Defending Soccer
“It must be great coaching a no-responsibility sport,” the college baseball coach snidely remarked.
“I know it’s hard for a baseball coach to understand the subtleties of soccer,” I responded. “I mean, soccer doesn’t pause for positions realignment, dirt-kicking, cup reconfiguring, spitting, batting glove readjustment, team meetings, sign language, specialized players who enter the game for a single throw, and extra warm-up periods between periods, which makes it difficult for, let’s say, a coach of a slower moving sport to keep up with.”
Such was the witty banter I participated in daily while coaching women’s soccer at a college. While the conversations were fun and lighthearted, beneath the gotcha-last banter was the soccer lifer’s responsibility to defend the values of soccer as it worms its way into the pantheon of American sports.
I didn’t grow up feeling as if I needed to defend the merits of soccer; everyone in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin played soccer. As well as basketball, pick-up football, and a little baseball. We all cheered for the Packers, Bucks and Brewers; soccer was just another sport we had fun playing as kids. It was junior high and high school before I heard teenage boys leaning out of car windows yelling “lawn fairies,” “carpet fairies,” and “gay-boys,” as they passed our soccer field. That’s gay or you’re gay,” was a pretty common insult in my neighborhood in the 80s and 90s. The relative absence of this phrase in 2020 is welcome social progress.
My grade school principal, Rod Blair, coached our grade school softball team. He didn’t like soccer much. Though he never said so directly, he implied it. One time he lectured me for ten minutes on how difficult it was to throw a curve ball. I asked him, “Have you ever tried to bend a soccer ball with your foot?” I wasn’t trying to be a wise-ass (ok, maybe I was), but I did think he needed some enlightening on the difficulty of soccer. Sadly, my comment curved just out of his reach and he responded with a ten minute strikeout on the difficulties of hitting a curve ball, while I stared at the tiny little booger pulsing out of his right nostril every time he breathed.
My mom defended soccer. At least, I think that’s what she was doing when I once heard her say to a friend, “The ball came out of the air and my son Tim juggled the ball with his thigh and then his foot and then kicked it to his teammate and the ball never touched the ground. That’s what a select soccer player can do.” I think what Mom really meant is, “My son Tim is really good at soccer.” I remember cringing at my mom’s bragging but proud of her for defending soccer.
“In baseball you need to be tough,” my coaching colleague declared. “The spotlight is on you as an individual. You catch the ball, make the throw, hit the ball or you don’t. It takes skill as well as mental toughness. In soccer you have all these kids running around aimlessly, and at the end of the game, they all get orange slices. Everyone is a winner,” the baseball coach sneered.
“Are you describing your failed youth soccer career?” I responded. “Because that sounds nothing like the games I coach now or played in throughout my life. Except the orange slices. I did love those orange slices. Still do.”
“I love the footwork of soccer players,” a college football coach once told me. Now that’s more I like it, I thought. I can talk to this guy. He’s not some typical macho man with a stick up his ass for soccer. But before I could respond he finished his thought, “It’s a great activity before boys start playing football.” I, genuinely, exploded in laughter – at him.
When I started thinking about this topic, I jumped on the internet and Googled “American’s hatred of soccer.” I wanted to know exactly what makes some Americans despise the sport that pays my mortgage and occupies 75% of my day or more. I learned something bizarre. Soccer is most hated by those on the farthest right of the political spectrum. Why? Because, apparently, soccer is socialist. I read, it’s popularity in the US is the result of weak immigration laws. Essentially, as this line of thinking meanders, soccer is un-American.
Okay, I cry uncle. I can’t defend soccer against assertions as dumb as these. Foreign soccer leagues certainly aren’t socialist, they’re more capitalist than American sports. Imagine an American sports league with promotion and relegation – now that’s the free market. I won’t take the time to properly research “the impact of American immigration laws on the growth of soccer” although it does sound like a college thesis no one will ever read. I do know this, however: Milwaukee wouldn’t have so much damn soccer if we had kept those no-good Germans out in the 1800s.
Another assertion I read is, soccer, apparently, promotes losers because games end in ties and underdogs win too often. Doesn’t everyone love the underdog except the favorite? Miracle on Ice anyone? Ties, many suggested, allow mediocrity – or a fully functioning cerebral cortex differentiating a tie’s value to each opponent.
Back to my boys of summer friend. “Soccer players are drama students dressed in shorts,” the baseball coach informed me. “They hardly get touched and they’re rolling on the ground screaming in pain.”
“It’s a special soccer skill that I’m afraid you wouldn’t understand. Too complex,” I offered. “Obviously baseball doesn’t offer anything as nuanced as the concept of simulation. Baseball doesn’t even use any words longer than three syllables.”
“Are you really defending the way those guys roll around on the ground?”
“No, I’m just insulting you.”
Actually, I stopped defending soccer years ago. Soccer is here to stay. Kids like playing it, and people, even non-soccer players, are watching it. European soccer jerseys are everywhere. Everyone knows Lionel Messi and Christiano Ronaldo. Some even know Phil Jones.[1] ESPN consistently shows soccer goals on their daily Top Ten Plays of the Day. Americans now, kind-of, understand the sport. It has become a small but integral part of our sports fabric.
And why would anyone hate a sport anyway? It’s just a sport, if you like it go for it, unless, of course, we’re talking about cricket.That “sport” is ridiculous with those weird white, don’t-get-dirty outfits, three-day-long games and lack of physical contact.
[1] The bastard child of Monkees front man Davey Jones
