In the past few years, the number of American players plying their trade abroad has increased exponentially. It wasn’t that long ago that knowledgeable American fans could easily count all of the “Yanks Abroad” (personally, I remember scouring for newspapers that would have a one-sentence blurb on the exploits of Tab Ramos at Real Betis). Today, knowledgeable American fans know all about the high profile players in Europe, such as the Fulham Five.

Hilarious parody from Oz City Soccer

While Fulham’s expats are relatively high profile, there are many Americans playing abroad who are anything but. It’s a truly dedicated fan who knows Eric Lichaj of Aston Villa, Michael Enfield of Sydney FC in Australia or Tighe Dombrowski of IK Sirius in Sweden.

But while teams abroad are snapping up American players (among other reasons, the falling value of the dollar makes them a good bargain), they appear reluctant to look at American coaches. Only one native-born American coach has held a major job abroad (Steve Sampson, who was in charge of Costa Rica’s national team from 2002 – 2004). Scouring the depths of my brain and the Internet for examples of American coaches who have worked abroad was only able to come up with three, all of whom are naturalized Americans born in other countries.

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Many trace the origins of many aspects of Western society to ancient Greece (though not all: in his essay Anthropology and the Savage Slot, Rolph-Michel Trouillot claims that “Greece did not beget Europe. Rather, Europe claimed Greece” [21]). The beginnings of democracy, philosophy, and debate as they are practiced today, it is claimed, can be seen in the lives of ancient Greeks.

Though not nearly as influential as other aspects of Greek society passed down to us today, several top soccer teams have names that make reference to Greek gods and places. In most cases these names suggest qualities to which the teams aspire (though perhaps don’t always achieve). The list I present here is relatively small, though I don’t doubt that there are other teams with Greek-inspired names (I am not, of course, counting Greek teams themselves in this list). If you know teams with such names, please post them in the comments.

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One of the joys of watching the World Cup is seeing teams from different parts of the globe play each other. The styles they employ are often a study in contrasts. Any time England plays Argentina, it is a battle of grit and determination versus technique and guile (there’s also the wee matter of the Falklands / Malvinas that provides the political backstory to such matches). But how did teams come to play they way they do? The answers offered to this question are as varied as the styles themselves.
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Greenland is an autonomous province of Denmark with a population of around 50,000. The Faroe Islands are an autonomous province of Denmark with a population of around 50,000. The Faroe Islands belong to FIFA; Greenland does not. A reasonable person might wonder why the Faroes are given membership into the international soccer governing body while Greenland is excluded. Such a reasonable person would not come up with anything resembling a reasonable answer. Greenland is one of the “countries” featured in Steve Menary’s new book Outcasts: The Lands That FIFA Forgot. The book is a whirlwind tour of forgotten lands scattered throughout the globe. During his visits with teams from places as diverse as Greenland, The Falklands, Northern Cyprus, Zanzibar, and Occitània, Menary introduces us to players, coaches, and officials struggling for international soccer recognition for their countries which, according to FIFA, don’t exist.

The Tibetan national team (photo: Kaos Pilot)

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Throughout history, soccer teams have been founded for many reasons. Many of the most prominent teams today were begun by groups of friends eager to find a source of amusement.

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Note: This is an idea I’ve been kicking around in my head for a while. It’s something I believe to be true, but am not 100% sure of it, especially being as far away from England as I am. I would love to hear readers’ thoughts on this post, especially those of my English readers.

Perhaps it’s the Marx I’ve been reading, but I’ve been thinking about the class identity of soccer recently. Is soccer a sport of the working class, the middle class, or the wealthy? Of course, the answer is yes. It is everyone’s sport. But I believe that throughout time, and especially in England, the sport has shifted in terms of the class of people it is primarily identified with.

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