Soccer is a funny game. It does something to you. I don’t fully understand why, but it does. I grew up like every other American boy in the 1970’s. I had never heard of soccer. There were only four sports – baseball, football, basketball and hockey (I grew up in Chicago – elsewhere in America, there were probably only three). I don’t remember ever playing soccer as a kid. It was not offered in school (either in gym class or as an organized activity) and there were no youth soccer teams to join. I recall once, as a young boy (about four or five years old), attempting to teach my friends this new game that I invented - you kicked a ball around the yard and you could not use your hands – quite a revolutionary idea at the time. I had yet to invent the concept of a goal, so the game did not catch on. Perhaps there was something there, in my childhood, which would give a slight view to what was to come.
In the late 70’s I was introduced to the Chicago Sting – Chicago’s NASL soccer team. History tells us that the NASL was an amazing league with some of the games all time greats playing in it. I knew nothing about that. My friends and I looked at soccer as a game that only losers played (that was not the term that we used, but I’m trying to be politically correct!) The only exception was the year that the Sting won the championship – then like all good Chicagoan’s, I turned into a bandwagon jumper and became a Sting fan. The next year the league folded, the team went indoors, and I returned to my original distaste for all things soccer.
In 1994 all that would change. The World Cup came to America and I was intrigued by it. I watched some of the games and began to get hooked. I don’t remember anything of the tournament – other then having a McDonalds’ World Cup hat on my desk at work and being fascinated by the game. Later that year my friend Dave mentioned that there was going to be a professional league stated in the US sometime soon. We agreed that if a team would come to Chicago, we would get season tickets. The league started in 1996, a team came to Chicago in 1998, but we moved to Atlanta in 1997 – so no season tickets.
Atlanta was located in the middle of College Football country – the home of the SEC – so getting any information on soccer was next to impossible. I knew the Fire existed, but little or no news ever came down south. We moved back to Chicago in 2003 and it took me four years to convince my wife to go to a game. By then I was following the Fire on the internet and starting to follow other international teams (a story for another day). That game changed everything and today the promise that I made in 1994 has been fulfilled – I am a season ticket holder (Dave is not).
I was thinking about this tonight as I was leaving Toyota Park. Once again, the Fire lost to an inferior team by penalty kicks and find themselves out of a tournament for the third time in twelve months. I left the park feeling extremely down and emotionally drained – the same way I felt after the USA World Cup loss on Saturday. The odd thing about this is that I have never had feelings like this when the other teams I supported lost. I did not feel this way when the Bears would loose in the playoffs. I did not feel this way in 1993 when the White Sox lost in the playoff or in 1994 when the Bulls lost. No other sport does this to me. I’ve heard of people in other countries that get this upset about soccer, but I did not grow up in a culture that develops that kind of emotional attachment to a team (remember, this is Chicago – the home of the lovable losers) Yet when Newcastle was demoted last year, I went into a funk for weeks. This is for a team that I have never seen play live – in a country that I have never visited! It must be something about the game.
One of my favorite books is by Nick Hornby called Fever Pitch. In it Nick writes an autobiography of his life through the lens of soccer (football to him) and his team, Arsenal. I thought of this book as I was walking up the stairs from my seat after tonight’s game. At the top of our section was my friend Sean and I said to him “Same old Fire” – a take off of the saying that Arsenal supporters sometime say – “Same old Arsenal”. I thought about how odd this game truly is and what it does to you.
I’m going to borrow Nick Hornby’s format and use it to look at life through the lens of soccer – or at least my experiences in life. All of the post from here on in will be broken down by a game that I have attended, coached, or watched on TV. Don’t look for highlights or analysis of the game – that will be elsewhere. Instead, look for a general commentary on life – at least my life.
Like I started with, it’s a funny game. This is to be the chronicle of what it does to me. Enjoy it at your own risk.
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