Wikipedia says that Americans coined the term "soccer mom" in 1995. That's 15 years ago. Those kids so assiduously ferried to sylvan suburban fields are now in their 20s. And the young American team was beaten by Ghana today, a country a tenth our size, soundly (yes, after two inspired American performances against teams that are already out of the World Cup). I can't remember a great American goal. Landon Donovan was OK. But he did nothing to compare with the magic goals of this World Cup that I've seen, from the Brazilian Maicon, from the Slovakian guy Vittek, the German-Turkish guy Ozil, the Uruguyan with the hair, that Ghanaian today in overtime, and the devilish David Villa of Spain.
Villa seems like a tough street kid. Is that the problem? Are American soccer players too middle class? Do the best athletes come -- generally speaking -- from the poor? Or does the U.S. lack a truly developed soccer culture to rival basketball, football and baseball culture in the imaginations of child athletes? And if we lack it, how long will it take to create one? I don't know anything about soccer, as I remind readers. Commenters, please explain.
The USA has way more than enough soccer players. Sigi Schmid– who coached both Los Angeles and Columbus soccer teams, to major league soccer titles, said “there remains fundamental flaws in the US system: not enough technical emphasis, development academies don’t give young players enough opportunities to play top competition, and players are not placed into proper positions earlier enough.”
RE: “Why does U.S. soccer fall short?…the young American team was beaten by Ghana today, a country a tenth our size, soundly…” – Weiss
POSSIBLE EXPLANATION: BP Oil Spill: Israel’s Revenge?, By Stephanie Mencimer, Mother Jones, 06/24/10
(excerpts) The ever-entertaining WorldNetDaily has a breaking exclusive this morning suggesting that President Obama may have caused the BP oil spill by dissing Israel. Quoting the Biblical prophecies of Carl Gallups, a talk-radio host and Baptist pastor in Florida, WND reports:
»»» April the 19th, Israel celebrates its independence in 2010,” Gallups says in narration on the video*. “On April the 19th, Fox News reports that the U.S. will no longer automatically support Israel in the United Nations. The next day, on April the 20th, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explodes. Coincidence? Or the hand and judgment of God?” «««
WND notes seriously that Gallups isn’t the only expert who thinks that America might be “under a curse from God.” Referring to the Gulf spill (which Gallups claims could eventually reach all the way to Europe), the 80-year-old “Biblical expert” and Christian Zionist Hal Lindsey tells WND, “I believe this is evidence that when you turn your back on Israel, especially when you’ve been a supporter, you’re gonna see judgments come from God.”…
ENTIRE MOJO ARTICLE – link to motherjones.com
* GALLUPS VIDEO (02:57) – link to youtube.com
To take from another comment:
The US plays its own exceptional sports, and doesn’t join the rest of the world in theirs. Soccer is the major example; a passion of many nations around the world, but not in the USA (although the US team is doing OK in the World Cup). Any nation that has the gall to call its own internal national sport’s championship the ‘World Series’ is deluding itself. Most of the rest of the world don’t bother about playing rounders (baseball), or American Football, which can be better played on one of those swivelling puppet tables.
Foosball.
And yes, one of the reasons that US soccer falls short is because…
What other country plays football? Colonialism has historically spread Rugby around the world, but football seems to be an exclusively American sport.
So, what will it take to change that? I believe the commercialization of football and the culture surrounding it need to change. The commercialization could very well be incidental, but when the average American thinks that “Soccer is for sissies” and when football is associated with ruggedness and the tough warrior culture, then you’d certainly end up with these results. Incidentally, both baseball and football require players to wear protective gear, while neither soccer nor basketball do.
Football displays a lot of brute force; must be an American thing?
We also call the NBA title the “World Champions”. Bottom line is Americans don’t give a shit about soccer, because we see it as an export from other countries. Just like our foreign policy and geography, soccer is foreign and strange to us, and we just don’t like it.
I really don’t think that’s the reason why. Hockey is imported too. I think many Americans like soccer, but it’s not a good TV sport, and so most Americans don’t watch it.
Real motivation means running to practice dribbling a ball, not strapped into the back seat of an SUV.
I don’t think it’s a class thing. It’s far more cultural. Americans have their own favorite sports and soccer is not among them. I think things are changing. When my kids grew up in the 90′s soccer was the biggest participation percentage sport in our town. I’m sure the same is true today. Popularity is definitely increasing, but it’s slow and takes decades. The difficulty in getting a decent US TV contract when you have 45 mins without commercials doesn’t help. Of course, since the Israelis invented soccer, you’d think they could come up with a US marketing plan.
In the meantime, you’re right, Phil – there have been amazing goals; I love the slo-mo where you can see that the shot initially is heading wide, but has a spin to bend it in. The Uruguayan’s name is Suarez, and he had one today.
“there have been amazing goals”
Let’s not forget that the two most remarkable goals in this tournament were not by Brazilians, Argentinians or Spanish but Japanese ( 2 free kicks).
Of course, since the Israelis invented soccer, you’d think they could come up with a US marketing plan.
Can you explain? I am admittedly puzzled.
I don’t think it’s a class thing. It’s far more cultural.
Football is the main game played by boys, it transcends classes. But that’s exactly why I think Phil is partly correct. You have to imagine that almost every boy plays the game in the street at a very early age. The best aren’t necessarily from the middle class. Some are, but most aren’t.
“Can you explain? I am admittedly puzzled.”
So you’re not quite familiar with David’s penchant towards sarcasm yet?
Admittedly I was assuming he was sarcastic. What I had troubles with was the out-of-context-additional quality of it. This isn’t typical for David. He doesn’t belong to the people that twist every topic back to their obsessions.
” He doesn’t belong to the people that twist every topic back to their obsessions.”
Oh, give me a break, I can’t help it. Probably the result of too much self self-determination.
“What I had troubles with was the out-of-context-additional quality of it. This isn’t typical for David. He doesn’t belong to the people that twist every topic back to their obsessions.”
Um, the thread is about US soccer, but the context is that this appears at Mondoweiss, which is mostly about criticism of Israel and where people often joke about Israeli claims to have invented one thing or another.
I know you can’t help it, Mooser, but then you are a different kind of animal. You may be able to perfectly personify a medical/psychological expert, but never in a way David Samel would, if that was his topic.
Donald, as far as I remember the “jokes about Israeli claims” of expertise and highest accomplishments followed RW’s proud presentation of them. That makes all the difference to me. In the context of Palestinian suppression it felt simply another diversionary tactic, thus I found the response appropriate.
Look, I am aware and I appreciate Jewish accomplishments. And believe me I am very aware how many of my favorite thinkers are in fact Jewish. As I am aware how much some are shaped by Jewish culture and traditions. But they wouldn’t be important thinkers if their thoughts were ethnocentric. Thinkers usually stand on the shoulders of other thinkers, as the poet speaks to the poet over ethnic boundaries.
Strictly I don’t know if the people that collect the lists or make the Israeli accomplishment videos and the ones distributing the collection are better than the ones ridiculing the collections. Better in the sense of more ethical. Do you?
noticed too late: it felt simply like another diversionary tactic
as response, should have been responses = ridicule.
According to the website Soccer Training Info (www.soccer-training-info.com) the modern game of soccer is Anglo-Saxon in origin and was first played using the severed head of a Danish prince as the ball.
I’ve never been to the US, but in every other country I’ve visited, a child learns how to kick a ball at around the age of 4. From then on, it’s played everywhere, all the time – in homes using mini footballs, on weekends at the local playing field, on an evening in the street, during lunch break, during Physical Education lessons at school, on the beach when on holiday, inside a Gym (for five-a-side matches) etc.
Playing for a team is only part of the story and it seems that’s the only bit Americans do. The obsession is not there and neither is the culture.
The equivalent in the US today is basketball. In some segments of the US population. Kids learn to dribble and shoot, there are hoops everywhere on poles or the front of the garage or the barn, the playgrounds and driveways are full of kids shooting baskets or playing one-on-one if no more kids are around.
They could just as easily be playing soccer, but for the most part, they aren’t.
See what game the kids are playing when there are no parents around, and that’s the national game.
But basketball is not the national game in the US. Not even close!
American kids have been playing baseball and football for many, many decades; always a baseball to at least play catch with a mit, and a football to toss back and forth, go out for a pass, etc…
The Uruguayan “with the hair” has to be Diego Forlán. Can’t miss his beautiful blonde locks.
We’ve be come far less fit in the 15 years since the term “soccer mom” was coined. At that time, I was a soccer dad, and coached soccer and Little League baseball for eight years.
We let the majority of our kids down athletically between 5th and 7th grade. That’s when school sports and community sports pay far less attention toward finding ways for many kids to participate in team sports and in team arts, like musical ensembles, for instance. My approach to coaching, which was to have the team reach out to the overweight kid, the uncoordinated kid, the kid from the dysfunctional family, and have the team pull that person up into their midst, was and is frowned upon. From middle school on, sports and arts programs concentrate way too much on the best, most fit and brightest, turning them into the so-called “stars,” and shunting those less so off into the inward-facing worlds of video games, TV and so on.
We spend a higher and higher amount of money on fewer and fewer prima Donnas per capita, less on the public health aspects of getting kids in that same 11 to 14 year-old category to develop healthy cardiovascular systems and teamwork.
I’m not bitter about this, and continue to work to bring physical fitness and artistic acuity to young people. With a child who is an NCAA national champion and another who came close, I also realize that parental support helps bring a kid to athletic maturity. But our system of producing great athletes and artists who are then saddled with having been idolized since grade school is not good policy.
From middle school on, sports and arts programs concentrate way too much on the best, most fit and brightest, turning them into the so-called “stars,” and shunting those less so off into the inward-facing worlds of video games, TV and so on.
Interesting topic. I think some soccer players over here are a combination of “stars” and the boy next door. Some aren’t very articulate and they don’t need to be, as long as they can handle the ball artistically.
I also realize that parental support helps bring a kid to athletic maturity.
there is a delicate balance between parental support and parental pressure. I witnessed both.
A little history is in order. The World Cup was played in LA in the summer of 1994, and Americans were a little perplexed by the ardor shown by foreigners. ‘You mean some beanstock from Brazil is world reknown? How come? I mean, he’s black and he’s just a sports star’.
Well, all the yet-to-be soccer moms loved that it wasn’t the rough and tumble that football represented — so they thought — so they pushed their kids’ school to start soccer teams. [Sasha and Malia play soccer.] It was an elitist thing of the up and coming Upper Middle Class; hence, the SUVs, the striped uniforms, no busted teeth, and low-rent bazookas from the trailer parks or projects roughing up your doctor/lawyer kid. Soccer was for the then Quiche brigade.
But 1994 was famous for something else. The Columbian Escobar playing against the USA made a goal into Columbia’s own goalpost, eliminating them in the first round. He was shot in the street by angry bettor almost the minute he got off the plane in Bogata.
How many other incidences like this you know about, MRW?
to slightly chance topic. There are people of many ethnic backgrounds in my team, among them a German-Italian. Strictly I do not like to make this difference but I need it at the moment.
This girl supported the Italian team. So I took a chance to ask her about on old prejudice on my mind. I didn’t like the Materazzi (Italy) – Sidane (France) encounter. I appreciated to learn that I probably didn’t know the whole story. That in fact Sidane had teased Materazzi earlier all the time, and insulted him, most of the football audiences weren’t shown the footage that proved it. OK, fine I revised my knowledge about the encounter slightly.
About half an hour later, the lady went into the most vicious diatribes against “the English” in the most general terms. Her main ire, besides what felt like superficial knowledge of the wisdom of the English yellow press, enlarged into a national attitude, derived from the fact that for the game Italy – Slovakia an English referee had been chosen. … How could they have done this. (obviously this is silly) So the typical Sun-football-warfare-euphoria had produced an Italian adherent to football as a national warfare with other means.
Why would a grown man care?
Wow. That’s an ignorant thing to say. You’re suggesting the 2b men and women who care about the Orld Cup are children?
Yes, I’m suggesting that it shows a streak of immaturity.
I’ll let the social psychologists argue about the means by which this sort of infantilism is created/maintained.
That’s some snoot for ya. Two billion people are infantile. Fans of the greatest peaceful competition on earth are chidren.
Quick life tip: Learn some manners, bitch.
i agree that im immature, but in a very conventional way
I don’t think it’s very important. We don’t need to be the best in everything.
What do you mean “fall short”? The US team made it to the round of 16 in the world’s most competitive sporting event by far. This is an incredible achievment, all the more so since since soccer remains a third rate pastime o yonder. Compare gate + television reciepts at the NCAA level, where most American atheletes are developed. It’s ahead of lacrosse and hockey, but nada compared to basketball and football and several other pursuits. The sport remains niche, from a funding POV, if nothing else. Most elsewhere, the sport drarfs all other sports combined. And you guys made it to the round of 16!
Listen to what victory meant to Ghanians:
This from a continent that is soccer crazy. They get it. Yet you expect this sort of incedible acheivement to befall the US because….?
Your entitlement is showing.
It’s like the Olympics of commercial sports, held every four years. You can’t even put a value on what soccer generates worldwide, although I’m sure someone knows. I know the contract for this year’s World Cup was $3 billion.
It’s way bigger than the Olympics. Everyone plays soccer. I doubt there is a nation on earth that does not play soccer. It is the world’s only common language, its only common spectacle.
Class & money required? We just have to look at the greatest laboratory-test in real soccerlife: the careers of Pelé and Garrincha. They played together for over 50 matches for Brazil (winning two world cups), only losing one, in 1966, their last one.
Pelé educated by his futebol playing dad using shoes and a ball, Garrincha not so. Probably, Phil, it has to do with spend time with the ball and a team, before school, midday, after school, after dinner until sundown and after, then use the ball as a pillow. No car involved, just a tiny square around the corner and neighborhood players.
Also, unlike Pelé Garrincha never knew or needed Viagra. Futebol is the best metaphor for life.
Phil
Maybe you ignore that US women soccer team is ranked no. 1 in the world and has won 2 world championships..
The US women soccer tean should’ve played the World Cup; upper body strength is not much needed. Here’s 7 reasons why American males suck at soccer: link to soccerlens.com
I assume the lack of time for TV ads (once in 90 minutes) is the number one reason US male soccer has not developed although we have more than enough actual male soccer players. Another key reason is there are no sexy yet clean cheerleaders.
John Cleese explains it all: Soccer vs Football.
Futebol is not about free kicks, which is a set piece only (a torcido/a abhors a penalty shootout: too sterile, even with the “pressure” involved).
It’s about defending – buildup – attacking in one run, it’s using a second chance. It’s changing from defending to attacking within a second. It’s playing roles and positions in a grand strategy down to tactics down to operational steps down to your techniques and wits, all in one and for minutes on end. And children know this by playing it.
Also, there’s the underdeveloped level of arbitration, which can spoil every good game. But no beer commercials.
You guys are all missing some obvious things. Soccer in America is overwhelmingly a white middle class thing, and at least where I was from as a kid was a sport played by mildly overweight white kids, usually as a way of getting the kids to run off the fat. Athletic kids of all backgrounds play football, baseball, basketball, etc. But soccer is generally seen as something that requires a lot less talent and coordination, and when you are starting with a bunch of kids who are destined never to be great athletes to begin with, mediocre or worse is what you end up with.
One of the reasons is that popular American sports are made for TV or have been heavily adapted for Americas commercial channels. Games are split up into periods no longer than, say 12- 15 minutes (I think). Football, rugby, cricket have long periods of play, not conducive to TV advertising and therefore not popular with networks. British commercial channels show 2 uninterupted halves (45 minutes each) of live football, unheard of in the US. Less TV= less money and development compared to other professional US sports. I think this is changing now though with the number of sports channels and bigger teams.
Oh yeah, and now the USA is out, I hope all Americans are supporting your former colonial masters, your brothers in arms, your number 1 coalition partner. The country that gifted BP to your shores, whose bankers joined with yours in raping ‘small people’ the world over. No? all right, at least against Germany?
As of the US Census 2000, here is the ethnic background in the USA:
Germans 15.2 %
English 8.6%
link to en.wikipedia.org
German Americans are the largest ethnic group in the USA.
oops, that should be 8.7% English Americans.
Is it not true that English as the American first language, was only achieved by a lot of arm-twisting and dodgy politics.
German had a chance to overtake it but then along came WW1 & WW2 finished it off as first language contender.
Interesting questions, all!
In defense of American sports fans, who aren’t crazy about soccer, I don’t think there is anything nefarious about that. Football, baseball, basketball, hockey — these are all terrific spectator sports. I am an avid football and baseball fan because I love the sports.
Soccer is also a terrific sport, but it certainly has an ugly, hideously racist underbelly in Europe. Mock American sports spectators as you wish, but at least we don’t chant “monkey” when black players take the field!
Real Sports on HBO current episode has revisited their 2005 report:
link to nocache.hbo.com
I’m a soccer mom with a 10 year old boy soccer player. In our small town, far more boys play soccer than football, and not because they are overweight! In fact, fat boys who lack athletic ability are far more likely to play football! One of the coaches tried recruiting our son, and I told him that our kid had probably never thrown a football. He said it didn’t matter, because 90% of the players on the field never even touch it anyway.
We’ll see what happens with soccer in this country when all the kids who played as kids grow up. Philly just premiered its own MLS team in a new stadium. Tickets are hard to come by! … and we’re supposedly the worst sports fans in the country. Go figure!
Children should put their time into learning instruments, not kicking each other in the shins. Think of all the young people who their lives were blighted by not making the team! Or injured their hands or fingers in athletic activities. Many of them might have been competent be-bop players, given good instruction and adequate practice time.
And Americans could spend their weekends jamming, instead of watching sporting events.
I gotta go, it’s time to practice “Rhythm” changes and IImin./V7s.
I plan on being the heppest cat in my nursing home.
It’s not either/or! My son plays soccer AND the sax!
To answer Phil’s question:
Plenty of American youths play soccer, but to date, this has not resulted in a popular, widely followed professional league that has captured the imagination of American sports consumers.
Who knows if this will change? The new-to-our-city Philadelphia Union game at 5:00 today is sold out (30,000 seats) and will be televised. Maybe the winds of change are blowing!
OTOH, I listen to sports talk radio when I’m in the car. There was recently much discussion about why soccer isn’t more popular among the crowd that watches the big 4 (football, baseball, basketball, hockey). The reason most commonly cited is the lack of strategy involved… the lack of plays, of battling strategy as employed in say football and baseball…
I think soccer was pushed by bourgeois feminists; they didn’t want their sons playing a full-contact sport like gridiron football, and their daughters were, after all, girls.
What sport did/do you play, Citizen?
I will confess that watching the center on my HS football get paralyzed on the first play on opening day in 9th grade put a downer on football for me.
American Football is not a full-contact sport; no other team player of any sport is girded up in full armour, and neither is any rugby player.
Rugby, now, is a full-contact sport, and probably resembles American Football more than any other sport (Or perhaps it should be the other way round).
Rugby players only wear two bits of specialist clothing; a headband to stop their ears getting torn off in a scrum, and a jockstrap to stop other parts getting torn off in a scrum.
Rugby is a hooligans’ game played by gentlemen; soccer a gentleman’s game played by hooligans, and American Football an automatons’ game played by automatons, in time with beer commercials.
America is classless, so has neither gentlemen nor hooligans.
I would guess that even in Ghana, more kids play soccer seriously than in America. I enjoy playing soccer, but it was never anything more than a way to stay in shape for football as a teen.
For the most part, in the U.S. soccer is a sport for kids with thick glasses, no coordination or weight problems. I’m shocked that the U.S. team has done as well as it has.
I’m not sure what role class plays in sports, other than to make poorer kids hungrier and more likely to pursue athletics seriously. But I don’t know if that means much, since even the poorest kids in America are well-off by third-world standards–and Americans do well internationally in many other sports. Either way, I think that most world-class athletes use some sort of PEDs. I don’t imagine that professional/world class sports is clean going by the corruption at the youth, school and collegiate levels.
At this point, athletics has little to do with real competition. Instead, it is something of a mix of corporate, ideoligical and sociological interests, all presented to the public as bread and circus. Kinda boring.
I heard today that drugs are used a lot behind the scenes in American higher level sports, while overseas drugs are not allowed and this policy is vigorously enforced as to soccer.
Having seen people go to ridiculous means to cheat as early as little league and school sports, my guess is that all levels of athletics are very open to cheating. And having seen the effects of steroids on the athletic performance of people I’ve known, I’m sure that using PEDs is very tempting with the money involved.
Soccer players don’t look like typical steroid users, but I’m sure there are drugs that would benefit them, and they may or may not be easily detected. Football players, baseball players, cyclists, boxers and basketball players often beat testing, and few would claim that drug use isn’t rampant in those sports.
no
goals
or not
enough
anyway
i hated soccer
you run up
and back
i could kick
that ball though
i played fullback
we had to play
if we wanted
to ski
and you know
i had to do that
so up i went
and back i came
got to kick the ball
in every game
and now i wish
i felt the same
youth ain’t lost
just the flame
no
i was never
a soldier
I think Phil’s absolutely right that there is a class dimension to this. In my experience, most of soccer’s popularity is based in the suburbs (especially blue state) and in people of recent immigrant stock. So “foreign” and “suburban” are soccer’s main cultural associations here. Whereas football and basketball have a much stronger “blue collar” association and appeal, basketball is the universal urban and African-American sport, and NASCAR is most closely associated with the country and the South. Whether any of this helps or hurts U.S. soccer I have no idea.
But even though a huge number of American youth play soccer, it’s still not close to being the country’s universal or even #1 sport. In spectator popularity it’s 4th or 5th at best, behind football, baseball, basketball, NASCAR and probably hockey. That’s gotta be the main reason the US team could lose to Ghana or have trouble against Slovenia. Americans just don’t play the game in the same numbers or with the same dedication of most other countries. Even if soccer’s growing more popular, America’s sporting energies are always going to be divided.
And soccer’s institutional growth hasn’t fostered a corresponding cultural prominence. Not sure why. But personally, I haven’t been drawn much toward soccer as a spectator, even though it was my primary sport through middle and high school. I usually get into the World Cup, but otherwise prefer to watch basketball.
I like playing the two equally but good luck ever finding a pick-up soccer game.
Also, love “devilish” to describe David Villa.