Note: This is the fifth 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.

Tom Dunmore got to go to his first match the way young children get most things they desire – by pestering their parents until they give in. Dunmore had long wanted to see his team, Brighton Hove and Albion, play, and when his mother finally bought him tickets to a match, it turned out to be, he says, the most exciting game of his life.

The tickets Dunmore’s mother had bought were the cheapest available and didn’t provide much of a view, especially for young Tom. Fortunately, the stewards took him, and many other kids, down close to the field, where they could see the match.

Brighton fans at their previous stadium, the Goldstone Ground (photo: View Images)

Late in the match, when Dean Wilkins hit a 25-yard free kick to win it for Brighton, Dunmore and all the other youngsters in the stadium had the best view in the entire stadium. The place went crazy, Dunmore recalls, and prompted a massive pitch invasion. Because the children were right next to the field, they had to be first onto the pitch, and Dunmore recalls fondly being in awe of the experience of rushing the field. (Meanwhile, back on the terraces, his mother was worrying about her child, but Dunmore says, “it didn’t cross my mind that she’d be worried.”)

This early fascination with the pitch invasion has continued to the present day, and provided the inspiration and name for Tom’s informative and entertaining blog on football fan culture. Pitch invasions, Dunmore says, tell so much about the sport of soccer. They have been used as mechanisms of protest (Brighton fans invaded the pitch in 1996 to protest their Goldstone ground being sold) and lack of security in stadiums has often led to forced pitch invasions. Today, of course, they are relatively rare, which Dunmore sees as symbolic of a Premier League that has completely sanitized.

Reading fans invade the pitch in 2006 (photo: ComEnts)

Tom Dunmore came to the US several years ago for graduate school and has remained here ever since. During the past year, he has become a fan of his new local team, the Chicago Fire, and has been documenting his experience for The Offside blog. I passed through Chicago recently as part of my American Soccer Road Trip and spoke with Dunmore about similarities and differences between English and American soccer.

Dunmore told me that when he first came to the US, he barely knew MLS existed. Like many English expats, he continued to follow soccer from his homeland, which he found surprisingly easy to do on TV and through the Internet. He went to a few Fire games the next year, but didn’t really begin to follow the league until the last year or so. Dunmore says that he began to follow the Fire because he missed having a local team to support.

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A second Where’s David challenge for today. This one is definitely more difficult (in fact, I’ll be shocked if anyone gets it). And, to be honest, it’s not really a soccer sight. However, the with a name like Manchester United Methodist Church, it was too good a photo op to pass up. Do you know where it is? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

The following tombstone was in the cemetery next to the church. A relative of Sir Alex, perhaps?

Another Where’s David? challenge. Can you figure out where I am? If so, comment below. No prizes for the winner except increased self-esteem.

Note: This is the fourth 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 United States is one of the few countries in which serious athletic competition takes place within its institutions of higher education. The combination of sports and school that most people are familiar with is big-time, Division 1 American football and basketball teams. Especially in the top programs, players see their time playing in college as a stepping-stone to a professional career, and it is an open secret that many such athletes rarely study, if they do at all.

The title student-athlete is often used to refer to such players, but it is truly a misnomer. To find true student-athletes, you have to leave the huge campuses of Ohio State, the University of Texas, UCLA, and the like, and go to Division III schools. The athletes at such schools are there for education first and play sports simply for fun. With enrollments that number a fraction of those at large universities and a relatively less serious approach to sports, such Division III institutions are often ignored.

Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana is such a Division III school (it’s also my alma mater and where I played soccer in 1998 and 1999). A Quaker school founded in 1847, it has established a strong reputation among liberal arts colleges. Earlham fields a variety of sports teams, none of which have a particularly strong record of success.

For the past 27 years, the coach of Earlham’s men’s soccer team has been Roy Messer. In his time at Earlham, Messer has had plenty of time to reflect on the role his teams play in the college community. He sat down with me recently and talked about the uniquely American way of mixing athletics and academics, and the role of soccer at a college like Earlham.

Roy Messer (front left) accepting an award in 2005 for his 25 years as head coach of Earlham College (photo: Earlham College)

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Note: This is the third 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.

When the Columbus Crew signed Guillermo Barros Schelotto earlier this season, many wondered why the Argentine forward had chosen to come to the US. He was leaving Boca Juniors, a club where he had spent ten years and achieved the exalted status of an Argentine ídolo, for a struggling team in a not terribly glamorous city in a country without the soccer pedigree of his homeland. About the only thing Boca Juniors and the Columbus Crew have in common is the yellow in their uniforms.

Boca Juniors president Mauricio Macri holds up a Crew jersey while Guillermo Barros Schelotto looks on (photo: AP/Natacha Pisarenko)

When I passed through Columbus yesterday, the Crew had just returned from a retreat in West Virginia. It was Schelotto’s first time in the Mountain State (somehow I just can’t envision him singing along to Take Me Home, Country Roads), and one example of how his life has changed in the past year. Schelotto took the time to speak with me about the differences between the United States and Argentina, both in terms of soccer and life.

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In homage to Where’s Waldo, one of my favorite children’s books, I’ll be offering a series of Where’s David? challenges during my American Soccer Road Trip. Take a look at the picture below and see if you can guess where I am.

Hint: if you can figure out who is depicted in the statue, you should be able to figure out where I am. Post a comment with your guess. And yes, that statue is made out of Legos.

Check back later today for an interview from this destination.