Another Sign Soccer Is Catching on Around the USA

6/5/2014

American soccer heritage: Victor Moreland and Tulsa Roughnecks, come home with Soccer Bowl Trophy, 1983 NASL championship. People remember.

The level of soccer expertise is rising all over this huge country. In the past two days, while plugging my new soccer book – Eight World Cups -- I have done over 20 phone interviews with broadcasters from coast to coast – Richmond to Tulsa, Seattle to Orlando.

The level of knowledge and experience was high. Gone are the days of raising the hoary sportswriter cliché that Americans will never go for a sport in which players don’t use their hands. It’s a new generation, thanks to cable and the web, plus MLS and our men’s and women’s teams, and the great leagues of Europe.

Plus, we are acknowledging our own soccer heritage, now going back generations. For your enjoyment, here is a link to a lovely article by R.J. Young, an e-mail buddy of mine, in This Land Magazine, about Charlie Mitchell, the first player signed by the Tulsa Roughnecks of the NASL, and later the coach of the Tulsa team that beat the Cosmos in 1983 and then won the next-to-last title in that doomed league.

http://thislandpress.com/06/04/2014/the-soul-of-the-game/?read=complete

In recent days, broadcasters around the country told me about matches they have seen. I was too busy babbling to take notes and names, but one recalled his first match (scoreless, Swindon Town at Sunderland) and another recalled getting hooked on a match at West Ham. Another compared notes with me about the Honduras-USA match in Soldiers Field in Chicago in 2009 – how the crowd was easily half Honduran (or maybe that was just the decibel count.)

Everybody wanted to talk about Jürgen Klinsmann’s omission of Landon Donovan from the USA squad. (Most think Klinsi is flat wrong.)

And just about everybody wanted to know about the “dark side” of my subtitle – FIFA’s greasy stewardship, the messy awarding of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar, and whether the tournament would be moved to, oh, say, the USA. (No way, I said, read my book as to why.)

It’s a new age. Americans have absorbed soccer. At the very least, America is preparing for its giant quadrennial party. And as soccer keeps growing, many commentators will keep people informed

(URGENT AS OF FRIDAY PM: The Steve Kornacki show had to cancel for Saturday because hard news raised its head. We hope to reschedule.
On Saturday I am taping an interview with Al-Jazeera. More information to come.
However, while in Boston I had a great interview with Bill Littlefield of Only a Game on WBUR. I am told it will air sometime Saturday, at different times on NPR. Please consult local listings.)
And on Monday, I am taping an appearance with John Schaefer of WNYC, the host of the stimulating New Sounds show. What do I have to do with music? Good question.
Please consult the Appearances box, to the left, for other appearances.)

juegos-juegos link

6/5/2014 03:23:33 pm

good article. worldwide soccer is the sport of kings, and I also love it thank you for sharing.

George Vecsey

6/6/2014 01:03:11 am

Thank you, and welcome. GV

Andy Tansey

6/6/2014 08:05:24 am

Oh, the humanity! Football is catching on around USA! (I agree.) We will need follow-ups on how Klinsmann is catching on around the USA and on how the USA, Kobe Bryant and all, is catching on with Klinsmann. I refer to the publicity in the Times. I tend to agree with Klinsmann's rationale on the Kobe Bryant point - isn't that the Money Ball theory? (but I still think Donovan past his prime, at 70% or 80% is good enough).

With the latest outrage, will Klinsmann last as long as Tottenham's next manager? If there's a betting pool, then we'll need to work with the refs.

It was nice being part of a small phenomenon when soccer began to catch on. Tickets cost less and there was not as much of the angst and dark side here in the USA. It was a bright and innocent as a youth match or the women's team. I could go up and talk to a stranger wearing a jersey in Manhattan and not seem like a nut. (Try that with someone wearing Yankees' colors.) I hope I do not become a sour-puss with the attitude of one who was in the know a few weeks earlier than the others. I hope I maintain my enthusiasm. Let's see what happens.

I will tune in to MSNBC tomorrow!

6/6/2014 11:15:12 am

Andy, Kornacki cancelled. Breaking news raised its ugly head.
Maybe next week.
I know the human impulse to say, wait a minute, I was here first.
But look at it this way, you were on to something, and it's still good.
Most of the time.
GV

Alan Rubin link

6/6/2014 03:22:33 pm

George

Nice piece of history. It will be a valued addition to the history page of http://www.understandingsoccer.com/history-of-soccer.html .

Many of my senior citizen friends are surprised when they learn that soccer in the United States did not begin with the Cosmos and that it dates back over 100 years.

I had never seen a soccer ball until I moved from Washington Heights to Teaneck, NJ in 1947. I played six years at Teaneck Jr. and Sr. and four years at Lehigh in Bethlehem, PA.

In addition to varsity soccer, I played three seasons with Bethlehem’s Mexican Aztec Club, which played in Philadelphia’s German-American Soccer League.

Although soccer was barely on anyone’s radar at the time, it became my lifelong passion. I had no concept of soccer’s United States roots and my only focus was playing and enjoying the game.

Fast forward about sixty years; I’ve again become committed to soccer in my retirement. This includes coaching high school goalkeepers, developing an online educational soccer site and keeping George on his toes. Although I’m developing a good network of soccer professionals that I can learn from, researching material for my web site made me realized that the soccer of my youth was played in a vacuum.

Teaneck, NJ is located in Bergen County and we played in the NNJIL(now defunct), which included Englewood, Hackensack, Tenafly, Ridgewood, and Rutherford. Teaneck always began their season against the West Point Plebes, but coach always wanted strong non-league games early in the season.

Kearney and Weehawken were always tough, but I knew nothing of their ethnic backgrounds and that most of them played soccer as soon as they could walk. The parents were emigrants who grew up playing in Europe, particularly Scotland and Ireland. It was rare if a parent of a Teaneck player knew anything about soccer.

Since coach only told us that they were very good teams, we did not know enough to be in awe. We went in expecting to win against these powerhouse teams and usually won or lost by a goal or tied. (George—this goes to what Brad Friedel said about being prepared to win).

What I did not know was that Northern NJ, including Essex and Bergen County was considered a hotbed of soccer starting in the early 1900’s. The same was true for the Philadelphia area. The Philadelphia German-American League, a strong league, was a feeder for higher professional leagues.

The Mexican Aztecs often played a team that was moving up to a professional league the next season. We once played a man short against a Portuguese team loaded with professional quality players as one car got lost. Our team was fairly good and I still expected to win, mainly because I had no concept of the caliber of a team ready to move up. We lost 3-1. I don’t know how we managed a goal as the entire game was played in our half, or should I say third.

I hope with all this chatter, to make a strong case that the United States has a long and rich soccer tradition that is finally getting its due. Soccer will continue to grow as a mainstream sport. Although it is still remains behind football, basketball and baseball for the present, soccer’s fan awareness and youth participation is rapidly out pacing them.

Four years ago, my friends referred to me as a “soccer nut”. Now I’m considered an “expert”, but the only thing that has changed is them.

The many knowledgeable former soccer players who frequent George’s blog are also an important part of our long soccer culture and contribute to its future. Even the worst fullback in the history of Jamaica HS contributed to the mosaic.

There are varying statistics that attest to our soccer growth and maturity, but one of my barometers is my satellite DVR. Four years ago, it was easy to screen the few recorded games each week. Now, there are so many, it pushes the DVR’s recording capacity and threatens my marriage. I’ve stopped most of the auto recording in favor of searching the weekly schedule and making the selections myself.

Although it is a pain, I hope that the problem continues to grow.

Sorry, posted in two topics.

smoking weed link

7/4/2014 03:28:38 am

The quality of information and experience seemed to be large. Removed are the days involving raising your hoary sportswriter cliché that will People in america won't get a sports activity by which gamers don’t use their own hands and wrists. It’s a fresh generation, due to cable plus the internet, as well as THE LOCAL MLS and our own men’s and women’s teams, plus the good leagues involving Europe.

Comments are closed.

QUOTES

Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

Another Sign Soccer Is Catching on Around the USA

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