Home not so sweet for U.S.
No home-field advantage. Ever.
That’s the harsh reality facing the U.S. men’s national soccer team for the foreseeable future, and there is very little that can be done about it.
Today, the defending champion U.S. plays Mexico in the championship game of the 2007 Gold Cup, with the winner earning not only the trophy but a place in the FIFA Confederations Cup in South Africa in 2009.
Even though the game is at Soldier Field, not far from U.S. Soccer headquarters, the Americans won’t be at home, as winger DaMarcus Beasley was quick to point out.
“There’ll be 60,000 or 65,000 Mexicans and about 15 or 20 Americans there,” he said. “There’s definitely going to be a lot of green and white. That’s just the way it is. It’s not going to change for a while.”
In this tournament alone, Mexico has attracted crowds of greater than 60,000 on four occasions, one of them, in Houston, topping 70,000. Today’s game is similarly sold out.
Neutral observers, especially from abroad, find it inexplicable that the U.S. team does not receive such support from fans in its own country. Just the other day, Landon Donovan was repeatedly questioned by an Asian reporter but struggled to make him understand the reason.
“I think we should probably get more respect,” Donovan said, “because we play a lot of games that are away from home. It’s not easy. We deal with things that other countries don’t deal with ever. That’s beneficial. That’s good for us in the end.”
Still, the reporter persisted, pushing the point.
“Look, there’s nothing we can do about it, right?” a frustrated Donovan finally replied. “It’s not our fault, because every time we play, we’re winning. We play these teams with all their fans and we still win. So we just have to play. If you worry about that, then you have other problems. We need to worry about what happens on the field.
“I can’t go grab the guy from the office over there and say, ‘Come support us.’ I can’t do that. We do our job. We win. We try to play well. We try to play entertaining soccer. And if people come, they come. If not, then that’s their prerogative.”
No matter where the U.S. plays, or who it plays, the opposing team always gets the majority of the support. In Birmingham, Ala., a couple of years ago, it was the Guatemalans who came out in large numbers. In the 2005 Gold Cup final in East Rutherford, N.J., it was the Panamanians.
At the Home Depot Center earlier in this tournament, Salvadoran and Guatemalan fans far outnumbered their U.S. counterparts.
“I think as time goes by, you see a little bit of that change,” Donovan said. “Maybe the Hondurans, for example, now are having kids who grow up saying, ‘Well, I like the U.S. I love the U.S. and I want to root for the U.S.’ We hope that eventually someday we have a full U.S. crowd. But for now that’s just the way it is.”
Bob Bradley, the U.S. coach, puts a positive spin on the issue. Having coached Chivas USA, Bradley recognizes the importance of soccer in this country being all-inclusive.
“As a coach, I always look at these kind of games from a standpoint of developing our team and improving our mentality,” Bradley said. “There are certainly going to be games in the United States where the support of Guatemalan Americans or Mexican Americans is strong. We all understand that. We are appreciative of the fact that these people support soccer in this country.
“On the other hand, we have some very, very good support of our own and hopefully that support will continue to grow.”
Like Beasley and Donovan, U.S. forward Clint Dempsey acknowledges that this is just the way things are.
“It kind of is what it is,” he said. “I think it makes us a better team in the long run, to play in atmospheres like that, because that’s what it’s going to be like come time to qualify for the World Cup and we’re playing away. Obviously, we’d like to have more support, but we have a strong team and that doesn’t really faze us or take us off our game.”
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