How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization

by Franklin Foer

  But soccer represented something very di¤erent. It was a tabula rasa, a sport onto which a generation of parents could project their values. Quickly, soccer came to represent the fundamental tenets of yuppie parenting, the spirit of Sesame Street and Dr. Benjamin Spock.

  Unlike the other sports, it would foster self-esteem, minimize the pain of competition while still teaching life lessons. Dick Wilson, the executive director of the American Youth Soccer Organization since the early seventies, described the attitude this way: “We would like to provide the child a chance to participate in a less competitive, win-oriented atmosphere. . . . We require that teams be balanced; and that teams not remain intact from year to year, that they be dissolved and totally reconstituted in the next season. This is done to preclude the adults from building their own dynasty

  ‘win at all cost’ situations.”

  This was typical of the thinking of a generation of post-’60s parenting theories, which were an extension of the counterculture spirit—Theodor Adorno’s idea that strict, emotionally stultifying homes created authoritarian, bigoted kids. But for all the talk of freedom, the sixties parenting style had a far less laissez-faire side, too. Like the 1960s consumer movement which brought American car seatbelts and airbags, the soccer movement felt like it could create a set of rules and regulations that would protect both the child’s body and mind from damage. Leagues like the one I played in handed out “participation” trophies to every player, no matter how few games his (or her) team won. Other leagues had stopped posting the scores of games or keeping score altogether. Where most of the world accepts the practice of heading the ball as an essential element of the game, American soccer parents have fretted over the potential for injury to the brain. An entire industry sprouted to manufacture protective headgear, not that di¤erent-looking from a boxer’s spar-ring helmet, to soften the blows. Even though very little medical evidence supports this fear, some youth leagues have prohibited headers altogether.

  This reveals a more fundamental di¤erence

  between American youth soccer and the game as practiced in the rest of the world. In every other part of the world, soccer’s sociology varies little: it is the province of the working class. Sure, there might be aristocrats, like Gianni Agnelli, who take an interest, and instances HOW SOCCER EXPLAINS THE AMERICAN CULTURE WARS

  like Barca, where the game transcendently grips the community. But these cases are rare. The United States is even rarer. It inverts the class structure of the game.

  Here, aside from Latino immigrants, the professional classes follow the game most avidly and the working class couldn’t give a toss about it. Surveys, done by the sporting goods manufacturers, consistently show that children of middle class and aºuent families play the game disproportionately. Half the nation’s soccer participants come from households earning over $50,000.

  That is, they come from the solid middle class and above.

  Elites have never been especially well liked in postwar American politics—or at least they have been easy to take swipes at. But the generation of elites that adopted soccer has been an especially ripe target.

  That’s because they came through college in the sixties and seventies, at a time when the counterculture self-consciously turned against the stultifying conformity of what it perceived as traditional America. Even as this group shed its youthful radical politics, it kept some of its old ideals, including its resolute cosmopolitanism and suspicions of middle America, “flyover country.”

  When they adopted soccer, it gave the impression that they had turned their backs on the American pastime.

  This, naturally, produced even more disdain for them—and for their sport.

  Pundits have employed many devices to sum up

  America’s cultural divisions. During the 1980s, they talked about the “culture war”— the battle over text-books, abortion, prayer in school, aªrmative action, and funding of the arts. This war pitted conservative defenders of tradition and morality against liberal defenders of modernity and pluralism. More recently this debate has been described as the split between “red and blue America”— the two colors used to distinguish partisan preference in maps charting presidential election voting. But another explanatory device has yet to penetrate political science departments and the national desks of newspapers. There exists an important cleavage between the parts of the country that have adopted soccer as its pastime and the places that haven’t. And this distinction lays bare an underrated source of American cultural cleavage: globalization.

  II.

  Other countries have greeted soccer with relative indi¤erence. The Indian subcontinent and Australia come to mind. But the United States is perhaps the only place where a loud portion of the population actively disdains the game, even campaigns against it.

  This anti-soccer lobby believes, in the words of USA Today’s Tom Weir, “that hating soccer is more American than apple pie, driving a pickup, or spending Saturday afternoons channel surfing with the remote control.” Weir exaggerates the pervasiveness of this sentiment. But the cadre of soccer haters has considerable sway. Their influence rests primarily with a legion of prestigious sportswriters and commentators, who use their column inches to fulminate against the game, especially on the occasions of World Cups.

  Not just pundits buried in the C Section of the paper, but people with actual power believe that soccer HOW SOCCER EXPLAINS THE AMERICAN CULTURE WARS

  represents a genuine threat to the American way of life.

  The former Bu¤alo Bills quarterback Jack Kemp, one of the most influential conservatives of the 1980s, a man once mentioned in the same breath as the presidency, holds this view. In 1986, he took to the floor of the United States Congress to orate against a resolution in support of an American bid to host the World Cup.

  Kemp intoned, “I think it is important for all those young out there, who someday hope to play real football, where you throw it and kick it and run with it and put it in your hands, a distinction should be made that football is democratic, capitalism, whereas soccer is a European socialist [sport].’’

  Lovers of the game usually can’t resist dismissing these critics as xenophobes and reactionaries intoxi-cated with a sense of cultural superiority, the sporting wing of Pat Buchanan’s America First conservatism.

  For a time, I believed this myself. But over the years I’ve met too many conservatives who violently disagree with Kemp’s grafting of politics onto the game. And I’ve heard too many liberals take their shots at soccer, people who write for such publications as the Village Voice and couldn’t be plausibly grouped in the troglodyte camp of American politics. So if hatred of soccer has nothing to do with politics, conventionally defined, why do so many Americans feel threatened by the beautiful game?

  For years, I have been collecting a file on this anti-soccer lobby. The person whose material mounts highest in my collection is the wildly popular radio shock jock Jim Rome. Rome arrived on the national scene in the mid-nineties and built an audience based on his self-congratulatory flouting of social norms. Rome has created his own subculture that has enraptured a broad swath of American males. They are united by their own vernacular, a Walter Winchell–like form of slang that Rome calls “smack,” derived in part from the African American street and in part from the fraternity house.

  An important part of this subculture entails making fun of the people who aren’t members of it. Rome can be cruelly cutting to callers who don’t pass his muster, who talk the wrong kind of smack or freeze up on air.

  These putdowns form a large chunk of his programs.

  The topics of his rants include such far-ranging subject matter as the quackery of chiropractors, cheap seafood restaurants, and, above all, soccer.

  Where specific events trigger most soccer hating—

  a World Cup, news of hooligan catastrophes that arrive over the wires—Rome doesn’t need a proximate cause to break into a tirade. He lets randomly rip with invec-tive. “My son is
not playing soccer. I will hand him ice skates and a shimmering sequined blouse before I hand him a soccer ball. Soccer is not a sport, does not need to be on my TV, and my son will not be playing it.” In moments of honesty, he more or less admits his illogic. “If it’s incredibly stupid and soccer is in any way related, then soccer must be the root cause [of the stupidity],” he said in one segment, where he attacked the sporting goods manufacturer Umbro for putting out a line of clothing called Zyklon, the same name as the Auschwitz gas. (Zyklon translates as cyclone. By his logic, the words “concentration” or “camp” should be purged from conversational English for their Holocaust associations.) He often inadvertently endorses some HOW SOCCER EXPLAINS THE AMERICAN CULTURE WARS

  repulsive arguments. One segment ripped into African soccer teams for deploying witch doctors. “So you can add this to the laundry list of reasons why I hate soccer,” he frothed.

  Such obvious flaws make it seem he is proud of his crassness, and that would be entirely in keeping with character. These arguments would be more easily dismissed were they the product of a single demented individual. But far smarter minds have devolved down to Rome’s level. Allen Barra, a sportswriter for the Wall Street Journal, is one of these smarter minds. Usually, Barra distinguishes himself from his colleagues by making especially rarified, sharp arguments that follow clearly from the facts and have evidence backing his provocative claims. But on soccer, he slips from his moorings. He writes, “Yes, OK, soccer is the most ‘popular’ game in the world. And rice is the most ‘popular’

  food in the world. So what? Maybe other countries can’t a¤ord football, basketball and baseball leagues: maybe if they could a¤ord these other sports, they’d enjoy them even more.”

  Unlike Rome, Barra has some sense of why he flies o¤ the handle on this subject. It has to do with his resentment of the game’s yuppie promoters. He

  argues, “Americans are such suckers when it comes to something with a European label that many who have resisted thus far would give in to trendiness and push their kids into youth soccer programs.” And more than that, he worries that the soccer enthusiasts want the U.S. to “get with the rest of the world’s program.”

  As Barra makes clear, the anti-soccer lobby really articulates the same fears as Eurico Miranda and Alan Garrison, a phobia of globalization. To understand their fears, it is important to note that both Barra and Rome are proud aficionados of baseball. The United States, with its unashamedly dynamic culture, doesn’t have too many deeply rooted, transgenerational traditions that it can claim as its own. Baseball is one of the few. That’s one reason why the game gets so much nostalgia-drenched celebration in Kevin Costner movies and Stephen Jay Gould books.

  But Major League Baseball, let’s face it, has been a loser in globalization. Unlike the NBA or NFL, it hasn’t made the least attempt to market itself to a global audience. And the global audience has shown no hunger for the game. Because baseball has failed to master the global economy, it has been beat back by it. According to the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association of America, the number of teens playing baseball fell 47

  percent between 1987 and 2000. During that same period, youth soccer grew exponentially. By 2002, 1.3

  million more kids played soccer than Little League.

  And the demographic profile of baseball has grown ever more lily white. It has failed to draw African Americans and attracts few Latinos who didn’t grow up playing the game in the Caribbean. The change can also be registered in the ballot box that matters most.

  Nielsen ratings show that, in most years, a World Series can no longer draw the same number of viewers as an inconsequential Monday night game in the NFL.

  It’s not surprising that Americans should split like this over soccer. Globalization increasingly provides the subtext for the American cultural split. This isn’t to say America violently or even knowingly divides over glob- HOW SOCCER EXPLAINS THE AMERICAN CULTURE WARS

  alization. But after September 11 opened new debates over foreign policy, two camps in American politics have clearly emerged. One camp believes in the essential tenets of the globalization religion as preached by European politicians, that national governments should defer to institutions like the UN and WTO. These tend to be people who opposed the war in Iraq. And this opinion reflects a worldview. These Americans share cultural values with Europeans — an aggressive secularism, a more relaxed set of cultural mores that tolerates gays and pot smoking — which isn’t surprising, considering that these Americans have jobs and tourist interests that put them in regular contact with the other side of the Atlantic. They consider themselves to be part of a cosmopolitan culture that transcends national boundaries.

  On the other side, there is a group that believes in

  “American exceptionalism,” an idea that America’s history and singular form of government has given the nation a unique role to play in the world; that the U.S.

  should be above submitting to international laws and bodies. They view Europeans as degraded by their lax attitudes, and worry about the threat to American culture posed by secular tolerance. With so much relativism seeping into the American way of life, they fret that the country has lost the self-confidence to make basic moral judgments, to condemn evil. Soccer isn’t exactly pernicious, but it’s a symbol of the U.S. junking its tradition to “get with the rest of the world’s program.”

  There are many conservatives who hate relativism, consider the French wussy, and still adore soccer. But it’s not a coincidence that the game has become a small touchstone in this culture war.

  III.

  I wish that my side, the yuppie soccer fans, were blameless victims in these culture wars. But I’ve been around enough of America’s soccer cognoscenti to know that they invite abuse. They are inveterate snobs, so snobbish, in fact, that they think nothing of turning against their comrades. According to their sneering critique, their fellow fans are dilettantes without any real understanding of the game; they are yuppies who admire soccer like a fine slab of imported goat cheese; they come from neighborhoods with spectacularly high Starbucks-per-capita, so they lack any semblance of burning working-class passion.

  This self-loathing critique can be easily debunked.

  I’ve seen the counterevidence with my own eyes. In the spring of 2001, the U.S. national team played Honduras in Washington’s Robert Francis Kennedy stadium. This vital World Cup qualifying match had generated the packed, exuberant stadium that the occasion deserved. Fans wore their nation’s jersey. Their singing and stomping caused the steel and concrete to undulate like the Mexican wave. In a country with lesser engineering standards, it would have been time to worry about a stadium collapse. On the field, stewards scampered to pick up scattered sneakers. Fans had removed them and thrown them at the opposing goalkeeper, a small gesture of homage to the madness of HOW SOCCER EXPLAINS THE AMERICAN CULTURE WARS

  Glasgow and the passion of Barcelona. They merci-lessly booed the linesman, softening him up by insult-ing his slut of a mother. It might not have quite ascended to the atmospheric wonders of a game played by the English national team, but it wasn’t far from that mark.

  There is, however, an important di¤erence between a home game in London and Washington. The majority of English fans will root for England. In Washington, more or less half the stadium wore the blue-and-white Honduran jersey, and they were the ones who shouted themselves hoarse and heaved their shoes. The American aspiration of appearing in the World Cup rested on this game. But on that day, the Washington stadium might as well have been in Tegucigalpa.

  Traveling through Europe, you hear the same complaint repeated over and over: Americans are so “hyper-nationalistic.” But is there any country in the world that would tolerate such animosity to their national team in their own national capital? In England or France or Italy, this would have been cause for unleashing hooligan hell.

  Nor were the American fans what you’d expect of a hegemonic power. The Washington Post had pu
blished a message from the national soccer federation urging us to wear red shirts as a sign of support—and to clearly distinguish ourselves from the Hondurans. But most American soccer fans don’t possess a red USA jersey and aren’t about to go down to the sporting goods store to buy one. They do, however, own red Arsenal, Man U., and Ajax jerseys, or, in my case, an old Barcelona one, that they collected on continental travels. While we were giving a patriotic boost, we couldn’t help revealing our Europhilic cosmopolitanism.

  I mention this scene because many critics of globalization make America the wicked villain in the tale.

  They portray the U.S. forcing Nike, McDonald’s and Baywatch down the throats of the unwilling world, shredding ancient cultures for the sake of empire and cash. But that version of events skirts the obvious truth: Multinational corporations are just that, multinational; they don’t represent American interests or American culture. Just as much as they have changed the tastes and economies of other countries, they have tried to change the tastes and economy of the United States.

  Witness the Nike and Budweiser campaigns to sell soccer here. No other country has been as subjected to the free flows of capital and labor, so constantly remade by migration, and found its national identity so constantly challenged. In short, America may be an exception, but it is not exceptionally immune to

  globalization. And we fight about it, whether we know it or not, just like everyone else. N o t e o n S o u rc e s

  There’s not much written on the connection between Serbian hooligans and the Balkan wars. As far as I know, the anthropologist Ivan Colovic is the only one to cover this ground. His work can be found in a translated collection, Politics of Identity in Serbia: Essays in Political Anthropology (New York: New York University Press, 2002). Colovic mines obscure sources—pulp fiction, television shows, sports pages—and comes back with profound observations. Unlike many cultural critics, however, he has as good a grasp of reality as obtuse theory.