"Getting" Soccer

OK, for the last time, could we stop with the argument that Americans don't "get" soccer? Pick any definition of "get" that you like. We get it. A lot of Americans have chosen not to prioritize soccer in their sporting firmament. But the sport does not somehow elude us like some sort of somplicated puzzle, or Ulysses, or Benny Hill. Via Andrew Sullivan, however, we get more of this cant. Naturally it all derives from the David Beckham situation. Fortunately, Duleep Allirajah veers precariously close to the hoary stereotype:

It is an undisputed fact that most Americans don’t really like football. This failure to ‘get’ football is often interpreted by Brits as a sign of American insularity and philistinism. Exhibit A, m’lud, is that the Yanks don’t like draws. They want to see a winner. They want shoot-outs to settle games. Exhibit B is that Americans don’t like low-scoring games. The only thing that Americans hate more than 0-0 draws is Osama bin Laden. So short is the average American’s concentration span that, unless there’s a goal every two minutes, they’re trotting off to the catering stall to buy another chilli dog. Exhibit C is the fact that they insist on calling it ‘soccer’. M’lud, I rest my case.

And then he does a pretty good job of debunking it:

If we look beyond this kind of crude anti-Americanism we find a rich and sophisticated sporting culture in the US. American sports fans are every bit as knowledgeable and passionate about the sports they follow as European or Latin American football fans. Indeed, like it or not, despite our instinctive antipathy towards the Disneyfication of English football, there are some US sporting prototypes that have successfully made the transition across the Pond (and no, I don’t mean big furry mascots or cheerleaders).

This week, for example, a ‘personal invitation’ from Alan Hansen appeared in my email inbox to subscribe to the Daily Telegraph’s fantasy football league. These leagues, which have turned a generation of British football enthusiasts into stats-obsessed nerds, were originally invented by US baseball fans. Americans are also ahead of the curve when it comes to writing about sport. Long before Nick Hornby penned Fever Pitch, American writers such as Philip Roth, Ernest Hemingway, Norman Mailer and Don DeLillo showed that serious writers could ‘do’ sport. Americans also make far better sports films than the Brits. They can produce works of cinematic splendour like Raging Bull while we just make rubbish like When Saturday Comes.

It’s not that Americans are genetically incapable of understanding the subtleties of football – enough of them play it at college in order to grasp the offside law. It’s just that they prefer other spectator sports. Principally, that means baseball and gridiron; but even sports like boxing, basketball, and golf rank above football. Invariably, if you browse through US websites you’ll find plenty of Americans sounding off about how ‘soccer’ is dull or too low-scoring or else that it’s a ‘girlie’ game unlike gridiron. These opinion pieces are a bit like my occasional tongue-in-cheek articles about sports that I don’t follow, such as cycling, curling or rugby – that is, they are, in part, intended to wind up aficionados of those sports.

Of course, if I applied myself, I’m sure I could learn to understand the laws of rugby or appreciate the finer points of baseball. Hell, if there’s a bottle of claret and some good cheese and saucisson on offer, I could even get into the Tour de France. It’s just that, well, life is too short and there are only so many sports you can watch before your missus walks out on you. So, for that reason, I limit my portfolio of sports to a manageable handful – football, cricket and tennis with the occasional foray into athletics or boxing. I’d imagine American sports fans are much the same. They simply don’t have the time or inclination to immerse themselves in yet another spectator sport. That doesn’t mean they’re too stupid to understand football, just too preoccupied with other sports.

Indeed, much as I love football, I think it’s a good thing if American sports fans don’t clamber aboard the Beckham bandwagon. It shows that ordinary Americans, so often ridiculed as dumb and suggestible, aren’t easily seduced by marketing hard sell. The US sporting public has doggedly ignored previous attempts to flog soccer to them, such as the ill-fated North American Soccer League and the big promotional pushes that accompanied the1994 World Cup and the 1999 women’s World Cup. The fact is that a football culture cannot be mechanistically transplanted or imposed on to other societies; it has to develop organically.

Let me add a bit more to the three basic critiques he outlines above:

We don 't like ties: Agreed. We do not like ties as a general principle. Or draws. Or whatever you want to call them. And it is telling that in the most important soccer tournaments on Earth, most notably the World Cup, NEITHER DO FOOTBALL FANS. When the rubber meets the road, we will never see a 1-1 World Cup Final. Because they have a shootout system. So apparently our anti-draw approach isn't completely anathema to the rest of the world inasmuch as once the games matter, they jump on finding ways out of ties like a chav on a free kidney pie.

We do not like or appreciate low-scoring games: I do not know if I buy this one either. This week the Red Sox and Indians played not one, but two games that finished 1-0. They were beautifully pitched games that any serious baseball fan loved. But also, our sports are simply engineered in such a way that there is more scoring. And so sports with very little scoring tend to throw us for a loop, I suppose. But there is another element to this, which is that especially away from the world class level, soccer is not necessarily a low-scoring game. At the elite levels it can be because the athletes are so skilled that they can prevent scoring chances. But in high school or college or even at the average club level? There will be plenty of 3-2 games. In other words, we can throw out the charge as specious.

As for calling it "Soccer": Look, there is no other way to put it. This is an irredeemably dumb argument. First off, remember the old Winston Churchill joke about Americans and Brits being two people separated by a common language? Well consider this exhibit A. We have a lot of words that are different to refer to the same things. Some Americans (and I place myself in this category) have spent enough time in the UK to develop fluency in both tongues. I'll call it football over there. I'll call it soccer over here most of the time. But the argument is silly for another reason. And that is that in other parts of the English-speaking world, it is not uncommon for people to call the Beautiful Game "soccer." South Africans call it soccer. The Australians? Here is a hint: In the 2006 World Cup when the Aussies made their nice little run, what did we discover was the team's self-anointed nickname? It was not the "Footballroos." It was the "Socceroos." How could this be? How could two countries with sporting cultures every bit as rabid and active as in the US and Britain choose the barbaric American nomenclature? Because these are countries that also have other games called "football" -- rugby is often referred to as football, and the Aussies also have their own game of football. Granted, the Brits have rugby as well, but football (soccer) is so dominant in the UK that rugby is rugby and football is football. Why make such a dogmatic stand on such a dumb issue? Don't you have some Irish Catholics (who have Gaelic Football and so, oftentimes, yes, will refer to "soccer") to oppress?

But above all: We do get soccer. More of us play it than do you. We have a Major League that is not up to the standards of the Premiere League or the Bundesliga or Serie A but that would probably play reasonably well when pitted against a lot of leagues in countries that like to scorn American soccer. Increasingly, furthermore, our best players participate in --sometimes shine, in -- the best leagues in the world.

Look: Many -- not all -- of us have chosen other sporting priorities. Baseball is a great game, which is why a huge swath of the world loves it -- in much of Latin America baseball is far more prominent than soccer. Basketball? I don't think I need to sell that game's popular appeal. So what it always comes down to is that we have one game -- American football -- that we love. Much of the rest of the world has rugby, a game I know and appreciate, and love. It's a pretty thin argument: Americans embrace a lot of sports, but we embrace American football more than we do global football, which we nonetheless embrace more than the rest of the world will acknowledge, so WE are the provincial ones.

Let's step back a little bit from the madness. Hopefully David Beckham will represent another step in the integration of American elite soccer into the global game. He does not come across as a savior because the game in the US does not need saving. It's doing fine. Now please excuse me. I believe there is breaking news from the Patriots' training camp.