Soccer holds a special place in my heart. It was the first opportunity I had, as a boy, to realize that my talents and skills were not as limitless as I had heretofore thought. My introduction to youth sports began as a 5-year-old in the spring of 1988, around the time many of this year’s incoming freshmen were born. I wore the noble maroon of one of the local Pottstown, Pennsylvania soccer teams. I played a variety of positions, from center to midfielder to my eventual permanent position of goalie. For anyone familiar with youth sports the position of goalie is reserved for those with an incredible lack of talent as few, if any, shots on goal are ever taken. Still, in the brief time I was on the field, I spent most of my time on the bench gorging myself on the oranges and water which were provided those of us below five feet in height, I gained a keen appreciation of my genuinely horrible skills. I was terrified of being hit by the ball, as well as the occasional large bug which flew by. Looking, as I did at those photos of my smiling, red-headed self almost two decades later, I wondered how on earth I managed to become a fan of the global phenomenon of the World Cup. As I seem to have alluded to, I have never been particularly good at any sport. I was a pitcher in my T-ball league, where I generally tried to avoid getting hit by baseballs, a sub-par member of the track team, where my main notoriety came in mooning the girl’s team with a few shot putters, and, in my last organized sport, a founding member of the high school rugby team, which never won a game, and folded after losing too many players to injuries. Still, my natural competitiveness is such that I enjoy others playing a game which I myself cannot compete in. Given that soccer, or football, has never had too much popularity in the U.S. outside of the preteen set, my own adult reawakening occurred when I began to watch the English Premiership league at night after the rugby matches were finished. I was drawn to what I saw. Here was a game that combined the fast-pace which I enjoyed in the sports of rugby and hockey, yet had the grace and strategy of baseball. Though derided by critics, I remember listening to Rush Limbaugh and several of his callers years back wondering whether one could develop brain damage from headers and wondering why soccer’s success occurred in socialistic countries. From the former, I’d wager heavy oxycontin use is worse, and as to the latter I can only aver that soccer’s origins came from Victorian Britain, hardly a socialist paradise. So, has public perception of the game changed any in the past four years that I have actively followed international football? I would say yes, and for the better. Certainly there are scoffers. I’ve met a few out there who still see the sport as slightly effeminate, compared to the seemingly more masculine American affairs of football and basketball, though the latter seems to me to be more the home of prima-donnas than the world of the black and white ball. Still more, however, I have found are following this year’s World Cup then those I talked to four years ago. In our newsroom, we all glance up at the muted television, interested in the events of countries that some of us have never before heard of, and won’t think of again until the next four years. And really, where else will one find such splendid athleticism until then? The Olympics perhaps, though their utter sanctimoniousness can be grating. At least the World Cup is honest about its commercialization, and seems to be enjoyed by the face painted fans screaming in the stands much more than any audience I have seen during the Olympics. It also lasts a good bit longer. So, as you read this paper, I’ll have dragged myself from my night job back to the newspaper office to watch the United States hopefully beat Ghana today. Win or lose, though, I take pride in watching a maligned sport, and wonder if there are other luckless five year old goalies who will someday sit in my position.
_____Contact Ryan Merryman at [email protected]