This is not
your garden-variety soccer apologist’s post. While I am a soccer fan, I
certainly don’t consider myself to be some holier-than-thou purist of the game,
nor do I think of soccer detractors as thick-headed cretins whose only
requirement for entertaining sports television is frenetic action and violence.
But I do know that, whether we’re ready or not, soccer is coming. And now is
truly the time to start tuning in.
What’s wrong with soccer?
My reasons
for following soccer are inconsequential, so let’s get right to the good stuff.
Ask any of the millions of people who would be proud to fall into the
“red-blooded American male” category in your trusty pocket stereotype-ometer, and
they’ll give you a handful of reasons that they dislike, can’t stand, or simply
don’t care about soccer.
Before
beginning, I’d like to point out that I’m only going to spend time refuting
arguments that I believe have some modicum of sanity behind them. This does not
include claims such as: “Every child in America plays soccer, and then the
better athletes move to football,” or “Soccer’s only for prissy Europeans and
flashy Brazilians," or especially “A sport where you can’t use your hands
isn’t a sport.” Those arguments all hold no water, and if you do find someone
to debate them with, I’ll advise you not to bet heavily on your winning that
round.
1. It’s boring
Reason
number one is usually some variety of the “it’s too boring/not enough
offense/too much walking, jogging, and standing around” argument. And, when you
put it that way, it almost sounds legitimate. But then you remember that goals like this can happen in
the blink of an eye, seemingly from nothing but a bunch of standing around. And
it makes you realize that soccer, when you get right down to it, is the least
predictable sport in the world. Picture the arduous routines ingrained into
baseball and football – the tens of seconds between each pitch, and the constant
huddling, play-changing, and decision-making that occurs before every down. Now
realize that soccer matches are played with running time – no pauses, breaks,
or timeouts. That means, at any moment
during a soccer game, a team could go from some casual possession near the
halfway line to a rocket-propelled
goal or two in less than five seconds.
2. There’s too much diving
Reason
number two is diving. And yes, diving
is a problem. You can watch videos like this and have some
serious fodder in the diving debate. And in response to the claim that soccer
is nothing but a tryout for the 3 meter springboard, I have two videos to show
you. Both are compilations of game footage from the undisputed best players in
the world at their sports.
First, we have the best soccer player on earth, a
5-foot-7 Argentinian who was literally prescribed HGH when he was younger
because of his stunted growth. He weaves through bigger defenders with the
grace and balance of a figure skater, and he never dives. There are
several of these videos, and you don’t need to watch more than a few highlights
to understand Lionel Messi’s philosophy. He knows he is the best in the world,
and he gives his team the best chance to win by playing the way he’s always
played – driving the ball through the hearts of defenses and probing for goals.
On the flip
side, and I’m sure you saw this coming, we have LeBron James. Yes, that LeBron James. The
same 6-foot-8, 250-pound human freight train who has been dubbed the best
athlete ever in a major American sport. To put it simply, he flops like a
fish. He could play the exact same way that Messi does, and indeed that’s what
got him to the top of the basketball mountain, but now he feels that he is owed certain calls as the resident
“King.” So yes, soccer has a diving problem. But so does every sport, and at
least in soccer it’s not led by the self-anointed monarch.
3. It’s unnecessary
Once we’ve
run through the previous arguments, we get to this one. This is the argument
that soccer haters pull out when they want to stand up and walk away from the
fight with their pride intact, the same way a spoiled child on the playground
will feign indifference when a classmate has a newer toy. It’s the old “America
doesn’t need soccer” defense. Many people use this tactic as a
conversation-ender, and tack on something like “We’ve already got the four best
sports leagues in the world, what do we need another for?” I’ll address that
question shortly, but first, let’s talk about why America does need soccer.
There are a
million ways to go about this response, but surprisingly, I’m going to turn to
the Stoolies. Yes, Maurice from Barstool Sports Philadelphia put together a surprisingly
good piece on this subject in May, just after the US men’s national team
lost to Belgium. Basically, his point is a nationalist one: if the US is such a
world superpower, why are we losing to countries with the population of Ohio? We
are the third-largest country in the world by population, we give our children
every advantage possible to let them become whatever they want, and our
training facilities, coaches, and medical care are top notch. There is no way
we should not be the best in the world at everything, and that in and of itself
is reason enough to support the team.
I’m assuming
that some portions of non-soccer-watching America won’t all of a sudden pick up
the English Premier League (though NBC Sports is making it fun
and easy to do so) or start following the ins and outs of the Spanish La
Liga. But appealing to our sense of #MURICA
makes sense, and it’s a perfect time for it. Consider: we’ve actually started
winning since the publication of that Barstool piece, having rattled off 12 on
the trot. Standing out among these was a 4-3, come-from-behind
win at Bosnia-Herzegovina, the 13th-ranked country in the world
(USA is currently 19th). Jozy Altidore continued his stellar scoring
run, racking up a hat trick in Sarajevo as the Yanks stormed back for their first ever comeback win on European
soil. Further, the World Cup is in less than a year, and the USA has four more
qualifiers before 2013 is out. Then the last-minute tune up games begin, with
our lads facing off against some of the best in the world before heading for
the Brazilian sunshine and the chance for glory.
In a perfect
world, American fans would watch a few qualifiers and identify their favorite
players. Inevitably, these players will be Jozy Altidore, Clint Dempsey, Landon
Donovan, and Tim Howard – our Big Four. Fans would be curious about the clubs
that these four play for, and a quick Wikipedia search would yield that two of
the four – Altidore and Howard – are playing for top-tier English sides
(Sunderland and Everton, respectively). Boom, just like that, America has two
teams in the EPL to find, research, track, and support. And the other two
players? Why, they’re playing stateside, in the quickly burgeoning MLS. For a
small fee, you can take your kids to watch a game featuring one of the best
soccer players that America has to offer. What more could you ask for?
The Case for
Following the English Premier League
So we’ve debunked the common myths about soccer. Hopefully
you’re thinking to yourself: You know
what? This little sport doesn’t seem so bad. In fact, I might like to check out
a few games and see what all the fuss is about. Well, if that’s the kind of
stuff that’s rattling around in your head right now, you’re in luck.
NBC Sports Network, a channel that comes included in every
normal cable package, is bringing unprecedented TV coverage to the US. Between
the NBC Sports Network (57), NBC (10), and CNBC (thankfully only 2), there will
be 69 live Premier League matches in the first three months of the season. And
that’s only the start of it.
The vast majority of these games happen in the morning here.
That’s right, the weekend morning. You know, that time that you’re hungover and
promise yourself you’re going to work out but instead just lie in your pajamas
and watch Homeland reruns? Yeah, that
time can be used for watching live, compelling, hi-def Premier League action.
And trust me, it will be compelling. If you are new to the
league, this is shaping up to be the most fascinating campaign in history. Seriously.
The top three teams from last year, Manchester United, Manchester City, and
Chelsea, are all starting the first year under a new manager. This would be
like if the Broncos, Patriots, and Falcons all got new head coaches over this
offseason. But it’s more than that. Because Manchester United is one of the
most storied clubs in all of soccer, and their former manager was so revered
that he was knighted. Imagine Bill Belichick
receiving a Presidential medal next year, winning two more Super Bowls, then
retiring, and you’ll have some idea of the hype around Manchester United’s new
manager, David Moyes.
Diving deeper into the Premier League, though, is where it
really gets good. Because this isn’t just about the crunching tackles, stunning saves, or outrageous displays of skill
(really, watch that one). It’s about two things: history and tradition.
The History: Why this
means so much to so many
Top-flight soccer in England started way back in 1888, and
soccer has been the runaway leader for most popular sport in the country since
that time. Sure, people play rugby and cricket and tennis and golf, but none of
these is a religion the way that soccer (or “football”) is.
Your location, your
loved ones, and your lifestyle all dictate your fandom. People are born into a
football club just as surely as they’re born into a family. Just look at that
term. They’re not teams, they’re football clubs,
and they dot the country from top to bottom. You’ll find pockets of die-hard
supporters for even the lowest-division sides. Teams that are now nearly
irrelevant may have once tasted the highest glory (check out my favorite
non-Premier League side, Nottingham Forest),
and teams that are now dominant giants may have toiled in relative obscurity
for decades, only to be saved by the seemingly bottomless pit of money thrown
their way by an unnamed Russian owner coughcoughChelseacoughAbramovichcough.
I wouldn’t claim to know the inner workings of the British psyche, but it
seems to go like this. With one dominant sport in the country, a city is
defined by its football club(s). If you support a club, you support all that
the club stands for as it relates to your city, and by extension, you are an
advocate for that city. Thus, fans who travel into an opponent’s stadium and
watch their team win a hard-fought match on enemy turf are tasting the last
vestiges of a long-dormant instinct: to conquer and assert dominance over
another man’s territory. And if you are lucky enough to be born into a
multi-club city like Liverpool or Manchester or London, your choice of squad
matters that much more.
The Tradition:
In the interest of brevity, I’ll just list some of the
traditions that make English soccer one of the best sports to follow in the
world.
·
Relegation
and promotion. This is a standings-based form of reward and punishment for
every team in the eight tiered professional leagues in England. Think of the
Premier League as the MLB and the lower divisions as farm teams, except no
teams have affiliations with each other. After each season, the top three teams
in each league’s standings move up to the next tier, and the three worst teams
move down a league. This has incredible financial ramifications – one season in
a higher league can bring a small club riches it could have only dreamed of
before. Similarly, being dropped into a lower division sometimes forces teams
to sell off valuable players in order to keep their heads above water. This
makes for life-and-death games between some of the worst teams in the league
near the end of the season, with a place in the richer league next season at
stake. Imagine if the Astros and White Sox had to play a three-game series at
the end of the season, and the loser was demoted to Triple A. Interesting,
right?
·
The fans.
As discussed earlier, English soccer fandom is a religion. And like all
religions, it has all manner of songs, chants, incantations, prayers, and
pleas. Stadiums ring with the signature song of a team, my favorite example
being Liverpool’s “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” Hearing the hordes of Liverpool
supporters belt out
the song after Liverpool’s 2005 Champions League triumph still brings shivers.
But more than that, many fans are dedicated to the craft of fandom. They pore
over the team’s transfers and acquisitions, as well as those of their
opponents, and make up clever (and often rude) songs to support their men and
deride the others. Some of the better ones are Manchester United’s “You Are My Solskjaer”
(playing off of “You Are My Sunshine”) and Liverpool’s song for mercurial
striker Fernando Torres.
·
Transfers.
This is one of the more interesting facets of European football. Basically,
there are no trades. Teams simply put a value on their players, and then other
teams make offers for those players. If the numbers seem right at the time, a
deal is struck, and the player is shipped off to a new team, league, and
sometimes even country. Transfers are not restricted by national boundaries,
and thus it’s impossible to discuss English soccer without tangentially
referring to Europe as a whole, and indeed the entire world, as the talent pool
in England is as diverse as they come. Getting back to transfers, there are two
periods of the year when teams are permitted to bid for players: the summer
(when the league is in its offseason) and in January (during the middle of the
season). It’s interesting to note that buying and selling players based on a
mutually agreed-upon price is much closer to our American version of capitalism
than the player transferring practices in any major American sport. Plus, it
makes great tabloid fodder when a perennially popular team buys a hulking, marginally
skilled striker for 35 million pounds, then sells
him two years later for 15.5 million.
·
The many,
many tournaments. Conservatively, in any full season, an English Premier
League team can expect to be involved in anywhere from three to seventy
tournaments. Of course, that’s an exaggeration, but it does seem that every few
weeks there is a new cup tie (tournament game), and it’s hard to keep track of
them all if you’re watching from a distance. However, narrow your focus to one
team, and it becomes much easier. Following Liverpool (as I do) throughout the
season presents countless opportunities to play armchair manager. Some
tournament games need to be played with substitutes in order to save the top
players for the more important league games, while other games demand a 100%
effort, no matter the schedule. Some tournaments mean much more than others,
and the Champions League (a tournament that pits the best teams in the best
European leagues against each other) is considered to be the best in world
soccer, even better than the World Cup. However, the fact that there are so
many tournaments involving so many teams means that even teams toiling
in near-obscurity taste the bright lights of Wembley Stadium in London.
Now is the time to follow the English Premier League. The
games are all on NBC Sports. They’ll be over before the NFL afternoon games, so you don’t need
to compromise. The immersive history, culture, and backstory of every team is a
rich tapestry of glory and triumph, loss and heartbreak. It’s everything you
could want in a professional sports league, and you’re not even compelled to
spend hundreds of dollars to watch the team in person. Plus, almost every
team
has
some
pretty
sweet
jerseys.
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