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Behind America's aversion to 'football'
By Ni Tao |
June 12, 2010, Saturday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
AMERICANS are hardly known for their love of soccer. In fact, their general distaste for the beautiful game is so well known that it has become yet another stereotype about Americans.
Even as US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made the point of seeing off their national soccer squad when it left on May 27 for the World Cup finals in South Africa, this high-profile audience probably did little to stoke enthusiasm at home for the jamboree that is celebrated almost everywhere else in the world.
Unlike their Anglo-Saxon cousins on the other side of the Atlantic dying to end a 44-year title drought, Americans' peculiar lack of interest in soccer inevitably raises the question: why has one of the world's biggest sports giants so stubbornly isolated itself from a universal obsession?
Even more noticeable is the fact that American aversion to soccer contrasts sharply with their passion for American football, baseball, basketball and ice hockey. Although the US has been a fixture at recent World Cup finals, the number of fans following US matches still represents a tiny fraction of those going ape over NFL Super Bowls and NBA playoffs.
How come the world's most popular sport ends up a distant also-ran behind football and basketball in America? This is a question Andrei Markovits and Steven Hellerman try to answer in their book "Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism."
The book's cover says it all: A vigilant Uncle Sam stands in the middle of a sea of black-and-white soccer balls that appears poised to engulf him at any time. Jealously guarded in his arms from the looming "tsunami" are a basketball, a rugby ball and a baseball -- icons of America's favorite sports.
The message is unmistakable: soccer is your sport, not ours. After comparing the levels of loyalty to soccer between American and European male adults, the authors argue that this "anti-soccer" attitude is encoded in the DNAs of large swaths of Americans -- due largely to historical reasons.
Soccer's European provenance is mostly to blame for its snub in America, which has portrayed itself as a "city upon a hill" since its very birth. To elevate itself above the corrupt "Old World," or continental Europe, America had better stay away from inventions by "scheming" Europeans.
Aside from being a sport many Americans find mind-numbing -- there is far less physical contact between "effeminate" soccer players than in American football -- soccer involves too many dirty tricks to be considered a decent sport, some might say.
These views are bigoted but not entirely without merit. My conversation with Chris Kwame, a Californian teenager who briefly lived with my family in 2008 on a home-stay program, confirmed Markovits and Hellerman's observation that American derision of those cheating in sports is the primary reason for soccer's lackluster image in America.
Hailing from a place steeped in soccer culture -- California has a large soccer-loving Hispanic population -- Chris is no less a soccer fan than myself, which I could tell from his wowing at skillful dribbling and sly give-and-gos by free-wheeling Dutch footballers in Euro 2008 matches.
When I asked him why so few people in America follow soccer, he simply told me that Americans despise the kind of athletes feigning injuries and lying on the pitch just to waste time. "These sleights of hand are nasty," I recall him saying.
Sure they are nasty, nasty to the point of reminding Americans of the worldly corruption around them. But by withdrawing into a world of nativism, Americans are missing a grander view outside the self-imposed confines that some of them, like Chris, are beginning to traverse, despite the daunting cultural barrier that lies ahead.
Even as US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made the point of seeing off their national soccer squad when it left on May 27 for the World Cup finals in South Africa, this high-profile audience probably did little to stoke enthusiasm at home for the jamboree that is celebrated almost everywhere else in the world.
Unlike their Anglo-Saxon cousins on the other side of the Atlantic dying to end a 44-year title drought, Americans' peculiar lack of interest in soccer inevitably raises the question: why has one of the world's biggest sports giants so stubbornly isolated itself from a universal obsession?
Even more noticeable is the fact that American aversion to soccer contrasts sharply with their passion for American football, baseball, basketball and ice hockey. Although the US has been a fixture at recent World Cup finals, the number of fans following US matches still represents a tiny fraction of those going ape over NFL Super Bowls and NBA playoffs.
How come the world's most popular sport ends up a distant also-ran behind football and basketball in America? This is a question Andrei Markovits and Steven Hellerman try to answer in their book "Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism."
The book's cover says it all: A vigilant Uncle Sam stands in the middle of a sea of black-and-white soccer balls that appears poised to engulf him at any time. Jealously guarded in his arms from the looming "tsunami" are a basketball, a rugby ball and a baseball -- icons of America's favorite sports.
The message is unmistakable: soccer is your sport, not ours. After comparing the levels of loyalty to soccer between American and European male adults, the authors argue that this "anti-soccer" attitude is encoded in the DNAs of large swaths of Americans -- due largely to historical reasons.
Soccer's European provenance is mostly to blame for its snub in America, which has portrayed itself as a "city upon a hill" since its very birth. To elevate itself above the corrupt "Old World," or continental Europe, America had better stay away from inventions by "scheming" Europeans.
Aside from being a sport many Americans find mind-numbing -- there is far less physical contact between "effeminate" soccer players than in American football -- soccer involves too many dirty tricks to be considered a decent sport, some might say.
These views are bigoted but not entirely without merit. My conversation with Chris Kwame, a Californian teenager who briefly lived with my family in 2008 on a home-stay program, confirmed Markovits and Hellerman's observation that American derision of those cheating in sports is the primary reason for soccer's lackluster image in America.
Hailing from a place steeped in soccer culture -- California has a large soccer-loving Hispanic population -- Chris is no less a soccer fan than myself, which I could tell from his wowing at skillful dribbling and sly give-and-gos by free-wheeling Dutch footballers in Euro 2008 matches.
When I asked him why so few people in America follow soccer, he simply told me that Americans despise the kind of athletes feigning injuries and lying on the pitch just to waste time. "These sleights of hand are nasty," I recall him saying.
Sure they are nasty, nasty to the point of reminding Americans of the worldly corruption around them. But by withdrawing into a world of nativism, Americans are missing a grander view outside the self-imposed confines that some of them, like Chris, are beginning to traverse, despite the daunting cultural barrier that lies ahead.
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