Just Win, Baby: Getting the United States Interested in Soccer

(Photo by Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images)

Let me start out this article by stating the fact that I am not what you might call a hard-core soccer (futbol) fan.

Where I come from, soccer was the wussy game you played in the interim before you were eligible for tackle-football leagues because it was perceived as a "safe" sport for young kids to play.

You weren't going to break your neck playing soccer.

You weren't going to rupture your spleen or irrevocably damage your shoulders.

Soccer, in essence, was thought of as the training wheels to true sport—something you could play competitively without the risk of serious bodily harm.

Soccer was not a real sport.  It was merely the diaper you wore before you became fully toilet-trained.

Now, I'm not here to argue that this ideology is correct, merely to state that perception often tangibly reflects reality when it comes to recruitment and fan interest. 

That this game is also called the "beautiful game," full of Fabio's and Ronaldo's and metrosexual innuendo, has also hindered its acceptance in a country that firmly thinks it is full of cowboys, steelworkers, and pioneers, even though demographics clearly indicate that most of us have never partaken in any of these "manly" endeavors.

So growing up, I played soccer until I was 10 and then joined pee-wee football, and Lord knows I loved that game.

This makes me uniquely qualified to talk about soccer.

How?  Because I've never followed it, generally dismissed it, and though I always knew that it would eventually acquire its place in the pantheon of (North) American sport, thought that it would take a display of competence that I wasn't likely to see.

You see, the irony of United States fandom is that even though we fancy ourselves as blue collar Joe's, we are absolute elitists when it comes to sport.

Not winning the gold medal with amateurs?  Then it's time to put together a Dream Team, even though it goes against everything the Olympics stand for.

Not a recognized sport in most other nations around the world?  Then we'll call our titles "World Titles" anyway, to make us think that only America could produce such a forum of imposing athletes.

As our games became more international, we began to see how silly this was, with the Dominicans dominating baseball and the Europeans catching up in basketball, but since we still fielded teams that won, our interest and pride remained intact.

You see, winning is what sells in America.

When I heard that David Beckham was coming to America to resurrect soccer in the United States, I laughed.  And I laughed some more.  And then I let out an unadulterated guffaw.  How could this possibly work?

Sports fans are a different kind of hero-worshiper, not interested in how super-dreamy a player is, not interested in whether or not he's married to a washed-up questionable pop icon, and not interested in whether he was once a great player.

We worship greatness on the field, and there was no mistaking the fact that the MLS was an inferior product anyway, so even if Beckham had dominated the scene, he would've been doing so in an inferior league full of inferior players.

The United States sports fan has no taste for this type of farce.

We are interested only in being the best.

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