"Overnight in ancient buses and railway carriages, or sitting beside the players in chartered planes and smart hotel lobbies, I began to get a whole new take on Italian character, and above all on what it means to invest so much emotion in something that we all know, in the end, is meaningless. In a globalized world where borders and discriminations are no longer possible, where religion and political idealism seem more dangerous than comforting, football, I at last began to understand, offers a new and fiercely ironic way of forming community and engaging with the sacred. Take to the road with the boys and you too can be a part time fundamentalist, a weekend Taliban."
Tim Parks - A Season with Verona
Walking into our favorite Italian restaurant my wife is forced to roll her eyes at me. At the next table a group of young men and women were discussing how the FA Cup is better than the Super Bowl. What was surprising to me was that the two voices of US origin were not only familiar with the FA Cup, but were able to compare the two with relative ease. I know better than to abandon my wife, a non-soccer fan, for a discussion about the beautiful game - no matter how much I wanted to.
Somewhere in our recent history soccer entered our collective consciousness, no longer shunned, but not yet celebrated in our popular culture either. It appears as part of our television commercials and even in country music but still seems to be a second-class sport, a sport played by our children.
Anecdotal evidence would seem to suggest that more kids are playing this sport than ever before. News stories, buried in the back pages of our local section, tell the tale of how soccer registration has surpassed football and baseball and other traditional sports. Occasionally you come across a story of how a community has done away with their baseball programs due to lack of interest, or scaling back their football program to make room for soccer. Soccer, with less emphasis on size, simple to understand rules and economical costs, is the perfect game for cash strapped school districts.
The emphasis on our kids however is a contradiction. It is our greatest strength and our most glaring weakness. Soccer has a built-in fan base but with little access to professional games and disposable income of their own. It is the children that will eventually force the game into the mainstream since they have played it and understand its simple beauty and complex patterns of point and counterpoint. They will eventually tip the scales and bring our game into the mainstream of America's sport scene. That is if we can actually get them to go to a game. It is these children that the newest soccer team in Pittsburgh wishes to attract to games and later, camps.
As I watched the first open tryouts discussing players and the game in general with local college coaches, I thought about this. These twenty-five to thirty young women came from all across the region for a chance to play a sport they love. The amateur Women's Premiere Soccer League (WPSL) may be the highest level of play they ever obtain, that's assuming that the WUSA does not regroup. Even if it does, the chances of any of these fine players reaching that level are slim.
Still they came. They came to play, to succeed. Each one has their own reason for playing the sport; each one is successful in their own right. They are our future. They are our soccer culture.
For the first time in our collective history, someone that loves the game that played the game is coaching an Under-8 player. For the rest of their lives, former players and not our parents, who did their best but had little understanding of the sport, will coach them. They have grown up playing the game, with men, with older girls and boys in many cases it will be the only game they have ever played.
The more soccer these children see and play, the more the sport becomes part of their blood. The more "American" it becomes and the more converts we obtain until it becomes an army of soccer ball toting Taliban.
American soccer is still in the midst of defining itself, as is American soccer culture. How we as fans, players, and coaches manage to touch the sacred soul of football remains to be seen but for once I think the future is brighter than the past.
