A Soccer (football) Match outside the US (2005 fadaguiga/sxc.hu)
So, you might be thinking for a moment: ‘What in the hell does Soccer have to do with the State of the USA?’ Well, correct, they don’t have any direct correlation. In fact, it is not specifically soccer that I am talking about.
I’m instead talking about much of the popular attitude and reaction toward soccer. Go to a sports bar, or a newspaper website, and ask about soccer. You’ll quickly get kind of a standard reaction from a lot of people:
Soccer sucks.
Most of the people making these comments have never seen a soccer game before, let alone taken the time to learn about the sport. What is clear to many of the individuals is this:
- Soccer ends in ties: American sports don’t end in ties – there MUST be a winner, and a sorry loser
- Soccer is ‘wimpy’, it lacks full body contact like football
- Soccer did not originate in the US, it is foreign; unlike Baseball, Basketball, or American Football (which, FYI, is a bastardization of rugby)
- Soccer is boring, a bunch of men kicking a ball back and forth; which is less appealing than 500 miles of left turns
- Soccer is a sport loved by upity-Europeans and third-worlders (read: illegal Mexicans), and not welcome here
- Soccer is not overly understood by a majority of Americans
I’m honestly not fooling on this people, these are the comments generated by many Americans in sports bars and forums. But what does it say about the United States as a whole? Quite a bit.
US Soccer Fans (2006 hortongrou/sxc.hu)
If we look at each item one by one, we can pick out some things. However, it’s when we put those observations together in a description do we get an, albeit gross generalization, a clear window into some of the problems facing our county:
Americans require clear cut winners and losers, prefer carnage and violence, are completely xenophobic to anything that is not American, are bored by collective play, and generally spite anything European or Latin.
Think about it for a moment, and you’ll start to see a little bit of what I’m talking about. Over the recent weeks and months, we have seen this attitude in American discourse rear its ugly head. While it may just be a bombastic minority, it lends toward why the US is in such a disarray and why it will take a long time to get back on our feet. Simply, we are enthralled with the idea that some win and some lose, a tie, or people being equal, is not acceptable. We’re a violent nation, having a per capita gun ownership level that far surpasses any other western nation at nearly 1 gun for every 1 person living in the US. We are indeed a horribly xenophobic nation; everything that did not originate here is seen as some how an attempt to usurp American culture. We don’t like the idea of working together. And, finally, we really do spite anything that is European or Latin; with the former becoming a derogatory term to describe something as socially beneficial, and the latter is a polite way of saying “Illegal Alien”. Finally, we love to jump to assumptions.
While some folks reading this post may latch on to that last sentence and say “BUT, BUT, DIDN’T YOU JUST ASSUME!!!”, so, for those who fail both reading and comprehension, I’ll state again: gross generalization.
We’re not going anywhere as a nation or a people if we continue this disgusting dialog. It really is about damn time we realize we’re players on a world stage. A small fraction of this planet. It’s about damn time we realize that winning isn’t everything. It’s about time we begin to work together rather than scream at each other. It is far past due for us to stop the mindless distaste for Europe, and our continued dehumanizing of Latin America. It’s time for us to take the violence factor down a notch or 10. More importantly, it’s time we understand that American Culture is not a specific culture like Irish Culture or Russian Culture; ours is every culture, including our language. Our nation is made up of people from all four corners of the globe and the places in between. Why do you think that we have Greek restaurants, Chinese restaurants, Turkish restaurants, etc., and that “American Cuisine” consists of Burgers and Fries, or Steak. Everything we have comes from somewhere else. And we’re immensely better for it.
As the post-World Cup articles continue to discuss the expansion and growth of soccer and MLS in the United States, and rebuttals are made, the discussion of soccer is not entirely a sports discussion. Watch closely, and I think you’ll see it is a surrogate for a lot of the larger discourse occurring in the country today.
In the end, although with a disappointing loss to Philadelphia yesterday, I must say: GO SOUNDERS FC!
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Soccer and the State of the US: Correlation Much?
A Soccer (football) Match outside the US (2005 fadaguiga/sxc.hu)
So, you might be thinking for a moment: ‘What in the hell does Soccer have to do with the State of the USA?’ Well, correct, they don’t have any direct correlation. In fact, it is not specifically soccer that I am talking about.
I’m instead talking about much of the popular attitude and reaction toward soccer. Go to a sports bar, or a newspaper website, and ask about soccer. You’ll quickly get kind of a standard reaction from a lot of people:
Soccer sucks.
Most of the people making these comments have never seen a soccer game before, let alone taken the time to learn about the sport. What is clear to many of the individuals is this:
I’m honestly not fooling on this people, these are the comments generated by many Americans in sports bars and forums. But what does it say about the United States as a whole? Quite a bit.
US Soccer Fans (2006 hortongrou/sxc.hu)
If we look at each item one by one, we can pick out some things. However, it’s when we put those observations together in a description do we get an, albeit gross generalization, a clear window into some of the problems facing our county:
Americans require clear cut winners and losers, prefer carnage and violence, are completely xenophobic to anything that is not American, are bored by collective play, and generally spite anything European or Latin.
Think about it for a moment, and you’ll start to see a little bit of what I’m talking about. Over the recent weeks and months, we have seen this attitude in American discourse rear its ugly head. While it may just be a bombastic minority, it lends toward why the US is in such a disarray and why it will take a long time to get back on our feet. Simply, we are enthralled with the idea that some win and some lose, a tie, or people being equal, is not acceptable. We’re a violent nation, having a per capita gun ownership level that far surpasses any other western nation at nearly 1 gun for every 1 person living in the US. We are indeed a horribly xenophobic nation; everything that did not originate here is seen as some how an attempt to usurp American culture. We don’t like the idea of working together. And, finally, we really do spite anything that is European or Latin; with the former becoming a derogatory term to describe something as socially beneficial, and the latter is a polite way of saying “Illegal Alien”. Finally, we love to jump to assumptions.
While some folks reading this post may latch on to that last sentence and say “BUT, BUT, DIDN’T YOU JUST ASSUME!!!”, so, for those who fail both reading and comprehension, I’ll state again: gross generalization.
We’re not going anywhere as a nation or a people if we continue this disgusting dialog. It really is about damn time we realize we’re players on a world stage. A small fraction of this planet. It’s about damn time we realize that winning isn’t everything. It’s about time we begin to work together rather than scream at each other. It is far past due for us to stop the mindless distaste for Europe, and our continued dehumanizing of Latin America. It’s time for us to take the violence factor down a notch or 10. More importantly, it’s time we understand that American Culture is not a specific culture like Irish Culture or Russian Culture; ours is every culture, including our language. Our nation is made up of people from all four corners of the globe and the places in between. Why do you think that we have Greek restaurants, Chinese restaurants, Turkish restaurants, etc., and that “American Cuisine” consists of Burgers and Fries, or Steak. Everything we have comes from somewhere else. And we’re immensely better for it.
As the post-World Cup articles continue to discuss the expansion and growth of soccer and MLS in the United States, and rebuttals are made, the discussion of soccer is not entirely a sports discussion. Watch closely, and I think you’ll see it is a surrogate for a lot of the larger discourse occurring in the country today.
In the end, although with a disappointing loss to Philadelphia yesterday, I must say: GO SOUNDERS FC!