“WMD’s, the informational super highway, ethnic cleansing… soccer mom’s”.
Perhaps the latest addition to hit the Buzz-word, in-vogue ‘word revolution’ in the United States might have less immediate meaning to us then any of the other words that are currently being thrown around on the American media circuit, but nether the less it is still indicative of a major change currently sweeping deep under the surface of American society.
With the baseball “world series*” now officially over with the long cursed red sox “world champions” and with baseball fever winding down (soon to be replaced by super bowl fever) and with the US MLS soccer league finished for the season it seemed apt to write something about the changing views of football in the united states. The Carolina tour gave me a chance to see this first hand and having lived on both sides of the country I believe I have certainly experienced the changing face of sports this year, and it has changed… check out recent Euro-winners the Greek team, World cup finalists Germany and the well supported republic of Ireland in the FIFA world rankings below:
1-Brazil
2-France
3-Argentina
4-Spain
5-Netherlands
6-Czech Republic
7-England
8-Portugal
8-Italy
10-Mexico
11-USA
12-Turkey
13-Germany
14-Republic of Ireland
15-Denmark
16-Greece
17-Uruguay
18-Nigeria
19-Japan
20-Iran
I remember when I first started writing for Ready to Go I wrote an article about how they were currently up-rooting several baseball play areas around Westchester and upper Manhattan to put in new football (ergo soccer) pitches, and I’m reasonably proud to announce that this trend is still going on in the states (Just last week I noticed that another one had gone up in the upper west side). But it did not escape my attention that the word ‘soccer mom’ has also ballooned out of nothing to become the staple diet of car commercials featuring “enough room to fit your whole team in”. Sure it existed before but never has its use been so prevalent. These days pretty much everyone in the metropolitan hospital that I work in now at least knows someone who plays football, plays football or is themselves a ‘soccer mom’.
This I believe is because there has been a subtle shift in what is being taught to children these days. Soccer, unlike American football or baseball, requires little expensive equipment or protective clothing, even though some states are now seeking a law governing protective headwear to be worn for their school children, which is of course another sign that the momentum of soccer is growing. Seasonal attendances in baseball are dropping (not play off or world series games) and more and more children are being taught soccer at schools- This means that a new generation is fast approaching that will be more along the lines of something we would expect to find in Europe. The advertisers know how many people in the states now have children who play soccer, and these numbers are actually worth while aiming their America wide product at. The difference to a few years ago is therefore staggering! Perhaps contributing to this is the fact that although this new generation is fast approaching soccer has been taught at schools for some time and flown under the radar of many other sports fans in this country, so it has already, to a degree, been accepted.
Add to this that Adu (supposedly under 21, but playing, and looking much older) is one of the hottest sensations in American sports at the moment with several sportswear and commercial endorsements flooding the television and you can be reasonably certain that the youth of the united states are going to grow up in an environment where soccer is an every-day reality, something I’m not sure I could have said a few years ago. Just go into any Irish bar in Manhattan on a weekend during the EPL (English Premier League for the uninitiated) and see how many lads or lasses are soccer coaches. You’ll certainly find a few… and don’t forget as well how highly the USA is currently rated in the FIFA world rankings.
Sure soccer has its protractors. It’s still not after all fashionable to actually like soccer yet in public areas (there was recently a sit-com advert proudly having its cast proclaim the fact that they were true-all-blood Americans by having them dance around in Uncle Sam hats to the song “We hate soccer”) and it is still a very dirty word among American football fanatics who tailgate their team around their stadiums and hang out in dark surf-bars littered with street signs, beer pong and ‘buckets o’bud’ but with any luck soccer will find a niche with these protractors, as well as in the new generations and hopefully that will all be a thing of the past.
It’s already a big hit with the Latino/Mexican population in the city (To give you an idea of how big this is there’s talk in the MLS of having a twin team of one of the Mexican leagues brought into the USA with only Mexican speaking plays allowed to play)
And of course New York is still the USA’s melting pot. What is culturally new tends to happen here years and years before it happens anywhere else in the states, but the point is still that it is happening and so undoubtedly will go on to spread outwards. Even teams like the new York/New Jersey Metrostars are building their own purpose built soccer stadiums now, think about that happening in the old American soccer leagues a few years ago.
Certainly, as is always the case historically with many other things and this country, the USA is a sleeping giant when it comes to football. Personally I think that if they start putting some more money into it and the crowds start coming in en-masse (the 100,000 seater giants stadium in NJ still barely gets to 25% full a metro stars match), which lets face it will probably happen if they have a good world cup run, they’ll start to be a force to be reckoned with.
Who knows, in a few years we might be having a few more pre-season trips back to the USA… and next world cup, who knows where they’ll be in the rankings…