Almost Voodoo--The Science of a Bending Soccer Ball (Part 2)

In my quest to comprehend the secrets of a bending ball, I stumbled upon SoccerNASA, an online soccer kick simulation program developed, oddly enough, by the folks at NASA. Apparently the intent of this program is to encourage student interest in the study of aerodynamics. Anyway it’s a wonderful thing, and further proof, if proof was wanting, that this is a great country.

As you may recall from my last post, I used Luis Suarez’s brilliant goal in the Uruguay v South Korea World Cup match as the paradigm for how to bend a soccer ball. To review...Suarez received the ball at the left side of the box, pushed the ball to his right, and struck it at the edge of the penalty box about midway between the penalty arc and the left side of the box. Professor John Eric Goff, who analyzed World Cup goals for the Wall Street Journal, estimated that Suarez’s shot left his foot at 54 mph and bent 8.7 feet from a straight trajectory before it hit the far post and rebounded into the goal.

It seems a reasonable extension of my original (nerdy) inquiry into Suarez’s goal to model it using the SoccerNASA program. The program allows you to simulate a direct free kick by varying conditions related to a ball’s flight such as starting position relative to goal, velocity, spin, spin axis, vertical angle of kick, and altitude. Technically the ball was moving when Suarez kicked it, but not so fast that it differs appreciably from a free kick (at least for my purposes here).


SoccerNASA simulation of Suarez kick--top view, no spin.
Note the ball misses the far post by about 9 ft.

 Using SoccerNASA I set it up so that without any spin Suarez’s ball would have missed the far post by about 9 feet (relatively easy to do as this is half the depth of the goalie box). The program allowed me to select the actual Uruguay v S. Korea match location of Port Elizabeth, South Africa (197 feet above sea level). I set the spin axis at -10° from vertical, assuming that the natural motion of a kick imparts a small amount of top spin (0° from vertical is pure side spin). Then I ran the simulator with different vertical angles and spin (rpm) until I found a combination where the ball just curled into the goal at the far post, i.e., it “looked” like Suarez’s goal.

SoccerNASA simulation of Suarez kick--top view, 310 rpm spin



SoccerNASA simulation of Suarez kick--field view, 310 rpm spin

 The combination of spin and vertical angle that best recreates Suarez’s goal is 18.5° and 310 rpm. The ball never exceeds the height of the goal (8 ft) and strikes the far post about 4 feet above the ground. From the moment the ball was kicked the goalkeeper had 1.2 seconds to react.

Almost all models based on theory involve some simplifying assumptions. SoccerNASA assumes that a kicked soccer ball typically travels fast enough that the boundary layer of air around it falls in the turbulent flow regime, i.e., faster than about 30 mph. Previously I suggested (as have many others) that the transition from a turbulent to a laminar (smooth) boundary layer accounts for some of the eccentric movement of balls in flight. For Suarez’s goal the original assumption appears reasonable as drag only slows the ball from 54 to 39 mph over the 24 yard flight.

Two empirical constants, the drag coefficient, Cd, and the lift coefficient, Cl, account for the real world behavior of a soccer ball as opposed to an ideal smooth sphere in flight. Wind tunnel tests demonstrate that the drag coefficient for a rough sphere (a sports ball) in laminar boundary layer flow is about 0.5. As air speed changes the boundary layer flow to turbulent, the drag coefficient drops to 0.25. The lift coefficient for a soccer ball is also about 0.25 and to my knowledge doesn’t change with flow regime.

Data table--SoccerNASA simulation of Suarez kick

In the SoccerNASA program the change in a ball’s flight behavior could be accomplished by changing the drag coefficient, Cd, from 0.25 to 0.5 at the appropriate point in a ball’s flight, but this potentially gets complicated as different makes of soccer balls may transition between laminar and turbulent flow at different speeds. For instance, the new Jabulani ball used at the 2010 World Cup likely flies differently than the traditional 32-panel stitched ball.

The drag and lift forces are also dependent on the ball’s velocity—lift is a function of velocity, drag is a function of velocity squared. As a consequence the lift and drag forces on the spinning ball are changing throughout its flight at different rates (see table above). No wonder a goalkeeper may have trouble following a well-struck bending ball.

Suarez scored his goal in Port Elizabeth, almost at sea level. World Cup games were also played in Johannesburg at 5,558 ft above sea level (higher than Denver). If Suarez strikes the ball identically in Johannesburg, it generates less lift and less drag. His shot goes wide. The match goes into overtime.

Almost Voodoo--the Science of Bending a Soccer Ball (Part 1)

In the 80th minute of the Round of 16 match between South Korea and Uruguay, Uruguayan striker Luis Suarez received a headed ball at the left side of the box, moved quickly to his right, and fired a curling right-footed shot that deflected off the far post into the goal. It proved the game winner.

Suarez's goal: the ball hits far post, Suarez ends up outside box at right 

Suarez’s shot was a remarkable demonstration of soccer technique, made the more impressive by the rainy conditions. As analyzed by Professor John Eric Goff of Lynchburg College, the ball left Suarez’s foot traveling 54 mph and bent 8.7 feet on its 24 yard flight to the far post.

So how did Luis Suarez manage this feat with his foot (sorry, couldn’t resist)? A spinning spherical object, that is a ball, moving through a compressible fluid, that is air, makes a fascinating subject for scientific inquiry. To this end many engineering types have studied baseballs, golf balls, tennis balls, and soccer balls in flight.

Presumably Suarez struck the ball off center with the instep of his right foot causing the ball to rise with a counterclockwise rotation. How hard to strike the ball and how far off center to obtain the desired swerve from a straight-line flight we can reasonably assume was the result of years of practice.

As a soccer ball moves through air it is subject to two forces, drag due to air viscosity and lift created by the ball’s spin (also called the Magnus Effect). Viscosity is a measure of a fluid’s resistance to flow, what we might characterize as a fluid’s “stickiness.”

Let’s look at drag first and momentarily ignore the rotation of the ball. Drag results from the friction between the ball and the air flowing around it. The nature of the drag force changes with the speed of the soccer ball through air as shown below.

Flow regimes at varying air speeds over a sphere

At very low speed the layer of air next to the ball’s surface, called the boundary layer, flows smoothly around the ball. This is laminar flow (see A above). In this flow regime the only drag force is the pull of the air stream on the ball’s surface.

As speed increases to something more typical of a ball in flight, say 20 mph, the boundary layer separates from the ball at about 90° from the direction of flight and produces a wide turbulent wake (see D above). Turbulence is chaotic fluid flow characterized by the formation of eddies. The wake is an area of low pressure behind the ball. It creates a large pressure differential between the upstream and downstream sides of the ball which opposes the flight of the ball. This is often called pressure drag.

At even higher speed through the air, say 35 mph, the air within the boundary layer becomes turbulent (see E above). Without going into the details here, a turbulent boundary layer doesn’t separate as early from the ball’s surface, thus creating a smaller wake and correspondingly smaller area of low pressure behind the ball. In other words at the moment the boundary layer changes from laminar to turbulent, the pressure drag drops dramatically.

This phenomenon is counterintuitive as we normally associate laminar (or smooth) flow around an object with low drag. In fact one of the factors that promotes the transition to turbulent flow is surface roughness. This is why the modern golf ball is manufactured with dimples on its surface, i.e., a dimpled golf ball will travel further than a smooth golf ball. The trip wire in the wind tunnel test shown below acts like dimples on a golf ball. In the case of a soccer ball, the stitches of the standard 32-panel soccer ball create a moderately rough surface.

Wind tunnel experiments: a) large wake from laminar boundary layer,
b) smaller wake from a turbulent boundary layer induced by trip wire

Now let’s consider the rotation of the ball. As the ball moves through air, its spinning surface tugs at the boundary layer. This creates an asymmetric condition around the ball as the spin force impedes air flow along one side of the ball and assists air flow on the other side of the ball.

This simple model of air flow around a spinning ball does
not account for boundary layer separation and wake formation

The often-cited explanation for why a soccer ball deflects in flight references the Bernoulli Principle, according to which the faster moving air on one side of the ball creates lower pressure than the slower moving air on the opposite side, the consequence of which is a net force, called lift, in the direction of the faster moving air. Essentially it is the same lift force produced when an airfoil moves through air.

A more likely explanation of Magnus Effect as a consequence
of asymmetric boundary layer separation

At best this is a partial explanation for the Magnus Effect, as it doesn’t account for boundary layer separation. At the point where the boundary layer separates from the ball the Bernoulli lift disappears. An explanation that better conforms to wind tunnel experiment is that the spin changes the points of boundary layer separation on the ball’s surface, moving it downstream on the side that assists the air flow and upstream on the side that opposes air flow. This has the effect of turning the airstream towards the side of the spinning ball that opposes the air flow. The momentum change of the airstream must be balanced by an equivalent momentum change in the ball (per Newton’s 3rd law) which is accomplished by the ball moving sideways in the direction of the side assisting the airflow. This action is analogous to turning a ship’s rudder. The rudder redirects the flow of water behind the ship and pushes the boat’s stern in the opposite direction.

Back to Suarez’s shot…as the ball left his foot at the 54 mph it was likely spinning counterclockwise at about 600 rpm (at this point a SWAG). This caused the ball to curve to Suarez’s left due to Magnus Effect forces described above. We presume at some point in flight the boundary layer transitioned from turbulent to laminar flow causing the pressure drag to increase about 150% (like someone putting on brakes). The ball’s spin likely doesn’t dissipate as rapidly as its forward speed with the result that the bend in the ball’s flight appears most pronounced as it nears the goal face. It is also possible that the Magnus Effect is stronger in the laminar boundary layer flow regime (although I didn’t read anything suggesting this is the case).

To complicate matters it is possible that the change in boundary layer flow from turbulent to laminar may not happen simultaneously on both sides of the ball due to the spin force. This creates a situation where the relative position of flow separation and the resultant airstream behind the ball may suddenly flip-flop, causing the ball to momentarily move in the opposite direction, i.e., appear to wobble in flight.

Spin--it’s all in the game.

What you do when you score a game winning World Cup goal

World Cup Post Mortem: Taking Stock of the US Men's Soccer Team

On August 8th LA Galaxy played Real Madrid in a pre-La Liga friendly. Yes, a friendly, but you know every Galaxy player hoped to strut his stuff before 80,000 local fans.

Jose Mourinho--The Special One

All started well. Galaxy went up 2-0 in the 1st half. Then Jose Mourinho made eight 2nd half subs and maybe a halftime “score one for the Gipper” speech and everything changed. With Ronaldo, Higuain, Alonso, Marcelo, and new Spanish wunderkind Canales on the field it was suddenly men vs boys. Except desperately clearing the ball, or worse, pulling it from the back of net, Galaxy rarely had possession. Forty-five minutes later it was Madrid 3, Galaxy 2, and no question who was alpha dog.

So what does this have to do with the US Men’s Team…well nothing… except this match reminded me, if I needed reminding, that there’s a level of soccer that we still don’t see in the USA; and until we get a critical mass of players playing at this level, we’re unlikely to play in a World Cup final.  I note that there are no Amercan players on Real Madrid.

My actual reasoning went something like this:

Spain wins World Cup 2010
Spain plays like Barcelona FC
Barcelona and Real Madrid compete for La Liga title every year
Inter Milan beat Barcelona in 2010 UEFA Cup
Jose Mourinho coached Inter last season
Jose Mourinho now coaches Real Madrid
Real Madrid manhandled LA Galaxy
Landon Donovan and Edson Buddle play for Galaxy
Donovan and Buddle play on US Men’s Team
Real Madrid would likely kick the US Men’s Team’s metaphorical ass
Therefore the US Men’s Team needs to play like Spain in order to win World Cup 2012.

Perfectly clear?

This is not to say that the US Men don’t deserve accolades. Their World Cup matches were wide-open, attacking, and entertaining. Their glorious stoppage time counter against Algeria with Landon Donovan, Clint Dempsey, Jozy Alditore, and Edson Buddle arrayed across the field like a cavalry charge brought me to my feet. Of course the US Men had to play attacking soccer—with the exception of the Algeria match, they were down a goal within the first 15 minutes.

Algeria v USA: Donovan Scores

This bespeaks a collective mental dullness that afflicted the US Men throughout tournament, perhaps the most egregious example being Ricardo Clark’s faux pas four minutes into Ghana match. With the US Team pushed forward Kwadwo Asamoah easily dispossessed Clarke at midfield and poked the ball to the feet of Kevin-Prince Boateng (the same Boateng who ruined Michael Ballack’s World Cup). Boateng attacked down the center, cut left at top of the box, and fired left footed a moment ahead of Jay DeMerit’s desperate slide. Tim Howard misread the developing play leaving a gap between his outstretched hand and near post. Wham! Bam! Ghana 1 USA 0, thank you very much. [You can almost read Clarke’s mind—“who’s open, who’s open?"—as he almost stumbles into Asamoah.]

It wasn’t just Clarke. Minutes after the goal Boateng caught Steve Cherundolo asleep with the ball at his feet and was off to the races. Cherundolo must foul Boateng at edge of box to prevent a 1 v 1 with the keeper and earned a yellow-card. Fortunately no goal this time, but don’t think Cherundolo wasn’t oh, shitting as he hightailed after Boateng.

Look, we’re the team that can afford the sports psychologists. Our soccer-brains shouldn’t shut down in front of 34,976 fans (attendance at Ghana v USA).

Besides the occasional mental lapses noted above the US Men tended to play a game that to my innocent eyes took the predictable form of 3 or 4 midfield passes and a flighted ball forward where a defender comfortably headed it out of danger. No slow build-up for this team. Was this Bob Bradley’s preferred tactic or the tactic he thought best fit this team’s skills? The US Men’s passing percentage was 67% as opposed to Spain’s 80% (here I use Spain as the benchmark for passing accuracy). Its long pass percentage was a mere 44% against Spain’s 63%. Over four matches the US covered more distance than any other team, the majority of which was without ball possession. All of which suggests a team that gives up possession easily and then expends a lot of energy recovering it.

Bob Bradley in Contemplation

I consider Bradley a good coach who made the decision early on that the US team didn't possess the technical skills to play possession ball against the likes of Spain and Brazil and settled on a more direct style that depended on speed and hustle, the two attributes frequently associated with the US.  It got the the US to the Round of 16, but no further, which, in the big picture, is right & just.

While Americans populate teams throughout Europe, they tend to play for the second-tier teams--Hanover, Everton, Rangers, Aston-Villa, Borussia, Hull City.  It's good soccer, just not great soccer. Among the elite--Barcelona, Inter, Bayern Munchen, Real Madrid, Chelsea, Aresenal, Man U--nary an American will you find (OK Oguchi Onyewu plays for AC Milan, but after his '09 knee injury he hasn't contributed much). Which pretty much tells the tale. 

We have 309 million people, scads of kids who start off in youth soccer, and yet we can't produce one player who is the soccer equivalent of a Michael Phelps or LeBron James.  To my mind there's a mystery here, and when we solve it, we'll have a team that can compete for a World Cup title.

My Joga Bonito World Cup--Part II

The other source of the beautiful game, one which seems more relevant to the 2010 World Cup, dates to the late 60s. At that time the Dutch soccer team Ajax under manager Rinus Michels created what it called total football or in the Dutchese totaalvoetbal. In brief, because I have limited understanding here, the essential tactical innovation of total football is player interchangeability. While players fill nominal positions on the field—defender, midfielder, and forward—they are selected and trained to seamlessly replace each other as they move out of position. On a totaalvoetbal team only the goalkeeper has a fixed position.

Reading the comments of Ajax players of the day, the emphasis is not on trading places for its own sake; rather it’s on creating and using space on the pitch. Interchangeability was simply the key to exploiting the space.

Players in this system must possess exceptional technical skills and field vision. So it was serendipitous that Ajax promoted an unusually gifted 18-year old player to its senior team in 1964. His name was Johan Cruyff (he of the eponymous Cruyff Turn) and he was born to play totallvoetbal.

In Cruyff's first season Ajax finished 13th in the Eridivisie, the Dutch premier league, one position above relegation. The following season Rinus Michel joined Ajax as manager and brought total football with him.

Cruyff’s extraordinary skills and Michel’s totaalvoetbal meshed completely. Whether it was the system or the quality of the players Michels selected to fit the system, or most likely both, Ajax quickly became the dominant team in Europe. In 1965-66 Ajax won its league championship. The next year Ajax won the league title and the KNVB Cup (Dutch equivalent of English FA Cup). Then it was off to the races, with Ajax winning among other titles the UEFA Champions League in 1971, 1972, and 1973.

[As tactical innovations goes, the success of total football is reminiscent of the introduction of the T formation offense by George Halas in the late 1930s, leading to the Chicago Bears 73-0 destruction of the Washington Redskins in the NFL Championshp of 1940.]

With Ajax’s success it wasn’t long before Michels, Cruyff, and totaalvoetbal migrated to the Dutch national team. In 1974 Cruyff and company reached the World Cup finals without losing a match, scoring 14 goals against one conceded. Playing home team Germany in the finals the Dutch took the lead 80 seconds into the match, kicking off and passing the ball thirteen times before Cruyff carried the ball into the box and was fouled.  The Dutch scored on the subsequent PK.

As serious soccer fans know (this is a test) the Germans prevailed 2-1 in this World Cup final and the Dutch are still looking for redemption. Reading accounts of this match, I cannot help think it was the high-water mark of Dutch totaalvoetbal.

While creation and exploitation of space was the focus of totaalvoetbal, the game as played by the Dutch was a thing of soccer beauty.  The team displayed fluid player movement, precision passing, and fearless attacking—in short, everything that defines the beautiful game. The Dutch team earned the nickname Clockwork Orange. What is ironic is that totaalvoetbal wasn’t created to be beautiful; it was created to be effective (are you listening Brazil?).

Andres Iniesta (in Barcelona Uniform) at 147 lbs 5' 7"
the World Cup 2010 Finals Man of the Match and
 Quintessential Player of the Beautiful Game

Both Michels and Cruff eventually moved to FC Barcelona, Cruyff as a player and, later, a highly successful manager. Here they planted the totaalvoetbal seed, where it found fertile soil, and spread to the Spanish national team. The Spanish team that defeated the Dutch 1-0 in the World Cup 2010 can trace its playing roots directly to the Dutch team of 1974.

So in wonderful World Cupian irony, the beautiful game that the Brazilian Dunga eschewed wins the World Cup; and the Dutch team of 1974 is redeemed by the Spanish team of 2010.

Long live the beautiful game.

My Joga Bonita World Cup--Part I

The big story during World Cup 2010, besides the competency of the officiating and the French team tantrum, was whether or not the winning teams properly represented the beautiful game, or in Brazilianese joga bonito.

Ronaldinho in a Nike Ad

The phrase itself is suspicious. It sounds like something Madison Avenue cooked up to sell the sport to hausfraus around the globe. I mean… might you not reasonably conclude that only beautiful people play the beautiful game? Anyway isn’t it a bit presumptuous for soccer to proclaim itself the beautiful game? What are the rest of the world’s sports? Presumably lower on the athletic aesthetic scale. Is bowling then the ugly game?

Seminal Moment in Evolution of Bowling as a Sport

Not surprisingly the phrase appears to have emanated from Brazil in the 50s, where soccer is a quasi-religion. Brazilians celebrate the idea that the game, well played, is an expression of their culture, and as such, must be won with style and flair—skill and inventiveness winning out over defensive caution and rude physicality. A Brazilian sees soccer as much art as sport.

A joga bonita moment occurred in the Brazil vs Ivory Coast match. Luis Fabiano took the ball out of the air with apparent guidance from his forearm, nudged it forward with his right foot, ran through defenders, flicked the ball into the air with his right foot, collected it with his chest and maybe an assist from his shoulder, and finally volleyed the ball with his left foot into back of net. It is an astonishing sequence displaying superb foot skills and athleticism. Was Fabiano in the least abashed that his brilliant score was likely abetted by two handballs? In response to this query, he said,

"But in order to make the goal more beautiful, there had to be a doubtful element. It was a spectacular goal and I believe it was not a voluntary handball. It was a legitimate goal and it was one of the most beautiful goals that I've scored in my career. Where better to score such a goal than at the World Cup?"

Ahhh...to be young and Brazilian.

Notwithstanding Fabiano’s "beautiful" goal, the word on the street is that the Brazilian team disappointed its nation. It wasn’t simply that the Brazilian team lost to the Dutch in the quarter-finals but that the team didn’t consistently display artistry and creativity. In short, it didn’t play beautifully.

Apparently this was in large part a reflection of its coach, Dunga, a former defensive-minded midfielder, who brought a no-nonsense, pragmatic style of play to the Brazilian side. He favored unusually robust players—his squad averaging a shade under six feet tall, one of the largest teams at the World Cup. Not that his players didn’t have skills…just watch Robinho, Kaka´, and the aforementioned Fabiano work magic with the ball at their feet. Still, the consensus is that Dunga would rather have a clean sheet than a beautiful game, and when, ultimately, he didn’t deliver either in the quarter-finals, he was handed his walking papers.

[Dunga responded to his critics that they are guilty of collective selective memory, i.e,, that they overrate the  artistry of past Brazilian teams.  The key thing was Brazil won World Cup titles.]

Circling back to my starting point…it seems FIFA, or perhaps Nike, would like to co-opt the beautiful game as a marketing slogan to promote the sport around the world. Among the soccer cognoscenti, however, the phrase has a much more selective meaning and most soccer teams don’t measure up—apparently the beauty of the beautiful game is very much in the eyes of the beholder. In any case the Brazilian game--beautiful or not--didn't make it to the World Cup finals, whereas the decidedly unartistic Dutch game did.

C'mon Ref!

Alright…Let’s pile on: the World Cup referees deserve it.


As a newly-minted soccer ref myself—OK I haven’t actually ref’d a game, but I own the uniform—I feel well-qualified to speak on this subject. Given the status of the World Cup, and all the hoops the refs jump through to qualify for it, I expected better. The invisible foul that nullified Maurice Edu’s goal in USA v Slovenia, Tevez’s offside goal in Argentina v Mexico, and Frank Lampard’s obvious goal (except to the ref) in England v Germany stand out among the officiating screw-ups. Oh… let’s not forget Luis Fabiano’s double handball goal against Ivory Coast, unquestionably the most technically skillful and sublime non-goal of the tournament.

I watch my share of professional soccer. I can’t recall officiating errors as egregious and numerous in a similar period of European league play. This makes me think that World Cup refs as a group may have the credentials but not the requisite “big game” experience. Kouman Coulibaly, the ref who negated Edu’s goal, is a Malian bank auditor by day. With all due respect to Mali and other small nations of the world, is Mali’s professional soccer league, where Coulibaly earned his referee stripes, the logical proving ground for a World Cup ref?

If TV’s talking heads are correct, part of the officiating problem lies with FIFA’s boss, Sepp Blatter, who has, to date, resisted the use of either extra refs or goal-line technology. Apparently Blatter believes such changes would upset the natural purity and flow of the game and otherwise cause a great disturbance in the Force. He also thinks some controversy is “good” for the game. Given his recent statements Blatter may be relaxing his stance on this subject. I guess he’s taking a lot of heat.

Much is made of the low scoring nature of professional soccer. While I’m not one who thinks low scoring equals boring, I assert that a low scoring sport elevates the importance of officiating. A bad call in football (American) may result in a touchdown, but unless it occurs in the final minutes of the game, it's unlikely to change the way either team plays the game. In soccer, however, going down a goal often forces the losing team to adopt a more attacking style, which conversely makes it more likely to be scored upon.

Personally I’m willing to sacrifice a little natural purity and flow in a big stakes match if it means the right team wins.

Beginnings

OK…let’s begin.

Regarding the game of association football, aka soccer, I have rarely played it and never owned a pair of cleats.

My first encounter with the sport coincided with my matriculation at Shady Side Academy, a toney Pittsburgh-area prep school. The year was 1967. I was a 7th grader. Many of my new Shady Side friends played on the middle school soccer team.

At the time soccer was largely the domain of private schools in the USA. How and why it evolved this way I don’t know. Throughout most of the world soccer is a game of the masses. In the USA it is a game of the microbrewery-drinking class.

Jurgen Klinsmann, former German player, World Cup coach, and sometime US resident (he’s married to an American) observed after the US loss to Ghana in World Cup play that this aspect of our soccer culture undermines the quality of our player pool, i.e., we need more hungry players from the barrios. In the same vein a July 10th Wall Street Journal article observed that South Africa's finest professional soccer players emerged during the apartheid years, suggesting that the combination of racial oppression and poverty produced über-driven players who perfected their skills as a “way out,” and whose like hasn’t been seen in the post-apartheid era.

 [The same article also notes a curious irony: South African soccer in the apartheid 70s was much more integrated than today, as South African soccer today is largely a black game whereas rugby and cricket are white games.  Maybe there's another lesson buried here.]

I encountered soccer again in 1972 when I started college at Brown University. At the time Brown was a soccer powerhouse, which, again, speaks to the upper-crust character of the sport in the US. As an Ivy League school, Brown did not offer athletic scholarships. Its players came from New England prep schools, the St. Louis area—a soccer hotbed at the time—and various soccer crazy countries around the world. I remember seeing Brown’s best player, a product of Europe, score on a bending corner kick against Cornell. At the time I didn’t know such ball skills existed.

USS Charleston (LKA-113)

During a deployment to the North Atlantic in 1979, my ship, the USS Charleston, made a port visit to Emden, Germany. German officers from the local army base invited the ship’s officers to a) fire automatic weapons, b) play soccer, and c) drink alcohol. Of these three important life skills Navy officers generally only demonstrate competence in drinking. Fortunately the ship’s company included a contingent of Marines whose officers helped preserve our national honor.

As for the (West) Germany v USA soccer match...I started at left back in a pair of running shoes. At the time I was an avid 10K runner and my relatively high level of fitness was the only positive attribute I brought to the match. As it began I prepared my ass to get kicked. It didn’t happen. The Marines had played college soccer and their collective skill was sufficient to put the Germans on the defensive. The anticipated whupping became a sporting competition. I forget the final score. Eventually the German team prevailed, but both teams came away feeling pretty good about themselves. The drinking afterwards was unusually collegial—and so, I concluded, soccer helps bring nations together.

Eventually I had children of my own. Like most suburban kids of the last generation they joined youth soccer teams and I joined the fellowship of soccer parents yelling from the sideline. By the time my third child started his soccer journey I began to feel I had achieved some understanding of the game.

Recently I completed the referee course. I haven’t ref’d a game yet, however, having watched a number of the World Cup matches, it doesn’t appear the job requires much skill.

Given this set of soccer-related experiences I think it is appropriate that I start writing about the game.