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| Friday, September 14, 2001 24:15 EST |
The day that soccer died ... not!
By Jeff Bradley
[ESPN The Magazine]
The ball stopped rolling and the soccer-playing children openly wept on the field.
News of the U.S. women's national team's 3-2 overtime loss to Norway in the gold medal game of the Olympics had filtered down to South Florida (where I'm now on assignment) and the reaction was stunning.
Parents pulled their children off the soccer fields and you could hear them saying, "If we move quickly, we can get you enrolled in Pop Warner football and cheerleading. If we're too late for that, we'll see what we can get you on the swim team. Anything but soccer."
Yes, Thursday will be remembered in these parts as the Day Soccer Came to an End in the United States. All the work the U.S. women did last summer, filling NFL stadiums and winning a World Cup is now for naught. It was their responsibility to keep the momentum going this summer with Olympic gold, wasn't it? They were the keepers of the sport, I was told, because America only likes winners. It was all in their hands.
And, heaven forbid, they lost. I now expect order will be restored in the American sports landscape. Ding Dong Soccer is Dead. The U.S. women, the only good thing about the sport in this country, have been knocked off by Norway. May Soccer Rest in Peace.
I'm joking, of course. But I couldn't resist, having just gotten through reading the clips from the men's semifinal loss to Spain. Yeah, the Olympic writers and "mainstream sports" columnists tried, in a day, to learn about Josh Wolff and Pete Vagenas.
And when the U.S. men lost, well, of course they felt they'd been sold a bill of goods, acted like they were ticked that some editor told them to go to a soccer game just in case the U.S won. So when there was no Miracle in the Grass, they all weighed in with their uninformed opinions. America likes winners, they wrote again. Second-place is for losers in our country, so don't try to sell us on the "bronze would be amazing" storyline, either.
These journalists didn't see the men's games against the Czech Republic or Cameroon or Japan -- some of the most thrilling action I've seen -- but they saw the U.S. lose to a classy Spain team in the semis and wrote the same, old columns about, "maybe soccer will finally go away for good now ... when will we stop pretending that Americans care about soccer? ... etc." They even dredged up old NASL obituaries. Yawn.
The biggest misconception, from my point of view, is that soccer fans have continued on since the day Pele arrived in New York trying to convert non-soccer fans into disciples of the game. I mean, I stopped doing that that in high school, when the football team (and its coaches) used to call us "seals" and much worse. My attitude became, Why should I waste my time on people who don't like the sport? That was almost 20 years ago.
Since that time, I've just been too busy enjoying the game with my soccer-loving friends to worry about converting soccer haters. I mean, the NASL folded in 1985 and I got into watching the college game for a spell, but by 1990, the U.S. was qualifying for a World Cup. By 1994, the U.S. was hosting the World Cup advancing to the second round. By '96, MLS was starting up and a couple of years later the U.S. was qualifying for France '98, setting themselves up for "the lowpoint in American Soccer history" and another round of articles about how soccer would never make it in this country.
Yeah, right.
I'm down here in South Florida, working on a little piece about the 1997 Florida Marlins and Game 7 of the '97 World Series. If you're a baseball fan, you remember that as a thrilling, 11-inning victory by the Marlins over the Indians. If you are a soccer and a baseball fan, like me, you may remember that Game 7 was played on October 26.
Why would you remember the date? Well, I do because I remember during the afternoon, I stood in the pouring rain at RFK Stadium, freezing my tail off, watching D.C. United defeat the Colorado Rapids, 2-1, in front of 56,000 screaming soccer fans.
I would guess that I was in the minority at that game ... I was probably one of the few who actually cared about watching the World Series game later that night.
I'm sure there were also big ballgames (baseball and NFL) going on a few weeks ago, when I sat in a sold out RFK again, watching the U.S. and Guatemala, and I'm sure there will be big postseason baseball games going on when the U.S. and Costa Rica play before another sellout crowd in Columbus in October. So, you see, soccer's not dead and it's not going anywhere any time soon. People just seem to have differing ideas about where the game should be right now.
Here's my final thought. The women could have been upended in Group play in Sydney, like China, and the men could have flamed out in Hershey, Pa., months ago, and the sport would be in the same place it is today, moving along at a nice pace.
Whether anyone from the mainstream wants to believe it or not.
In tight space
Look for the Kansas City-Los Angeles series to be a classic. The Galaxy were superb in Game 2 of their sweep of Tampa Bay and Kansas City schooled Colorado in Game 3 of their series. Los Angeles will find K.C. a much more organized defensive team than the Mutiny while the Wizards will have a lot more to worry about with the Galaxy's attack than they had to worry about with the Rapids. I'm looking for a three-game series, close-games all the way, but then again, my predictions, as you know, have been horrific.
As for the Chicago-Metros series, I expected to see a Game 3. Keep in mind that the Fire had won only four road games all season. In Game 2, the Metros showed they were a far better team than their 3-0 Game 1 defeat by putting out the Fire 2-0 as they got an emotional lift with the return of goalkeeper Mike Ammann. It should be noted that Paul Grafer did an exceptional job filling in for Ammann and Olympian Tim Howard. In fact, Grafer kept the Metros in Game 1 and NY/NJ nearly cut the Fire lead to 2-1 on numerous occasions.
Keep in mind, with both of these series going to third games, the Olympians will be around for the conclusion. That means, the Galaxy will have Peter Vagenas, Sasha Victorine and Danny Califf, the Fire will get back Josh Wolff and Evan Whitfield and the Metros will have Howard and Ramiro Corrales.
There's all kinds of MLS loan talk going on, and the best place to keep up with it all is on Teamtalk.com, where reporter Chris Bergin has his ear to the ground 24-7. In case these rumors haven't made it onto Teamtalk yet, here goes: Jason Kreis and Bobby Convey might be headed to Ipswich and Chris Albright to Newcastle on three-month loans.
Word coming out of San Jose is that Khodadad Azizi will be an ex-Earthquake soon as the league looks to sell his contract.
The Project 40 team will tour Argentina this offseason.
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