Adventures in Soccer Fandom, Part One

Anyone who has spoken to me for more than 5 minutes can immediately identify my sports allegiances: the New York Mets, the New York Giants, and the New York Rangers being most obvious among them. And, if you dig really deep, you can find the lost corner of my soul that hasn’t been killed off by James Dolan and Isiah Thomas that still cares about the New York Knicks (under the salary cap by 2010? Sign me up!). To a varying degree I’ve been a fan of each of these teams since the mid 90s: the Rangers and Knicks 1994 playoff runs, the tail end of the Phil Simms/Lawrence Taylor era with the Giants, and the Mets’ dark age of Bobby Bonilla and Bret Saberhagen (I just threw up in my mouth a little). I’d admit now that baseball is probably my favorite sport, but each one of the others has its own excitement, its own nuances that make it worth being a fan and can whip me into a frenzy at a moment’s notice; Super Bowl 42 is the single greatest sporting event I’ve ever watched, I don’t think any sport can match the atmosphere or intensity that hockey has during the Stanley Cup Playoffs, and when the Knicks were competitive Madison Square Garden was one of the best home courts in the NBA (sigh).

There has been one major sport I haven’t been able to follow with the same intensity or passion as the others all these years, and that (if you didn’t read the title of this post) is soccer. The World Cup is a must-watch every four years and one of the great spectacles in the world of sports, but beyond that and Greece’s 2004 European Championship (the biggest upset in the history of sports that nobody in America knows about), my interest in the game has been flaky. Maybe it’s been that I’ve gotten so spoiled by World Cup matches that I haven’t been able to watch relatively mediocre MLS talent, or maybe I’m just ticked off that I don’t have the money to pay for the EPL package on my home satellite dish. Either way, I’ve been a delinquent follower, but lately I’ve been striving to change that.

On the MLS front, a friend of mine recently purchased Red Bull New York season tickets. I’ve always had mixed feelings about the MLS and its New York franchise. In part because of the fact that they changed the team name a couple of years ago because Red Bull bought the team (the MetroStars were one of the few original non-knockoff Euro names in the MLS), and in part because of my general apathy towards the American domestic leagues, I haven’t really followed the team closely in some time. Oh, I knew of a few of their star players through the years (Savarese, Donadoni, Ramos, Mathis, the flaming disaster that was Lothar Mattheus) but I never kept more than a casual interest in their results or who was their roster, especially in recent seasons.

After attending two games, however, I can see that there is the possibility for a greater MLS influence on the American sports scene. There’s a small but dedicated fan base, the games are affordable, and presumably the atmosphere will improve once the team moves out of the cavernous Giants Stadium (a great venue if you can draw 75,000, not so much if you draw 10,000). The level of play has also improved. Everyone knows about David Beckham’s arrival but the Red Bulls seem to be the model for how the MLS wants to operate: lots of American players (led by Claudio Reyna, former national team captain) with some mid-level internationals (Juan-Pablo Angel is the “star” international here, formerly of Aston Villa).

Most exciting of all Red Bull players is Jozy Altidor, the 19 year old forward who scored a goal on a spectacular run against New England at the last match I attended and could be the first truly great American forward. He has also been linked to a move to the English Premier League in the summer, which highlights the inherent dilemma of MLS competition: other than unique situations where the league will pay a huge sum of money for an aging foreign star (Beckham) it doesn’t have the financial resources or the level of competition to satisfy most truly world-class players.

Hence, until American soccer improves as a whole from the grassroots level, its level of play is somewhat restricted. This is a part of the problem with any American soccer league; it seems Americans are generally disinterested because it’s not “our” sport, we’re not very good at it, and the national team did little to inspire anybody in Germany in 2006. With the MLS in its present state, even top American players like Altidore will leave these shores for money or to improve their game against tougher competition. And who can blame them? The only conclusion I can come to is that as the American game progresses from the bottom up so will the MLS competitively; it seems financially stable right now, so as the fan base slowly expands it should become more and more relevant both on the American sports scene and internationally. Hell, it’s already on a more visible cable network than the NHL is (ESPN as opposed to Versus, thanks Gary Bettman!).

The MLS is doing the sane and proper thing, however. The New York Cosmos used to sell out Giants Stadium with Pele and Beckenbauer (the craze even inspired a documentary), but the last major American soccer league, the NASL, was out of existence a decade later. By sticking to its principles it should continue to improve in the coming years and, while not on a par with the top leagues in the world (despite whatever insane pronouncements Alexei Lalas wants to make), should certainly garner a respectable following and a growing presence in the American sports mainstream.

In conclusion? Go Red Bulls!

I want to add that for all my praise of the MLS’ financial responsibility, that if the league signed Zinedine Zidane out of retirement for an insane amount of money and assigned him to New York I’d buy season tickets and a jersey on the same day. Zidane blew Beckham away as a player and even after two years off might be the best player in MLS, plus there would be the added head-butt/comeback storyline that would put the league in the news for a day or two (Marco Materazzi is a punk, for the record); however, that’s probably a pipe dream.

Speaking of Europe, Part 2 will discuss my growing interest in the English Premiere League and in Manchester City, the possible future home of Jozy Altidore. The best part? EPL players’ lives are a lot more hilarious than their MLS counterparts. Stay tuned (or, continue not to care because I’m writing about soccer)!