Is Soccer Un-American? – Part 1
Note: This article ended up being quite long. As a result, I have broken it into two parts, the second of which will be published tomorrow.
A book came out shortly before the 1994 World Cup whose title almost perfectly summed up many Americans’ ideas of soccer. It was called Twenty-Two Foreigners in Funny Shorts. Something about soccer has always been, to many in this country, a bit foreign. Perhaps even un-American. Why is this? I believe there are several reasons.
Some people dislike soccer simply because it is, literally, not American. Baseball, basketball, and American football were all invented in the US (even if they may have had roots in games from other countries). Soccer, on the other hand, was invented in Europe. This in itself is cause enough some people to dislike the sport.For the set of Americans who like to think of ourselves as a “chosen people,” it is difficult to embrace a foreign sport. Better we should offer our own chosen sports rather than adopt inferior ones invented by others. Allen Barra represents this strain of thought well in a 2002 piece in Salon:
Yes, OK, soccer is the most “popular” game in the world. And rice is the most “popular” food in the world. So what? Maybe other countries can’t afford football, basketball and baseball leagues: Maybe if they could afford these other sports, they’d enjoy them even more.
Others say simply that soccer and the American character just can’t mix. Sports Illustrated columnist and NPR commentator Frank Deford is perhaps the best example of this line of thinking. Speaking specifically about the offside rule, Deford has said, “That’s simply un-American. We’re all about forward, forward, forward, in sports and in our society. From the 19th century onward, we have not taken to soccer. It’s almost as if it’s not in our DNA to like it.”
A New York Times article last year about a team of refugees from all over the world who play on a team in Georgia called the Fugees quoted a local mayor who had similar views on soccer. In explaining the rationale he had used for not letting the team play soccer in a local park, mayor Lee Swaney of Clarkston could only say, ““There will be nothing but baseball down there as long as I am mayor.” We might complete this thought: “because it’s an American sport.”
This view of soccer as a foreign sport has a long history. Mark Salisbury has written about the physical director at Northwestern University, who said in 1915, “We do not believe in its [soccer's] success in the ordinary college community. It takes a leaven of good Scotch, English, and Scandinavian boys to make it a success.”
With the exception of cities like St. Louis, Bethlehem (Pennsylvania), and Fall River (Massachusetts), soccer for most of its American history gained its strongest foothold in ethnic communities. It was an easy sport to ignore or disdain when the only people playing it were those with funny last names, whose presence in the country many were happy to ignore.
Soccer remains a potent example for xenophobes to use in describing why some immigrants have not yet become Americans. Right-wing reactionary Pat Buchanan complained on the Daily Show last year about Mexican fans who boo the American flag and national anthem during soccer games at the LA Coliseum.
Part 2 is available here.
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October 18th, 2007 15:29
Good article. Americans just don’t understand soccer–the passion, the drama, the skill. Moreover, given that it is not ready made for TV advertising, there is no great marketing to bring it to fore.
Americans are just boorish…
Soccer is life! everything else is details
October 18th, 2007 18:18
A couple of points. FIrst: The only Americans who are really hostile to Soccer are media institutions who are loathe to add soccer to their coverage. They know that if they cover MLS they will be asked to cover England, Spain, Champs League, etc…
This and the lack of commercial breaks just mentioned renders much of our media uninclined to follow the sport. ESPN is coming around and new media has enabled us to work around lax papers, radio, and even video.
Second: Millions of Americans are not boorish isolationists but the very opposite. While matched in number by Buchananesque jackasses, these “cosmophilic” Americans hit the sport bedcause they want to get a little deeper into the rest of the world.
Nothing makes me feel like I’ve been somewhere than finding out about the sport culture. Look at Germany’s “Miracle of Bern” in 1954, England’s frustration over their lack of dominance, Spanish and Catalan focus on clubs or Africans and Brazilians dealing with exploitation all over the world. The representative character of sport is striking.
October 19th, 2007 06:01
Suppose that some American ex-pat baseball enthusiasts attempted to set up a pro baseball league in Europe. Many, if not most, Europeans would find the sport confusing and dull. It’s likely that baseball would never match football in popularity, even if an army of advertisers and marketers attempted to convince Europeans otherwise.
Would I conclude that Europeans were “boorish” isolationists because they didn’t like baseball? No. I wouldn’t expect large numbers to rapidly embrace a sport that required decades to become established in the US, Japan, and Latin America. Why are we to be condemned because soccer hasn’t reached world-wide levels of popularity after such a short incubation period?
I’m really surprised that in a country as diverse as the US, so many people lump everyone together as “Americans” and use a polarizing, marginal pundit such as Pat Buchanan–or a small-fry mayor of an insignificant town–to characterize the national psyche. So Americans won’t adopt anything that didn’t originate here? Really? So we all eat…what? White bread with Velveeta? No one celebrates their ethnic heritage–everyone has forgotten their own immigrant roots? The only Americans who count are WASPs? I don’t think so.
I agree with Jason completely and would like to add that we haven’t even had consistent TV coverage of soccer for very long in the US. Davies’ book is excellent, but the conditions he described in the early 90’s are quite different from what we see now. The internet (to which Jason alluded), has forced traditional media to recognize soccer.
And Frank DeFord is wrong–hockey has an offside rule, which hasn’t stopped millions of American kids from taking up the sport.
October 19th, 2007 06:35
[...] This is part 2 of this article. Part 1 can be read here. [...]
October 19th, 2007 08:30
[...] Why soccer isn’t as American as apple pie (Culture of Soccer) [...]
October 21st, 2007 07:19
This was an excellent article and is “spot on” in defining the attitude which has been prevalent in the United States. I grew up in a rural area of the United States. Many in the area seemed to almost regarded those from neighboring states as foreign.
I’ve lived in Africa for 2 years, Europe for 11 and have traveled extensive to areas of the Pacific and Indian Ocean regions including Australia and numerous Asian countries. I have had the opportunity to view American’s they way the rest of the World views us. This has helped shape my understanding.
The point I would have to differ with this article is that the rules of soccer were formalized in England in 1863 but football (played with the foot) has been around for thousands of years and was played in this country in the early 1600’s when my forefather’s arrived. A similar game was played by Native American’s before the arrival of European settlers on these shores. Soccer is very much American. Soccer wasn’t invented in Argentina, Brazil, Spain, Mexico, Egypt, or Iraq but is immensely popular in their places as it is in England, France and Germany.
Many anti-soccer pundits treat sports as if it a religion or a marriage and they if they watch or enjoy soccer they are being unfaithful. What they don’t get is that they can still watch and support their other sport and the same time watch and support soccer.
I think that attitudes will slowly change as more American’s realize it’s patriotic to support Soccer because soccer is the World sport. Also soccer so so much better in regards to health. I am very glad my son plays soccer. Gridiron is an unhealthy sport. Most linesman are groomed to be obese. The average NFL player’s life expectancy is only 52 years of age. It’s not even classified as an aerobic sport.
Certain other inaccurate attitudes keep getting propogated in this country. One is that soccer is a violent sport. I’m 53 years old and I can tell you that I’ve been watching baseball, gridiron and basketball over the years and violence is just as much in these sports as it is in football (soccer). It’s very easy to find example after example whenever I hear this rhetoric.
I’m an an American who served my country for 25 years in the United States Navy – the greatest navy in the World. My ancestors came to this continent from several European countries as early as the 1600s. They have fought in every war since the revolutionary war. I’m an American.
Patriotic Americans support the U.S. National Soccer Team(s) which play in the World’s most popular sport. They also support the system which develops and supplies players to the U.S. National Team (men’s) . The majority of these players come from Major League Soccer (MLS).
The majority of American’s were like me and had never been to a professional soccer game in their entire lives. This is changing very rapidly and they, like me, will be attending more and more MLS games. I grew up on baseball, basketball and gridiron and still watch these sports. I didn’t really discover football (soccer) until around 16 years ago. I lived in Europe for 11 years and have watched some of the World’s top team.
Major League Soccer is an exciting league. Many of the current MLS teams have played some of the top club teams in the World and won. For several years there were no American professional teams in the top 350 top clubs in the World. This has changed and these MLS clubs are rising in the Club rankings as they continue international play.
The league has only been in existence for the past 12 years in wake of the 1994 World Cup in the United States and after the fall of the North American Soccer League due to over expansion in the bad economy of the early 1980s. MLS is on very solid footing and unlike the NASL is intentionally expanding at a slower rate. MLS , unlike NASL has a very wide base of talented American players and also a growing international player base. Attendance is growing and David Beckham has been contributing to this. Many are coming to see David Beckham but staying because of the quality of play.
Soccer (more appropriately in my opinion called football or futbol) is the most popular sport in the World. Soccer is played in almost every country and is by far the most popular team sport in the world. The pinnacle event for World soccer is the World Cup which is held every four years.
The 2006 Men’s World Cup was aired by a total of 43,600 broadcasts across 214 countries and territories. The 2006 FIFA World Cup Germany had a total cumulative television audience of 26.29 billion (24.2 billion in-home and 2.1 billion out-of-home viewers). An estimated 25% of the world’s population watched the final game of the 2006 World Cup. The United States of America’s men’s team has never won the World Cup. Our best finish as a nation was when the United States Team came in 3rd place in the 1930 World Cup.
Soccer is a sport which requires strength, explosive power, speed & agility, endurance and overall total body strength. The incredible skill required to control a round ball with your foot, body and head without the use of hands takes years to develop and refine. Soccer requires strategy and tactics.
Soccer has been played in the United States since the 1600s when it was played in it’s pre-modern form was played on the Boston Commons in the 1600s. Both groups are probably right as both forms of football was played at the time.
Soccer, in the United States, was initially played more by the upper class school boys and university students in Ivy League schools such as Harvard and Yale. The Oneida club, formed in Boston in 1862 is thought to be the first football club in the United States. Both gridiron and soccer football in the United States tie their origin to to the Oneida club. Since no formal rules had been established and variations kicking the ball and carrying the ball were played at the time. Soccer has enjoyed a number eras of immense popularity in the United States. The first “Golden Age” era of soccer was in the 1920s which culminated in the United States coming in 3rd in the 1930 World Cup. The great depression followed by World War II along with poor marketing brought this era to an end.
There are four times as many players participating in youth soccer than in Little League Baseball.
The United States Soccer Federation has the most registered youth players (3.9 million) in the world, with 2.3 million male players and 1.5 million female players. Germany is second and Brazil third.
Professional soccer didn’t have a resurgence until the arrival of the North American Soccer League and the arrival of Pele who most regard as the greatest player of all time. When the North American Soccer League was formed in 1968, in the wake of the 1966 World Cup, there were few professional players in the United States and most of these had been playing in European Leagues.
In 1975 the NASL team the New York Cosmos miraculously was able to recruit the player most consider to be the greatest player of all time. Edson Arantes do Nascimento best know by his nickname Pelé came to a team of mostly inexperienced semi-professional players. With the arrival of Pelé to North American soccer many other World class players followed including such players are George Best, Franz Beckenbauer, Johan Cruyff, and Giorgio Chinaglia. The league blossomed and peaked with 24 teams by 1984. This rapid over expansion, however, was also spelled the death of the league in 1984.
The recession of the early 1980s hit the young league like a gulf hurricane. In the wake the of the 1973 oil crisis then the 1979 Iran hostage crisis resulting in another energy crisis the economy stagnated. In 1980 inflation soared to 13.5% The prime interest rate, at the time a highly important economic measure, eventually reached 21.5% in June 1982. Unemployment hit a high of 10.8% in December 1982. Job cutbacks were particularly severe in the oil industry, housing, steel and automobiles.
Many new team owners were given franchises without a strong financial foundation. The expensive international players meant a very high payroll. The rapid expansion had also thinned the available talent pool. Despite an unbelievable run the dream ended in 1984 when the North American Soccer League suspended operations but the seed was planted.
Major League Soccer (MLS) was created in December of 1993 by the U.S. Soccer Federation in an agreement with FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association ) in exchange for the 1994 FIFA World Cup being held in the United States. The league started play in 1996 with ten teams. Unlike the NASL, there was already a broad base of skilled American players although many lacked international experience. Because there was limited opportunity in the United States, many young players had gone to play in foreign leagues and did gain international experience. The league had learned from the experience of the North American Soccer League. All MLS franchises have been built on a solid footing.
November 3rd, 2007 11:08
Soccer is simply a wonderful game to play and watch. It is the one game that can be properly described by all of these adjectives at any given time within the same match: simple, elegant, physical, balletic, tactical, graceful, passionate, aggressive, methodical, heart-stopping, agonizing, frantic, exhausting, joyous, and many more. Soccer is the world’s game because it is easily understood, played and enjoyed by anyone and everyone.
I am very proud of the game in this country, the US National Team, the youth and adult amateur systems and primarily, Major League Soccer. I have had the privilege to work in MLS for its entire life span and could not be more proud of the effort my colleagues and I have made to see this sport to its success. We have had amazing highs (most notably in the last 3 years with new ownership, expansion, new stadiums, improved attendances and player development) and some scary lows (Tampa Bay and Miami’s contraction at the end of 2001). There is no question that MLS, in just 12 short years, has established itself as a viable business, league and brand and will thrive in the US. Ultimately, we will rank among the highest caliber of Leagues worldwide and win World Cups with our amazing national physical talent and business acumen. It’s simply a matter of time as the League looks to new markets and we continue to grow the fan base within each team, develop higher level corporate and media relationships, attract and develop talent in the front office and on the field. Rather than rely on converting American football, basketball and baseball fans, soccer fans in the US should invest in this League now via tickets and merchandise as well as viewing game broadcasts to help support its rise to those levels and make it sooner than later and pull everyone else in over time. If you love soccer overseas, live in this country and don’t follow MLS, you are doing yourself and the sport a disservice. It’s time for everyone who loves the game to pick sides in MLS and root for a home team. If you do not, you are no different than Jim Rome and Tony Kornheiser who prefer to bash our sport than take a risk at falling in love with it. Step up and take part in the joy ride.
January 31st, 2008 20:22
Reasons yanks hate football…
1. They are hopeless at it.
2. They are scared of competing with other countries and not being able to guarantee and american victory.
3. Halfs are 45 minutes each way and no room for adverts.
4. TV companies do not want competition for players and leagues, aswell as trophies.
5. Football is just too complex for american high school jocks.
6. Steroids have no affect in football and baseball and gridiron are based on steroid abuse.
7. Americans love playing football and are desperate for some great players and in the mean time they pretend they hate it to cover over the factt hat they suck at it and it hurts.
8. They are jealous because no one cares about gridiorn, NFL euorpe ewent bust and baseball was kicked out of the olympics in 2007.
9. They hoped gridiron would usurp football and it has failed in a mammoth way, this hurts them.
March 7th, 2008 14:01
[...] is NOT un-American By ASN Staff • Oct 7th, 2007 • Category: Op-Ed Yes, this again. Culture of Soccer had to go there. I don’t know why, especially seeing as they base their arguments on a book [...]
March 18th, 2008 16:26
If I were on that soccer team banned from a public park, I would be out there the next day with signs and a megaphone screaming to anyone who could hear me that the mayor is a biased, unfair, and frankly stupid, ignorant, and arrogant.
i would repeat for as long as necessary
May 11th, 2008 09:23
If you are a real ‘merican, you must hate sawker. Sawker should be ridiculed whenever mentioned or the terrorists win.