-Keith Hickey

There's been a lot of talk recently about the GQ UK article concerning the Sons of Ben. A lot of it plays to British perceptions of American sports fans: inauthentic wannabes, stuffing our faces with processed food and watery beer.

We can have our discussions on how accurate it was, or how much of it was manufactured for a story, and if all of it even happened. What most of us can agree on is this: it was a pretty lazy piece of journalism.

What makes it worse for me is that another English journalist did a much better piece on the Sons of Ben. The late Steven Wells, a legendary music journalist with the NME, wrote features on the SoBs for The Guardian and Philadelphia Weekly. Swells, whose resume oozes with Punk Rock street cred, was able to find the heart of the story: The convergence of Philadelphia sporting tradition with extant soccer culture to create something uniquely familiar.

So, without any more of my words to sully those of Swells, here's his 2008 Philadelphia Weekly cover story about the Sons of Ben.


The link flat our refuses to work, so copy and paste this instead http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/news-and-opinion/cover-story/the_sons_also_rise-38465969.html - JD