A Soccer Fan in America
It’s hard to say when you first start loving something. I don’t know the exact moment I started to love soccer, and I don’t know the exact moment I became a United fan. And not the casual, “David Beckham is SOOOOOOOOOOO hot!” fan either. Nor the glory-hunting bandwagon fan that slips away in those slump years. No, I am the 100% loyal, die-hard, bleed for the team fanatic. The guy who wakes up at 7 a.m. on a Saturday to listen to an Internet radio broadcast. Who pays $40 a month for digital cable, and watches one channel. Most people go to church on Sunday mornings. My church is Saturday mornings, where for 90 minutes I hold my breath with millions others who share my passion and love for the game of soccer.
The team I support, Manchester United Football Club, is the largest in the world. In nearly every measure, they are the best. They are among the best in the world in terms of trophies won. A rich history of youthful, attacking and entertaining play has been seamlessly linked with a record in the past twenty years that makes rivals cringe. Out of the last twelve seasons, they have emerged champions of England eight times. At the helm of this soccer colossus for over twenty years (think Duke’s Coach K) Sir Alex Ferguson has nurtured countless youngsters into seasoned professionals, and turned United’s on field success into off field profit.
Thanks to Ferguson’s success and steady business acumen by an amazing backroom staff, United are a global brand. Recently listed in Forbes for their $1.4 billion valuation (the highest of any soccer team), United is an icon around the world. Global superstars like David Beckham and Cristiano Ronaldo sell millions of dollars in merchandise every year. The club has a far reach around the world, with annual summer tours in places like South Africa, Asia and even (gasp!) America. They were until recently a publicly listed company, able to be bought and sold like shares of Target or BestBuy. Everything about the club is big, and about winning.
I don’t remember when I first heard about United, Probably through Mr. Popular himself, David Beckham. Raised in London, Beckham played the first ten years of his career at United, helping them win several of the trophies mentioned above. His ability to bend the ball around a wall had me spellbound, and the club he played for, its history and culture, had me awe-struck. Beckham soon moved on though; moving to Spain to play for Real Madrid, giants in their own right. My love affair with United had just started though. As I read more about ‘the beautiful game’ and learned about its culture and history, I found out more and more about United. The match was seemingly made by Fate. With their blood-red jerseys and never-say-die attitude, the United of the 90s embodied the carefree, cavalier style of my youth. I was soon hooked.
And hooked big time. Not like how I occasionally support my local NBA franchise, but how a UF alum believes the only possible education worth having is one from Gainesville. The arrogant, brash and blind devotion of the Vestal Virgins or the Cameron Crazies. Everything I could find on the team I read. I read how they started in the industrial heartland of northern England, originally named Newton Heath, later changed to Manchester United. How their stadium, Old Trafford, was bombed during World War II. The century-old rivalry with neighbors Manchester City and Liverpool. I read of their rise in the mid-60s, playing a team of local boys, whose talent and potential was cut short by a plane crash in Munich, Germany. The entire history and the rich tapestry of their culture was sucked up by my budding sports identity.
As I learned more about the team and its history I fell in love with them. But I needed something more to cement my sports identity and loyalty. So that August, when the season started once more, I was ready. I followed every game I could and watched highlights on ESPN. I wasn’t devoted, and our success showed. The next summer, United went on a summer tour to the States. I convinced my dad to drive with me up to New York’s Giants stadium to watch them play AC Milan, an Italian team of some note. Watching my idols play cast aside the doubts formed by the previous season. It was like seeing an old love after years of separation. I knew in my heart that they were the team for me.
Following them became my obsession, and my passion. Jerseys were bought, books were devoured, and long days were spent at my computer desk, metal on plastic, a desk chair pulled up and headphones plugged in, spending hours listening to radio broadcasts of my team. At this point I reached a stage in my sports identity many young males reach in their lives. The point where participating in a sport cedes to following a sport; I no longer played soccer three times a week, no longer practiced for three hours a day for high school games, and yet my devotion for the sport and my team in particular grew exponentially. Just like the Little Leaguer or Pop Warner eventually puts down his bat or helmet and starts supporting the game from his armchair, I had made the transition from participant to spectator to devotee.
I was a late bloomer to this transition. Many lifelong sports fans are set in their ways before their teenage years. How many Red Sox fans do you know that discovered them at age 15? Or Bulls fans who realized they were a good team after Jordan left? That type of sports devotion is something very primal, and very tribal. Passed on from generation to generation, from father to son, it has started before talking. Many UF fans are UF fans for no particular reason other than ‘my dad was a UF fan.’ But I had no great legacy, no upbringing into a sports culture. I had to create my own culture, in a society that shuns my sport’s very validity.
Soccer has always been the bastard sport in America. Played by immigrants, it was always, and still is, viewed as being ‘foreign,’ ‘different,’ and ‘inferior’ to the predominant sports of baseball, football and basketball. Seen as a sport for the children of yuppie soccer moms who don’t want their little Johnny to get hurt playing football, or mixing with the wrong element playing basketball, soccer has always been the major participatory sport for youths in America. No real, established, viable league has existed for the greater part of the twentieth century; Major League Soccer, a venture started as a condition of the 1994 World Cup, is barely in its twelfth season. The ill-fated North American Soccer League, that brought international superstars like Pele to America, failed miserably in the early 1980s, all of its teams bankrupt and financially unsound.
Because of these and other failures, soccer is not a viable professional sport in America, and there exists very little culture devoted to it. Contrast that to the 24-hour coverage on the Big Three provided by networks like ESPN and it is easy to see the difficulty in finding a game on TV. So, when I moved out of the house and the relative paradise of digital cable’s Fox Soccer Channel (ESPN but for soccer) desperate measures had to be taken. I listened to radio broadcasts of live games, waking up at ungodly hours on Saturday mornings to listen to the cracking voices of broadcasters half a world away, but available to me through the miracle of the Internet. Later I learned of programs that let you watch games over the Internet. The feed was fuzzy and the commentators often Chinese, but I was able to finally catch every game live, watching as men like Ryan Giggs or Paul Scholes scored amazing, beautiful goals.
It’s tough enough getting insulted for following soccer fanatically, but when you get insulted by your own fans is beyond disheartening. Because of their amazing success and tragic history, United were the first club to have a truly global following. There is a saying; “there are no United fans in Manchester,” making fun of the fact that many Manchester United fans have never been to Manchester, never seen Old Trafford and never been to a match and supported the team. What is really demoralizing is when I am called less of a fan by my own fans because I live in the States, and don’t have the money to take a plane trip to see my beloved team in person. The arrogant, xenophobic and narrow-minded nature of some people who claimed to be fans was disgusting.
But not all is lost. Sites like Facebook allow me to grow in my knowledge of the game, and meet people from across the country and the world who share my love and passion for United. Todd from Nebraska. Lauren from Manchester. Rohan from India. David from Wales. Jason from Iowa. Colin from Chicago. Students just like me who, whether introduced before birth by parents, or through a YouTube video of a picturesque freekick, love a team that is many miles away. Some are regulars at Old Trafford, singing their hearts out and cheering on the mighty Red Devils. Others, like myself, have never been to England, never seen the green grass of the Theatre of Dreams, but still hold the club in the highest regard.