Team USA: Gone, but Hopefully Not Forgotten

In the United Kingdom it’s called football and it powers a premier world economy through a nation’s fervor and love of the game. In Italy it is known as “calcio” and is defined by battle scars and broken limbs.  But here in the States, where we refer to the beautiful game as soccer, it has been the Achilles’ heel of American sport for nearly a century.  Soccer is the world’s game, and yet the United States, one of the world’s most formidably athletic and competitive nations, has never truly adopted it as one of its major pastimes.  But there is hope yet for another revolution in American sports thanks to soccer’s most prestigious and well-known tournament the world over: the FIFA World Cup.

Bradley, Donovan, and Dempsey are just three of the names American fans have come to know and love this World Cup

In the 2010 tournament the Americans made an impressive but somewhat disappointing run into the first stage of the knockout leg, the “Round of 16.”  Despite being eliminated by budding nemesis and rival Ghana for the second Cup in a row, the United States side was a microcosm for American soccer as it stands at a fork in the road of its future.  This team was and is the culmination of hard work and promotion within the U.S., and represents where soccer could potentially be headed if the proper persons take the proper actions over the next few months to ride this wave of soccer frenzy.

The 2010 American team embodied all the aspects of the game that fit within the American athletic psyche.  They were undoubtedly one of the most physically fit sides in the tournament, able to keep intensity and pace at a high level through the full 90 minutes of play.  They also displayed a tell-tale American characteristic in their “never-say-die” attitude towards each match, coming back from being down to draw even in 3 of their 4 World Cup matches, and getting their only win on a thrilling goal from Landon Donovan in the 91st minute to put them atop Group C and into the elimination rounds.  These are the qualities we as American spectators cherish, and the ones Major League Soccer needs to encourage and promote within their players if the game is going to succeed State-side.

The real problem, perhaps, isn’t lack of effort or interest, but rather the MLS’ unusual structure that dilutes these aspects of the game.  The MLS, unlike any other American sports association, is a single-entity in which teams are centrally controlled by the League.  Revenue is divided evenly between the teams and players sign not with franchises, but with the League itself.  Players are then given by the League to a team deemed most in need of their service.  Perhaps it is this overly egalitarian, almost anti-American, treatment of teams that doesn’t allow for the assembling of dominant, revenue-generating teams like the Los Angeles Lakers or the New York Yankees.  Teams which have become deeply rooted in American society and with players treasured as American heroes.

There’s no doubt that the passion and understanding of the game is alive and well in American players like Tim Howard, Landon Donovan, and Jay Demerit.  And there’s no doubt that the support is here in the States to promote this caliber of play. (Anyone at any sports bar across the country when Donovan scored to beat Algeria could probably vouch for this statement).  But the U.S. needs something more, something that makes playing professionally here in America…American: unique, dominant, and important.  Hopefully we can ride the coattails of this 2010 U.S. squad into a new decade of American soccer, a decade of change for the better.