By Graig Carbino - ALBANY, NY (Apr 16, 2009) USSoccerPlayers -- I wonder sometimes about the American soccer fan. How do we define this wide-ranging crowd? To those who don’t get our game, our friends and family who prefer American football or baseball or basketball, we are outsiders. Cast aside as Euro-loving snobs or ".edu guys" by a certain national radio personality, we are not understood or appreciated. I wonder why….
If you grew up in the United States and were into sports you most likely found your way to the National Football League at some point. It's a real easy thing to get into. We all know that they play every Sunday from late September until early February without fail. We also know where the best football is. It’s right here in front of us and easy to find.
There is also a pretty good chance that if you grew up here, you probably played at least a little bit of baseball. Sure, it can be a very slow game at times, but which one us has the standing to question a patriotic past time? Certainly not I. Apple pie, fireworks on the Fourth, and baseball... or something like that. Anyway, even if you didn’t play you probably have a team. Again, the best baseball is here right in front of our eyes and kind of hard to miss.
Soccer is different. The best of the best that play the World's game don’t have much to do with us. We can’t wrap our arms around the most accomplished players because they are all performing a half a globe away.
The very idea of that keeps National Basketball Association and National Hockey League executives up nights. What if the major European leagues in those sports really started to compete for the big name players?
Major League Soccer is trying very hard to claw their way into the realm of significance with it taken for granted that the best don't play here. That's not exactly the best marketing slogan to sell a League.
That point alone is what makes the US soccer supporter so hard to figure. There's too much of a willingness to take a broad definition for granted. It's not that simple.
You have the group that wants nothing to do with their own country's league, putting over everything from major clubs to ones most of us have never heard of as better. Fair enough on the big names, but a tougher sell further down the foreign leagues.
There are the poseurs, the ones who take those hooligan books and movies a bit too seriously. A small section of some MLS crowds really seem to think screaming obscenities or throwing things out onto the field makes them real supporters.
Then we get to the target audience. The ones who care about this League on its terms. For some, it's latching latch onto something different and making it their own. Fed up with the NBA sheen or baseball boredom they move to soccer because it’s different and so are they. MLS has marketed to this group, along with trying to win over the world football enthusiasts who are well aware of their cable television options.
What then for the group of folks who don’t watch MLS or follow a team abroad but love international soccer?
You know who you are. You might flip on an MLS game from time to time but you don’t really care that much. That is, of course, unless Landon Donovan or Sacha Kljestan or Frankie Hejduk is playing. Then you want to know how they do.
You also don’t really root for Fulham or Everton or Rangers or Rennes. But if you get the chance to watch Dempsey or Howard or Edu or Bocanegra starring for a foreign team you will watch.
One thing you would never dream of doing is missing out on any US National Team game. It doesn’t matter if you need to get up at 4am, you’ll be there in front of the television, pj’s and all. You’re the patriotic fan, the one that gets into your own players but doesn’t much care for teams or their standings.
So there are four of the many different variations of what a US fan could be. There are others out there who blur the lines of these groups and make things even more complicated for the outside observer who just doesn’t get it.
With baseball or football or basketball or even hockey in our country everything fits into a nice box and can be tied up neat with a bow. Soccer from a US perspective just isn’t like that. There is no easy definition for what an American soccer fan is or what they should look like. Each one of us has different interests and different ways that we approach this game.
It’s called the World’s game for a reason. No wonder people give you blank stares when you talk about “getting stuck in” or the away goals rule. We aren’t able to easily label exactly what we are, how could they?
Graig Carbino covers American Abroad and writes a weekly column for USSoccerPlayers. Contact him at graiger11@yahoo.com
