Chelsea and Arsenal have provided an excellent study in contrasts this week. While Roman Abramovich was busy parting with Jose Mourinho, the best manager Chelsea has ever known, and bringing in a stooge who has already lost the dressing room, Arsenal played some fantastic football and turned in a financial report that propelled them up the clubs rich list to second in the world (behind only Real Madrid). The contrast was clear for all to see: Abramovich’s ego was taking Chelsea down as quickly as his rubles had taken them up the footballing hierarchy while Arsenal had taken a slow and steady approach, with investment in a new stadium and faith in their young players. At least for now, the Gunners appear in a much stronger position (that is, until Alisher Usmanov takes over).

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The United States men’s and women’s national teams both took on their respective Swedish counterparts recently. The men lost 1-0 in a friendly while the women won 2-0 in the first round of the Women’s World Cup (if a tie-breaker were needed, perhaps we could use the Davis Cup, where the American tennis team beat Sweden in the semifinals).

I, sadly, was unable to watch any of these matches (tennis included), but my parents did and pointed out an interesting contrast between the makeup of Swedish men’s and women’s teams. While the women are almost exclusively “typical” Swedes with names like Johansson, Forsberg, and Lundgren, the men have much wider variety of names that hint at their more diverse backgrounds.

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Note: This is the ninth and final part of my American Soccer Road Trip, which will involve me traveling across the country, finding stories that exemplify the diversity that exists in American soccer. Check back soon for further updates.

If I had to choose one word to describe Kosuke Kimura, it would have to be determined. The Colorado Rapids midfielder would not be where he is today were it not for his determination. From a young age, he knew he wanted to be a professional player, but at times it seemed such a goal would be impossible to attain. He has achieved his goal, although far from Japan, the country where he grew up. But determined as Kimura is, he is unwilling to rest on his laurels, and now has new goals for himself as a player.

Kosuke Kimura (photo: Colorado Rapids/MLS)

I knew of Kosuke Kimura because he is the only Japanese player in MLS. The league has said that it wants to attract Japanese players, but has yet to do so (my own hypothesis is that Japanese players aren’t that interested because the level of play is not much higher than the J-League and the pay is often lower). MLS didn’t attract Kimura to the league; he found it through his own roundabout career path. He sat down recently in Denver to talk about how he got to the US and differences he sees between American and Japanese soccer.

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In case you’re interested, an article originally posted here has been picked up and published in the Christian Science Monitor. The piece, which I titled The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and How Language Affects our Understanding of Soccer, is in today’s Monitor on the commentary page under the headline Win or Lose, It’s How You Say the Game. It has been edited from the original essay, but contains the same basic ideas.

Note: This is the eighth part of my American Soccer Road Trip, which will involve me traveling across the country, finding stories that exemplify the diversity that exists in American soccer. Check back soon for further updates.

The final chapter in Sam Quinones’s book Antonio’s Gun and Delfino’s Dream is titled “A Soccer Season in Southwest Kansas.” The book is a study of contemporary Mexican migration, and the last chapter is set in a place that most people don’t associate with immigration. But as immigration patterns are shifting, Mexicans and other Hispanics are settling in places like Garden City, Kansas, far from the communities where such immigrants have typically settled.

Hispanic immigrants are bringing many new things to these communities. Soccer is often a new sport in these areas in which American football, basketball, and baseball have traditionally reigned supreme. Even while soccer has made inroads in American suburbs and cities, its penetration into rural areas has been minimal. As Sam Quinones describes Southwest Kansas, “out here on the High Plains [soccer] was as foreign to the native white residents as the immigrants who played it” (222).

Quinones covers and writes about a season with the Garden City High School soccer team. The team’s success that season has a profound impact on a town struggling to adapt to new demographic realities. Like in Paul Cuadros’s book A Home on the Field, Sam Quinones uses soccer as an avenue to explore social issues relating to the immigrants who play the game. It is a book that soccer fans might not be aware of, but is worth a read at the very least for its chapter on Garden City High School’s team.

After reading this chapter in Sam Quinones’s book, I got in touch with the author and he was kind enough to put me in touch with people in Garden City. I was able to stop in the town as part of my American Soccer Road Trip and talk with them about the team today. Quinones’s book does an excellent job of describing the team and the role of soccer in Garden City, so I chose not to repeat this task, but instead to compile a photo essay of the team. I hope this will add to Quinones’s book and prove interesting to readers of this blog. (more…)

Note: This is the seventh part of my American Soccer Road Trip, which will involve me traveling across the country, finding stories that exemplify the diversity that exists in American soccer. Check back soon for further updates.

In 1977, when Peter Vermes was 11 years old, his father took him to see a World Cup qualifier in his homeland between the Hungarian national team and the USSR. The young boy was in awe of the stadium and the players out on the field. He told his father, “One day I’m going to play in this stadium. I’m going to play for the United States and we’re going to play against Hungary.”

Vermes’s desire to play for the US against Hungary reflected his family’s background. He was born in Delran, New Jersey in 1966 to Hungarian parents. His father, Michael, had been a professional player, a member of the great Budapest Honved FC team in the 1950s. Things were on course for the elder Vermes to play in the 1958 World Cup, but the Soviet invasion of 1956 forced him to flee his homeland. He eventually settled in the United States, although he would later return most summers to Hungary with Peter, seeking to instill a connection to his homeland in his young son.

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