In search of an American Soccer Vernacular

In Chinatown, at the field on Delancy and Chrystie a stray ball slowly rolled by a Ghanaian. He stood and watched it.

"I'm like Landon Donovan, I don't move for no one."

I stood and watched him, completely unsure how to craft an adequate comeback.

***

I think American fans feel a little left out of the World Cup and not just because the U.S. was eliminated without a win.

The problem for American soccer fans is that we don’t know how to talk about soccer.

My first exposure to soccer commentary was the video game FIFA 98. ESPN’s own, Irishman Tommy Smyth, did the commentary.

He was the realest soccer voice I’d ever heard. His most frequent comment was, “He put it in the back of the old ol’ onion bag.”

Exposed to an impressive variety of Smyth’s goal calls, the video game commentary became my soccer language. I remember saying “brilliant strike” in earnest.

Live at the 2006 Cup, Smyth is still quirky and Irish, and he is about as insightful as his 1998 Playstation 1 video game self. When Ecuador played Poland, he called Ecuador the Denver Broncos and Poland the Gonzaga of the World Cup. Like Quito is high altitude and no one wants to play Poland.

His yank-pandering analogies left my American soccer identity in tatters.

Now, when I am the lone American playing in Chinatown, I can’t quite bring myself to say, “football.” I feel like I’ll be recognized as a fake, as the Smyth imitator that I am.

And as a fan I am lost. In New York, I see Ghanaian, German, and Swiss fans and I want to understand soccer like they do. I follow these authentic fans to ethnic bars to take it all in.

***

Our home-grown league is as lost as I am.

Major League Soccer formed 10 years ago, and initially featured bad, but at least, original team names: Burn, Earthquakes, Mutiny. As the league expands, team names have suddenly gone sickeningly faux-euro:

-Real Salt Lake. What does it mean that Utahans root for a team called “Royal Salt Lake,” in Spanish?
-Houston Dynamo. Maybe the MLS means this to be subversive; Dynamo was originally a Soviet sports clubs sponsored by political police like the KGB.
-The Dallas Burn have been renamed Football Club Dallas.

These names are apparently designed to attract the kind of Americans who yell, “Come on lads” when Manchester United is on television.

ABC/ESPN’s World Cup commentary offers a different direction. Aside from Tommy Smith, the commentators are thoroughly American. They could be worse. Balboa, Harkes, and Wynalda might not have been world-class players, but they at least understand soccer and generally make reasonable points.

Unfortunately soccer knowledge alone is insufficient for adequate commentary.

In terms of style, the TV Americans are lost. They waver between the tone of a baseball announcer and British inflection, they aren’t very funny, and they are prone to repeated dramatic overstatement of the obvious. On the knockout round:

“And remember the losing team is sent home after today’s game.”

***

The MLS is lost, ABC/ESPN is lost, and I am lost, because there is no American soccer vernacular. To be a soccer nation, the U.S. not only needs a more creative intelligence on the field, we need a new kind of voice in he booth to show fans a way to talk comfortably about soccer.