Coming Home: Learning To Be An American Soccer Fan

Coming Home: Learning To Be An American Soccer Fan

Coming Home: Learning To Be An American Soccer Fan

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By Jordan Brown, writing from Chicago

Watching last Tuesday’s United States Men’s National Team match against Guatemala, what struck me most—beyond the team’s confident performance—was the support in the stands. The stadium was a packed array of red, white, and blue. The atmosphere was fantastic; the crowd was active and loud, the American Outlaws section enthusiastic in both dress and volume. They also seemed so distinct from a European crowd, so uniquely American in the whole endeavor of support—the Dempsey big-head that got a top billing, the ‘Shot, Shot, Shot’ chant that came out a few times—hints of bombast and swagger, beer in the stands, questionable body paint all spake very American.

The antics weren’t a simulacrum of our European cousins, but instead showed an individual character, and I was suddenly aware that I wasn’t a part of it and dearly wanted to be. The match made me realize that for all my fervent interest in the Beautiful Game, when it came to my own nation’s expression of the sport, I have been an absent participant. It’s taken the week ‘till now for me to consider my situation, but I feel I’ve found a reason: for all the grassroots movement and growing national interest, most Americans are and have been Soccer Orphans.

In Luke Dempsey’s fantastic piece in Howler’s recent first issue, he discusses the difficult position of growing up a Manchester United fan in the West Midlands, home to of clubs like Aston Villa and West Brom—essentially not Manchester.

“If you’ve watched British football from early childhood, your loyalty is probably going to be about your father and which team he supported. I have an American friend who picked Chelsea when she came to the sport as an adult, because she had watched them lose the Community Shield in 2006 and ‘always likes to root for the underdog.’ Bless her.”

In two sentences, Dempsey effectively sums up the identity crisis facing American soccer fans. The America I grew up into is a land of many fathers, but I’d wager that very few of them supported soccer, much less any individual club with any ardor. And the other side of the coin Dempsey has tossed out is a good-natured, but still somewhat common view of the modern American support of European clubs—that it is more novelty than authenticity.

My father isn’t a supporter of any pro sports team, surely not any European one. That’s not to say he doesn’t love sports; both my sister and I were encouraged to and did actively play on teams through high school. Despite being Michigan natives, we weren’t a Tigers, Lions, or Red Wings household.

My lack of general sports indoctrination is an extreme example—plenty of American kids inherit their father’s Baseball, Football, or Hockey affiliations, but the vacuum for soccer is there for the majority of us. For that vacuum, American soccer fans each undertake a journey of discovery, a search for identity that settles us each into the love of one club or another, finding a tribe that suits some part of our own character, matches our desires and appeals to our own personal philosophies—the football world being our proverbial oyster. It’s what makes discovering soccer as an American so pleasurable, each of our paths are so unique, our choices distinct and grounded in individual experience.

It is understandable that so many of us are drawn first to Europe, which has for some time been the ‘big show’ of the game. Its leagues are a magnet for the world’s talent meaning the stars are there, and the game on display is the world’s peak in technical level. My first idol in the game was Zinedine Zidane, whose play seemed to me magical, his movement so fluid—almost a dance. I took instantly to his monastic appearance; Zizou’s bald pate and solemn expression refreshing to me as opposed to the often photogenic stars of American sports, and the delicate technicality of his game was—to me—an artistic counterpoint to the all-action, ‘smash mouth’ holler of popular sports marketing.

Much of my introduction to European football came from native Europeans themselves. I spent my university summers working at a sleep-away camp with plenty of foreign staff, the first during the 2006 World Cup. We’d play a three-legged staff Cup with the two entrants being England and Rest of the World, and for matches of interest squeeze dozens of people into the tiny break room and around a small television whose unreliable reception was dictated by a rabbit ear aerial.

That summer holds some of my earliest and most cornerstone memories of football: the domineering Cannavaro leading Italy’s back line, Zidane—in his Indian Summer—playing so beautifully but for that slow-motion head-butt and sad march past the trophy. I vividly remember crowding around a computer watching YouTube compilations of players; when Matty Appleton typed Eric Cantona into the search line, I asked who that was. “Almighty God,” he responded. The ensuing evidence was difficult to argue with.

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Travel is also fertile ground for the American to grow into a supporter. My friend James’ many trips to visit a cousin in London have made him an obsessive Arsenal supporter—team blogs, podcasts, yearly kit upgrades and all. Even my sister—a sporting philistine—claims a continuing fondness for Fiorentina from her semester there. My own personal conversion came on my travels. Visiting Barcelona, I far overpaid for some miraculously remaining tickets to 2007’s El Clasico.

It was the closest to a spiritual awakening I’m likely to ever have in my life.

The sound, the pure intensive volume of the Nou Camp was a revelation to me. My small fortune bought me ground level seats in the Gol Nord, amongst the Boixos Nois, and no money I’ve ever spent has been so well worth it.

Choosing to support Barcelona has had me more than a few times facing the accusation of ‘glory hunting’. I’ve never much appreciated it, Luke Dempsey’s own response regarding his Man U support being very familiar, “With all due respect, and if it’s not to much trouble, please go f*ck yourselves.”

I can empathize with the born and bred Stoke fan who views the ever ballooning kit revenues of the giants with growing frustration; but in fairness, when I see photos of Asian fans thronging airport receptions or smiling African schoolchildren in love-worn knockoff jerseys they are rarely showing their support for Wickham Wanderers. Basically, what I’m saying is don’t lay the grief at my doorstep, I fell for the girl I fell for, had I visited Stoke and made it to the Britannia I might now be an advocate for wet-and-rainy hard-nose football. Blame your tourism board.

We also grow into the game through the mounting community of fandom and journalism surrounding football. Everyone consumes their morning blogroll and weekly podcasts, filling themselves with greater and greater ease on their own particular flavor of the game. I myself have been a Football Ramble listener for over two years now, drawn to the unabashed love for the sport Marcus Speller, Lukey Moore, and Pete Donaldson gush about every week—it’s like a football love-in. Their Dean Windass Hall of Fame segment has been like my own personal time-machine with the Ramblers as tour guides—delighted to share their own milestones and memories with a captive audience.

What I’m finding now, however, is that my experiences have been wholly colored by a continental view. While not necessarily a bad thing, my decade-long consumption of the European game and its clothing of culture has been at the expense of my own country’s emergent identity. Like an orphan child raised by missionaries, I became evangelical for a tradition that while rich and generous, wasn’t my own. Seeing the brilliant crowd in Kansas City reminded me where home was—who my people are—and that I’m coming full-circle.

The American journey of football discovery necessarily get informed by our European and South American brethren. It is a lovely sort of sharing, like helping a friend straighten up their attic—going through a lifetime of boxes full of childhood toys, travel souvenirs, and photo albums filled with happy memories. You learn about your friend, and are happy for the stories, but you’ve got your own attic to fill.

I’m realizing that in the growing list of my own football memories more of them are pointing home—Donovan’s 2010 gamewinner against Algeria, Abby Wambach’s 121st minute equalizer against Brazil in the 2011 WWC. When I’m passing on the trappings of my love for this game to my children there will surely be the pleasure of living in the time of Messi and Ronaldo rivalry, the brilliance of this enduring Spanish side, the legend of Zidane—my first idol. It’s just now that I’m realizing I owe it to them to give them something American as well—a tradition of a nation’s game that is uniquely theirs so that they won’t need to find it as late as I did.

In the interest of growing the American soccer culture, I’d urge everybody to go make yourself a subscriber to Howler Magazine. It’s an insanely good magazine put together by people who are dedicated not only to the American game, but the American perspective on the whole game.

This piece was written by Jordan Brown, a Senior Writer at AFR. You should follow Jordan on Twitter at @JordanSig. This piece is also co-signed wholeheartedly by AFR Editor Eric Beard. Comments below please.