Pressdog.com

Bring it On, Soccer Haters

By Bill Zahren
(Posted 06/19/02)

Goalkeeper Brad "Land of the" Friedel, I want to party with you, cowboy.

Standing 1.93 meters tall, weighing 92 kilograms, dressing mainly in black, wearing big Mickey Mouse gloves -- striking.

And bring along your buddies, fearless defender Pablo Mastroeni, midfielders Landon "The Hobbit" Donovan and forward Brian McBride. We’ll hang and chuckle about how the U.S. victory over Mexico in the Hugest Sporting Tournament on the Entire Planet Outside the U.S. has legions of American Soccer Haters frothing.

The Americans play the Germans at 6:30 a.m. (Central Time) Friday. If they win that one, people like me will just explode in front of our TVs.

Because I’m frothing about the World Cup soccer team, bay-bee. And so are unseen thousands of others. And the vocal minority of indignant baseball, basketball and American football heads out there can just deal with it.

"Oh yeah?" American sports traditionalists scoff in their editorials. "Well, if soccer is so cool, why can’t I go to the local grocery store and have the first person I ask tell me the name of ONE American World Cup player? Huh?"

Oooooooh, got me with that one. Soccer hasn’t reached the Common Grocery Store Knowledge Level yet. A stinging indictment, to be sure. It’s almost as if the Soccer Haters are mad that the team hasn’t justified their ridicule by tanking against the best teams in the world.

I pay no attention to the Soccer Haters, the most vocal of whom tend to be lethally bitter people who hate (or are at least suspicious of) all things that aren’t 100% American. If they didn’t play it when they were in school, by God it can’t be very good.

Hey, I used to be a Soccer Haters. I never even heard of it growing up in the 70s. I made fun of it through my high school and college years. I was a big, tough (American) football player back then. The idea of running around in shorts and kicking a ball amused me. Then I had daughters.

Suddenly, soccer was a great (and relatively cheap) way for them to get exercise and get all the character benefits of team sports without football's orthopedic and reconstructive surgery bills.

Girls youth soccer is all love, love, love At first I liked the sport because it was so darn inclusive. Anyone who can run can play youth soccer. Size means virtually nothing. Participants do a lot of running, get their heart rates up, develop legs like racehorses and learn the same great life lessons that all team sports teach.

Soccer players are egregiously fit. Ever see a fat hard-core soccer player? I suspect that’s why they take off their shirts when they score a goal -- to show off the abs of steel. If I had those abs, I’d show them off too. And if I played soccer every day, I’d have them.

Soccer is more about quickness, anticipation and working as a team than it is about brute strength. Sometimes size is a disadvantage. I became so enamored with it that I -- reformed Soccer Hater -- now help coach my 7-year-old’s recreational team. After five years of soccer dadhood, I now appreciate the continuous action, end-to-end nature of the adult game.

There are no timeouts in soccer. You play (and run!) 45 minutes straight. You have half time. You play 45 minutes more. Game over (unless there’s overtime). Last basketball game I went to there were roughly 43 timeouts. Each side gets something like 5, all the better to make the last three minutes of the game last an hour.

There were even television timeouts, even though the game I watched wasn’t on television. Play six minutes. Stop for two. Play six minutes. Stop for two. Same deal for football. And don’t even get me started on baseball.

It may just be that America has too short of an attention span for soccer. Since there are, at the most, about three goals scored in an entire soccer match, you gotta pay attention or you’ll miss one. Can’t be chit-chatting with your neighbors during the eight minutes between pitches.

And soccer goals usually happen REALLY FAST. No working the ball down to the five-yard line, taking five timeouts and running five plays and settling for a sort of half score field goal. No. At absolutely any time during the match the soccer ball goes from midfield to the left wing to in front of the goal to in the back of the net in about 20 seconds. Total distance covered: 80 yards. Total amount of time the ball is on the ground: 5 seconds. Total number of players involved: about eight.

I’m not the only one who finds this worth watching in the wee small hours of the morning. (OK, I admit taping the US vs. Mexico game at 1:30 a.m. and getting up at 4:30 to watch it.) Soccer is definitely coming to America -- it’s just arriving here five fans at a time. It’s a soccer trickle, not a soccer wave. You will not wake up tomorrow and find the grocery store abuzz with talk of Eddie Lewis’s amazing horizontal pass from the left wing -- on the dead sprint, left footed -- to diving Donovan who bonked it into the goal off his head.

Or Friedel’s latest circus save. Or the brilliant role-playing of veteran midfielder Cobi Jones. And let’s all remember the American staples of football, baseball and basketball have each been around for many decades. Soccer has been in the U.S. for maybe 15 years, tops. Even the Mighty NFL was still a novelty at age 15. Give us 25 more, and then we’ll talk.

And hey, give soccer a chance. I happen to know there’s a good game on Friday at 6:30 a.m. Or, better yet, check out a soccer match near you in person. Here in Des Moines, we're digging the Des Moines Menace and Drake University Bulldogs.

It’s not like you’re cheating on baseball, football, basketball, NASCAR or whatever if you watch a soccer match. If you watch a few games and end up hating soccer, fair enough. But if you take more than one brief look and keep an open mind, you also may find yourself, a few years from now, screaming "CORNER!" at the appropriate time.

Until then, how ‘bout those crazy American kids? Somebody forgot to tell them they’re supposed to suck. Tell it to Mexico. We’re 25-1 shots to win it all. Hey, we took down the unbeatable Soviets in Olympic hockey in 1980. I’d say we’re due for another lightning strike. To soccer fans, winning the World Cup would be even bigger. You never know.

Repeat after me: U-S-A! U-S-A!

Printer-friendly version

-- end --