney’s goal, and even a novice like me could appreciate Barcelona’s greatness. Just after the start of the second half, Andrew and I agreed on a double-or-nothing bet. If Messi or Rooney scored again, I’d win $5 more. If not, he’d get his original $5 back.
Then came the 54th minute, and the Argentine’s skidding shot. Andrew and I jumped from our barstools at the same time.
“Messsssi!” I shouted, exploring the bar’s limited space. He took off his hat and threw it at the vacant hostess stand.
In the moment, we looked like die-hards. It wasn’t just the money, either; the rhythm of the game had swept us along.
Alas, we’re not soccer fans. Not by any strict definition. At that exact instant, though, you couldn’t tell the difference between passion and love.
Shane Ryan lives in North Carolina and writes the blog Seth Curry Saves Duke! You can follow him on twitter at @SCurrySavesDuke.
Read More: American Notes
by Shane Ryan · June 21, 2011
Shane, I stopped at your very first paragraph. I grew up a dyed-in-the-wool red-blooded baseball and football fan and moved on to soccer, for all the reasons I assume you’ll get to. Hope the rest of the piece refrains from such sweeping, purportedly definitive statements.
@Mark I guess you’ll never know.
I just can’t believe the Crunkleton was playing football.
Tedious and meandering. Also the two footballs are not mutually exclusive. One does not have to abandon one and be a former addict to pick up the other. The popular nature of the game is an argument made because the only way that the game will gain real traction is if the US does not see itself as outside the global community because footy is not a sport born in N. America. The game is beautiful the way chess is, not the way American football is. It’s a question of aesthetics and a contrast to the gratuitous nature of American football’s culture of violence. Can’t be bothered to point out all the other issues here but someone needs get the OP an editor ASAP.
Next time someone (probably an American) asks me why I love soccer so much, I’ll send them this link because I could never express all this in English by myself. Thanks for writing this piece Shane!
I was a full American football loving fan for my entire childhood and teenage years, and into my late twenties. However, I became interested in soccer by way of EA Sports FIFA video game in the early 90s. Then as luck would have it my freshman year roommate was on the soccer team, and so were all my soon to be friends. That was all she wrote.
Now? American football is exactly as you described. Boring, with about 4 plays a game that are interesting, commentators that would rather talk about when they played the game, and more about advertising & fantasy stats than anything else.
I now watch soccer exclusively on the weekends, read about 15 soccer related blogs a day, and generally live soccer.
I too have tried converting others, but you are correct that its pointless as soccer will just let you down. Especially American soccer. MLS is still too young to be worth watching, and the USMNT thinks too highly of itself simply for being American. For every WC moment (see Algeria in 2010) of total ecstasy, we get like 15-20 matches like what the team is playing right now in the Gold Cup.
Oh well. Long live the beautiful game
The problem with American Soccer Missionaries is that they spend too much time worried about converting and not enough time worrying about educating. A love of soccer does not require hatred of gridiron or baseball—it’s not about which is better.
1) I grew up being taken to weekend college football games by my alumni parents, attended a big, southern football school that won a couple of national championships while I was there, and used to love nothing more than a crisp fall day in a stadium with a marching band blaring away. Yet, in the span of a few of years I’ve gone from that to a good Liga or PL game winning the battle for my Saturday afternoons week after week. So it happens. (Then again, I am just a girl….)
2) That Champions League final may never leave my DVR.
3) The bitchy face is the reason to love, not hate, David Villa!
Lovely article, btw. And true. Despite a few successful results, I’ve mostly given up on trying to make soccer fans of my friends who have no reason to care about anything other than the usmnt in the world cup every fourth year. You either get it or you don’t, and it’s hard to care if you don’t. I think you’ve captured that feeling well. Thanks.
@Bryce My goodness I’ve had the same experience getting to know soccer, except it started much later with FIFA 08 and coincides with the rise of Messi. I started playing FIFA 08 at 26 on a whim and now I’m on this website writing comments… go figure
At first I scoffed at the analogy, then I remembered how long it took me to get over the 2006 World Cup Final. I lived in France as a kid and my heart beats for the French national team (my home country is Iceland, a football minnow… the only time I’ve ever seen the two teams meet, which I did in person in Reykjavík, the game ended in a 1-1 draw, which suited me perfectly). The traumatic final minutes of the match had me psychologically scarred for years. So yeah… you may have a point there.
Also, the moment you said”this is a homeless man who—bear with me—has just lost control of his bowels” I knew you’d bring up the 2010 World Cup final.
One major niggle though… when you say that a “traditionally ‘weak’ soccer country has never won” the World Cup, you are stuck in something of a tautology. By definition, a country that has won the World Cup is not a ‘weak’ soccer country. For instance, Spain, outside a sole European Championship gold, had performed dismally in international competitions until 2010. Until then it was considered a middling power on the international level.
And as to Holland being the only major soccer country to not win the World Cup… I would say that Czechoslovakia, which no longer exists of course, is another clear example. They made the World Cup final twice and won the European Championships once and got third place twice.
Two other contenders for major soccer countries that never won the World Cup, Hungary (two World Cup finals, one Euro bronze) and the Soviet Union (one Euro gold, three Euro silvers, a mysterious inability to get it together in World Cups akin to Spain pre-2010).
I understand your point of view, to a degree…. But really, you can’t make some of the assumptions you make here if you tell me that the last Champions League Final and Germany-Uruguay are the two best games you’ve ever seen….
Soccer gives you joy and satisfaction in the long run. I agree with you, that some (most) of the time it dissapoints (that’s why you have to choose which games to watch, there are a lot of options worldwide), much more if you watch crappy leagues and teams. But the thing about soccer is that if you are lucky enough to watch an amazing game, you’ll never foget it ever!
I vote this as the best article on the site currently
One- I really liked this article and agree with your reasoning about converting people to a love of soccer.
Two- “Women’s Realm” by Belle and Sebastian is a truly great song and I had a very similar experience while listening to it. In fact, this article has made me listen to it on repeat for the past half hour.
I first came across this on Shane’s blog (via newsreader) and stopped at the third paragraph then, too.
I only became a soccer fan in about 2006, after the third game that my father in law dragged me to. It took exactly three games.
Now, soccer is the meat and potatoes of my sporting interest. I follow it every day, in myriad forms, and without it my life would change fundamentally.
I am, however, still an American football fan. If anything, I still get a visceral thrill as one of my teams kicks off a game. It’s a weekly indulgence that gets to my origins and my core, like the pumpkin pies my Mom makes every fall. I love it, I would hope never to have to do without it, but I do not count on it to sustain me.
Here the analogy breaks down, because while I never tried to live on pumpkin pie, I did live (in a sporting context) for American football. I would watch Arena and CFL games in the spring, I’d pore over the literature in the offseason. Now, I mostly watch the games of my and my wife’s respective alma maters and my hometown NFL team (there’s a whole other entry about the emotional connection an otherwise-willing emigrant keeps with the hometown sports teams). If anything, I think I enjoy those games MORE now, for the lack of oblong-ball-related noise in my life.
I’m a convert in the sense that I would say the majority of my sports-fan time is dedicated to soccer, but as many have mentioned, there’s no need to give up on the one to embrace the other.
Read most of this article, you lost me with some of your metaphores, I found out about your blog today. I grew up in Mexico, where Futbol is the first sport. I think your mind set is very American, in that you are always having to defend “soccer”. Nothing needs to be defended, its like music taste if you like Devo and somebody doesn’t you can show them why you like it, there are songs, there are plays, goals, stragegy, melody. Futbol is not about being happy for 90+ minutes, even when you say games are “boring” there are things happening that are very interesting, if you love futbol that is.
Thanks for your words, will continue to read although this was a long one.
The article was intriguing and kept you searching. After being outside the U.S. for a couple months and then being placed in a bar where football was playing, and my hometown team was involved with, It was interesting to see the lack of actual playing time as compared with constant droning of action in soccer games. Enjoyed the title, and felt a connection(or smirky smile) before starting to read….
\m/
Shane, I stopped at this sentence:
“The entire state of Alabama could change its name to NASCAR, and I still wouldn’t talk about it with my friends.”
I was enjoying this article, and this made me chuckle out loud.
I will now continue reading.
Loved it. A lot here worthy of digestion.
The idiosyncrasies that some found grating I found endearing.
Surely, without personal accounts/sensations/experiences all football writing becomes a dull iteration of “fact”.
Keep it coming.
Great article, but I also do not think that two footballs are mutually exclusive as someone already said. I think all depends on your experience. I grew up as a soccer fanatic and came to this country when I was 26. First ten years, I lived in Atlanta, and I went to couple Falcons game, and I just did not get anything out of it. I did not get that desire to go again. I moved to Seattle and went once to Qwest Field, and Seahawks just took over club soccer (I would not say they are above national team competitions, but it is getting close) . If someone told me ten years ago that I will be season ticket holder for NFL team, I would think they are crazy. I still watch soccer (a lot of it), but to be honest, I prefer watching NFL than club soccer. Probably, it has to do something with parity. Also, I think if you support some team, you are much more vested in that sport. Yes, I watched Barcelona – Mutd, but I really do not care who will win because I do not support either team. Actually, I prefer to watch MLS over any club competition in Europe (there is parity in MLS too). Again, maybe, it has to do something with the fact that I support Sounders.
I love both soccer and football. I love the ways in which they are alike and the many many ways in which they are different.
I couldn’t read the rest of this tedious wankfest of a post.
Sorry about the intemperate response. Scrolling through, it looks like there are some really good things in your article.
It’s just that, your opening assumption, that one must be “converted” away from American sports to soccer, is completely, utterly, farcically wrong.
I enjoyed this article, but I think that the last paragraph is really the only one that counts. Soccer will not take over the imagination of this country until the evangelist becomes the evangelists. The lone gunman approach will not work. My love for the game did not fully come alive until I found myself in a stadium surrounded by 36,000 other like minded people – a place where you can’t “tell the difference between passion and love.” Welcome to Seattle.
@QuiteAFewPeopleSadly Oh, sweet mewling babby Jesus. If something you read falls short of your standards, you’re quite free to shuffle off and read something else. It’s a very big Internet out there. Ponder this for a second. Which is the bigger “wankfest”: a piece that you personally don’t much care for or a comment that is posted with the sole purpose of telling the world that you didn’t much care for it?
Anyway, to the meat of the matter. I was utterly appalled by Shane’s piece, myself. The comma after “song” in the second paragraph of the second question is roundly, thoroughly and fundamentally wrong. Incredible, I know, but it’s quite true, sadly. I don’t know whether I’m more shocked or affronted. Either way, I shall not be renewing my subscri. . . Oh.
So maybe I was short on time and needed an excuse not to read it, spawning my earlier comment.
I’ve read it now, and I some fundamental issues with the mindset that produces a piece like this. First, selling the beauty of soccer to the unconverted is a fool’s errand. The beauty of the game is something you come to appreciate after you’ve already decided you like the sport. Beauty isn’t why you fall in love with soccer, it’s why you stay in love with soccer.
The ideas expressed are so rife with exceptionalism – not just soccer’s, but you’re own – that it reads like satire. If I was going to imagine how a soccer-loving europhile hipster with an elitist attitude, the kind that draws the ire of so many American sports fans and is literally the reason some of them resist soccer, would explain why the sport has such trouble attracting supplicants despite all the wonderful things about it, this is how I would imagine it. Complete with overwrought romanticized memories about the poignant lyrics of songs no one but of said type would know.
The whole thing is overwrought, really. I suppose that’s a critique of your writing style more than the message you’re attempting to convey. But let’s not over-complicate this, because it is exactly the reason so many Americans find distasteful the way soccer is sold. It’s not the thing that is inside that’s the problem, it’s the ornate packaging with the floral accents and abstract poetic description.
Is soccer passion and love and beauty and joy and sweetness and light and anguish and the answer to all life’s mysteries, the full expression of what it means to be human in the form of athletic competition? Maybe. Maybe for some of the world’s billions of soccer fans, the sport truly transcends its status as a game and is a actually a matter of life and death rather than just a mechanism for expressing tribal behavior. It’s not that for me. For me it’s just a sport I really, really enjoy.
The bit you got right is that every goal is a miracle. I think it’s that which truly separates soccer from the traditional American sports, because the anticipation for the climatic act, the very point of the game, is so different in flavor.
Thanks everyone for your comments. It’s probably a bit gauche to respond, but I wanted to clarify one thing – no part of me believes that football and soccer should be mutually exclusive. I’m not sure how that impression came about…I was only trying to make the point that in the American conversion process, it would be significant if a previous football devotee was the missionary. And judging by the comments, it looks like there are at least a few of of you out there. Anyway, I enjoy and will continue to enjoy both sports.
Last, to those of you who stopped reading after the third or fourth paragraph: you’re missing the exciting car chase in paragraph 18!
-Shane
He took off his what and threw it at the vacant hostess stand?
Sorry, the editor in me. I enjoyed this piece.
@Archie_V And so on… It seems to me that most folks like this website because it projects american sports writing onto football. And THAT blows. Also, the faux-intellectual pretentiousness does not sweeten the deal, on the contrary…
That’s a *very* well-written piece, and you’re right on a lot of things — including the uselessness of popularity as a selling point.
But the notion that you have to give up one sport for another? Everytime I run into some soccerfan (a derisive term for the stereotypical whiny soccer fan that others of us who love soccer have to fight against) who thinks you have to give up other sports to be a true soccer fan, I want to ram their head into a wall. OK, not an actual wall, but a Nerf wall. Just something to get across the point that they’re being complete idiots, that only soccerfan seems to lack the minimal cognition required to follow more than one sport.
If you can track multiple soccer leagues around the world from, say, Seattle, you can certainly also track the Sounders, Seahawks, Mariners, Storm and Huskies and even the Canucks in Vancouver without much problem, either. Believe it or not, many people actually engage in tracking more than one sport at once. It is perfectly possible to admire the skill involved in both a twenty-yard strike into the top near corner and a twenty-yard strike into the end zone on fourth down while down by a touchdown in the last minute. Soccerfan needs to quit assuming that people can only operate in one sports dimension, because that’s not what happens in real life.
@Archie_V It’s a very big Internet out there. Ponder this for a second. Which is the bigger “wankfest”: a piece that you personally don’t much care for or a comment that is posted with the sole purpose of telling the world that you didn’t much care for it?
How about the self-righteous comment telling other people in a blog comment thread not to comment on a blog they don’t like?
i really enjoyed the soccer/ heart-breaker comparisons. i have spent (too) much time listening, watching, and traveling to see a certain rock and roll outift from vermont over the past several years. its kinda therapuetic to know there are others out there suffering similar fates with their obsessions
As an American I have loved soccer since I was in Brazil during the world cup in 1966….In Recife the town went crazy (and you could hear it even in a quiet residential street) when Brazil scored such fun…And I love football too …no hope for me
@Ronit In the flurry of this just isn’t good enough posts, I missed your own about-turn. Apologies.
I very much enjoyed the incontinent drunk analogy. Jorge Valdano may have been a little more concise when he likened that Liverpool v Chelsea match to a shit on a stick, but yours was more fun to read.
@Tonyto I like to think this commenter gingerly removed his monocle and softly tugged on his smoking jacket before turning his nose up and begining to type, “Tedious and meandering…”
Great article, personal and well thought out, keep up the good work.
This was an unexpectedly awesome read on my lunch break, and this is coming from a convert too, i especially loved the musical anecdotes, looking forward to your next piece.
The “world’s most popular sport” ploy is almost always presented in a condescending manner. The underlying current, at least when I hear it, is “What’s wrong with you?” America should come to soccer. Soccer isn’t coming to America. It’s bad advertising. Dom Draper would not be impressed. That said, I think America is primed for futbol. There’s a new generation of adult in the States that grew up playing the sport. FIFA is making a mistake by not scheduling a North American World Cup. I thought those guys were all about money and power?
Shane, first piece I have read by you, ever. Wonderful – I am a fan.
Also, I love football and live and die with the Jets. But when Arsenal is playing Chelsea at 2:45 on a Monday afternoon, I tivo it or, more often, sneak out of work and go to a bar to watch.
Joe
This is outstanding. Funny, sarcastic, and with moments of brilliance. The beautiful game thing (soccer = life) is great.
As a Scot I don’t give a damn if Americans like or get football. In fact I’d rather they didn’t…keep to the monster truck racing etc.
I must be the only person who used to follow “American football” almost religiously and now only really watches “football”. I think the beautiful game is much like golf. Those of us who don’t like golf, probably never will. But if we ever “discover” it, if it ever grabs us, we will never be able to go back to before golf. And we’d spend the rest of our lives trying to make others understand how great and unique and amazing golf is. It has been the very same thing with soccer for me. Soccer has nothing to do with nationality, or culture, or socio-economic tendencies. It has to do with me, sitting here, trying to put into words what I like about the game, and what it makes me feel. I will never be able to. And neither will this website, or any other. We can only learn more about it, and what it means to us, and for us.
And how about Gio Dos Santos’ goal Saturday?
This is among my favorite ever Run of Play pieces. You write wonderfully. And convincingly. I read the first paragraph, gave up, but came back again – surely you use subliminal commands to make that happen.
@Tonyto I can attest, being a big fan of both footballs. However, I don’t think Shane was arguing that one is replaced with the other. Simply that one when soccer fans are “evangelizing,” many tend to from this replacement phenomenon.
One comment already noted how on the international level its almost unheard of for teams to win the big tournaments, and at the club level this is becoming a trend as well as more money is coming into the game (think Porto winning the champions league under Mourinho in 2004: this is unheard of now right?). However, part of the beauty for me in soccer is that anything can happen in 90 minutes. No team better showed this than Blackpool this season, who won both of their matches against Liverpool. For a less attacking, more solid team, Wolves pulled out some impressive wins this season, including a 2-1 victory over Manchester United when they were in last place that started their return from the dead this season. The easiest example (and one im most familiar with as a supporter) is Arsenal. This team punched above its weight this season, defeating manchester united, barcelona, chelsea, and manchester city in matches, but then collapsing against “lower” opposition, including blowing a 4-0 lead against Newcastle in one half.
On a side note, I think arsenal this past season fits your criteria for the emblematic woman as well (although I assume many fans would argue that their own team could be called that as well).
Yeah, wamp wamp. Other writers here are usually weak on U.S. soccer or soccer in America. Don’t get me started on Grantland’s soccer coverage, wow, dude from Hipster Runoff? Really? Phillips is the best soccer writer in America and he’s over at Grantland writing on Federer. Fail.
Oh wait, this kid is a Dookie. That explains it all.
the problem with soccer missionaries is that they cannot write about the game without taking gibes at some Middle America stereotype like the author does here. in that regard they are a lot like the worst missionaries–they need the unwashed to justify their existence.
meanwhile, it’s possible to love soccer and love american football and countless Middle American values that the author fears. there are plenty of people like us, we just don’t blog as much.
i meant to put “Middle American values” in quotes, because I don’t think the inhabitants of Middle America are as easily shoehorned as soccer missionaries might believe. i say this is an atheist libertarian hick who loves football and soccer.
@Dr Lister our soccer is already better than your’s.
amazing article but I have to say, I was a true soccer hater growing up and loved Football and hockey only. Now though I love soccer more than either of them and I still love both.
This was a brilliant read. Funny and very true. I try to explain to my friends why I love football and this sums it up perfectly.
Great piece.
Awesome article! Who is the lovely lady in the picture by the way?
Let’s hope that Americans never properly get into football, because if they do, they’ll actually start winning things. Like they do in every other sport they bother to try in.
Personally, I beleve that the only new winner of the World Cup in the next 50 years will be the US. When that happens, the American people will REALLY get into football and the rest of the world might as well give up.
I’m English, by the way.
Surprised but at the same time not surprised at all by the volume of internet hate. Yknow?
No, he’s not Phillips, but he’s alright. Definitely not as bad as some of these comments make him out to be. I would absolutely LOVE to see the writing of some of you smug pricks. Not a few paragraphs. I mean a few thousand words, a theme, a metaphor, something, anything… then let’s compare it side-by-side.
And if you actually can produce something to compare to or surpass Shane’s piece that STILL doesn’t make it okay to be so condescending and, for lack of a better word, dickish. We’re all soccer/football fans here and I’d venture to guess we all have an interest in writing. If we can’t be respectful amongst ourselves then where can we? Just because it’s the internet doesn’t mean we can’t or shouldn’t be respectful. (Bring on the ‘can’t we all just get along?’ – You guys are hilarious! And so original!)
By the by, I did have one thing to say about the piece. I find a well-timed tackle can be just as thrilling as the slickest of offensive moves. Good defense is ‘doing your job’ but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t take guile and talent. I don’t know if you play soccer, Shane, but defense is, in fact, less than a miracle but far more than mundane. Anyway, nice piece.
Wow! This is a long but interesting piece. Thanks, Shane!
I love that you brought up the part of Soccernomics about England and the world cup. If I wasn’t reading that book only a week or two past the 2010 WC I would have sworn that it was written based off of that. It was kind of freak-ish in that regard.
There’s I think another side to America’s relationship to soccer other than the girl that is simultaneously enthralling and disappointing that we eventually learn to steer clear from, and that’s the girl we fool around with when we’re younger, but never really care or about or have real feelings for – our youthful summer fling, if you will. This coming from another section of Soccernomics (if I remember correctly – it’s been a while since I read it and don’t feel like checking the figures, so correct me if I’m wrong) where it mentions that the US has the largest number of soccer players at the youth level for any nation, but such a low percentage of them ever take a lasting interest in the professional game or even playing past the casual recreational level. That love is generally reserved for football, basketball, and baseball. Soccer for most of the country appears to just be a youthful roll in the hay that is quickly outgrown and forgotten.