The myth-making of American 'plastic' soccer

Thought I'd continue with the theme of football as we are approaching the start of the World Cup!

Media is filled with rankings, speculations and analysis these days. Who will win? Who's the biggest profile? Which team has the nicest outfits? As I reported yesterday almost half of North Americans, naively, believe that the US will stand as champions in about a month. In a non-scientific poll 12,5 percent of Swedes believe that England will capture the gold-medals, almost as naive as the Americans if you ask me. A more serious poll was also conducted to see which nation Swedes would support in lack of Sweden's participation. Hardly surprising Denmark received the largest support with 17 percent of the votes, followed by England and Spain. Big football nations such as the Netherlands, Brazil and Argentina also gathered some sympathies. Equally non-surprising was that not a single out of the thousand polled persons voted for the US. Most, I believe, it has to do with the fact that the US historically has not been a big football-nation, regarding trophies and public interest, although the country has participated in the World Cup since the start. There is a resistance towards football being established in the US, the US holding the World Cup, or the national side reaching far in international tournaments among a, albeit small, segment of the Swedish and West European public. As an anonymous commentator on of Sweden's largest football blogs put it: "the eventual football-boom of the US can be a bit 'dangerous' as they will then start to export their plastic franchise-football one way or another". Of course this type of comments follows a general trend of fear against American influence, in Sweden for instance that it will mean too much of commercialism and capitalism. The fear of American soccer meaning turning world football into "plastic" and "fake" also follows a long tradition of views on the American nation, people and culture as not really "real", a different kind of reality, and one not as good. It should be noted however that slightly more positive than negative comments about American soccer culture have been posted in the last couple of weeks, so there is no general coalescing anti-Americanism going on among Swedish (and West European broadly) football fans and pundits.

It is further shown in an international poll which has been undertaken in the last couple of weeks, which shows that Italy is "the most hated team" in this years World Cup, with 20 percent of the votes. The US is number ten with three percent of the votes as the team people don't want to see as champions (interestingly with the same percentage as North Korea). More "feared" or "hated" are larger football-nations Germany, France, Brazil and Argentina, probably as they get votes from nations regarded as competitors for the gold. Here, the US is little to fear, as they shouldn't be feared to turn world football into plastic commercialism.

U.S. optimism also in football

This years World Cup of football in South Africa is only three days away. Sadly without Swedish participation this year, but somewhat of a relief is that most other big football-nations are taking part, which will hopefully guarantee entertaining plays.

One such big nation is not the USA. On the contrary, taking in consideration its size and wealth it must be one of the "smallest" footballing countries in the Western hemisphere, as it so far has very few accomplishments on the World stage. Having made it to the round 0f 16 a few times since 1990 might be considered a decent result, but real successes have been lacking. This have not decreased Americans' optimism for this years tournament, where a whole 46 percent of North Americans (also including Canadians) believe that the US will bring home the gold from South Africa. The US is in general an optimistic society, where positive attitudes towards the future, one's own situation, and technology outrank those of the cousins in the West. When it comes to belief in one's own nation, as measured in the belief of the "cultural superiority" of the country, the US is only outranked by Italy in the Western hemisphere. I was a bit surprised to find that this had spread to football, which is still quite a small sport in the US. It has grown since the World Cup was held there in 94 though, and now the games in the domestic league MLS oftentimes fill more seats than the National Hockey League-matches.

That is not to say that the U.S. optimism about their national "soccer" side has grounds. I would say there is no chance of the US winning the gold, although they should advance from an easy group consisting of England, Algeria and Slovenia. Making it to the quarter-finals would be a big accomplishment for the Americans.