In the Long Battle for Respect, It’s Still U.S. Against the World
One by one, 32 nations and cultures head to the World Cup departure gate asking themselves the same question.
What next?
In England, it is what’s next for David Seaman, the veteran goalkeeper whose international career may have ended with the soft, high Brazilian cross he let sail over his head into his net?
In France, it is what’s next for Roger Lemerre, the coach who inherited the world champions from Aime Jacquet and oversaw it right out the tournament in three games with no wins and no goals?
In Mexico, it is what’s next for Rafael Marquez, the 23-year-old defender who impressed clubs across Europe with his poised play and may soon have several of them lined up for his services?
Only in America does the question carry the hint of doubt and skepticism--not about the U.S. team, a World Cup quarterfinalist suddenly coming to grips with its young potential, but about the very sport at which it is learning to excel.
What next for soccer in the United States?
As in: Is this the event that finally enables soccer to “make it” in the United States?
(Whatever that means. The not-so-subliminal suggestion every time that question is posed: This is basketball country, boot boys. When you come back home, remember to know your place.)
We have been outsiders in Asia, truly one of a kind. At this World Cup in Japan and South Korea, there have been 31 countries with an unrelenting, unbridled passion for what the rest of the world calls football--and there has been us, the Clueless Yanks, who don’t appreciate saw-ker, who don’t understand it or even know what to call it, who clearly don’t deserve a team capable of beating Portugal and sending a 90-minute jolt of fear through Germany.
The United States had just finished perhaps the best World Cup match it has ever played, pushing Germany to the limit in an eventual 1-0 American defeat, and a foreign journalist hit U.S. Coach Bruce Arena with this:
“Have you considered that when all this razzamatazz is over with that America goes back to following its three or four major sports?”
Germany’s Rudi Voeller never gets those kind of questions.
Arena just rolled his eyes, took a deep breath and advised, “Well, let’s wait and see what happens. Let’s talk in 2006 and see if this World Cup has had any impact on soccer in our country.”
Arena was simply being diplomatic. The foreign journalist can be excused for painting with a broad brush, because he’s not familiar with the turf. But U.S. writers taking their potshots in their quickie soccer-will-never- make-it-with-Americans takes need to take a longer look at what constitutes being “American” in June of the year 2002.
Because when they do, they will see that soccer has already “made it” in the melting pot of Mexican-Americans, Euro-Americans, Asian-Americans and all the other ethnic Americans whose interest in the sport cannot be measured in Major League Soccer television ratings and Women’s United Soccer Assn. attendance figures.
Americans I know avidly follow their favorite club and national teams on Univision and Telemundo and Fox Sports World and the Internet.
Americans I know wake-up at 6 on Saturday morning to head to the local soccer pub to watch live European matches kicking off at 7 a.m. or shell out for satellite English Premier League game of the week telecasts, or link on to the Web for live radio commentary from Manchester or London.
Americans I know, some of them 35-year-old soccer moms, some of them 50-year-old business owners, some of them 40-year-old sportswriters, suit up every weekend to play in adult soccer leagues across the Southland.
These Americans buy athletic shoes and televisions and cars, which is why Nike and Philips and Chevrolet have signed to sponsor U.S. soccer during this World Cup. The success of the U.S. team only gives these companies and others incentive to strengthen and expand those corporate ties.
These Americans are the reasons Philip Anschutz continues to build $50-million soccer-specific stadiums across the country, trying to tap into that huge wellspring of soccer interest many in the mainstream media have conveniently and lazily chosen to ignore. Anschutz rarely invests $50 million in losing propositions.
Alan Rothenberg, the former president of U.S. Soccer who organized the successful American World Cup of 1994, is smart enough to know there is no “big-bang” event that is going to catapult soccer into the football-basketball-baseball universe.
But soccer has carved its niche, and that niche grows a larger with every U.S. success on the playing field--the women winning the 1996 Olympics and 1999 World Cup, the men reaching the 2000 Olympic semifinals and 2002 World Cup quarterfinals.
“There’s no magic wand,” Rothenberg says, “You just keep working hard ... We need to keep re-investing in player development, building the right stadiums and getting the TV money to help move us further along.”
It’s a classic American conceit: If soccer stadiums around the world sell out and soccer media around the world treat the sport as religion, soccer must be doomed for failure in America because those things aren’t happening in California, Texas and Ohio.
The rest of the world had a century’s head start when it comes to growing a soccer culture. Playing catch-up takes some time.
“I never thought we’d see us reach the stage where we’d see the U.S. in the quarterfinals against Germany and have Germany on the run,” Rothenberg says. “The last 30 minutes they were just whacking the ball out of there, trying to take the heat off.”
Give Americans a good team, with at least a chance to win, and they will follow it anywhere.
The fans who followed Team USA to South Korea also stepped up their game. Round by round, their chanting not only grew louder but more creative as well.
“L-A RE-JECT!” they chanted when Mexico brought on substitute Luis Hernandez, a bust with the Galaxy, during the second-round match in Jeonju.
“A-DI-OS AM-I-GOS!” they sang, serenading Hernandez and his teammates off the field and out of the tournament as time wound down on the United States’ 2-0 triumph.
Some of the most important victories in the history of U.S. soccer occurred between midnight and 6:30 in the morning. Quite literally, they happened overnight.
Developing a soccer culture worthy of a World Cup quarterfinalist takes a little longer.
