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We're sorry, World, but it seems we just don't get it
We Yanks just don't understand your football. Worse, we don't really understand that we don't understand.
Here's a moment we've all been dreading: the part where the snotty Yank chimes in, makes a big arrogant deal out of his ignorance of "soccer," maybe even turns his apathy into a point of national pride, and reveals that he probably wasn't even paying enough attention to realise that he has absolutely no idea what he's even said.
I admit to my ignorance, and make no excuse for my own apathy, but please bear with me for a while as I attempt to explain why - against all common sense, popular thought, and marketing hype - the entire hapless US side seems to be right here with me as far as the inability to pay attention long enough to realise what's going on with the world's favorite sport, a fact in which I take no pride at all, thanks.
I should start by admitting that I've never seen the need to apologize for the plain fact of being an American. I know plenty of my countrymen are - to understate a point - raucous, arrogant asses, and I deeply regret this. I know that plenty of my countrymen see a need to self-consciously apologise for their citizenship, and I regret that almost as much.
But as an American, I sincerely believe that a sophisticated individual is only defined by their nationality insofar as they allow themselves to be. I wish to establish this point early if we're to be discussing a sport that is said to reveal so much about the hearts and souls of the nations who play it, a sport people truly believe is defined by national character.
Because for US citizens, one of the defining aspects of American hearts and minds is this: we don't really understand your football. And what's worse, we don't really understand that we don't understand your football.
I think this is why the elites of US Soccer, the supposed eighth-best side in the world, played with almost no raucous arrogance, putting together three self-conscious, almost apologetic matches. You see, I might not be able to perceive the nuances of the game, but I know enough about sports that I can tell, for example, when a man is playing hesitantly, tentatively, and making bad decisions. I can tell when a player, no matter how handsome, isn't anywhere near as good as the commentators would have me believe. And I can tell when a coach has screwed up so royally, misfired so badly on everything from motivating his players to regulating team chemistry to formulating the game plan, that he should quietly wander off from the team hotel, never to be seen again, leaving only a simple note saying "Went for a walk; I may be some time."
I saw, in other words, the same thing you did, although again, I'm not certain I'm capable of understanding the importance of what I've seen.
What many of the citizens of my beloved nation don't seem to see is that no matter how often they claim to want to join the whole World Cup family, it doesn't seem likely that it'll ever really happen. No matter how badly Landon Donovan claims to want it, he's never scored a goal outside of the country he plays in, a country where the league is a joke - and believe me, I ought to know. That means something, whether my countrymen realize it or not, something that speaks to the all-important "intangibles" which stat-obsessed American sports fans love to invoke but never really trust.
I haven't mentioned our other, much more popular sports - it's not like we win world tournaments in basketball or baseball, after all, and only the Germans seem to like our football, which is frankly a bit terrifying--but they're ours.
If there's one thing Americans understand, it's what's "ours," and soccer can never be. We think it's fine sport for women, mind you, but boys are expected to outgrow it and parents whose kids play it - "soccer moms" - have become a political synonym for middle-class selfishness.
And no, despite what even many dismissive Americans believe, we still won't love it even if we somehow become good at it; Lance Armstrong won seven Tours de France and no one over here can tell a domestique from a dominatrix. Those sports aren't ours, aren't even played in our language, really, and as long as we think that way it makes us incapable of being Wilkommened zum Fussball, creates an atmosphere where no one can Joga very Bonita. And it's not fair of us to expect it.
Nor is it changing. Not so long ago, Freddy Adu was the future of American soccer, a brilliant young prodigy. Now a polished Nike product like any other American athlete (as well as not as young as he once was going to be by now, if you follow), he made the American sports-talk circuit, not only because he's still the only golden boy we've got. He's also Ghanaian by birth, and of course they asked him if he wanted to suit up for USA or Ghana when it came time for him to play in the World Cup. Polished or not, he got a definite gleam in his eye at the idea, but he would only say that, well, he loved America. But in Ghana soccer was the only game they played, the only sport that Ghana really had.
You have to wonder if the Americans listening realised exactly what he'd just told them. You have to wonder, actually, if by that point, any Americans were listening at all.
-- John Krewson is Sports Editor of the Onion.
ACK!
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