Rapids Class VI

Something to do until 2009 starts

Soccer In A Football World, The Story of Americas Forgotten Game, by David Wangerin

Reviewed by Joe Higgins

Class Sixers, the dark months here. I know lots of you are still in pain and shock from the way the season ended.

Sixers, I'm here to help. Why not while away the long months between Conor Casey hamstring pulls with a good book? It's an option Fake Salt Lake fans don't have, since most can't read, but CVIers with their distinguished cast of bloggers, educators and all around wits are known for erudite observations and bon mots, some of which don't even start with the letter 'F'.

So I'll start with a relatively recent addition to my soccer library, and one I think that most can enjoy, Soccer In A Football World, The Story of America's Forgotten Game, by David Wangerin. Here, in a nice little 338-page package, is a wealth of diligently researched info about America's version of the World's game, from its 'Tangled Roots", a full chapter on the first pro league, which gave the fledgling NFL a run for its money and probably contributed to a loosening of the purse strings in England's Football League; to the "Revenge of the Commie Pansies", a chapter on the 1994 World Cup; and all the way up to "Take Me Out to the Soccer -specific Facility" a look at what the Altitude announcers insist on calling "the" MLS.

Along the way, we get a fairly balanced look at American soccer's flops and golazos, its champions and bashers, and the snarling, xenophobic ignorance that in concert with internal greed and backbiting have kept it in the shadows of the nation's cultural arena. For every hater like Dick Young- the originator of the infamous "commies and pansies' quote- there is a US Soccer Association, whose institutional small mindedness helped to kill the American Soccer League of the 1920's, and probably doomed the US Open Cup to decades of irrelevance. Not a pretty picture, but I guess we all knew that. The difference is that Wangerin names names, gives scores and attendances, and transports us to the mill towns and ethnic enclaves that rose to prominence in soccer's early years, only to fade into obscurity. It is fascinating stuff.

This is certainly a book that fills a huge gap, but there are some disappointments.
"Charting the peculiar course of Soccer in America will require more than a passing reference to its distant and violent cousin", Wangerin tells us, and there is a detailed recounting of the transformation of college football from soccer rules to rugby rules, but quickly thereafter he "loses the plot". This may be excusable. Certainly, soccer becomes little more than an afterthought to cultural and sports historians after 1930. But I would have loved a more in-depth examination of Red-State America's Gridiron and Blue-State Soccer's clashes on front lines in the culture wars. Perhaps that's a different book.

Less forgivable is his insistence on peppering his book with Britishisms. I'm not one to carp too much about the barroom anglophiles who drop references to "nil-nil" score lines or "cheeky" passes. But Wangerin, an American expatriate whose book is published here by Temple University Press (Philadelphia), and who is clearly targeting an American audience (who else would care?), gives in to this self indulgence far too much. For example, he give player weights in "stone". This is either bad editing or lazy writing and is about as irritating as that Altitude announcer referring to our D-Mid as Pablo "Mass-tree-oney".

These flaws are not enough to damn a needed book, however. Before we can understand fully what is needed to make MLS succeed, I believe we need to be aware of how and why soccer has consistently failed here, and at the same time the rich history that makes it a TRULY American game in the best sense of the word.

This book is a great place to start. It's only about $15 and I recommend you slide it into some deserving fan's X-mas stocking. Because if we leave Soccer's tale to the Altitude announcers, I shudder to think think how it will be told.

Posted by mark at November 8, 2008 04:04 PM