Team America

It's all too much for Captain America.

Only someone with a heart of stone could fail to feel for this fan of Team America which was knocked out of the World Cup the other day after a gallant rearguard action against Belgium.

The Americans lack the star players available to other more glamorous squads, but more than make up for this perceived deficiency with unbridled enthusiasm, great team work and a never say die attitude.  

As for Captain America, my admiration knows no bounds and he deserves a medal for taking the trouble to brighten up the game with his wonderful costume, especially in the sweltering heat of Brazil.  

Soccer as Socialism (2 July 2014)



Apparently some crackpot, right wing commentator in America is portraying the beautiful game of football in a negative light - soccer is 'socialism' according to Ann Coulter, so says Justin Webb in this entertaining opinion piece from The Times. 

And it is un-American to like, play or even support one of the most entertaining sports in the world, but then again America is full of 'gobby' commentators who are happy to say the dumbest things just to get on TV or even just Fox news.  

Soccer will never catch on. Socialist garbage

By Justin Webb - The Times



America’s traditional individualistic sports will always trump the alien imported game

Who am I to deny that Bangladesh could one day be the world capital of rugby league? And yes, the Russians might take up boules. But never in a million years — even after Saudi Arabia has triumphed in beach volleyball — will America embrace football.

Tonight the US national team play Belgium in the second round of the World Cup. Their achievement in getting so far has led to an outpouring of chatter on both sides of the Atlantic about how Americans, even if they call it soccer, have caught the round-ball bug.

Pleeeeze. The entire world has failed to grasp an essential fact about Americans: they are enthusiastic. Period, as they say. If there’s a party with beer and girls, and the rules are easy to grasp and don’t involve much more than wearing a scarf and shouting “One-nil, one-nil, one-nil” at the top of your voice then, hell, they’re on for it.

But the idea that football — soccer — could replace American sports or seriously compete with them? As so often in the modern US, a culture war has begun over the question.

The charge has been led by the firebrand rightwinger Ann Coulter. Ms Coulter is one of America’s highly paid professional extremists and on most issues she is nowhere near the mainstream, but on the subject of soccer she has raised such a storm that you have to wonder whether her views are a little too representative for some people’s comfort.

She warmed up thus: “Any growing interest in soccer can only be a sign of the nation’s moral decay.”

There was more: “The same people trying to push soccer on Americans are the ones demanding that we love Beyoncé and Hillary Clinton. The number of New York Times articles claiming that soccer is ‘catching on’ is exceeded only by the ones pretending women’s basketball is fascinating.”

Then Ms Coulter flooded the penalty area as only she can with: “What sets Man apart from the lesser beasts, besides a soul, is that we have opposable thumbs. Our hands can hold things. Here’s a great idea: let’s create a game where you’re not allowed to use them!”

Soccer as socialism. A fiendish plot to undermine American individualism and replace it with a team sport in which, Ms Coulter claimed, not much happens and nobody gets hurt. Unmanly and un-American. Didn’t the philosopher queen of the modern conservative movement, Ayn Rand, warn everyone about this?

American sports do demand a degree of individual performance in the spotlight that soccer really cannot match. In football (the American version) there is a hit, or a pass, then a studio discussion about it and then an advert for indigestion medicine. Basketball has a score every few seconds. Rounders — sorry, baseball — is where most Americans learn that in life you have to step up to the plate. Ice hockey: well, there are proper fights, with sticks.

Soccer is tame by comparison. It also involves, as we have seen in Brazil, a good deal of feigning injury that will strike most Americans, not just Ann Coulter, as less than decent. Remember these people have little sense of irony. They like players who fall over to have been poleaxed for real.

The fact is that soccer has been in America for years and has got nowhere. Children play soccer every week in every state; millions of Americans have soccer kit in their homes. My children still have the trophies they used to win every week — not because they actually won games but because they took part. Exactly. Nobody is taking this too seriously, folks. It’s soccer, not football.

The best argument for American soccer is that futbol is coming home. Hispanic Americans might well make up 30 per cent of the population by the middle of this century. Surely they will play the national game of Brazil and Colombia and Mexico? Some will, of course — and in Miami and Los Angeles probably quite a few will watch it too. But I am not convinced they will stick with it. Yogi Berra’s (Italian) parents had never heard of baseball. Joe DiMaggio’s dad wanted him to stick to fishing. The tradition in America is for the second generation to embrace the host culture — partly as a rebellion against mom and dad. The Italians did it, so why should Hispanic immigrants be any different?

And if they hanker after futbol — well it’s on TV, with Spanish commentary, all over America at the click of a button. Nobody needs to go to the effort of inventing it (or making it mainstream) in the United States. And I suspect nobody will.

So don’t believe the hype. America will participate tonight with great gusto. But our balls and theirs will always be different sizes.

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