q: “how do you get from here to mexico?”
a: “keep driving south until someone gives a [bleep] about soccer.”
these days, it’s pretty safe to say that — if given the chance — any red-blooded north american would probably spend their growing stock of entertainment dollars on watching two modern phalanxes slug it out on the gridiron before they sat through 90 minutes of “the beautiful game”. for that matter, they’d likely spend more on bowling or horseracing or the wwe (author’s note: bowling can actually be quite fun). but the simple fact remains: for some strange reason, americans don’t have the patience for the type of strategic posturing and skilled athleticism that gives “european” football its otherwise universal global appeal.
so what do you get when you cross the world’s most popular sport with the world’s least popular global hegemon? that’s right: you get “major league soccer”, america’s best attempt so far at global athletic integration. granted, the “world” series of baseball will include more than 2 of the 178 countries in the “world” for the first time in 2006, and the nfl has already sewn its seed in the more touristy backcountry of european suburbia, but the country that rules almost everything it wants has somehow fallen short on the task of assimilating “football” into its athletic subculture.
“soccer moms” and the rise of the minivan
christened long ago in this, the backyard of the ultimate fighting championship, “soccer” has only recently received the type of broad public endorsement that other major sports have enjoyed for decades in america. the root of that slow but accelerating adoption curve has more to do with economics and changing cultural demographics than it does with underlying consumer demand. but the outcome is basically the same: more people are playing soccer in the u.s. and canada than ever before.
in canada specifically, amature participation has even supplanted hockey, the country’s long and storied national pastime, as the number one recreational activity by total registration. but “soccer” is still widely unavailable on our public broadcasters, and programming on the major cable operators is still peripheral at best.
one obvious contributor to north america’s growing (but still embryonic) interest in football — mexico aside — is the extremely low financial barrier to entry. at the house-league level, the cost to join is virtually non-existant. all football really needs is a ball. even shoes are optional for the beautiful game. in fact, bare feet are the preferred choice in footwear throughout most of the developing world. and with the soaring cost involved in properly outfitting a growing child with thousands of dollars worth of hockey equipment every october, added to the almost dizzying cost of maintaining those collosal athletic refridgerators all year round, it isn’t hard to see why canadian parents now understand what the rest of the world has known for decades.
as a natural consequence of all this rational economic behavour, “soccer” has recently popped up within various forms of popular american culture, replacing baseball and football as the reference of choice in many of today’s popular sitcoms, soap operas and other televised dramatic fare. even hollywood is getting into the act these days, with more feature films about “soccer” during the past five years than at any other time in the history of modern cinema (look no further than 1999s “soccer dog: the movie” for growing confirmation of this rather embarassing trend).
still, america hasn’t quite wrapped its head around actually watching the sport on television, particularly if the “world’s strongest man competition” or the “1,000th westminster kennel club dog show” is airing on the very next channel. as much as the world’s second largest democracy loves sending its kids off to “soccer” practice, they still seem leary of bringing their children (or their friends, for that matter) out to watch an actual game. and while that may have something to do with an unhealthy obsession for “high-scoring” sports, it also highlights a fundamentally different sociological approach to co-operative athletics.
like many of the world’s greatest activities, european football’s greatest asset has always been its difficulty to master. successfully organizing 22 players on a field and waging an all out battle for 90 minutes, with no clock stoppage, a gigantic playing surface (8,200 square metres), gaping goalmouthes (192 square feet), minimal real-time coaching input, almost no auxiliary equipment, and an estimated 8.8 kms of running, jogging and walking at heart-rates that average between 150 and 170 beats per minute over the course of the entire game, is a considerably difficult task. not to suggest that football is too difficult for americans to grasp, or even too difficult for them to play, but it does require any interested viewers to appreciate the extremely challenging dynamics of the sport, particularly at its most competitive levels.
that said, there is one lingering stigma that has kept the game off the radar of american viewing habits for years: a lack of high-quality referees.
in all fairness to the guys in stripes (a concession i’m not usually all that willing to make!), that field is fricken huge. but america’s point is taken: watching professional players “draw” penalties in any sport is an embarassment to the entire spectrum of competitive athletics. traditionally speaking, european football is perhaps the most notorious offender, and in some respects you can’t necessarily blame the viewing public for calling “bullshit” at the slightest hint of a “dive” and quickly flipping to the next available program.
but the game is definitely changing. rivaldo will one day retire, and the sport’s more histrionic athletes are being replaced by hard-working professionals with the same level of raw creative talent, but fortified with a generous helping of self-respect. and as referees like italy’s pierluigi collina and sweden’s anders frisk begin to wrestle back control of the beautiful game, fans will begin to notice. (i hope…)
triple threat
it’s been just over 10 years since the u.s. first hosted the world’s largest sporting event, and the game is finally catching up with its newest western front. with the passing of the 1994 world cup, fifa’s prestigious tournament finally broke through the galvanic shell of american pro sports, but it wasn’t until the last few years that “soccer” finally took hold at the grassroots level. the americans even managed to earn themselves a spot in the quarter finals of the 2002 tournament, announcing their arrival on the world scene with a particularly impressive performance.
as with most american decisions, once their resources have been allocated to achieving some tangible global goal (in this case, cracking the top 10 in a sport that 10 years ago was less popular than pro bass fishing) it might be time for the rest of the world to catch up. the country has both the funds and the know-how to sell pretty much anything it wants, and as its immigrant population continues to expand (those immigrants love their football), the triple threat will push “soccer” into a truly unique position in the realm of professional american sport.
in this way, football has now begun its slow but steady journey toward america. the two are still separated by oceans on either side and a border with mexico to the south, but the tides are slowly changing, and the americans will no doubt embrace “european” football before the rest of the world ever embraces its “american” cousin.
football’s “americanization”
when the mls first launched in 1995, most people fully expected the league to fail. america has tried to support several professional leagues over the years, but public interest in “soccer” wasn’t quite there. players had no domestic inspiration to carry on with the sport beyond its junior ranks, and countless young athletes shifted toward sports like baseball and hockey which have a fully developed pro system waiting to employ them straight out of college (or even high-school, in some extraordinary cases).
originally a promise to fifa while bidding to host the 1994 world cup, the u.s. established its professional league with high hopes for the game, on the heels of one of the most commercially successful fifa tournaments of all time. trying to piggy-back on that initial public success, the league only received a luke-warm reception when its first 10 clubs took to the field in late 1995.
in the 10 years since, the league has expanded (and contracted) several times, signed lucrative tv contract deals with disney (i.e. abc, espn, espn2), and experienced growing fan attendance in almost every subsequent year of operation. now, in its historic 10th season, the league is finally on solid financial footing, its players are paid well enough to be more than just “half-decent” european drop-outs, and people are finally starting to watch the sport on tv.
that said, it’s still no “american” football.
america’s “football-ization”
with the aid of a worldwide network of media distributors, american entertainment dollars are now a driving concern of major club owners around the world. witness england’s venerable manchester united as the subject of a “hostile acquisition” (to use the american vernacular) by u.s. billionaire-tycoon malcolm glazer, or david beckham’s move to spain (in part) to drive sales of real madrid jerseys in both asia and america, two of the largest global markets for pro sports memorabilia. even “fox sports world”, a veritable treasure trove of world-wide “soccer” programming, has recently changed its name to the “fox soccer channel” to better describe its principal programming thrust.
the end result of all this financial posturing is that football has actually evolved, both as a result of its american influence, and in spite of it. the game is much more exciting, but no more aggressive. it’s much more skillful without being excessively barbaric or digitally sensationalized (remember “foxtrax“?). the athletes are well-oiled machines, and wage intense athletic battles in what might be the most strategic form of professional athletic warfare on the planet.
it’s now almost to the point where brute physical challenges have been all but completely removed, and the game has achieved an elegance that isn’t typical for modern team sports. not that “american” football isn’t at all like chess, but in the case of the nfl, it’s orchestrated and implemented almost exclusively by the coaches and a few key players. in contrast, with proper european football, the coaches do organize a basic system within which the players can manifest their particular skills, but once that first whistle blows, it’s up to the 11 men on either side of the pitch to use those skills with effeciency and effect, and strike only when the iron is hot.
call it the “cold war” of professional athletics. unrivaled one-upsmanship that has produced some of the best attacking (and quite possibly the best defending) footballers the world has ever seen. and it all comes down to basic game theory (i.e. “the prisoner’s dilemma” and the “scorched earth” apocalyptic metaphor). if both teams club each other down night in and night out, no one really wins. they all get paid way too much to destroy their bodies like that.
so finally, it seems (much to the satisfaction of america’s viewing public), a compromise has been struck. one that combines skill with athletics, and manages to avoid the american entertainment landmine that is the basic “soccer dive”. the reason for compromise is simple: for the money these guys make (the best players in the world are currently earning in the neighbourhood of US$30-$40 million a season), they better smarten up and put on a show every time they step out on the pitch, or viewers are going to find something else to watch and someplace else to watch it. diving is no longer an option. arguing is no longer an option. average is no longer an option.
scoring fantastic, highlight reel goals is the only remaining option. making sportscenter and sportsdesk each night is the only commercial option. getting people to watch, and buy, and then watch some more, is the only real option. such is the modern game of “soccer”, and we may have america to thank for it.
changing of the guard
when david beckham moved to spain, as the reigning captain of england’s national football team, and began his tenure in madrid with 5 of the other top 10 players in the entire world…there were, of course, a lot of euros involved. in professional sports, as in business, the money always flows where the media goes. and the media is concerned with one thing alone: growing their target demographic. if the people want their fancy football, say guys like brazil’s ronaldinho, it doesn’t mean they have to play like little ballerinas anymore. their job is now quite simple. all they have to do is be the greatest athletes ever to grace a professional pitch, and get paid really well to do it.
and if that isn’t reason enough to start watching the beautiful game — if witnessing the pinnacle of modern strategic athleticism doesn’t crank america’s chain — then i guess “beauty” really is in the eye of the beholder.