Discussion // The American Fear of Football (Soccer)

With the US team in the throes of its World Cup campaign, the question often is posed to soccer players and people involved in the game: "Why aren't Americans better at soccer?" To address this question is to not only evaluate the skill and talent of American players but to understand the nature of the game in a country where the sport is incredibly popular and which is blessed with a population of 300 million (the largest of the participating nations in the World Cup), and to recognize misperceptions by the public and, especially, members of the media.

^^^US Men's National Team.

From a purely "soccer" perspective, the US (ranked 14th in the world) does not have a poor team burdened with non-athletes. Jozy Altidore is an incredible physical presence; Tim Howard, Clint Dempsey, and Landon Donovan are world-class and blessed with speed, agility and intelligence. Then again, American as a whole consistently produces great athletes no matter the particular sport. The problem lies in coaching players to understand soccer, a game where, at the highest level, no one individual can dominate and the team is required to function as a whole, without pause, on offense and defense. Basketball and hockey are similar in the latter aspect but with far fewer players on the field of play and other rules differences, those sports can be won, but not always and to a measured extent, by superior individuals.

Coaching in American soccer at the youth level is the real culprit; while 8-year olds in England and the Netherlands are already in soccer boarding schools (like the world-famous Ajax academy), kids of the same age in American are taught by your-best-friend Billy's dad from down the street - a talented accountant, but soccer coach? No way. Additionally, talented young players in the US fail to learn the importance of teamwork in soccer at an early age because of the lack of good competition, especially in the football, basketball, and baseball hotbeds of the inner-cities and rural areas, where those players are so much better than the people on their own team that they rarely require assistance.

In truth, the real criminals of the American soccer world aren't the players or coaches - let's face it, soccer is an incredibly difficult sport in which to find success at the highest level (even for tradition-rich nations like England) - but rather the media, who delude, insult, and patronize a largely pro-soccer American public. Glenn Beck, for example, is an exceptional moron when it comes to his lack of understanding, but even the best and most well-respected American sportswriters - that means you, Rick Reilly - take to writing the same old tired, useless, stupid, and unoriginal articles aimed at perceived ignorance. Most sources of truly valuable soccer writing come from overseas and often emerge from intellectuals rather than sportswriters or former athletes - I've been hearing a lot of positive reviews of Simon Kuper's books - and I think the American sports consumer finds that difficult to accept. Obama receives similar criticism for being too "professorial," and it's possible that soccer suffers from a perceived elitism propogated by your everyday PBR-swilling sports jocks and talking heads. It is very important to know that in countries like England, soccer is covered in the exact same manner as basketball, etc. are covered here, and not always intelligently; only in the US, it seems, are people ostracized by soccer's "suburban" status.

Perhaps the most disturbing feature of soccer coverage in America is the blatant homophobia from many analysts long stuck in the cycle of American sporting tradition who prefer big plays, frequent scoring, brute strength and individual prowess over conditioning, teamwork, and culminating rewards. Non-athletes (especially those that end up in newspapers and on talk radio as so-called experts) often view soccer as a "fashion" sport played by a bunch of dainty, Euro-snob namby-pambies - one reason why the arrival of Beckham caused such a stir. No one, especially responsible members of the media, should ever equate sexuality with athletic performance, sophistication or fashionability. They should also try to understand that men behave differently in the cultures around the world in which soccer is popular and that there is no sin in not conforming to the established image of the American athlete. Thankfully, from my own experience, American athletes who are active in other sports know and admire exactly how physically demanding soccer is and recognize the ability of those that play at a high level. If you bring up the argument that many football and baseball players, for all their strength, power, and sheer bulk, would be completely useless on a soccer field, you would meet either silence or enthusiastic but unsupported resistance.

To make matters worse, coaches often confuse the emphasis on phyiscal traits we value in other sports (height, musculature, quantifiable strength, power) with the values that are necessary to compete in soccer (teamwork, control, vision, intelligence, conditioning, awareness) because there is a bias between the "masculine" qualities of the former attributes and the "feminine" qualities of the latter. The sports media often goes on to point out that if our best athletes - LeBron James, Dwight Howard, Adrian Peterson, etc. - played soccer we'd dominate like any other sport; perhaps true, but I can say with reasonable certainty those guys would look nothing like the chiseled behemoths they are today if they played soccer from an early age.

^^^Just because he's good-looking and well-dressed, doesn't make him a bad person...

I believe that if our attitudes about soccer changed, it would transform into America's truly modern sport, and would improve our ability to compete at the highest level. It won't happen any time soon, but in the mean time, I'm going to keep cheering for the US team and enjoying soccer!

-JD