Giving ourselves over to passionate support of a particular team in any sport usually means checking logic at the door, losing the ticket, and drinking so much shit beer we forget we brought our precious logic with us in the first place. High, lows, the desperate irrelevancy of mediocrity; they all bring with them opportunities to look hard at our squads, our managers, and the team's prospects, and do what supporters (and professional analysts for that matter) have done since the beginning of organized sports clubs one hundred and fifty years ago. Get it completely, utterly, totally wrong, and feel no guilt about doing so.


Guilt cannot grow where obliviousness poisons the soil.


And yet, no matter the reasons for it or how justifiable it is from a very human standpoint, this lack of logic, perhaps better termed in the positive as "bias", is anathema. We're not supposed to be oblivious, we're supposed to realize our bias and correct it, as if it is a soul-staining sin dooming us to the pits of a fiery hell of community disdain. How dare we overrate our team, or fail to acknowledge that our league or club pales in comparison to others. Homer-ism will not be tolerated. Take your blinding passion and shove it.


Never mind that without blind passion, there wouldn't be a beautiful game to argue over. The history of the sport is built on people paying hard earned money to cram into spartan stadiums and watch grown men play a game. Through the circumstance of history, and the late blooming nature of soccer here, America is the land of the soccer aficionado; suppressing your bias-laden opinion and getting with the "proper" viewpoint is part of the price paid to enter the selective club of worldly appreciators. Soccer isn't just another sport, played by brutish louts like American football or freakish giants like basketball; it's a way of life, a secret gift passed like a precious heirloom, the Faberge egg of athletic endeavors, a priceless treasure to be treated with all of the reverence due the world's greatest game.


Bias, for lack of a subtler phrase, is a bitch to overcome. Human beings are full of biases, both natural and assumed, that will affect how they see the world and how they relate their views to others. Soccer is a particularly fertile area for the application of bias in the sporting world; not only is the game played on every continent with the expected local attention, it also crosses borders in ways no other single cultural touchstone does. Local competitions no longer exist in single-nation cocoons, but as part of a worldwide fabric of the game that makes comparing everything from leagues to players to branding the pastime of every honk with a television, an internet connection, and the annoying need to proffer his or her opinion without ever being asked.


But for every supposedly objective observer cranking out thousands of words a week on the relative quality of this player and that team, there are thousands for whom a love of the game means reacting and overreacting to everything with their hearts first and only. This isn't something to be lamented, but rather a integral part of the makeup of soccer; without the unrepentant homers, who might one week back a player or manager than turn virulently against them the next, there is no reason to care. Without the self-styled analysts playing foil to their own foggy-minded nonsense, the fans would have no one to rail against, no one to strengthen their resolve and heighten their passion. Both play parts in the greater drama, giving depth to the performance of the other exactly because they are so diametrically opposed in philosophy.


You suck, because you clearly hate my team.


No, you suck because your fandom blinds you to the truth.


Call it reciprocal cannibalism, a strange phenomenon where each feeds off the other, and would be left to an agonizing death by starvation of conflict if the other didn't exist.


It's a lovely arrangement, bloody carcasses notwithstanding.


So...spat this out, not sure where it was headed when it began. Apologies for any proofreading errors, but it's late and I couldn't possibly stand to take yet another look in the morning.

ESPN recently aired a special in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of "The Greatest Game Ever Played", the 1958 NFL Championship game between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants. The game, and its televised broadcast, is often credited with bringing the NFL to the forefront of the American sports consciousness. In the years since, football has taken its place as the king of American sports, engendering the kind of passion and support that the rest of the world reserves for that other football, the game we call soccer.


Alan Ameche scores the winning touchdown in "The Greatest Game Ever Played"

Soccer fans in this country are desperately waiting for our own "Greatest Game Ever Played". We're waiting for the seminal moment that the switch gets flipped and the rest of the country wakes up to the obvious greatness of the beautiful game. What that '58 NFL Championship game had going for it is something that cannot be recreated; the newness of televised sports. The images transmitted to the rest of the country from a frozen Yankee Stadium did more for the NFL than anything that MLS or the USSF can think of will do for American soccer. The modern world seems devoid of frontiers to conquer. There is no new and untapped medium through which soccer can stake its claim in the American sports landscape. It seems that our sporting minds have been made up; if we haven't been doing it for generations, then we sure as hell aren't going to do it now.

It creates a dilemma difficult even to comprehend. Throwing in the towel is not an option, and unless MLS goes belly up, it does not seem likely those of us who do love the sport and support the domestic game will let it happen. But it leaves us grasping for that elusive breakthrough. So where do we look?

There is only one possibility. USA-Mexico. USA-Mexico, a rivalry that more than contends with all of the most famous American sporting battles. Ohio State-Michigan? Nothing compared to El Tri and the Yanks. Yankees-Red Sox? USA-Mexico makes it look like a tea party. Redskins-Cowboys? Leaves me wanting. Wake up America. Spend a little time searching YouTube. Want rivalry? Here's rivalry:



And that's just from the qualifiers.

Here then, is the call to action: ABC, ESPN, whomever: Give USA-Mexico your five-star treatment. Get the word out, advertise MONTHS in advance. Have those clever talking heads of yours spend a little of their energy hyping something that deserves the hype. Put together a nice little package reviewing the recent history of soccer's answer to Yankees-Red Sox. Drum up a little excitement across your twenty-seven networks in February with something that approaches what you might do for a Saturday night football game in November. Send two or three of your cadre of reporters to interview anyone who might have an opinion on what beating the US means to Mexicans. Find out what the grass root supporters groups are doing in preparation of the game. Challenge your viewers who might otherwise ignore the game to give it ten or fifteen minutes of their time; it's more than likely that at least some of them will stick with it, get hooked, find themselves diving in headfirst, just like so many of us have done.

US Soccer, I have three words for you: Super Bowl commercial.

I'll admit it. I'm DESPERATE for American soccer's Greatest Game Ever Played. Here's to hoping February 11, 2009 lives up to my hype.

If you're reading this, it is almost certainly thanks to Graham Bell at CSRN, and as such, I would like to thank him for pointing people in this direction.

American soccer fans have been hit with a relatively new phenomenon during the lead up to the January silly season; Americans being on the tips of the tongues of some of Europe's biggest teams.

Rumors are currently circulating that Chivas USA's shaggy-haired midfielder Sacha Kljestan has piqued the interest of several big-name European clubs, among them Celtic and FC Schalke. Add this to the still unconfirmed loan of American soccer's golden boy Landon Donovan to Bundesliga giants Bayern Munich, as well as Kenny Cooper's varied rumored destinations, and Yanks suddenly seem to be hot properties. All of this, of course, is old hat for our brethren in fandom across the football-playing world, so they will have to forgive our newbie enthusiasm. It's not every day the phrases "US international" and "Champion's League side" appear in the same news piece.

Forgotten among the excitement of trials and transfer rumors is the belief of some that Americans leaving for the continent is a detriment to our domestic league. How can we continue to grow MLS and draw more Americans to the game if the players that those potential fans could most identify with are off to Europe by the time they are twenty-five? There is of course, a contrary argument: How can our young players get better if they are not challenged in a more competitive club environment? In my opinion, holding back the development of a player by refusing the approaches of foreign clubs is indefensible. A player's career is short, and for MLS to refuse a transfer move for a young player simply because they wish to hold on to their American stars is tantamount to sabotaging that player.

So I say, go east young man. The game in America can only be helped by players we've produced performing on a larger stage. The profile of MLS can only be helped by players who plied their trade in the burgeoning league going on to bigger and better things. Departing American players will force MLS to intensify efforts to uncover future stars in order to keep the supply and demand system working. The search for new young stars will benefit the league as a whole as well. Overall quality depends on a class standard that will come from deep investment in youth academies, not holding on to a few desirable players. We all, of course, look forward to the day that the MLS is no longer a feeder league, a day when it can stand on its own as a solid player on the world football stage, when the Sacha Kljestans and Kenny Coopers of the world can stay and prosper as American stars in a top tier American soccer league and be no worse for the experience, and top talent from overseas will consider MLS as a first or second option, rather than a possible final payday.

In the short term, MLS may in fact find itself scrambling to find players to market to its American audience. It appears, however, that the immediate future of the league may rest squarely on the talents of foreign players. Cuatoamac Blanco and Guillermo Baros Schellotto seem prototypes for the high profile players the MLS needs to boost quality and visibility. As it becomes obvious that MLS should focus less on the unconverted American sports fan and more on the non-MLS following soccer fan, the nationality of the stars of the league will be less of a factor. For football savvy fans and ardent club supporters who want trophies, the nationalities of the players matters little.

MLS has a stated goal of managing the financial aspects of the league to ensure solvency. While this is paramount to the survival of the game in America in the historical context of the NASL, it restricts the growth of the league more than any other single factor. If our young, talented players are going to go abroad, MLS has to increase the salary cap or modify its rules in order to fill the void. Soccer can succeed here, American stars or not; we’re more than happy to root for foreigners when they wear the colors of our favorite team (see MLB, NBA).

Simply put, the more go Yanks abroad, the better.