The academy formed as part of Chivas’s sangre nueva (new blood) effort to develop young talent. While at a player identification try-out in 2005 for young players that Chivas Guadalajara put on in San Bernardino (it drew 15,000 players and showed the top brass in Mexico that there was the potential for a US-based team; later that year Chivas USA was founded), Alexis was identified by then scout Dennis te Kloese. Esmaldo and Gilbert kept in contact with te Kloese and when Chivas decided to establish actual affiliated academies in the United States, South Valley Chivas become the second one.

Photo: South Valley Chivas Academy

While it might seem odd that a club based in Guadalajara, Mexico would seek a partnership with a youth club in California’s Central Valley, it makes sense when one considers the history of Mexican migration to that area to work in its expansive agricultural fields. Esmaldo Hernandez estimates that around 75% of the players in the academy are Mexican or Mexican-American. The Hernandez brothers estimate that half of the players in the academy are children of farmworkers, which creates many challenges. Although they try to keep the costs low, the $35 monthly fee is too much for many. Gilbert and Esmaldo do fundraising in the community and even chip in their own money to help players, half of whom receive scholarships, to be part of South Valley Chivas.

The location of the academy also proves a formidable challenge. Located in the small town of Porterville (population 30,000) in Tulare County (the poorest in California) in the middle of the Central Valley, well known for agriculture, which has fields that stretch as far as the eye can see. Yet these are agricultural, not soccer, fields, and finding opponents often involves a long drive. The nearest serious competition is 75 miles away in Fresno; Los Angeles is 3 hours away. Chivas USA has invited players from the academy to come to events in LA, but when Esmaldo has told parents about the opportunity, some have expressed reluctance because they can’t afford to take their kids. “They say, ‘I can’t go, I have to work.’ And it’s not just one or two. Pretty soon, you need a bus load because it’s 20 kids who can’t afford it.”

Farmworkers in Tulare County (photo: Humboldt Magazine)

Getting to games is a challenge for the academy’s teams, and as a result it is often difficult to get their players noticed by scouts and coaches from professional and college teams. Players who Chivas USA might be interested in having join their academy can’t spend the time or money to take the three times a week trip to LA. Chivas Guadalajara has shown interest in some players as well (and indeed some have gone to play with their youth teams for tournaments like Copa Chivas), but for many parents, especially those who don’t have papers to be in the US, the idea of sending their kid to Mexico to join that team’s youth academy is off-putting. “What good is it going to do to have my son over there [in Mexico],” Esmaldo has heard several say, “if I can’t even leave the country?”

In addition, the move by US Soccer to establish a development academy system in 2007 has, ironically, marginalized clubs like the South Valley Chivas Academy that are not a part of it. While the academy almost made the cut, it was not one of the select group of clubs chosen and thus does not receive the support and scouting that those within the system do. When informed of this decision, Gilbert was disappointed, but told US Soccer, “it’s a good thing what you’re doing with the academy system, but for us, what you’re doing is just making it that much harder for some of these kids to be looked at.” He insists: “There is talent here. There’s just not the funding to do anything with these kids.”

Being Mexican-American helps Esmaldo and Gilbert Hernandez connect to academy players as well as their families. But there are some areas in which cultural differences make it a challenge for them to achieve the academy’s goals. 75% of players on the boys teams, for example, are Latinos while only 25% of players on the girls teams are Latinas. Little by little, Esmaldo says, they are seeing changing gender norms that are allowing more Latinas to play. “But still,” he says, “you’ve got old Mexican customs that girls aren’t supposed to play soccer.”

South Valley Chivas girls 1998 team (photo: South Valley Chivas Academy)

In addition, while Gilbert tries to help players to do everything necessary in order to ensure they are eligible to play at the college level (in his day job, he works for the local schools), he often has to fight against cultural norms, including the desire of parents as well as their children to keep family members close by. “For many, it’s like they are still living in Mexico,” says Gilbert. For them, the idea of going several hours or farther to play college soccer can be a tough sell. In some cases, talented players end up getting lured to play in local unaffiliated leagues made up primarily of Latino players. Gilbert and Esmaldo say that the success Alexis and Amber have had has shown some the possibilities that are out there, but it continues to be a tough slog.

The Hernandez brothers say they continue to do the work to support the academy because they want to see youngsters from the community (where they both grew up) succeed. Although they face many obstacles, they hope to see their hard work bear fruit. With half a dozen of their current U18 team being looked at by college coaches and some having interested pro teams in Mexico, their efforts appear to be paying off. The poverty and remoteness in the Central Valley may be obstacles, but South Valley Chivas is helping to overcome them in order to develop talented players. “If you have talent, someone needs to look at you,” says Esmaldo. “Talent is talent, no matter who you are.”

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The concept for the film became crystallized in November of 2008, during qualification for this summer’s World Cup. Miralles was talking with some Mexican friends of his and suggested that, based on form at the time, it was possible that the US could beat Mexico in the Azteca. Their shocked response, he says, showed him that “there is something really deep and important here.” He wondered to himself how a victory over their fiercest rivals could mean something so different to fans on either side of the Rio Grande. “Why is that different for an American fan, who might say, ‘that would be cool!’ versus a Mexican fan, who would describe the same result as ‘catastrophic’?”

Miralles got in touch with two old UCLA film school classmates of his, Mike Whalen, based in Santa Clara, andRoberto Donati, in Mexico. Together, they have been working for nearly two years to make their vision reality. Gringos at the Gate, as the in-progress trailer shows, explores what soccer means to citizens of the two North American neighbors, especially in light of the US teams dramatic improvement in recent years.

The scope of the project has expanded as the filmmakers have worked on it. At various points, they have wanted to finish filming, but opportunities to interview important people have come up, and they have continued to shoot. “The thing with documentaries is that they keep going and going and going,” says Miralles. He says they have ten interviews left and intend to wrap up shooting in the next couple of months.

Asked what the main message he has taken so far, Miralles answers in two parts. For the United States, he refers me to an interview Bruce McGuire of DuNord did with This is American Soccer. McGuire told Adam Spangler: “I’ve told people for years that soccer in America is like a glacier. It’s moving slow, and most people can’t see it, but there is no stopping it. And it’s going to destroy everything (laughing) in its path eventually. It might take 1000 years, but it’s going to do it.” Miralles says he concurs with McGuire, noting that making this film has “made me very optimistic about the future of soccer in the United States. There are so many diverse people who are so interested in the sport. It goes deeper than I ever imagined.” The growth in of knowledge and sophistication among US fans in recent years has amazed Miralles. As an example, Miralles told me about wearing a retro Johann Cruyff LA Aztecs jersey to last summer’s LA Galaxy vs. Barcelona friendly and having fans come up to him saying, “Oh, that’s so smart because Cruyff played for both teams!”

Johann Cruyff LA Aztecs jersey (photo: Toffs)

Mexico, on the other is a country that Miralles describes as a “classic soccer culture.” Given the predominance of soccer in the Mexican sporting landscape, so much of many Mexicans’ identity comes to be tied up in the performance of the Tricolor. Though soccer may seem to be unrelated to more “serious” matters, Miralles believes it is intimately tied up with national identity and self-esteem. He quotes Mexican commentator, who says that soccer is “the most important of things that have no importance.” This importance is especially acute because Mexico has “the misfortune to be next to the richest, most powerful country in the world,” and much of the film documents how Mexicans have dealt with the fact that their rich, powerful neighbor has started to care about, and often beat them in, the one thing in which they always had an advantage: soccer.

The Mexican collaborator on the film, Roberto Donati is also a psychologist, and Miralles told me that he has said that if the two countries were individual people, he would describe Mexico’s feeling of inferiority toward the US as a “psychosis.” Losing to the US, then, takes on far more importance than a loss to any other opponent. The rivalry, Miralles says, “is much more intense for a Mexican than an American could ever understand.”

Mexico and the US today are tied even more intensely than ever through immigration. With millions of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans in the US, the question arises of whom these fans choose to support. Miralles notes a game played in the Rose Bowl in 1994 (leading up to that year’s World Cup) in front of 80,000 produced images of mostly Mexican fans that led many in the national media to take note. In an interview, Gustavo Arellano, satirical writer of Ask a Mexican fame, told Miralles that it was on that day that people said, “Holy shit there are a lot of Mexicans in our country!” and it spurred talk of increased border enforcement (legislation was enacted in 1996).

Mexico fans at the 2009 Gold Cup final in New York (photo:  Every Joe / Newscom)

It’s not surprising, Miralles told me, that children of immigrants, many of whom, he notes, grow up in households dominated by Mexican culture, would come to support Mexico. However, the US victory over Mexico in the 2002 World Cup marked a turning point, “the beginning of the cracking of solidarity” among Mexican-American fans. It was then, when the US beat Mexico on the biggest stage of all that many Mexican-Americans really took notice of the Americans as a power, and many started to see them as a team worthy of supporting. This trend has persisted, Miralles believes, and as the US continues to improve, its support from second and later generation Mexican-Americans will grow.

Although he continues to find interesting people to talk with and stories to tell, Miralles says he and his collaborators are hoping to finish what will be a 95-minute movie by the summer. They hope to have a release right after the World Cup in order to take advantage of the excitement the tournament will generate. It is a project that Miralles has poured his heart and soul into despite the fact that it is only a side project on top of his regular work in television and film. He has also opened his wallet to make his dream reality – he has funded much of it himself with the hope that it might get picked up by a distributor after completion. What would his greatest hope be for the film, I ask. “I have a fantasy that it is such a mind-blowing film that we take it to Sundance and it wins audience favorite. And then of course HBO Films picks it up, it does a cable run …” He trails off, smiling, aware that it is, after all just a fantasy for what is still, despite the growth of soccer in the United States, an esoteric topic. No matter what happens, Miralles says he has been happy to be involved in making the film.  “It’s been very enlightening – and fun!”

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Any list of soccer meccas in the United States would have to include Nevada Smith’s. The bar, located on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, has bringing in the soccer faithful of New York since 1994. Today, on any given weekend day, the bar shows games from morning till night. Matches from England, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, the United States and beyond (catering to a group of supporters of SK Brann, Nevada Smith’s even shows Norwegian league) fill the bar’s many televisions spread over two floors. Weekends are “a constant coming and going of people,” Nevada Smith’s owner Jack Keane told me recently. “On a busy Saturday, there’s no doubt that we have between 2000 and 3000 fans that come through the doors.”

Fans at Nevada Smith’s (photo: New York Daily News)

Keane, a jovial Irishman has been running the bar for 15 years. He recalls the days in the mid-1990s when he could only get one game a day from the Premier League to show in the bar. German and Italian games became available around that time too and he would show them as well. But it was really with the advent of Fox Soccer Channel (then known as Fox Sports World) in 1997 that the number of games he could show exploded. As the number of games shown at Nevada Smith’s increased, so too did its clientele.

Looking back on 15 years in business, Keane points to the 2002 World Cup as a turning point for his bar. “If there ever a time that we really captured something,” he says, “it was during that tournament.” With games kicking off at 2:00 AM, 5:00 AM, and 7:00 AM, it was not ideal for New York audiences. “A lot of bars felt there was no business to be done during Korea/Japan. I had the opposite attitude. I thought it was going to be the biggest party of all time, and I was right.” Indeed, fans packed the bar throughout the month of the tournament.

One reason that Nevada Smith’s has had sustained success is because it has become a meeting place for supporters clubs of various European teams. Most notable are those for English teams, many of which have supporters clubs at the bar. These clubs are often made up of expats living in New York for a time, some of whom have told Keane how important they are to them. “There is absolutely no doubt that the pride in which they take in gathering under their club banners. Many of them over the years have said to me that coming here is the most important part of their week. I’ve heard that story many, many times.”

The New York Gooners at Nevada Smith’s (photo: flickr/Jonathan_Hawkins)

British clubs are not the only ones to have supporters clubs at Nevada Smith’s. There are clubs that support teams from across Europe, and those clubs have often received favorable responses when they have contacted the European teams. Keane told me, “We’ve had lads in here who have made contact with the clubs in Europe and have gotten immediate response. I remember the Barcelona peña was formed 6 years ago. Within 2 years, Joan Laporta was here in the bar. Laporta has visited the bar twice this year.”

While many European expats make up the membership of the supporters clubs, their ranks are filled by many Americans as well. This mirrors a shift in the clientele at Nevada Smith’s, which has gone from 90% expats to a 50/50 split between expats and American fans. Keane notes that several clubs, especially Arsenal’s, have a high percentage of Americans. Wherever they come from, members of the supporters clubs who congregate at Nevada Smith’s often go on to become close friends. “People who met in here under football banners absolutely have become friends outside our walls,” Keane says. “There has been friendships born here that have been life-long for a lot of these lads.”

In his 15 years running Nevada Smith’s, Jack Keane has seen many changes in the American soccer scene. He notes the tremendous growth in interest in the game in the US, and is particularly impressed with the knowledge that many American fans possess. “Soccer fans in this country are very knowledgeable. I’m always amazed. Let’s say they’re a fan of Arsenal. They also know what’s going on with other teams, they know what’s going on in Germany.” Of course, Keane notes, soccer fans in the US are a “tiny, tiny percentage” of the population. Despite this, he has been mystified that the American sports media has not put a larger emphasis on the game, and the national team in particular. “I’ve never understood why the media have not gotten behind the US national team. … They get little respect from the media in general. They could have a wonderful result earlier in the day and that night get little attention.”

But Keane sees things changing. ESPN in particular has changed its tune, doing what Keane calls a “360” on soccer. Keane sees the sport behemoth muscling in on rights to the English Premier League because, while the audience for soccer may be dwarfed by that for baseball, basketball, and American football, it is significant enough for the network to see value in catering to those fans. Indeed, ESPN executives need only take a trip to Nevada Smith’s on any given weekend to see proof of the passion that soccer in the United States can generate. But they had better go soon: Jack Keane says that Nevada Smith’s has nearly outgrown its current Lower East Side location. “We don’t expect to be at this location very much longer. We’re looking forward to expanding. We have a group of investors who want to take us nationwide.”

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Daniel Ridenhour (L) talking with locals in Uganda (photo: Daniel Ridenhour)

Daniel Ridenhour says that going to Uganda was an eye-opening experience for him personally. Having never been to the country before, he spoke with Winthrop’s two current Ugandan players, but he says, “they can tell you, but until you see it with your own eyes, it’s not what you think it’s going to be like.”

One of the first things that Ridenhour noticed upon arriving in Uganda was a very different attitude toward organization. Despite the fact that he had traveled thousands of miles, he arrived with Kampala with no “set schedule or set itinerary. You just know you’re going to watch games.”

Even appointments that were set while Ridenhour was there rarely began at the set time. When he went to see the Ugandan national team practice one day, the training session that was supposed to start at 9:00 kicked off at 11:15. The national team coach turned to him and said, “this is just Africa, it’s just how it is.”

In his two weeks in Uganda, Ridenhour spent most of his time watching high school games. Some of his time was spent looking at specific potential players for Winthrop, some doing general scouting and relationship-building. Ridenhour says that he was impressed by the skill he saw on the field – “talented, talented, talented kids” – even though the players often lacked equipment. One game he saw “half the kids [were] playing with shoes, half the kids [weren’t].” The fields were similarly lacking, and one match featured a very special pitch invader. “I literally watched one game and there were cows on the field. They’re not on the field the whole time but they’re just kind of passing through.”

Preparing for a pitch invasion (photo: Daniel Ridenhour)

Poor conditions did not damper the atmosphere at many of the games Ridenhour saw. He recalls one high school game in which 2000 students, almost literally, lined the field. “There was no net on the goal and … they were standing right on the field, a half yard off the endline behind the goalkeeper, egging him on. It was great.”

While in Uganda, Ridenhour sought to give something back to people he met. He gave clinics for local coaches and spoke with Ugandan officials who are working to put together a national coaching curriculum. Ridenhour notes that he often saw a lack of basic coaching knowledge, but no lack of enthusiasm to learn. “They were eager because they don’t get a lot of information.” Providing some information pleased Ridenhour. “It was fun to share,” he says.

Talking with local officials photo: (Daniel Ridenhour)

Ultimately, though, the purpose of Ridenhour’s trip was recruiting future players for Winthrop. Recruiting in Uganda is a difficult process, one fraught with difficulties that college coaches recruiting domestically don’t encounter. Although Division I Winthrop can offer scholarships, recruits from Uganda have to incur expenses that are prohibitive to many in the country. “They have to be able to support themselves when they get here, they have to be able to fly themselves over, basic expenses that they have to be able to afford. Being able to find out if a family can do that, that’s a hurdle unto itself because there aren’t a lot of families that can do that.” Daniel Ridenhour says he knows of examples of players whose expenses are being paid by a whole village in the hope that they will return and better the lives of villagers.

Then there is the potential hurdle of recruits getting student visas to enter the US. Winthrop has recruited players in the past, only to find out that their visa application has been denied by the American embassy. The process can be frustrating for all involved, says Ridenhour, but it is completely out of their hands and just one of the many hurdles involved in recruiting Ugandan players.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, there is the matter of ensuring that potential student-athletes have the academic and sporting talents to succeed. Given the unique system in which sports are intertwined with American colleges and universities, coaches looking for players overseas have to keep in mind the full range of talents that potential recruits possess. In Uganda, Ridenhour says, there are “a lot of kids who, academically, can’t cut it, but athletically can. And there are probably quite a few kids who can do it academically, but not athletically.” Finding those who can succeed on the field as well as in the classroom is one of the biggest challenges Ridenhour faced on his trip to Uganda.

The two Ugandans currently playing for Winthrop have succeeded on and off the field at the South Carolina school. Ridenhour describes Stephen Nsereko, who has represented Uganda at the under-20 level, as a “fantastic little attacking midfielder” with a “big heart.” Defender Henry Kalungi has played in every position across the back for Winthrop. With both players, Ridenhour says, “you put them wherever and they’re going to perform the job.”

In the classroom as well, Nsereko and Kalungi have both excelled at Winthrop. “They’re here to do two things: they’re here to study and they’re here to play. And they’ll tell you that. They’ll say, ‘Coach, grades and football, grades and football.’ This is all they worry about.”

Henry Kalguni (#4) and Stephen Neserko (#5) in action for Winthrop (photo: WInthrop University/Rich Posipanko)

Ridenhour sees another benefit to having Ugandan players on the campus of Winthrop University. Their presence and their life experience can provide a unique perspective to the American students. Ridenhour believes that Winthrop’s Ugandan players can also help to open up the eyes of Winthrop students. He tells me that Nsereko and Kalungi “bring a different perspective, a global perspective that not a lot of kids have.” It’s that perspective, combined with their on-field talents, that has made the many Ugandans who have studied and played at Winthrop University over the years such a success.

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Luis told me that being Hispanic gives him a unique perspective in covering American and Mexican soccer. And being a journalist gave him the ability to see things from the point of view average American sports reporter (i.e. non-soccer fan):

I can relate to how my parents grew up in their culture (they are from Mexico) and especially their love of soccer. I see how soccer can appear to press people who don’t know or understand the game. So I can see it from both sides. I think that’s helped out. If nothing else, my familiarity with the Mexican league and the national team [has helped out]. Long before I ever thought I’d be a journalist, I was watching games with my dad.

When asked about the popularity of soccer in LA, Luis told me that the sport “huge.”

It’s kind of strange in that teams like the Lakers and the Dodgers … Chivas Guadalajara probably has as many fans as they do here in LA. … It’s not true that people don’t care about soccer in LA. Because people speak a different language, they don’t read the LA Times, they don’t watch ESPN. the assumption is that it’s just Lakers and Dodgers in LA. But it’s not like that at all. There are communities here that are mostly Hispanic and [soccer] is their passion.

Despite the popularity of soccer in Hispanic communities in LA and elsewhere, few Hispanics represent the US national team. Luis told me that this is a problem in getting potential Hispanic fans to support the US.

Last year I think there were 3 [Mexican-American] players and they had more than 50 players on the US national team. The only ones who had any Mexican descent were Carlos Bocanegra, Jonathan Bornstein and Herculez Gomez. Gomez was more filler than anything, Bocanegra and Bornstein are solid first-choice players. So I think to capture that market, especially with young kids who are just starting to become fans, I think if they had some guys named Hernandez or Suarez, they might relate to them more.

When I asked him how this was possible, given that Hispanics are the largest minority group in the country and many are more into soccer than the average American. He said that until recently, he didn’t see US Soccer taking the issue seriously.

I heard Steve Sampson once on a conference call when he was coach of the Galaxy say something like, “Oh, all Mexican-Americans support Mexico.” If that’s the attitude of the former US national team coach … That’s not to say Sampson hasn’t done a lot, he actually has. … If any American coach knows about Hispanics, it’s him. Yet it kind of surprised me. Why would he say that? Does US Soccer feel like that entirely? Does Bruce Arena? Bob Bradley? Do they see the importance of it or are they just saying, “Well, we’re just missing this whole wealth of talent.” We don’t know. There could be the next Landon out here, the next Altidore. We don’t know since it’s something that’s never really been explored.

When I asked Luis how MLS could attempt to reach out to Hispanic fans, he told me the league would be well advised to target those born in the US.

I think they need to target more Mexican-Americans than Mexicans. I always use the comparison of my dad. My dad’s a big Chivas Guadalajara fan, but I don’t know that he’s ever watched a Chivas USA game. When I told him that they signed Claudio Suarez, he was like, “Oh, this is about his speed. He couldn’t play down in Mexico any more so he came up here.” I think that’s a common perception. But if you get American-born children of Mexican parents who follow Chivas or whatever club, I think those are the ones who are more apt to watch MLS games.

With the arrival of Chivas USA, I have long wondered how the 2 teams have become identified within LA. I asked Luis if he thought there was any danger that the Galaxy would become the “white” team and Chivas the “Mexican” team. He agreed that this is a danger, noting a fight between supporters of the two teams at the end of last season. But even more than that, Luis told me that the Galaxy roster may indicate a shift in how the team is seen in LA.

When you look at the players, there’s Carlos Ruiz and, um, (laughs). It’s kind of funny to think about it. In LA, how is that possible? I talked to Mauricio Cienfuegos last year when they didn’t have a single Hispanic player on the roster. … The perception is really there, though, that the Galaxy is the “white” team. I would hope that’s not really how it goes.

My interview with Luis focused on about ways in which US Soccer and MLS are reaching out (or not) to Hispanic players, fans, coaches, etc. The write-up of that interview with him will be up on TIAS in the near future.

The transcript of the full 50-minute Q&A with Andrea is up now on TIAS. Here are a few quotes to whet your appetite before you head over to TIAS to read the entire thing.

Andrea was born in Michigan (although she says people in LA constantly think she’s saying she’s from the Mexican state of Michoacan), but lived in Argentina for a couple of years growing up:

In Argentina I learned to play a little soccer. When you’re that young you don’t know that girls don’t usually play soccer because I had always grown up doing whatever my brother did (he’s 2 years older). And so, it was a small town we lived in and they wanted to have enough players to have a team so I was allowed to play with the boys. I didn’t know that was unusual.

Talking about some of the places her career has allowed her to travel to:

I feel really lucky, by and large, to have had the opportunities I’ve had. I could go to the [2006] World Cup, I went to Peru for the [2005] Youth World Cup. That was actually kind of fun because there are a bunch of players who have transitioned to other things, like Jozy [Altidore].

On the stories she’s written that she’s most proud of:

I guess I’m proudest of the stories I’ve gotten a lot of flack for, but I feel like were valid points. I wrote one about Bruce Arena and that I thought he should move on after the 2006 World Cup, but I wrote that before the World Cup happened. There were so many people that were like, “Oh, Arena’s great, maybe he should just be coach for life.” … And of course, after the 2006 World Cup … I got exactly one email saying, “You know what? I remember you wrote about Arena needing to move on and I think you were right and I just wanted to tell you because I remember I wrote you a negative email.” I was proud of having a little foresight there.

On being one of the few female soccer reporters:

I have had a couple of other reporters say, “Okay, I’m standing next to you in the mixed zone because I know the players will stop to talk to you.” I’m not sure that’s true because I’ve gotten blown off plenty of times by players who don’t want to talk to anybody. That’s [the other reporters’] viewpoint anyway, but maybe they were just teasing me. I’m kind of gullible that way.

I did put on the blog an incident I had with a player. It’s kind of depressing to think about. … but I do think it’s part of the reality of being a female soccer reporter. The simple fact is that you get people who come from different cultures and that means they’re not used to the US style of doing things. … To me, it was just being fair. I have no problem with a mixed zone. It’s not like I want to be in a locker room, but that’s just the way things are done in American sports. If other reporters want to give up locker room access and do a mixed zone, then that’s fine. But that’s not the way professional sports want to build an audience. … [Players] can’t try to order me out of the locker room so I can’t talk to anybody else.

On whether soccer is the sport of the Internet:

I’d have to say a qualified sort of yes. What I think is that soccer, more than other sports, creates a dividing line experience here in the US. I think if you follow basketball, no matter who you are, you’re watching the Lakers. If you follow soccer, if you’re an expat in Santa Monica, you’re watching the EPL early in the morning at the King’s Head Pub. If you are Hispanic, you’re reading La Opinión and other papers that focus on teams back in Mexico. They provide very good coverage of the Mexican league, more so than MLS by far. If you’re an American soccer fan, then your experience once again is unique and the media you go to is also unique. For the American soccer fan, and when I say American I mean of the domestic sport, the MLS fan, I would say it’s very Internet-based.

On what she sees for the future for her and soccer journalism in the US:

I don’t know. I wish I did because then I could plan better. I could give up on it and just do teaching (she teaches part-time in addition to soccer writing) but I keep thinking, “Hey, maybe something’s coming around the corner.” I think a lot of us were hoping that the arrival of Beckham would [help]. It sort of did, I mean, Luis and I have a book on the way. I’m not going to say that it didn’t open up doors. But did it open up enough doors for us to do this full-time? Not yet.

Steve Menary (photo: Play the Game)

How did you get the idea to write Outcasts?

I’m just a self-employed freelance journalist. There’s no career structure: you write an article and then you write another one and then you write another one and it goes on. I wrote an article about football in the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man and Jersey, and why they didn’t play international football. When I’d done that, I thought, “this is quite an interesting idea and no one’s ever written about this.”

Not everyone who applies to FIFA can get in or there would be the FA of David Keyes [ed note – not a bad idea!] and anyone could join. When I looked into it, they had turned some places down. FIFA would admit they turned someone down if I could find them out, but I asked them many times for a list of people who they’ve rejected and they would just ignore me.

I wrote a few chapters and I realized there were a few things like the Island Games … that I could go to and I could meet Greenland. They don’t even play in Greenland anyway and the flight there would have been about 1,000 pounds. The Falklands would have been about 2,000 pounds. But I realized I could go to the [2005 Island Games in the] Shetlands and I could see these people.

Shetland’s Steven Umphray during the Saaremma vs. Shetland match (photo: Shetland Islands Council / Steve Lindridge / www.idealimages.co.uk)

I sent it out to some big publishers and they said, “It’s very good, but we don’t know how much we’ll sell.” The publishers were okay, they gave me pretty encouraging rejections, if there is such a thing.

I knew David Conn and he said, “Why don’t you try to get in touch with World Soccer?”So I had a chat with [World Soccer’s] Gavin Hamilton and he said to me, “Come along, write something for us [on a non-FIFA “country”] each month.” World Soccer paid me fairly and he said, “If you get a book deal, don’t worry about [the rights]. It’s fine.” So that meant, for about a year, I could carry on researching the book. Each month I’d do an article [for the non-FIFA section] and I’d amass so much information, more than I could fit in a 500-word article. Then I found a smaller publisher after that, Know the Score.

Tell me more about the research you did for the book. Did you do it mostly at tournaments?

Yeah, I realized that the Greenland and the Falklands were good stories. I decided I was only going to do a chapter on a team if I could go see them play, meet with them in person, or have substantial dealings with them on the phone or by email. It’s very easy in this day and age to go on the Internet and cobble something together, but I just thought that was a cop-out. That was a quality control I set for myself.

I didn’t go to the Northern Marianas, which you probably guessed. The guys there, Vince [Stravino] and Peter [Coleman], were fantastically helpful. We exchanged a lot of calls and emails.

But I pretty much met [everyone else]. I went to the Island Games, I went to that tournament on the Isle of Man, I went to Gibraltar, I went to the Wild Cup in Hamburg, I went to the Occitania vs. Cyprus game, I took the whole family down to Montpellier. I went to a couple of NF Board meetings, one in London and one in the Hague.

Northern Cyprus and Zanzibar face off in the 2006 FIFI Wild Cup final (photo: FIFI/Corbis)

I went to the [2006 ELF Cup in] Northern Cyprus, which was a great bonus. They wanted to invite some journalists out there and they invited me and the guy who did the photographs for the book. That was great because the problem was the cost. I could have blown the advance I got for the book just going to the Falklands. You kind of had to have an imaginative way.

I also got some commissions. I did a thing for Guardian Unlimited about the Sami Cup. The great thing about that is that I’m in the journalist union and I was flipping through the magazine. There was a little ad in the bottom corner that caught my eye. It said that the Norwegian Embassy in London funds journalists’ trips to Norway. At the time I was thinking, “How am I going to get to Lapland? I’m never to be able to find another magazine to pay me to go up there.” I got in touch with a guy at the Norwegian Embassy and he said, “Right, when do you want to go?”

I had to make each thing pay. I wasn’t going to lose money going anywhere. It was more fun that way anyway.

Do you have an overall goal for the book?

I kind of wanted to try and look at how nationality is defined on the football pitch. I come from the UK and to most other places, it’s Great Britian. To us, we’re all English or Scottish or Welsh or from Northern Ireland. I live in a place that isn’t a country to the rest of the world, but it’s a country to us. In terms of football and rugby union, it’s a country.

I knew that I’d end up asking more questions than I answered. But I thought maybe it would just be a way of exploring it and writing something that will make people think in the way it made me think.

What are some of the questions you think you’ve asked?

I suppose, what is nationality? What is that, really? The Tibetian [player Karma Samdup] said: “It’s just a passport and you travel on that passport.” Or the Greenlanders. To them, [Greenland] is a place, [it’s] a country. It’s almost the same as the Faroes, who are in FIFA. There are certainly anomalies and there’s so much madness. It’s all about politics at the end of the day as much as anything else. There’s that idea that sport and politics shouldn’t mix. But clearly, they’re tightly intertwined.

Would you like to see the countries you profiled get into FIFA?

When I started telling people I was doing the book, they all kind of thought I was writing some kind of manifesto. I was never doing that. You couldn’t conceivably have the Falklands playing against Argentina even if [FIFA] let them in, which they never would. It would be ludicrous.

I think some of the places need more help than others. Certainly, Greenland deserves more sympathy than others because it’s been practically abandoned. They couldn’t go [to the Island Games last year] because they didn’t have the money to send the men’s and the women’s team and they thought it was about time the women got to go. They had played in every Island Games since 1989, but they had no money so they said, “Right, let’s let the women go” and [the men] stayed home. That seems madness really.

Greenland (in red) and Zanzibar face off in the 2006 FIFI Wild Cup (photo: FIFI/Corbis)

I don’t think they can all go in, but some of them, like Greenland and Gibraltar, they only want to play amateur football. They don’t want to play in the World Cup qualifiers; they don’t want to play in the Champions League. That was never really their ambition. I think they just wanted some help with the football they were organizing and they weren’t getting any.

Did you ever feel like you were ever covering teams that were too amateurish to warrant your covering them?

Some of the things with the NF Board were more about making a statement. A Lapland journalist, for example, told me that, in his opinion, a West Papuan team had no intention of ever turning up [to the 2006 Viva World Cup]. That was a bit amateurish.

And the Sami team that went out there murdered everyone because they had a lot of good players. They had people who had played international football at the under-21 level. So yeah, some of those teams, you feel, there’s got to be a real team, there’s got to be some basis to it rather than just a political stunt. Some of the teams didn’t have enough substance, but maybe if they got going long enough, they would have some substance.

Clearly, these teams aren’t going to win the World Cup. What, then, do you see as the value of your book?

They’re not going to win the World Cup, that’s true. But if you take some of the teams that are in FIFA, say Luxembourg. It’s 300,000 people, they’re not going to win the World Cup. I think they won a competitive match last year for the first time in 10 years. But they’ve been playing a long, long time. Luxembroug played in the early Olympic games. I think in the mid-1960s they knocked Holland out of the European Championships when it was a two-legged tie. Every dog has its day.

The nature of competition is that someone’s going to win and someone’s going to be last. It doesn’t matter if you’re playing golf or if you’re playing football. Someone’s got to be Arsenal and someone’s got to be Derby, and that’s just the nature of it. But you can’t go around and say, “Derby are really crap so let’s drop them” because maybe next year Derby will be better.

I think if you give people a chance, there’s a chance they’ll improve. I think if you cut them off, which is what’s been done to some of these places, then [the level of play] will just dissipate.

Who were some of the most interesting people you met while working on Outcasts?

I think some of the NF Board people. They’re very interesting. [President] Jean-Luc [Kit] is a very interesting guy. The Sami guy, Leif Isak Nilut, too, when he’s up on stage doing one of his yoiks.

President of the Sami FA, Leif Isak Nilut, in traditional clothing (photo: NRK.no)

And some of the Greenlandic people, too. It’s quite a harsh world out there. There are 15 kilometers of road in the capital and none of them go anywhere.

Probably the best thing about the book was that I met a lot of really interesting people and everyone was really interested in talking to [me]. That was one of the joys of doing the book. [I’d] ring someone up and they’d say, “Yeah, I’d love to speak to you.” The response from people was fantastic.

Do you see potential for change on FIFA’s part in terms of which countries they’ll let in?

UEFA have taken a reasonable stance and said, “You’ve got to be in the UN.” Whereas FIFA have just said, “You’ve got to be in the international community.” They don’t say what international community. It’s whatever international community they want it to be.

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Like most talented players, Qumsieh began to show interest in soccer early on. From the age of three, he began to kick anything within range. And whenever soccer came on television, he was transfixed.

Like young soccer enthusiasts around the world, Qumsieh began playing in the streets with friends. But unlike most kids, Qumsieh’s games were often interrupted by Israeli soldiers. “They would shoot in the air and tell everyone to leave,” recalls Qumsieh. When he later joined the Palestinian team Thagafi Beit Sahour, the team bus would often be turned back at Israeli checkpoints on the way to games.

Qumsieh was a precocious player and made his debut for Thagafi at age 16. Shortly after, he was invited to a try-out for the Palestinian under-17 national team. He made the team and in a match against Kuwait scored a memorable goal. With his team down 2-0, Qumsieh picked the ball up in midfield. He picks up the story from there: “I saw the goalkeeper playing like a sweeper … so I figured a shot it was worth it.” And the shot he took was definitely worth it.

After the game, people wanted to talk to him about his incredible goal. Some questioned whether he was young enough to be eligible for the U-17 team. All around him, he heard murmurs and people saying, “There was no way a kid … can have a shot like this.” So many people questioned his eligibly, Qumsieh says, that the “[tournament organizers] had to take something from my knee to see how old I was.”Qumsieh was a rising star in Palestinian soccer, but he also wanted to continue his education. When an offer came for a full scholarship to play soccer at Goshen College in Indiana, he took the offer. In two years at Goshen, he became a star at the Mennonite school, leading them to the national tournament. Qumsieh’s developed unique style – he describes it as “freestyle, moves, thinking fast” –on the streets of Bethlehm, but it translated quite well to the cornfields of the American Midwest.

At Goshen, Qumsieh was a big fish in a small pond. He longed for more space to swim and so when Park University coach Efrem Shimlis expressed interest in the Palestinian forward, Qumsieh took the chance. He transferred to the Kansas City school, where he just finished his first year. Qumsieh says that his first year with his new team was successful, even though they lost in the first round of the national tournament.Qumsieh is disappointed that the college teams he’s played on haven’t performed better in national tournaments, but says he’s grateful just to have the chance to play soccer in peace. He’s aware that the situation is quite different for Palestinian players who remain in the occupied territories.The Palestinian national team, Qumsieh notes, has, in its ten years of existence, struggled to overcome barriers imposed on it by the Israeli occupation. Qumsieh notes that, playing with youth national teams in Palestine, players would often be stopped at border checkpoints. “We would be on the borders like any other people. We would sleep in the streets at the borders.” Team officials would often appeal to FIFA to intervene, with limited success.(A movie called Goal Dreams chronicles the Palestinian national team’s unsuccessful attempt to qualify for the 2006 World Cup. The Palestinian FA went so far as bringing in Chilean players of Palestinian descent because the Israelis would not allow native Palestinians players through checkpoints.)In addition to barriers imposed by Israel, Qumsieh notes, a lack of money hinders the Palestinian team’s progress. He reckons that, on merit, he would likely be called up for the national team, but the costs of getting him to games prevents it from happening.

The political situation that has led to the West Bank and Gaza Strip being governed by separate Palestinian factions has also been played out within the national team. Qumsieh notes that spots on the team are divided equally between the two territories. This often causes problems for the players, as they get little chance to train together before matches. “Sometimes we don’t have time to know each other because of the situation. We practice maybe once or twice together. We’re not even used to each other at all.”

Despite this obstacle, Qumsieh says that atmosphere in national team camps he’s been involved with have been overwhelmingly positive. On youth national teams, Qumsieh was the only Christian, and often got good-spirited ribbing from his Muslim teammates. “They would kid me: ‘why don’t you become Muslim? Come on, man’.” But, Qumsieh says, “They’re all my friends. We respect each other. We’re representing Palestine.”

Representing Palestine is a powerful inspiration for Qumsieh. He has two goals: to become a professional player and to represent and improve the senior Palestinian national team.

Qumsieh had a trial with Egyptian powerhouse Al-Ahly last year and may have trials with European teams next year. When I ask him if he would ever consider playing for an Israeli team, Qumsieh laughs at the suggestion. Despite the geographic proximity, Israeli teams don’t scout Palestinian players. If considered in purely geographic terms, Qumsieh’s career path (Palestine to the US to, hopefully, Europe) makes absolutely no sense. But then, little in the Middle East does.

Qumsieh’s desire to represent his country again is, not surprisingly, tied closely to the political situation. He notes that all Palestinians cheer for their team, one of the few representations of statehood for a stateless people. Seeing the Palestinian national team, says Qumsieh, helps to take people’s mind off of the difficult conditions under which they live. The team allows “people [to] forget about the conflict.”

Qumsieh expresses exasperation with the conflict. “We’re really getting sick of it,” he says. “It’s boring.” The word boring may not be used often to describe the Israeli – Palestinian conflict, but its repetitiveness is, in some ways, just that.

Peace with Israel would represent a major boost for the Palestinian people of course, but also for its national team. Qumsieh is hopeful that Palestinian statehood can boost the team. “To do something to be proud of, that’s what I really wish for in the future. I want to represent Palestine with a good team, not a bad team.”

Thanks to Lee Tesdell for offering the idea that led to this interview.

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Since 1994, Vickery has been discovering more and more about South American soccer and writing about it for the BBC, The World Game, Sports Illustrated, and World Soccer magazine. He was kind enough to take the time to speak with me recently about soccer in Brazil, the country where he is based.

Tim Vickery (photo: Tim Vickery)

One of the first games Tim Vickery went to when he came to Brazil was between two of the coutry’s biggest teams, Flamengo and Corinthians. At the time, Savio (who would later play for Real Madrid and earn 44 caps for Brazil) was playing for Flamengo. Vickery was amazed at Savio’s talent, and the fact that he had not heard of this player, who was clearly destined for great things. It was at that point, says Vickery, that he realized how strong the Brazilian “factory of players” was. Going to games, he says, was like “going to a movie and seeing the trailers. These are the forthcoming attractions of world soccer and you’re privileged to see them.”

At the same game in which Savio wowed Vickery with his skills, there was another player who also caught his eye, but for a very different reason. Corinthians defensive midfielder Ze Elías was, as Vickery describes him, “an awful, awful player, a bad, bad player.” Ze Elías subscribed to the “if it moves, kick it; if it doesn’t move, kick it until it does” school of soccer more often associated with Vickery’s homeland than Brazil. “It was a surprise to me that someone of this limited technical ability could be considered of great prominence,” says Vickery. Yet Ze Elías’s constant effort and his effectiveness had endeared him to many in Brazil.

Ze Elías was just as popular with Corinthians fans as Savio was with Flamengo supporters. Though he says it was a “huge surprise that a player such as [Ze Elías] could be lionized by the Brazilian public,” this taught Vickery an important lesson: Brazilian soccer has been “mythologized out of all proportion” and the reality is often far different from the stereotypes that most people have about it. Yes, there is jogo bonito, but that is not all to be said about Brazilian soccer.

Anyone who’s watched games from Brazil knows that violence is quite common in the Brazilian league. Vickery notes that games in South America’s largest country “can be played in a very violent atmosphere. It doesn’t take much for the fists to start flying.” A former coach told him simply: “football is survival.”

Brazilian coaches in general today don’t fit the vision many have of Brazilian coaches, encouraging creativity, flair, etc. Advocates of jogo bonito are few in number, having been overtaken by what Vickery describes as the “technocrats” that make up much of the ranks of Brazilian coaches. These men often have advanced degrees in physical education and work with a large team of highly specialized assistants. Like technocrats in any profession, Brazilian soccer coaches “live in a world of statistics. What they can’t measure, they can’t manage. They absolutely love breaking the game down into statistics.” Vickery recalls meetings of coaches he has been to as being incredibly boring, focusing on ideas such as whether moves that string together over seven consecutive passes are more likely to lead to goals.

Current national team boss Dunga is a good example of a new breed of Brazilian coaches. Dunga subscribes to the belief that “winning is everything,” and he is far from the only one in Brazil to believe this. Vickery says he “absolutely hates” the Brazil teams of 1982 and 1986, who played a more free-flowing game, and calls them “specialists in losing.” Dunga’s teams value winning over everything, even if that means leaving out players such as Ronaldinho and Kaká in favor of Josué or Mineiro, both players in the mold of Ze Elías (or, more generously, Dunga himself).

Tim Vickery’s most recent column focused on the touchy subject of race in Brazilian soccer. In that article, Vickery goes back to the 1950 World Cup to explain ways in which race remains important in Brazilian soccer today.

The 1950 team had several prominent black players. There was a widely promoted idea that Brazilians were a new “race,” distinct from the indigenous population, former slaves, and European immigrants who were their ancestors. The 1950 loss led many to question this idea and brought out what Vickery describes as Brazilians’ “racial phobias” about themselves. “The idea of being an inferior, mongrel race, which was very, very popular at the time, that really came to the fore. The players who were singled out for special scorn after that were the black players.”

These racial phobias were not put to rest until 1958, when Didi, Garrincha and a 17 year-old named Pelé won the World Cup for Brazil. They remained in place for goalkeepers until recently (some might say they still exist) and Vickery says the low number of black coaches is evidence they haven’t disappeared completely.The Brazil team of 1958 and many teams after them played a free-flowing soccer that gave rise to the typical “Brazilian” style (exactly which Dunga and the like have been fighting against in recent years). This style originally came about as soccer was brought to the country from England, explains Vickery. The sport there had been “forged by the values of the English industrial revolution … where the virtues of muscle power and reliability” were important. But most important of all in English soccer was the collectivity, everyone working together for a common goal. Factory workers were valued for their muscle power, reliability, and ability to work together during the worker; footballers were prized for the same talents on the weekend.

But in Brazil the game was reinvented. Vickery says that “[soccer] was reinterpreted by the South American masses from a game of straight running, muscular Christianity to a much more balletic thing full of twists and turns.” Playing this new style, Brazil was very successful and this “led to international triumphs and international recognition for a nation that [was] starved of both.”

In this reinterpretation, Brazilians came to value individual play over that of the collective. Despite the pragmatic shifts of recent years, this emphasis on individuality remains an important part of Brazilian soccer. Vickery attributes this in part to the social stratification, which has long been a part of Brazilian society.

“In Brazil, the football culture is much more individual. … Brazil remains semi-feudal and people are born serfs almost. Football is the moment where the serf can become a king. Say I’ve got the ball and you come and tackle me and I do a little shimmy and you fall on your backside. Even if that move serves no objective purpose and you’re on your feet instantly, I’ve made you look ridiculous, for that one little instant I have humiliated you. And that is the moment that will most get the Brazilian public up.”

Robinho (in white) becomes a king during his days with Santos (photo: Sydney Morning Herald)

I ask Vickery whether soccer is played more avidly among any class of Brazilians. Absolutely not, he tells me. Soccer is universal in Brazil and “all the other sports live on scraps.”

But Vickery does acknowledge that the make-up of professional players might be changing. Whereas before well-off Brazilians would have given up their passion for soccer in order to pursue a more stable career, today more are tempted to pursue a career in the sport. Especially with more and more players going abroad, the potential payoffs are just so great today, Vickery says. A player like Kaká, who comes from a quite well-to -do family, would never have tried his hand at professional soccer twenty or thirty years ago. Even Pelé, who came from anything but a wealthy family, was discouraged from going pro by his father, who was afraid an injury might ruin his son’s career, as it had ruined his.

Brazilian soccer was recently in the news when FIFA announced that the country will host the 2014 World Cup. Vickery has written recently about some of the potential problems the nation will have to overcome in order to stage a successful tournament. Given this, I was surprised when he told me that he has no doubt that the 2014 World Cup will be a success. “Football has a fantastic ability to assert itself in the most unfortunate circumstances,” Vickery says.

But that, he says, is not the real question. It is more appropriate to ask what the legacy of the World Cup will be for Brazil the country. “It’s a fantastic opportunity in terms of stadium and infrastructure improvement. I worry that the opportunity is not going to be taken to the fullest extent and the traditional pattern of Brazilian society will reassert itself once more. A small minority will do fantastically well and the great majority won’t get a great deal out of it.”

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