In For The Hat Trick

When Berlin-born center back John Brooks scored the United States’ winning goal against Ghana, fans watching the game in bars across the US celebrated wildly. I know this because I’ve seen it on YouTube. Videos of American soccer fans wearing replica jerseys and red-white-and-blue scarves as they cheered on the US national team became an Internet sensation after Landon Donovan’s last-minute goal against Algeria in 2010, and a handful of similar clips cropped up the morning after the Ghana game. I love these videos. I happen to think it’s pretty cool that Americans are excited about soccer.

Not everyone agrees with me. American soccer fans are under assault – not by partisans of other American sports who consider soccer slow and boring but, surprisingly, by fellow soccer fans. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed titled “Why I Hate American Soccer Fans,” Jonathan Clegg, a British expat who writes about the New York Giants for a living, calls American fans an intolerable “scourge on my beloved game” and “the most derivative, excessive and utterly ridiculous collection of sports fans on the planet.”

Continue reading →

Earlier this morning, the Premier League released the 2014/15 fixture list. Manchester City will face Newcastle on opening day. Manchester United will play Swansea. Liverpool will host Southampton in what I have decided to call the Rickie Lambert Derby. Most years, I get up early to see United’s fixtures and then spend about half an hour poring through the rest of the schedule. Not today. I don’t feel like reading the Premier League fixture list; indeed, I’m offended by its mere existence. After all, Holland-Australia kicks off in less than three hours! And Spain-Chile is on ESPN this afternoon! It’s day seven of the 2014 World Cup, and, frankly, I couldn’t care less about Chelsea’s run-in.

 If you could care less: BBC Sport’s guide to the Premier League fixture list.

Today’s World Cup Google doodle features an old friend from 2010: Paul the psychic octopus, the “animal oracle” who correctly predicted the results of all seven of Germany’s matches in South Africa.

The 2014 World Cup is less than a week old, but some fans are already calling it the best international tournament since Spain ’82. I’m not so sure. Paul died in October 2010, and the animal-related news emanating from this year’s tournament is pretty bleak: two of the three doves released from the center circle before Brazil’s match against Croatia crashed into the stands and died. The third dove flew into the press box and instantly became a Twitter celebrity. Welcome, symbols of peace, to the 21st Century.

If you’ve recovered from Holland’s ridiculous 5-1 victory over Spain — if you’ve gone at least five minutes without screaming “Blind! Robben! Van Persie!” — check out Brian Curtis’ Grantland piece on the evolution of American soccer writing. It’s partly an account of The New York Times‘ coverage — well, attempted coverage — of the 1982 World Cup. The Times has sent 15 reporters to Brazil for this year’s tournament, but, as Curtis explains, it was not always thus: “The World Cup had no local hook — the U.S. team didn’t qualify. ABC Sports agreed to televise the final live for the first time, but refused to replay it two days later because the network didn’t want to preempt General Hospital.”

As I write, Chile-Australia is playing on ESPN2. We’ve come a long way.

If you’re in the mood for 7000 words on the Belgian national team, check out this Grantland piece. It’s an interesting account of Belgium’s rise from footballing obscurity — and, at Euro 2000, public humiliation — to 2014 World Cup-dark-horse status.

Apparently, like the football authorities in Germany and a couple of other European countries, the Belgian FA has spent the last decade cultivating a “utopian” playing style based in part on Dutch total football. (England should take note.) The article also describes the cultural and demographic changes that have turned a team once divided between French and Flemish factions into a France ’98-esque bastion of multiculturalism.

Let me know what you think.

Earlier today, as I looked for highlights of Real Madrid’s 4-0 win over Bayern Munich, I stumbled upon an interesting Foxsoccer.com video: “Bayern Munich vs. Real Madrid: Best of Gus Johnson.” In it, Johnson, an accomplished basketball commentator, describes (or tries to describe) Real’s four goals. Clearly, Fox still loves this guy. Which is a shame, because, as far as I can tell, more than a year after calling his first Champions League game, Johnson has barely improved: I cringed when he announced that “Los Blancos can smell Lisbon.” He sounds like a man trying to prove to the world that he understands soccer — that he knows Real Madrid’s nickname and is confident enough to, you know, use it in a sentence.

Click here for an article I wrote about Johnson last year.

And watch the Fox video here.

Check out my latest World Soccer Talk post. It’s about former soccer broadcaster Steven Cohen’s controversial comments on the Hillsborough stadium disaster. Let me know what you think.

On April 13, 2009, two days before the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough stadium disaster, Steven Cohen said something stupid. “In this weekend’s Sunday papers in England, where they’re all doing big commemorations about the 96, and why we should never forget, nobody discusses the six to eight thousand who showed up without tickets,” Cohen said on the radio show World Soccer Daily. “I’ll leave it at this: if those people don’t show up, this never happens.”

To the uninitiated, Cohen’s claim might seem plausible: ticketless fans force themselves into a crowded stadium and create a fatal crush. But according to Lord Justice Taylor’s report on the incident, although “small groups of fans without tickets were willing to exploit any adventitious chance of getting into the ground,” the primary cause of the disaster was the incompetence of the police officers patrolling Hillsborough. Moreover, Liverpool fans have spent decades making that very point.

Read the full article here.  

Earlier this week, Zlatan Ibrahimovic got the full New York Times treatment — a lenghy-ish profile by Sam Borden that ran in Monday’s Sports section. It’s a good story, and it raises some interesting questions. For instance: Is Zlatan as conceited as everyone seems to think? Or is he just having a laugh? At one point, Ibra tells Borden about his two sons:

“‘I changed diapers when they were babies,’ he said, adding, ‘I know other footballer may not, but I do.’ Then he shrugged, as if slipping back into character. ‘Of course, I am very good at it,’ he said with a grin.” 

In December, Zlatan claimed that “I don’t need the Ballon d’Or to know I’m the best.” Judging from Twitter, some people thought he was serious. Maybe now they’ll finally get the joke.