My Commentaries on World Football

Main Commentary:

The Roots Of The American Media's Cultural Bias Against Soccer.

The North American media has a special affinity to criticize international football (soccer) from their biased and sometimes intolerant perspectives. They show political correctness and cultural sensitivity for everything else except the world game of soccer. I believe that is because soccer threatens and scares them. "It's a foreign game. Americans can't understand or appreciate it. They don't use their hands. Not enough scoring. I'd rather watch paint dry. Injury time? Equalize? What's that? And those fans. They go crazy after every game." But tell me something? If soccer were such an inferior sport, why did it take us 72 years to return to the Quarterfinal round of the World Cup? "Our best athletes don't play soccer." No, they are too busy playing other sports that demand total obedience to overpaid and overanalyzed coaches who have become cultural icons. Soccer is a player's game, and our media can not fathom such a basic concept. 

Have you ever counted the amount of time the TV networks focus on the coaches during a game? If an NFL game takes twelve minutes of actual running time to play, the networks spend more time showing you pictures of the variety of coaches. The message is clear: Without them, there would be nothing to watch. I disagree, and believe it is an insult to the American athlete, along with the few coaches who recognize what the game should be about: The Players. I don't want to hear the head coach or offensive coordinator say, "I called a bad game today." I would prefer to hear the quarterback say those words. It should be about the players; not the coaches.

Why do baseball games take three to four hours to play? Because the managers don't let the players think on their own. They have to exert control over virtually every nuance. Ted Williams said it best. "Baseball is the only game where being right 3 out of 10 times is considered successful." The managerial control is not just seen at the professional level. Recently, I attended my nephew's Little League baseball game. The game was stopped for several minutes when the opposing coach questioned a rule. Apparently, a child can't pitch less than 48 hours between games. "Well, that makes 40 hours. He can't pitch." He had analyzed this game to such an extent that he knew when the opposing pitcher last threw a ball... And this is Little League! 

Athletes are not robots; we should not expect them to be. As a society, we prize individualism, but if you look at our sports, it is a different standard. Coaches and the media who promote them have taken the games away from the players. The message is: You are not smart enough to make decisions on your own. That is why soccer frustrates the American media. It is not a game suited for domestic television or mountains of statistics. If a coach can't stop the game, call plays every minute, or exert dictatorial control over a team, how will they write about it? The lack of scoring is also highlighted to signify that nothing of importance can occur without several goals. Some in the media continue to bash the sport, instead of doing their jobs and learning more about the game and its history. Or better yet, perhaps they should remain silent... 

If the sport is so simple, why can't more American sportswriters produce cogent material? Why does virtually every article have to contain a reference that Americans will never embrace the sport. (4000 people showed up at RFK Stadium at 0730 on a Friday morning to watch a big screen TV for the USA v. Germany quarterfinal match. So much for indifference...) Why do their editors allow them to publish a disproportionate volume of negative and sometimes ignorant articles? This is 2002. Not 1972. Why do they maintain an attitude of indifference against our own fans? Why can't an American be as passionate about the sport and our team as Argentines, Brazilians, British, Germans, Dutch, Greeks, Spanish, South Koreans, or Italians are about their national teams? Part of the problem is that our sporting media mentality is more club or city specific. We don't have the same national fervor when the red, white, and blue takes the field. When Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Italy, or England play in the World Cup, those countries basically shut down.

When I first started playing soccer as a child, I used to hear that it was a communist or socialist sport unfit for red-blooded Americans. At my own high school, the Athletic Director held us in such contempt that we were not allowed to practice on our own home field. We had to drive miles away at our own expense. We were given the worst uniforms to wear, and many didn't even match during my first two years. We were never supplied with warm-up suits, Gatoraid, ice packs, tape, or anything else that would resemble normal sporting equipment. His attitude was prevalent. Unfortunately, it still persists. A friend of mine said that a baseball coach told him, "Why don't you get rid of the goalkeeper to make soccer more high scoring?" Why don't we change the rules of baseball from four balls to three balls, and from three strikes to two strikes? And allow only two pitching changes per inning? Heresy, I know... ;-)

Will the USA win the World Cup in my lifetime? Probably not, but I am comforted by the fact that the creators of football, England, have only won the competition one time. Will soccer ever be accepted as our other sports? In a culture that is saturated with professional sports, that remains to be seen, and is perhaps highly unlikely. Hopefully, it will gain its niche, because our guys have proven they can compete on the world stage. Ernest Hemingway said it best: "Write about what you know." Hopefully, in the future, more sportswriters will know the beautiful game, and be able to describe it in an unbiased and realistic fashion.

Blog: November 2006 to the present.

World Football Commentaries: My weekly commentaries about international soccer. Also listed are links to my published articles and commentaries on the side bar.