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.

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For years, businesses have tested new products in the city of Columbus, Ohio. The capital city is known as a good test market because its population largely resembles that of the United States as a whole. So perhaps it’s not surprising that in the past few years, like many places that did not traditionally have much of a Hispanic population, Columbus has been an ever more popular destination for immigrants from Latin America (the city’s Festival Latino last year drew 300,000 people).

The local MLS team, the Columbus Crew, has taken note of the growing Hispanic population in the area. This year, they appointed Eddie Carvacho, the team’s former goalkeeper coach, as their Director of Hispanic Development. Upon his appointment, Carvacho said, “My objective is very simple. I am the connector within our organization between the growing Hispanic community…” While his objective may be simple, achieving it is anything but. Carvacho spoke with me recently about the challenges of attracting Hispanic fans to the Crew.

Eddie Carvacho (photo: Columbus Crew)

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People of Croatian ancestry make up less than one-half of one percent of the population. But the influence of this small Balkan country on soccer in the land of Oz has far exceeded their numbers. Of the 23 players on Australia’s 2006 World Cup squad, 7 had Croatian heritage. Croatia’s team had 3 Australian-born players.

Croatian-Australian Mark Viduka (photo: Getty Images/ABC)

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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 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…)

During qualifying matches for the 1998 World Cup, I had an argument with some friends about how to pronounce the last name of Costa Rican forward Paulo Wanchope. They said that since Wanchope (who just signed with the Chicago Fire) was from a Spanish-speaking country, the e at the end of his last name had to be pronounced. I claimed it was silent, but I couldn’t explain why. It was only when I went to Costa Rica in 1997 that I came to understand the reason why the e is indeed silent. The reason has everything to do with the history of the Central American country.

Paulo Wanchope (photo: AP / Deutsche Welle)

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