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.
No comments:
Post a Comment