Soccer, Schmoccer : Despite U.S. Win, Many Still Bored and Confused
It was 5:30 p.m. at Chillers Bar & Grill in Santa Monica. The Nigeria-Bulgaria World Cup match was beaming down from overhead TVs. At a table by the door, Chris Lehr prepared to explain soccer’s offside rule to his old college buddy, Kelly Younger.
OK, Lehr said, the Heinz ketchup bottle is the offense and the French’s Classic Yellow mustard container is the defense. The daiquiri cups are the goal posts. The saltshaker is the ball. And the pepper? “The pepper is just hanging out.”
At that point, a Bulgarian player collapsed in pain on the field. But the game continued without a pause. “He’s holding his crotch and they won’t replace him?” Younger asked in amazement. “If that was me, I’d want to leave town.”
Welcome to the world beyond the world riveted to the World Cup. As billions of people across the planet live and breathe each header and back pass--and scads of Americans perk up their ears in the wake of the U.S. team’s stunning upset of Colombia on Wednesday--many Southern Californians remain confounded, dumbfounded or just plain uninterested.
Soccer, some say, is boring because of the low scores and what to the uninitiated seems like a slow pace.
“Nothing to nothing means nothing to me,” said Gayle Green, 95, as he sat at a South Pasadena bar, paying scant attention to a match on a nearby screen. “I’d watch the Financial News Network before soccer.”
Others are curious why goalkeepers insist on dressing differently than their teammates. (In Spider-Man-style suits, for instance.) Or are perplexed by the fact that the game doesn’t necessarily end when the clock seems to say it should.
Then there are those who simply can’t fathom what keeps players from picking up the ball and just flinging it into the darn net. “Why did God give you arms and hands,” said Westside film editor Richard Boehm, “if you can’t use them?”
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In staging the planet’s premier team sports event in the soccer-stupid States, sponsors are hoping that Americans will finally get caught up in World Cup fever. But midway through Week 2, evidence persists that, at best, it is a low-grade infection.
Take the crowd last week at Gus’s Bar-B-Q in South Pasadena, a neighborhood joint a few miles south of World Cup Ground Zero, otherwise known as the Rose Bowl.
In the midst of the startling U.S. victory against Columbia, bar patrons craned their heads away from the soccer match toward a second TV to watch the introductions, the introductions, of the players for the final game of the NBA basketball championships.
“Basketball is much more comprehensible,” said banker Steve McIntire, 52. “Everything in soccer seems to be random and accidental.”
A few minutes later, in the waning moments of the match, Colombia scored to narrow the American lead to 2-1. Even then, McIntire and his drinking partner, Irwin Zolle, remained unfazed when apprised.
“This isn’t basketball, they’ll need another hour to score again,” McIntire said.
“An hour? They’ll need two more weeks,” replied Zolle, a financial adviser from Pasadena.
In seeking to raise Cup consciousness, no better selling point could exist than the strong U.S. performance. After all, as Gus’s manager Vincent Lappas puts it: “Americans like sports that they’re good at. If they don’t win, they don’t watch.”
Yet rarely has there been a week less suitable for marketing, with soccer having gone head to head with the seesaw New York Knicks-Houston Rockets NBA final, and, of course, the non-soccer story of the century, the O.J. Simpson saga.
Indeed, for some national commentators, soccer continues to represent the epitome of ennui. CBS talk show host David Letterman joked last week: “I think I speak for millions and millions of Americans when I say: Is the World Cup over yet?”
Or how about the spoof of America’s lack of soccer acumen in the new soft drink ad aired before and after World Cup matches? The PowerAde commercial features multiple sports star Deion Sanders catching a soccer ball, cradling it in his arms, running downfield, and, after a ref waves a yellow penalty card, pulling out a pen to autograph it.
Among the newly converted, such ribbing may seem sacrilegious.
“All I know is you kick the ball into the net,” growled actor/action hero Mr. T as he watched a match in Legends Sports Bar and Rib Room in Santa Monica. A little ignorance doesn’t necessarily hurt, he suggested: “I didn’t know all the rules for football and I had a football scholarship.”
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Unquestionably, those monomaniacal soccer fanatics streaming into Old Town Pasadena--the ones sporting strange birthmarks on their cheeks that at second glance turn out to be painted flags--know the rules of the game.
Yet even in their midst, one can find holdouts galore.
Insurance broker Gene Whitlock, a luncheon regular at Dodsworth Bar & Grill, admitted that he would rather take a trip to the dentist than to the Rose Bowl.
“My feeling is that if they flew me in on a helicopter that landed on the 50-yard line and had me sit in an air-conditioned box, I still wouldn’t go,” shouted Whitlock above the din of fans watching a Switzerland-Romania match last week. “I suppose I’m interested in the United States. But Cameroon? That sounds like a cookie.”
Down the street at a cappuccino bar, Pasadena college professor Gary Mraz gazed at the passing street spectacle and said: “I’m not interested in sports but this is like going to a concert where people dress up to look like Madonna or Motley Crue. . . . It’s a fascinating cultural experience.”
Farther down Colorado Boulevard at the staid old Pasadena Cafeteria, soccer was the last thing on the mind of attorney Robert Shelley.
“I frankly don’t understand the game and therefore haven’t watched,” said the industrial accident specialist. “I don’t know what a free kick is, although at least I do know there is such a thing.”
Similar sentiments were echoed last week across the Los Angeles Basin.
“I can’t understand why they get so excited,” said Juan De Cruz, a marketing representative at the Downtown YMCA.
And on the Westside, film editors Boehm and Barry Zetlin seemed bugged about the fashion stylings of goalkeepers.
“The color has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the team,” Boehm said while taking a break from cutting an air combat film scene. “Have you noticed that? The guy is dressed like Robocop. He has pads and everything. I mean, what game is he playing, where’s he coming from?”
“It’s like, ‘I’m the goalie, I think I’ll wear black today,’ ” Zetlin said. “Oh, let’s see, today plaid might look nice. Or like we’re playing Romania. I know they hate red. I’ll wear red today. That’ll rub them the wrong way.”
Yet there are some consolations for the soccer-ignorant.
“I thought the World Cup was that sailing contest,” laughed Younger after his impromptu soccer/condiment lesson at Chillers. “But at least the drinks here seem to be half price. So there are benefits for those who don’t like soccer.”
