Who was it that said that the chief value of soccer in this country is in junior high gym classes as phys ed credit for kids who are free to use their hands to push their glasses up their noses?
Oh, wait. That was me.
The elimination of the United States from the World Cup will come as somewhat of a surprise, since so few Americans had any idea we were in it.
Or even what the World Cup is, though just four years ago it was we who were France, and how long will it take us to live that down?
It is kind of like hearing about a friend’s wedding after the divorce.
So, what you’re saying is, you are dating again.
The great advantage of American soccer is that it comes with-out guilt, even losing to Iran, which is worse at soccer than we are. Iran would be the L.A. Clippers of world soccer. We would be the Sacramento Kings.
In other places, losing coaches are fired, bungling players are shamed (even killed, as I recall), national honor is besmirched, though I think I can safely say that today we feel pretty much about soccer the way we did the day before yesterday.
A few hands may be wrung over how far back soccer will be set by this humiliation, a point that is lost on me since I can’t figure how you can get any further back than Columbus, Ohio, home of the Crew.
Losing to Iran will do exactly for soccer what beating Brazil did earlier this year. It will not cause one fresh fan to demand to know the difference between a sweeper and a striker.
And here’s the more important thing: American players get to come back to America, even the naturalized ones, while Iranians have to go back to Iran and Yugoslavians, the next opponent, will have to go back to whatever they call home these days.
I mean, if we were serious about national sports failures, we would have made the U.S. hockey team stay in Nagano. That would have served them both right.
The saddest thing about this is not the shabby and listless play of the U.S. team, nor the pitched plea of Brent Musburger at halftime (“Maybe we get Michael Jordan over there to finish”), but the crude invoking of a sad political incident to boost public interest in a soccer match.
Back when the American hostages were released by Iran, Bowie Kuhn gave them lifetime passes to all baseball games, to which Beano Cook blurted, “Haven’t they suffered enough?”
Well, apparently not.
Nearly 20 years later they became props in soccer hype, as if one had anything to do with the other.
The American soccer coach, a Steve Sampson, had suggested that reminders of senseless suffering and cruel intolerance might be just what the sport needs to put it over the top in the U.S. of A.
This could have been a Don King production. You half expected Dennis Rodman to show up and throw a chair, or a camel.
The TV network, ABC, milked the moment as well, stirring cold stew for all it was worth, and how little that is will be sadly revealed by the overnight ratings.
Our games are ours–baseball, football, basketball–and we don’t much care whether the rest of the world plays them or not. We can call it the World Series without including the rest of the world, and the World Cup will get along, as it always has, just fine without us.
A London journalist, after Germany had defeated England in a World Cup soccer match, had to have the absurd last word on sports and politics.
“The Germans may have beaten us at our national game,” he wrote, “but let’s not forget that we have twice beaten them at theirs.”
Wars and corner kicks, I guess, can make you wacky.
