The Wall Street Journal and NBC News are among sources that offer quantitative data that support the growing popularity of soccer in the United States. The Wall Street Journal also notes how this trend parallels the growth of residents in the United States from other countries, where soccer is king of spectator sports.
Contrary to this reported trend, however, this year’s Copa América soccer tournament has underwhelmed in attendance at U.S. venues and TV ratings, reports The Big Lead, a digital publication of USA Today Sports.
This inspires a debate as to why soccer may lack the impetus to gain ground in the United States. In my view, soccer’s hurdle has to do with a rift of culture and language with a tincture of chauvinism for it to integrate into the American Way.
First, not an excuse or an apology—certainly not a boast—there is a tradition of indiffernece in the United States to learning foreign languages or experiencing international travel. U.S. State Department data reveal that over half of American citizens do not hold a passport. Customarily, by the 3rd genertion, language fluency and cultural connection are a thing of the past. That’s “assimilation,” which might also portend that soccer blend in and not be a fruit salad.
An argument can be made that, aside from automobiles and foreign-made goods, the United States is resistent to “foreign” preferences such as free education and health care to national pasttimes. A doctine like Laissez-faire (“leave us alone”) might be said to be engrained in our national psyche.
International bodies like the United Nations, polls say, are viewed unfavorably by many Americans. UNESCO may do good deeds for nations in need, but the United States has its own do-good body, the Peace Corps. Decisions by the World Court in The Hague may hold sway elsewhere but not here, not with our own Supreme Court to interpret the only laws that supposedly matter.
The language of soccer may include English but not necessarily American English. It’s football, or futbol, elsewhere in the world but in the United States. In American English, the people who play the sport are players, not footballers.
Soccer sounds like a foreign language with a term like “a friendly.” But “exhibition” or “preseason” is spoken here.
And “match?” Isn’t that to coordinate a wardrobe or to find a date? (Okay, “match” is the word for “game” in tennis. But even so, there’s confusion about a sport where love means nothing.)
A game by any other name is still a game.
In American English, “pitch” is a verb to denote an action by a baseball player, not a noun for the field where a game is played. And considering the vastness of the soccer field, it might make sense to call it “plantation”, or even the Spanish word “La Sabana“ (grassy plain).
And while the rest of the world uses the metric system, our football fields are the Imperial system, 100 yards long. About all metric is used for in the United States is childbirth, to measure dilation.
“Draw” is an action in cowboy movies. But in soccer it implies something akin to kissing your sister, an act we call “a tie.”
As a whole, we Americans devour statistics—each nook and cranny of each game of each player who ever played the game, from team won-lost records to player on-base percentages and on and on. Soccer pales in comparison, and uses highfaluting words unaccustomed to American sports vernacular like: “Goals conceded.”
The game clock in soccer is the mirror opposite of American sports timekeeping. At the end of the quarter or half or game the clock reads 00:00. In soccer, the clock ticks up to 45 minutes at the half and then it continues to 90 to what soccer calls “full time.” But it doesn’t stop there. The referee tacks on something called “stoppage time,” an extra few minutes based on what his gut tells him was time lost for an injury. Such seeming arbitrariness could be construed as taking the law in your own hands. Set rules and instant replay in homegrown U.S. sports take care of any ambivalence about the spot of the ball or time on the clock, and more.
Scoring is the eternal brew for Americans, who may see offense in soccer as like limburger cheese—it stinks. Scores of 2 –1, 1–0, or 0–0 don’t arouse passion.
Americans cherish the underdog, the Horatio Alger rags-to-riches protagonists of the world who emerge victorious. The perception of soccer is that good is good and bad is bad and bad stays bad even when it plays … good.
The American Way is to embrace the comeback kids—a team that has dug itself a deep hole and rallies for a win. Etched in lore is the Buffalo Bills’ 28-point second-half rally in a championship game in 1993.
“Hang on to your seats; this [game] is something special,” said the sportscaster during a Philadelphia Eagle four-touchdown extravaganza in 2010 in the final 7 minutes.
The NBA’s Houston Rockets scored 13 points in the final 33 seconds to overtake the San Antonio Spurs in December 2014.
Even baseball has comebacks. Last season, the Toronto Blue Jays trailed the Boston Red Sox 8–1, but a 9-run seventh inning earned them a win.
Baseball icon Yogi Berra said, “It ain’t over ’til it’s over.”
But that doesn’t seem to apply to soccer, where a two-goal lead can be insurmountable.
Finally, not to mean that we Americans are heady in our preferences, but modern sports in the United States have evolved to reflect society, where everything is complicated, where it almost takes a lawyer to explain things. Strategy, rules of the game and types of infractions and their penalties are works in progress and annually reviewed and tweaked. (It would seem that this alone would get the lot of us to look elsewhere for a national pastime.)
By comparison, penalties in soccer are few. Players are allowed to do something very foreign, to play unrestrained for 45 minutes each half until it’s “full time.” Now that’s foreign! Think of the advertising revenue lost from not having injury or team or commercial time-outs?
Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love.” The arguable truth is that soccer’s subservient status in the United States is a matter of linguistics and culture. The lyrics in “This Land is Your Land” strike the note that soccer, too, could be a part of the landscape. Not so simple, though, as “Mr. Gorbochev tear down this wall,” exhorted by President Reagan in 1987, and soon afterward it was a done deal.
Tim Wahl is writing a book to explain American football to non-native English speakers.
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