For those few readers who have reguarly been coming to this space, you may have noticed that I am posting a lot more soccer news and material to this blog. As the brief bio points out, this blog is about my passions and I love soccer. I have loved soccer since I started playing at age 9. I still love the "Beatiful Game" and probably always will. My vision of my deathbed is my wife, kids, grandkids and close friends sitting around watching a soccer game.
I also love the United States, with all my heart. In terms of my allegiances, you could easily say, my family, my country, my fiends and my soccer--in that order. But there are times when I wished that I grew up in a nation that followed soccer a great deal more than the United States--say England or Germany. But I was blessed to be an American and cursed to be a soccer fan in America.
I have come to accept that right now, Americans don't follow soccer with the same passion that I do. In fact, thanks to chuckleheads like this guy, most Americans get a viciously skewed view of the game. But Americans can and should love this game, if only they looked at from a different point of view. Instead of looking at the scoreboard and the game's lengthy test of endurance, Americans needs to view the sport in terms of American values. There is so much about American that can be seen in soccer, so many things that while not uniquely American in the game, certainly match with American sensibilities and mores.
From the time I was consciously aware of it, America has always been a land of optimisim. Even in the worst of circumstances, America maintains a positive outlook, predicated on plucky, stick-to-it-iveness that simply is not a part of the national psyche in other countries. America has always believed that if it kept trying, kept thinking, and kept working, then success would come to them. That optimism underscored the phenonenal success of our nation, our government and our way of life. No other nation achieved so much in such a short history.
Detractors bemoan the lack of scoring in soccer, noting that games often end with just one or two goals scored in a game. To these people soccer lacks excitement and thus they are pessimistic about the game. But soccer is a game designed for optimists, for American optimism. It takes a great deal of optimism and "stick-to-it-iveness" to routinely and repeated go on the attack trying to score. It takes faith, another American trait, to believe that this attack will end in a goal, even though statistically, it won't. Teams scheme and work and continually try to score. In that respect, soccer is no different than football or baseball.
America has always prided itself on its inherent inventiveness, the genius of finding a new solution to a problem. We are a nation of Robert Fulton, Eli Whitney, Alexander Graham Bell, Henry Ford, NASA engineers, Bill Gates and Sergey Brin. We are the people that find solutions to problems. We are a nation of thinkers and of do-ers. We are an industrious people, for whom hard work is no stranger and believe that hard work leads to success, regardless of whether that success is modest or grandiose.
In so many ways, soccer is thinking man's game. It is a game of fluidity, of action and reaction. Soccer boasts a constant movement, a constant adjustment of strategy and tactics. Unlike football, where plays are plotted and rehearsed over and over again, soccer is a game the requires adaptation on the fly all the time. Improvisation and ingenuity are rewarded, routine and rigidity punished. The only time you see improvisation on a football field during a game is when a play breaks down. With soccer you see solutions to problems developed in the run of play, not in a huddle every 40 seconds. Soccer should appeal to the thinker in us all.
Despite everything, America is a nation that believes the little guy can still win, where a poor adopted kid from Hope, Arkansass can become President. Soccer is a game where at anytime, on any given game day, anyone can win. A combination of luck, skill and determination can carry the day over big payrolls and big names. Soccer is a game where the George Mason's of the world are far more common than you would believe. While soccer as a game can carry heartache and heartbreak, remember it is still a game of optimism. There will be another time, another match.
Soccer is not a game of bursts of energy or violence in the same way that baseball or football presents. Soccer can't be broken down into numbers and situations the way those games lend themselves to. Soccer has so few set plays, whereas football and for the most part basketball are predicated on set plays. There is no playbook for soccer. Soccer has skills that are rehearsed regularly in training, but unlike baseball, they must be combined every game in new ways and applied in new situations against new teams.
Perhaps this is why soccer fails to garner the type of fan base as others. But outside of the professional ranks of sports in this country, there are more people playing soccer.
More children participate in soccer in the United States than in baseball/softball and football combined. Soccer atrracts more young people to sport than any other game in America. Soccer is is a game that requires teamwork, communication and group problem solving, but it is also a game that still admires the talented individual.
Soccer is the ultimate democratic game of democractic nation, it requires no specialized equipment or specialized fields, it requires no massive outlay of money, only an effort, desire, an open space, a ball and a few peple who want play. Soccer can be played with teams as few as three and as many as 11 at anyone time. It asks nothing of a player but his or her energy and skill. It provides the joy of athleticism, of speed and endurance, of individual achievement and group success. It teaches about life, about failure and success, about learning from mistakes and reveling in success.
Soccer may not be America's game but it is a game that shares American values far more than any other.
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