The American Condition and Major League Soccer

This is a guest post by Jason Davis of Match Fit USA. Jason is an a-class Major League Soccer blogger and also hosts an excellent podcast, which comes highly recommended.

As an American fan of the world's game that actively follows Major League Soccer, it's difficult to avoid developing a inferiority complex.

I'm constantly told that my national team is crap, that my domestic league is terrible, and that I'm wasting my time worrying about either of them.

Like most people, when faced with outright disdain for something I care about, my instinct is to get angry. I want to yell and scream, fire off a barrage of invectives, and give the critics the lambasting I feel they deserve for denigrating my team/league/country.

Only, that's not the most constructive response. Besides, this is football and I'm American, so I'd only make it worse; my opinion doesn't matter, and I can't possibly know what I'm talking about. Right? I'm sure all of you reading this are having a nice laugh at my expense, jaws unhinged while you mock the pathetic Yank. Feel free to head to my blog American soccer blog, Match Fit USA and let me know just how sad I truly am.

Bah.

There's that inferiority complex, rearing its ugly head. Excuse me for a moment while I shake it off.

Perhaps I'm being unfair. Maybe I'm painting with a broad brush, allowing a small segment of critics to color my perception of the whole football community. But you can certainly understand my frustration. Americans are caught in-between, forced to forge our own football identities in a culture that has yet to embrace the sport. This means making a conscious choice about whether to care about our domestic league, a situation that has few parallels around the world. Our version of the game, at least on the club level, is so far behind the European big time that it seems to outsiders to be a pathetic exercise to even bother caring. Though, if we don't care and we forsake the domestic league completely, then it will go the way of the NASL, and America will once again be without a major national competition.

There are plenty of Americans who would be fine with the demise of MLS, who would go on following foreign clubs and leagues without giving a second thought to the death of another one in the United States. These people depress me. Their mindset diverges from mine so completely that I can barely comprehend it. Where would small domestic leagues all around the world be if people simply stopped caring because the foreign product is better? I shudder at the thought. Yet, in my country, where the sport exists on the fringe and needs as much support as it can get, the mindset proliferates.

It's human nature to want acceptance. In our school days, we spend more effort than we truly should on our social standing; we make sure to wear the right clothes, listen to the right music, and say the right things. Many American football fans treat their status as soccer fans as a popularity contest; by turning their back on MLS and decrying its quality as substandard, they make themselves seem more knowledgeable, more worthy of acceptance by Europeans who laugh at America's attempts to play the sport. The "cool kids" think Major League Soccer is a joke, and since American football fans desperately want to be cool, they go out of their way to announce that they think it's a joke, too. Enabled by British ex-pats with radio shows (among others), they feel justified in their attitude, and remain oblivious to the damage they're doing to the American game.

Major League Soccer doesn't struggle because the United States cannot support the game, or because Americans are anti-soccer as a rule; Major League Soccer struggles because a large segment of the potential audience turns their collective back on the league, refusing to support something that doesn't meet some arbitrary standard that they themselves don't truly understand.

Perhaps that's not as large a revelation as I make it out to be.

Simply put though, it's the most frustrating thing about following the game in this country. It's not enough love the sport, to support your local side, or to enjoy every version of the game available (as I do); too many here feel it necessary to place themselves above the supposedly unrefined average American fan by actively disparaging MLS, vehemently attacking anyone who uses the word "soccer", or just refusing to believe that anything of football-worth can come out of the United States.

Forgive me if I don't share that viewpoint. Call me crazy for believing that Americans will one day be among the best players in the world, and that MLS will compete with established European leagues for both players and global attention. I should probably be committed for being certain that MLS will one day be a top five league in the world.

Is hope really such a bad thing?

Maybe I'm the one that's got it wrong. Maybe I shouldn't care about Major League Soccer. Maybe all of those Euro centric Americans, whom I could never accuse of not being passionate about the game, have it right; money and history are all that matter, and since Major League Soccer has neither, I'm wasting my time. I might be better off ignoring it altogether, and focusing my attention on clubs and leagues an ocean away. Forget cultural differences, language barriers and geographical separation; what really should matter to me is that by some subjective measure, Major League Soccer is second-rate.

Maybe that's all true. But I just can't do it.

I'll be watching Premier League matches this weekend. I might even catch some Italian matches, or search out a way to see some of the La Liga action. I'll enjoy it because it's football and it's world-class. I'll enjoy watching Ronaldo and Rooney, Pato and Kaka, Messi and Henry, and all of the other stars that those leagues possess. But when all of that is done, when clocks in London and Barcelona tick over to the evening hours and there is no more European football to be had, I won't hesitate to flip over to Major League Soccer. And I know I'll enjoy it just as much, world-class stars or not, because it's my league.

I guess second-rate is good enough for me.

This missive was an effort to give a bit of insight into the American dilemma; a Catch-22 of epic proportions exists for professional soccer in the United States. Second-rate means less attention, and less attention means less growth, which will obviously only hamper efforts to improve the league. I lay it out here because Chris has been kind enough to give me the forum, and because I believe that an opportunity for mutual understanding should never be ignored. Excuse my use of both "soccer" and "football". I tend to use them interchangeably on my blog Match Fit USA.

(Photo: The Shots Heard Around The World)

---

Posted by Chris Nee

---