Soccer is the future
By John Sheridan
When my ESL classes' topic of conversation was the Qatar World Cup 2022, I liked telling my students that British football used to be called “soccer,” by the creators of “the beautiful game,” and that Americans never stopped using “soccer” even though the rest of the world, including the Brits, switched to “football.”
Americans stayed with “soccer” to avoid confusing it with their own football, which had evolved from British rugby. The legend is that some McGill University Canadians had played rugby while in England, introducing the game, in 1874, to Harvard boys while visiting their school.
The Harvard boys then made some changes, by adding a bit of soccer to rugby, and the separation of American football from British rugby had begun.
As the Harvard game was taken up by the rest of the Ivy League, it was at Yale where Walter Camp, the “Father of American Football,” codified football rules, beginning with straightening out the chaotic rugby scrum, by lining up 11 offensive and defensive players face-to-face on either side of “the line of scrimmage.”
And rather than playing footsie with the ball as it's done in the scrum, it was placed on the line, from where the offensive center “snapped” it with his hands back to the quarterback.
British rugby and American football were now on separate paths.
What did separate football from rugby from the get-go was the popularity of the former among all Americans, no matter their social rank.
Football, a game that was first played in the Ivy League among the manly scions of America's upper crust, soon became popular with the coal miners and steel workers of western Pennsylvania and Ohio.
By contrast, eponymous rugby began at Rugby School, a British public school, and retains its posh status among manly public-school boys to this day.
I recall a British yachtie whom I sailed with saying, “[British] Football is for the plebs,” whereas no American sport “is for the plebs.” American baseball, football, basketball and volleyball (Yes, made in America) are played in the Ivy League, in urban streets, in suburbs, in small towns and in farming communities.
The next significant break between British rugby and American football was the forward pass. According to Hollywood's “Knute Rockne, All American” starring Ronald Reagan as George Gipp (the legendary “Gipper”), the forward pass was first thrown in a 1913 game between the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame and the mighty Cadets of West Point, won by the Irish in an upset, 35 to 13, due to the forward pass. This revolutionized football, which had been a running game, like rugby.
Many of the techniques of rugby ― especially the dropkick ― were still commonly used in football until World War II, but the forward pass became ascendant after the war and began to dominate in the 1960s, with today's offense going through the quarterback, who usually stays protected in “the pocket,” and with the fullback and halfbacks in a diminished role.
Once the British taught the world how to play their football, a common query among its aficionados was: Why don't Americans play the beautiful game? It confounded them. Some fans believed that sports-loving America would become a football superpower if only her athletes would take up the game.
That's why there were great expectations among them when, in the 1970s, Americans began to show some interest in the World Cup. A West Indian whom I was watching the televised 1978 World Cup with in London even predicting that the U.S.A. would win the World Cup in 1994.
The U.S.A.'s World Cup performances, however, have disabused him of that notion, while I was more sanguine 12 years ago about the U.S.A.'s chances of winning the World Cup than I am today. Like most Yanks, I don't expect too much from our side, anymore.
Since I never played the beautiful game, I don't know enough about soccer ― I'm puzzled by “offsides” ― to determine what's wrong with the U.S.A.'s program.
A Frenchman opined that America doesn't have a soccer culture that produces great players. He's right, because soccer is so white, so suburban and so organized rather than spontaneous.
Until suburban white boys play soccer with the same passion that urban black boys have for basketball ― America's own beautiful game ― and working-class (“the plebs”) and third-world boys around the world have for British football, the U.S.A.'s prospects of becoming a football power are nil.
A Britisher coaching soccer in Wisconsin claimed that more American boys play soccer than Little League Baseball, and he's frustrated when many of his boys stop playing at age 14.
When I was talking to the British coach, I couldn't pass up telling him a joke about soccer: “Soccer is the sport of the future in America ― and it always will be.”
Soccer's passionate American supporters notwithstanding, it's still a curiosity among the vast majority of American sports fans. Our interest was piqued when the Qatar World Cup Groups were announced ― the U.S.A. is in Group B ― and we'll show great enthusiasm for the World Cup as long as the U.S. is still playing matches.
But once the Yanks are eliminated, our interest will flag.
Until Americans hoist the World Cup trophy, soccer will always be the sport of the future in the U.S.A. No worries: we have our World Series, Super Bowl, NFL and NCAA football weekends, March Madness and NBA playoffs to get excited about.
John Sheridan (sherbo77@yahoo.com) calls himself an "urban flaneur" living in Seoul.