Jeff Agase
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Our eyes red, our bodies famished for sleep, and our fanaticism
dealt a staggering blow early Friday morning, will we rise early
Wednesday to watch Brazil play Turkey?
Is soccer finally here to stay? Has America moved on already?
Should America move on already?
Eight years ago, after artists of the world’s sport set up
studio in our backyard, the answer was typically American:
“Wow, that was fun. Are the Dodgers on?”
In 1994, soccer was Spider-Man without the suction. It slammed
into the edifice that was our national psyche, only to slide back
down to the floor months later.
But something has happened this summer. The Sun has gone down
and soccer, to those willing to sacrifice grades for goals, pillows
for penalty kicks, has been the beacon.
In any given lecture, I could turn left or right and find
someone truly excited to talk about the World Cup. It was a campus
buzz normally reserved for UCLA basketball season, minus the hair
gel jokes.
Maybe I’m talking like I swallowed some of that
footballitis ointment, with all this lovey-dovey gushing over a
sport to which most of us were relative strangers a month ago.
But if you’re at all nodding your head along with my sappy
babble, (or just wincing in memory of the United States’ 1-0
loss to Germany), you catch my drift.
This was the year in the U.S. when soccer games became Soccer
Games. It was a Finals Week when you stared blankly at a closed
Econ book on your coffee table the night before a titanic exam,
sighed, and flipped on Univison to catch Paraguay and Slovenia.
So much has been going for the World Cup, which, just like the
gritty American team, struck at an opportune time. Jaded by the
Lakers, Red Wings and Tiger Woods blitzkrieging their way to
titles, fans turned to soccer for world-class competition and
passion. Soccer answered.
The World Cup has been, quite simply, the thing to do. But with
four teams left and the surprising Americans out, will anyone be
awake at 3 a.m.? Check that. Anyone who is sober?
Hard to say. Naturally, enthusiasm grew in the States as each
successive match replaced its predecessor as THE BIGGEST GAME IN
U.S. HISTORY.
Only the next few years will tell. Major League Soccer expects a
surge of interest for some time, though it knows all too well that
Americans can quench their year-round sporting thirsts
elsewhere.
But it’s also clear that this U.S. team is unlike prior
squads ““ confident and (dare I say) respected, the Americans
surely won’t enter the next Cup at 300 to 1 odds.
It is naïve, not to mention unfairly demanding, to expect
soccer to dominate the U.S. sports landscape as it does elsewhere.
It has, however, found a substantial niche and won over some of the
most ardent, soccer-is-a-communist-sport skeptics.
And now to add some levity to an otherwise uncharacteristically
uber-romanticized column: some dandy and not-so-dandy (soccer words
I picked up) developments from the 2002 World Cup.
“¢bull; Tommy Smyth. The straight-shooting Irishman pulls no
punches in his analysis, though one meets great difficulty in
translating his words once he gets going. I remember him saying
something like, “Well, England have two powerrrful goal
scorerrrs, David Beckham, who runstowrd the goalwit gret
deteeermnation” (followed by two more minutes of passionately
garbled speech). DANDY, if not entirely comprehensible.
“¢bull; Scoreless ties. Mine eyes have seen the boredom! In only
a pair of pool games did the two teams fail to score a goal. But
seeing France and Uruguay battle to nil-nil made me feel like I was
14 again, staying up all night to get a glimpse of skin on
Showtime…to no avail. NOT SO DANDY
“¢bull; Penalty kicks to end elimination matches. No comment.
NOT EVEN CLOSE TO DANDY
“¢bull; Blatant Nationalism. The World Cup has always been a
forum for former colonies to strike back (see Senegal), the
continuation of petty disputes (see England and Argentina) and
jokes about premature French surrender (see France). DANDY, to a
point.
“¢bull; Flopping. (Insert your favorite Vlade Divac joke here).
NOT SO DANDY
“¢bull; Former Bruins in the Cup. Brad Friedel was masterful in
goal, Cobi Jones is now the dean of U.S. Soccer, and Frankie Hejduk
and Eddie Lewis outplayed the German midfield. DANDY
“¢bull; Korean “cheering teams.” Fans were paid by
the World Cup organizers to don the shirts of foreign teams and
urge them on. NOT SO DANDY ““ How can this fanaticism go on
with the Expos suffering a continent away?
“¢bull; Landon Donovan. When he zipped along with the ball, I
kept switching back and forth between singing “The Space
Between” and yelling, “throw it down, quick man!”
in a Bill Walton Voice. DANDY ““ the future of U.S.
soccer.
We’ve all had too much fun these last three weeks to see
soccer lay dormant until 2006. Here’s hoping footballitis
becomes a chronic disease.