What I’m Reading: July 8, 2007

That money plays a huge role in the success of teams is no surprise. One of the most successful teams both on the field and earning money (no coincidence, of course) is Manchester United. As the Irish Independent reported last week, Man U has been among the most successful clubs worldwide in marketing itself. The marketing department there has done an incredible job, raising the profile of the team around the globe. Many of the teams sponsors – e.g. AIG – are international companies interested in being seen by Man U fans around the world. And because the club can boast such a wide fan base, it can charge its sponsors more. This money can then be used to buy stars. The 75 million pound bill so far for summer purchases Owen Hargraeves, Nani, Anderson, and Carlos Tevez (soon enough) could not been achieved without the club’s success in marketing.

Wayne Rooney sports the AIG logo

A lot of the reason Manchester United built its brand in the 1990s was because of a certain David Beckham in their ranks. Evidence of Beckham’s marketability came this week when Real Madrid announced that the England midfielder had earned the club 300 million pounds. “Madrid reportedly sold one million shirts within the first six months of Beckham’s arrival and the money continued to roll in over the course of his contract at the Bernabeu.” Suddenly, the enormous salary Beckham will soon be earning with the Galaxy sounds like it could be a bargain.

Indeed, there is evidence that Beckham’s salary has already been recouped and more by the Galaxy. According to CNN Money, “[h]is base salary of $5.5 million for this year, a MLS record, has already been covered by increased revenue for the Galaxy.” The writer, Chris Isidore, cites some interesting stats about Beckahm’s marketability in the US, including the fact that over 50% of Americans know who he is (21% know Tim Duncan, 9% are familiar with Landon Donovan). Soccer teams such as Manchester United, Real Madrid, and now the Galaxy have all tried to improve their marketing, but none can match the all-conquering Beckham brand.

Seriously, how can you compete with this?

Many have suggested that Beckham is coming to a country of complete soccer novices. It seems that the less familiar such “experts” are with American soccer, the more likely they are to criticize it. So it’s refreshing to hear a foreigner not only praise, but really take the time to get to know the diversity of American soccer. Simon Kuper, author of the classic Football Against the Enemy, turned his weekly Financial Times column to American soccer. Kuper points out that soccer is the most popular sport for kids and that immigration is only increasing the numbers of players. He writes that immigrants are among the “nearly 20 [million] Americans played soccer at least once” last year.Ultimately, Kuper makes a point that I’ve long thought sensible. To be successful, American soccer need not overtake the other big sports; it merely needs to find a place to co-exist with them. Kuper writes that this level of support is not unlike that seen in Europe: Only a tiny minority of Americans watch soccer in the stadium but then so do only a tiny minority of British or Italian fans.”

Kuper, however, is not blind to the racial disparities in American soccer and points out that “[m]oms tend to see soccer as an innocent game, free of certain aspects of modern America: ?not violent, not drenched in money, and not very black.”

The touchy subject of race in soccer also came up in Steven Wells’s interesting piece, Bend it Like Janiah, about an African-American girls’ team called the Monarchs in inner-city Philadelphia. Wells mirrors Kuper’s comment about soccer being a way for wealthy, white families to segregate themselves. He quotes sociology professor Paul Kooistra, who says, “Competitive youth soccer in the United States is really the middle-class equivalent of dressage or polo. It provides a way middle-class parents can separate themselves and their children from lower social classes and minorities.”

The team Wells profiles is an all African-American team that plays in an area wracked by violence, drugs, and poverty. That the Monarchs exist is a minor miracle; that it is one of the only inner-city soccer teams in the United States is a major shame.

Andrea Canales used the Chicago Fire’s hiring of Juan Carlos Osorio to bring up a similar “sensitive topic - the ethnicity of players and coaches in the league.” Writing at her Sideline Views blog, Canales says,

Basically, it’s my contention that, (although I don’t really know all the coaches of the league personally) no one is looking to discriminate. Soccer is the world’s most international game, and both coaches and players are actually some of the most widely-traveled people who work regularly with a amazingly diverse group.

That said, I also believe that coaches feel comfortable with what’s familiar. They’re not going to stray too far from the roots of the style that they know and understand

Canales goes on to contrast MLS’s “honest, direct and hardworking approach” with the “varied and often more creative” style used in Latin America, and wonder whether players and coaches who value the latter style may be ignored. Hopefully, Osorio’s appointment is a sign of things changing.

Meanwhile, the Copa America keeps providing interesting storylines. As I discussed last week, this tournament was always going to be a chance for Hugo Chavez to burnish his image. It is perhaps not too surprising, then, to learn that many of the tickets to the games were given to Chavez supporters. How else would it have been possible to carry this out?

Kim Jong Il, eat your cult-of-personality-loving heart out

Until it crashed out against Uruguay yesterday, the Venezuelan team had done quite well. Qualifying for the second round was an achievement for a team that is normally the laughing-stock of South America. The only thing that made this achievement sweeter was the fact that Chavez’s enemy, the Americans, had done so poorly. This confluence of events was not ignored, as Roy Carroll writes in the Guardian:

Commentators on state television channels have hailed Venezuela’s first-round results as a sign that the Bolivarian revolution, named after the 19th-century liberation hero Simón Bolívar, is on track. That President George Bush’s emissaries should be sent packing makes Venezuela’s breakthrough all the sweeter, according to some football fans. “They might have the best military in the world but they haven’t stood a chance on the pitch,” said Jorge Bernal, 41, a fruit seller.

The American team, though did not get out of Venezuela without a minor diplomatic incident. According to the AP, two American State Department security agents were accused of lacking the proper permits to carry their weapons. After a tense stand-off, “The agents were held for two hours by immigration authorities who lectured them saying Americans may think they can flout local laws, but not in Venezuela.” The agents were ultimately let go after receiving this good-bye present from the Chavez government.

Finally, because I’m a grammar-nerd, I became very interested in a minor point at the end of Grant Wahl’s mailbag column. Wahl wrote that one way to “detect a EuroPoser soccer fan in the United States … is if he says something like ‘D.C. United are hammering the Red Bulls.’ My Microsoft Word program flags it for bad grammar, and so do I. Can’t stand it.” I have noticed Brits’ use of the plural (are) for what seems like a singular subject (D.C. United) and often wondered where it comes from. And while I agree with Wahl that it is a tip-off that the speaker is a EuroPoser (his word, not mine), I disagree that it is incorrect.

Ruth Walker, the language columnist for the Christian Science Monitor, agrees with me. She wrote in November of some of her “favorite … newer conceptual names: the New England Revolution and the Chicago Fire.”

Both are distinctly singular. And yet they are often paired with plural verbs: “The New England Revolution are currently selling season tickets,” that team’s website announced a while back.

This sounds like a BBC bulletin on football (soccer) results: “Manchester United have defeated Arsenal.” It always sounds so veddy, veddy BBC. But it’s based on a principle that Americans might do well to follow: A singular collective noun - group, team, staff, family - can take a singular or plural verb, depending on whether its members are acting severally or in concert.

So, while I, as an American will generally use the singular when talking about a team (I do use the plural at times, I admit), I don’t claim that people who do otherwise are incorrect.

Some quick hits to finish off:

• Did anyone else notice that the wave going around the stadium in the recent US vs. Colombia game was going counter-clockwise? Perhaps it was a bunch of Chavez hacks showing their displeasure for imperialist American clockwise waves? Or maybe those cheeky Southern Hemispherians were just trying to mimic the water spinning counter-clockwise in their toilet bowls?
• Tony Edwards at US Soccer Players writes about the growth in American soccer, especially that seen on Spanish-language TV.
• 101 Great Goals writes about soccer popping up in TV shows, including Entourage, Sex in the City, and other programs I’ve never seen.
• Zoran Milosavljevic of the Reuters Soccer Blog writes about Champions League qualifying match-ups that are pitting former Yugoslavian clubs against each other, and the security concerns such matches are raising. In my hometown in Ohio, an amateur game between ethnic Croatian and Serbian teams had to be called off (this was in the middle of the Balkan War) for fear of violence; I can only imagine what might happen in the Balkans themselves if these matches go forward.
• Finally, for a weird sport, how about kabbadi? Suggested by my brother, it sounds like the kids’ game Red Rover except that those coming over have to hold their breath. Or something like that.

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