U.S. Fans Must Learn to Act More Like Fanatics

Two weeks ago, they doused our players with cups of bodily fluids.

On Saturday, we retaliated with ditties.

“Oh when the Yanks . . . go marchin’ in . . . .”

They pelted us with batteries, beer and saliva.

We pummeled them with vowels.

“Claudio, ooooohhhh, oh!”

They wrote signs slandering Alexis Lalas’ mother.

We behaved like Alexis Lalas’ mother.

The good news for U.S. soccer fans on Saturday is that our national team defeated Costa Rica, 2-1, to advance to the final qualifying phase of World Cup ’98.

The bad news is that once again, the players basically did it by themselves.

The crowd at Stanford Stadium was large--40,527--but soccer in this country has grown to the point where large is no longer enough.

It is time for adjectives like loud. And maybe even annoying.

This is not to say we should behave like the animals that roamed the stands in San Jose, Costa Rica, two weeks ago, when the U.S. players were subjected to some of the worst treatment by a team from this country in our international sports history.

But would it hurt so much to boo?

Would it hurt to remind opposing players that once they step on the field, our melting pot shuts?

Whenever a Costa Rican took a cheap shot on a U.S. player Saturday, the mostly pro-American crowd sighed.

When the Costa Ricans screamed at the referee, the crowd yawned.

Even when fans cheered the U.S., they didn’t do it unconditionally.

During introductions. After each goal. When a marching band showed up.

With the exception of several hundred members of a U.S. fan club called Sam’s Army--they are noisy but way too polite--this was a football crowd waiting for the cheerleaders.

“And it’s not like soccer is a sport where they can stop the game and 15-20 pretty girls run out on the field,” said Kevin Payne, president of MLS-champion D.C. United. “We have to adjust for that.”

With Saturday’s victory, the U.S. will schedule 10 games next year in hopes of qualifying for the world’s most popular sports event in France.

Five of those games will be in other countries, where their hosts will be embraced and the U.S. players will be terrorized.

Five of those games will be at home, where, well, they don’t know what will happen.

But if they don’t start receiving the same home-field advantage afforded some of the other teams in their group--namely Mexico, Jamaica, El Salvador and probably Costa Rica--they will not have a chance.

“We have to do it right,” Lalas said. “We have to position the games in the right places, get the good fans out there, give ourselves the same advantage other teams have.”

The important part of that quote for Los Angeles is, “position the games.”

What Lalas is saying is what every U.S. soccer official believes.

They can’t play games against Latin American countries in Latino-dominated markets because their fans are better than ours.

So that game against Costa Rica or El Salvador in the Rose Bowl? Forget it.

They’ll move it, instead, to a place such as Birmingham or Kansas City, where fans can be as docile as they want, because there will be nobody to shout them down.

They may play Mexico in the Rose Bowl because of the money it will raise. But only next winter, after it is assumed that both teams will have already qualified for France.

What does it say for our home-field advantage when officials have to work overtime just to find a good home field?

“I just don’t think the American fans realize their importance to this sport yet,” Lalas said. “I think they just come out to see American players like Cobi Jones running around. . . . They don’t come out to help influence the game. They don’t realize they can.”

Mark Spacone, a teacher from Buffalo who co-founded Sam’s Army, paused while beating a drum amid his red-shirted friends Saturday.

“We’re not looking for trouble,” he said. “We come here to enjoy the game. We respect the Costa Ricans. We respect the game.”

So nice. So . . . North American.

So what?

The U.S. soccer honchos would prefer a section of Duke college basketball fans, next to a section of New York Yankee baseball fans, surrounded by a couple of thousand Oakland Raider football fans.

Well, OK, maybe not the Raider fans, but you get the point.

“We have come a long way in terms of fan support, but we still don’t have the tradition of how to support a team here,” Payne said. “I don’t mean we need to be uglier. Just more spontaneous. I guarantee that can be an intimidating factor.”

More so, perhaps, than wearing Dr. Seuss hats and singing, “We all cheer for the Red, White and Blue.”

“It was very nice here,” said Costa Rican forward Hernan Medford late Saturday.

Think so, huh? How about you just wipe those cleat marks off your face and shut up.

There. Was that so hard?