The Whole World is Watching

The 18th FIFA World Cup begins in Munich, Germany today with a game between Costa Rica and the host German team. Millions of people the world over will skip out on work and school and be glued to their televisions and radios, to follow the first of a month�s worth of games, culminating with the World Cup Finals on Sunday, July 9. It is a sporting event that has the entire world in its grip it seems everywhere except in the United States.

For almost as long as I�ve been alive, people have been saying, �Soccer is about to take off in the U.S.� In my 46 years it hasn�t, and isn�t likely to in my lifetime.

I�m not suggesting to you that soccer, or football as it is called in the rest of the world, isn�t at times an interesting sport. There are youth leagues in just about every community in this country. The term �soccer mom� reflects the fact that kids all over America are involved in leagues where parents regularly have to drive them to games. But the higher up you go, from high school to college to professional leagues and international competition, participation and fan interest drops off precipitously. The rest of the world can�t seem to understand why we don�t love �the beautiful game� the way they do.

The answer merely requires a basic understanding of the American mindset.

First, we didn�t invent it. It isn�t our game. Americans will import television sets or fabrics or fruits and vegetables, but we don�t import our culture. We like to think of that stuff as our own special province. We might take it and change it into something uniquely American, like indoor soccer–a game played on a hockey-sized rink and only in this country�but we aren�t accepting the world�s game hook, line and sinker. Xenophobic as it sounds, it�s just too foreign.

There�s not enough scoring. A soccer match can go 90 minutes only to have the final score �1-nil.� (And we don�t use words like nil around here either. It�s zero, or zip, or nothing, but never nil.) That�s simply not enough. American sports fans like to see scoring, witness basketball and football, our two favorite sports. Running up the score is exciting. It�s an example of one team�s domination of another. Low scoring is dull and a sign of weakness.

The game also doesn�t have sustained and clearly identifiable periods of offense and defense. An attacker advances the ball only to have it taken away by a defender who moves it forward only to have it stripped by an opposing player, and on it goes. This constant shifting of possession grows tedious for sports fans accustomed to seeing one team sustain a drive and their opponent man a defensive stop. Even basketball and hockey, with similar styles of fluid action, enable fans to see exactly when one team is moving in for a score. Strategy laid out in black and white is easier to comprehend and builds excitement toward the realization of an impending outcome. Too much time is spent in a soccer match waiting for a play to develop. That requires an understanding and appreciation for subtlety and nuance, ebbs and flows and change that comes with patience, time and sustained effort.

The World Cup only happens every four years. The three years in between is more than enough time for Americans to lose interest or move on to something else. Ours is a consumer-driven society. We have many things competing for our entertainment dollars, many options to keep ourselves amused beyond sports. You can�t expect a sport that hasn�t gained a foothold to hold onto its tenuous grasp with such long gaps. And professional soccer in this country, in the form of the MLS, doesn�t even draw as well as horse racing.

The best players in the game are not from the United States. Hockey suffers from this problem as well, to a lesser degree. Most Americans can�t name anybody on the U.S. squad, let alone identify the game�s best, and American soccer players are not in that group. Brazil�s Ronaldinho may be known around the globe, but he�d be just another cute brotha with a jheri curl if he walked down any street in the United States. Conversely, while some of the best baseball players in America are from Latin American countries, they are playing our game, here. In essence, they have assimilated.

The NBA and NHL finals are underway, baseball season is heating up and NFL teams will go to training camp in July. The U.S. would have to win the World Cup before anyone would take notice here. We know that will never happen.

Now, I�m not suggesting America�s reasons for ignoring soccer are rational or drawn from an enlightened world view. Clearly they aren�t. They are valid only in that they are the obstacles to be overcome before anyone will embrace the game. But they are precisely part of the (many) reasons why people so despise us. The insular, elitist �we�re important, you�re not� position we take not just around sports but in most of our foreign affairs.

We call our Major League Baseball championship the World Series, even though only American teams play in it. We call our game football and the world�s game soccer, even though in our game, touching the ball with one�s foot is done only on kickoffs, punts, field goals and extra points. We send NBA players to the Olympics to push around smaller countries and win by large margins (although the balance of power in international basketball seems to now be shifting). Sport, as an extension of U.S. foreign policy and prevailing American sentiment, dictates that we define the rules of engagement and deem important only those things where we dominate. Soccer is not one of them.

I won�t pretend to be an avid soccer�uh, football fan, but I will pay attention to the games, watching when I can, following scores when I can�t. As a citizen of the world who happens to reside in the United States, I want to join my fellow world citizens in participating in this international spectacle that comes along every four years. I don�t think that�s asking too much of my time.