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Today Chester, tomorrow the world, or: The globalization of soccer
Life lessons from professional soccer
Tom Purdom
Major League Soccer's All-Star Game is a global hybrid. It combines the American All-Star tradition with the "friendlies" that have become a standard feature of international soccer.
In soccer parlance, a "friendly" is an exhibition game. This year, the U.S. All-Stars took on the Chelsea Football Club, the current European champion. Major League Soccer staged the event in PPL Park in Chester, the home stadium of the Philadelphia Union, because Philadelphia fans have responded to the Union's first three seasons with a fervor that guaranteed a sellout crowd.
For the impresarios behind Major League Soccer, the All-Star format constitutes a calculated risk. If the All-Stars win, they can claim that America's fledgling league really is a major national league, comparable to the top European soccer powers. If they lose, they reinforce the sneers of critics who disdain Major League Soccer as, at best, a second-rank league by world standards.
The league's marketing department struggles with a persistent feature of U.S. soccer fandom: the stubborn resistance of soccer snobs.
Snobs and sideshows
Millions of passionate, knowledgeable American soccer fans follow the leading foreign clubs on TV but dismiss their local Major League Soccer team as a minor league sideshow, beneath the attention of connoisseurs.
When the Philadelphia Union played a friendly against Manchester United two seasons ago, 42,000 fans crowded into Lincoln Financial Field. Most of them were cheering for ManU.
The All-Star game isn't a decisive test. It's an exhibition game, just like the All-Star games presented by other American sports leagues. The visiting superpowers don't give it the intensity that they would throw into a European Cup final.
Still, nobody likes to lose. And the visitors have the advantage that they're a regular team, with players accustomed to working with each other. The All-Stars are essentially a pickup team, selected by vote of the fans, that enters the stadium with one practice session behind it.
And the U.S. All-Stars can lose, decisively. Manchester United drubbed them by 5-2 in 2010 and 4-0 in 2011.
Last-minute victory
The players who competed in this year's All-Star game may not have played hard, but they played skillfully. The fans got to watch a five-goal game (a high score for soccer) and the players on both teams delivered an entertaining display of the high-level passing and ball handling that constitute one of soccer's aesthetic attractions. It was a fairly relaxed game on both sides, without many fouls or arguments with the referees. It all ended happily, furthermore, with the U.S. All-Stars scoring the winning goal in the last minute.
This was not a contest between American players and English players, as the uninitiated might assume. Many players on the U.S. All-Star roster were citizens of Denmark, France, Colombia, Cuba, England and Canada. The Philadelphia Phillies may draw their players from all over the country, but the Philadelphia Union draws its players from all over the world.
Chelsea, like most English teams these days, is even more polyglot. The foreign players on its roster come from 11 different countries, including Ghana, Israel, Sierra Leone and Serbia.
In the 1970s, when I first started paying attention to soccer, the North American Soccer League emphasized the importance of fielding American players. Major League Soccer rules limit teams to eight foreign players, but national origin seems to be a dead issue as far as the fans are concerned.
Cheers for a Colombian
During its home games, the Philadelphia Union displays the flags of all the countries its players call home. When the Philadelphia Union played the New England Revolution on Sunday, 18,000 local fans cheered like lunatics when a young American forward, Jack McInerney, scored the winning goal in the last minute of a 2-1 victory. But they cheered just as wildly when the team captain, Colombian Carlos Valdez, blocked a perfect shot by diving across the front of the goal and knocking it away with a header.
Professional soccer has mirrored its society ever since it began its global advance in the late 19th Century. Today soccer clubs all over the world reflect an international society in which Korean car makers set up plants in the United States and Starbucks and Kentucky Fried Chicken open hundreds of stores in China every year. Two of the most insular peoples in the world— the English and the Americans— have learned they can cheer anybody who can give them a win.
In the global society, as in soccer, where you come from is a matter of passing interest. What you can do gets you the job.♦
To read a response, click here.
In soccer parlance, a "friendly" is an exhibition game. This year, the U.S. All-Stars took on the Chelsea Football Club, the current European champion. Major League Soccer staged the event in PPL Park in Chester, the home stadium of the Philadelphia Union, because Philadelphia fans have responded to the Union's first three seasons with a fervor that guaranteed a sellout crowd.
For the impresarios behind Major League Soccer, the All-Star format constitutes a calculated risk. If the All-Stars win, they can claim that America's fledgling league really is a major national league, comparable to the top European soccer powers. If they lose, they reinforce the sneers of critics who disdain Major League Soccer as, at best, a second-rank league by world standards.
The league's marketing department struggles with a persistent feature of U.S. soccer fandom: the stubborn resistance of soccer snobs.
Snobs and sideshows
Millions of passionate, knowledgeable American soccer fans follow the leading foreign clubs on TV but dismiss their local Major League Soccer team as a minor league sideshow, beneath the attention of connoisseurs.
When the Philadelphia Union played a friendly against Manchester United two seasons ago, 42,000 fans crowded into Lincoln Financial Field. Most of them were cheering for ManU.
The All-Star game isn't a decisive test. It's an exhibition game, just like the All-Star games presented by other American sports leagues. The visiting superpowers don't give it the intensity that they would throw into a European Cup final.
Still, nobody likes to lose. And the visitors have the advantage that they're a regular team, with players accustomed to working with each other. The All-Stars are essentially a pickup team, selected by vote of the fans, that enters the stadium with one practice session behind it.
And the U.S. All-Stars can lose, decisively. Manchester United drubbed them by 5-2 in 2010 and 4-0 in 2011.
Last-minute victory
The players who competed in this year's All-Star game may not have played hard, but they played skillfully. The fans got to watch a five-goal game (a high score for soccer) and the players on both teams delivered an entertaining display of the high-level passing and ball handling that constitute one of soccer's aesthetic attractions. It was a fairly relaxed game on both sides, without many fouls or arguments with the referees. It all ended happily, furthermore, with the U.S. All-Stars scoring the winning goal in the last minute.
This was not a contest between American players and English players, as the uninitiated might assume. Many players on the U.S. All-Star roster were citizens of Denmark, France, Colombia, Cuba, England and Canada. The Philadelphia Phillies may draw their players from all over the country, but the Philadelphia Union draws its players from all over the world.
Chelsea, like most English teams these days, is even more polyglot. The foreign players on its roster come from 11 different countries, including Ghana, Israel, Sierra Leone and Serbia.
In the 1970s, when I first started paying attention to soccer, the North American Soccer League emphasized the importance of fielding American players. Major League Soccer rules limit teams to eight foreign players, but national origin seems to be a dead issue as far as the fans are concerned.
Cheers for a Colombian
During its home games, the Philadelphia Union displays the flags of all the countries its players call home. When the Philadelphia Union played the New England Revolution on Sunday, 18,000 local fans cheered like lunatics when a young American forward, Jack McInerney, scored the winning goal in the last minute of a 2-1 victory. But they cheered just as wildly when the team captain, Colombian Carlos Valdez, blocked a perfect shot by diving across the front of the goal and knocking it away with a header.
Professional soccer has mirrored its society ever since it began its global advance in the late 19th Century. Today soccer clubs all over the world reflect an international society in which Korean car makers set up plants in the United States and Starbucks and Kentucky Fried Chicken open hundreds of stores in China every year. Two of the most insular peoples in the world— the English and the Americans— have learned they can cheer anybody who can give them a win.
In the global society, as in soccer, where you come from is a matter of passing interest. What you can do gets you the job.♦
To read a response, click here.
What, When, Where
MLS All Star Game: MLS All Stars vs. Chelsea FC. July 25, 2012 at PPL Park, Chester, Pa. www.mlssoccer.com.
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