Cultural change can be an incredible thing to witness and examine. This is especially so when the change is something you have been up close and personal with.
In 1974, as a young teenager living in Cincinnati, I watched the World Cup in Cincinnati Gardens. The games were shown on a movie screen on the basketball court with curtains around it. My mother managed to win a set of tickets from a local radio station and I had the thrill of my young life.
The Netherlands were incredible throughout the tournament, crushing Argentina and Brazil on their way to the final against West Germany. I remember they also seemed to be the better team in the final. But Neeskens and Cruyff couldn’t get past Beckenbauer and Sepp Maier. The West Germans were playing at home in Munich and took the crown 2 – 1.
It seemed strange to be in the Gardens with all those foreign voices. I was a distinct minority in my own backyard.
It would not be until 1982 that the first World Cup match was televised in the United States. That is an incredible statement given the immensity of the tournament.
Today, 36 years after the World Cup in West Germany, I sat in a bar in downtown Denver to watch England and the USA battle it out to a 1-1 draw. The weird thing wasn’t that I was expecting a good game. . American soccer has come a long way and our guys play for some of the best professional clubs in the world. No, the weird thing was sitting in a bar in the middle of the US, teeming with people singing, chanting, and cheering the tones on one side more than the other. Hours before the game started, and I mean HOURS, chants of “USA, USA, USA” and my favorite song “Ole, ole, ole, USA, USA” could be heard.
The crowd made so much noise when the teams were shown on TV before they entered the field that my ears hurt. And when the players jumped onto the pitch, he didn’t let up.
I can honestly say that, as a veteran of several hard rock concerts in the 70s and 80s, when Robert Greene mishandled Clint Dempsey’s shot and allowed the US to tie, I never heard a louder ovation.
I asked several people around me before the game what they expected and their answers constantly surprised me. “I’ll take a draw, but I think we can win,” they repeated to me several times. Expectations were very high for the US team, despite what the media told you. And there could be no question as to his loyalty. Most people wore a US National Team jersey, and many wore headbands and carried flags.
The media will have you believe that football doesn’t matter in the United States, that it never will. But the media likes this story because the game doesn’t fit the mold of American consumerism. They are two halves with 45 minutes of uninterrupted play. No TV wait times. No breaks in the field. In the US, the media can’t sell the sport, so they continue with their “soccer doesn’t matter” mantra. The corporate shills can’t find a way to take over the game, so they want you to believe it: the game doesn’t matter. In fact, they’ll tell you that hockey is the fourth biggest sport in America, even though soccer has been getting better ratings on television for several years now.
Fado’s is in downtown Denver, across from Coors Field. It’s full of Guinness, widescreen TVs on every corner, and on that day, it was full of screaming fans cheering for the US National Team on the world’s biggest stage. But Fado was not unusual or unique. Several friends have told similar stories from other parts of the city. There has been a change in our culture, despite what the media says. Soccer does matter. It’s relevant. And it’s here to stay.
You don’t find groups of eight or nine turning up at an Irish pub at 7.30am to make sure they get a seat for a 1.30pm game, nor do you find women clamoring for a yellow card after a bad game. . tackle, unless your football culture has progressed beyond the “football doesn’t matter” meme.
At the end of the match I turned to one of my English friends who smiled and said: “After living here for over 15 years, I never thought I would see this. I feel like I’m in a London pub.”
This is not 1974. We no longer get together in small groups to watch other countries play a foreign sport. We have made our sport both on and off the field. We have sewn it into the fabric of our culture and we have sewn our culture into the fabric of our game.
England take the lead in the fifth minute of the game and then try to protect what they have. But that’s not the American way, is it? We are a nation that always wants more. We are as tied to consumerism as the Italians to pasta and the English to tea. The beauty, and the betrayal, of American football is that we don’t sit back and defend, defend, defend when we lead. If we are one goal up, we want to be two up. And we play like this. That is what we are. We started with so little a short time ago and have moved to the point where our culture is now showing on the field. If American culture isn’t about never give up Y always looking for more So how else does it describe us? Forget the merits of those traits and whether or not you like them. they are us AND they are reflected in our game on the pitch.
Regardless of how the team finishes in this tournament, it’s exciting to see how grown up we’ve become about the sport and our place in it. Now we demand excellence. We look forward to it. And whether the media likes it or not, we are no longer one voice in a large crowd. We are the crowd.