UC Santa Barbara became the first team to draw two crowds of 10,000 or more in a season when the Gauchos attracted 11,242 fans -- the sixth largest crowd in NCAA regular-season history -- for their 2-0 win over Duke.The soccer attendance story of 2010 rolls forward again. Tennessee has football, Kentucky has basketball, but CA has soccer.
Not too long ago, 15,000 fans would have been the SEASON attendance total, not just for one game. Times are changing quickly, with attendance up nation wide and two of the top five most-attended regular season NCAA soccer matches of the modern era occurring just in the last 2 weeks. I should add also that they both were played in California, not in Maryland or Connecticut or North Carolina, or even in St. Louis.
UCSB defeated UCLA 2-0. By no means a crushing win, so the story becomes the event itself. Out of nowhere, soccer this fall is capturing the attention of money-restricted fans with attendance numbers way up in California as well as back in the traditional soccer-center of the mid-atlantic.
I asked my soccer-neutral wife what she thought of the attendance-record-smashing year and she commented that "People must like soccer." I thought for a moment. Yes, it probably is really that simple.
Would Tim Howard EVER go outside in a blizzard wearing shorts if he weren't playing soccer? I don't think so. Yet another reason why soccer is ... better.
I have played on squads with cheerleaders and without, and I guess, oddly enough the presence of cheerleaders lent an air of legitimacy to our whole soccer endeavor. They outnumbered the fans at some of my games, so they didn't have a huge crowd to lead in cheers. Still, I was touched that they would go to all the effort to organize, buy their equipment and show up to support the team.
Soccer cheerleaders aren't common in English Premiership games, so some soccer fans don't see their place. Two points: this isn't England (nor Italy nor Germany), and I really don't think that most fans would argue to much if teams calmly started adding yell leaders to Premiership games. Oh, yes, the girls/women's matches could use guy cheer support! Fair is fair.
Franklin Foer gathered perspectives on the soccer world from countries that take the game seriously. In a couple cases, deadly seriously. How Soccer Explains the World exaggerates the conclusions that can be drawn just from soccer. Still, people do lay at Soccer's doorstep all manner of personal and social worship that I found fascinating. I enjoyed reading it to see that the way a group responds to something like soccer can show who they, and we, really are.
If you enjoy international politics and soccer (who doesn't?), Mr. Foer's book is just for you.
Spain is catholic country, but the stone churches are mostly empty now. Estadio Bernabeu in Northern Madrid is the crown jewel (Barca fans will protest in vain) and is home to Real Madrid. To say that many Spaniards consider their soccer team with greater understanding than they have of God, would still to understate the devotion they have for their local club. Especially if they are currently winners.
This may sound like the US NFL fans who skip church 4 months a year to spend all Sunday at the game, but it is not the same concentration of sports fanaticism as you find in Spain. Yes, Spain is excited about Basketball. Team handball attracts some attention. And that is about it for other sports in Spain (sorry Rafa, you are a niche product). In Spain, you don't have the 30+ other sports as in the US between which to divide their sports passions, so the net effect is to have a huge fan base for a single sport that responds in unison with sports enthusiasm to every kick, foul, and goal.
They wisely made the stadium out of concrete, in case pyro-minded fans tried to have their way.
FIFA rankings normally appear to made by drunk monkeys throwing darts at a board with the team names on it, but it is fun and quite heady territory to think that the drunk monkeys may be on to something that could prove quite intereting in the coming 15 months. The Men are winning convincingly and they haven't even really had all their best players on the field all at the same time yet.
Hope is a strange thing when it can spring from sauced primates.
In the U.S. no one need break in to a soccer practice to get a peek at their favorite players. So few people have a favorite US soccer player that there are paltry few fence jumpers at the national team practices (see pic of a Brazilian National Team practice in '05).
Good or bad? Well, I'm glad people have lives and don't have to climb fences to see people PRACTICE soccer. Still, the energy and excitement of people willing to break the law for the sake of their sport: that kind of enthusiasm is missing in almost all of the soccer experience in the U.S.
In the end, remember that the word fan comes from FANATIC.
Steven Goff is one of the few soccer writers left in American print journalism. He knows the game, and is worth reading every time he writes. He writes extensively (not exclusively) about the US National teams.
Faces are what matters in these pictures. Context is great, but doesn't have to take up more than half of the image. Team uniforms are fun to document, but seeing all 22 players' full uniform is not necessary.
Solution? Stack players 4 high on a bleacher and focus on increasing the relative size of the faces and decreasing background and uniform space.
K is for Kick is a soccer book that introduces early primary (grades 1-3) students to soccer. The art is appealing, and what soccer fan wouldn't want Junior to know that FIFA is pronounced "fee-fuh"?
Yes, Virginia, there is a beautiful soccer field at FIFA headquarters. Considering the money that FIFA has at its disposal, it could have gold leaf turf. Still, the campus is visually appealing.
Amazing. Inspiring. Angering. Human.
Full report after the jump. Incredibly, the players seem basically to just be nervous about their soccer games, not staring 24/7 at where their missing foot used to be.
Update: I think this picture is an example of why people keep investing in the future, like investing in the stock market in hopes that other people's effort will yield positive results some day. If these guys are so optimistic as to be playing games and expending great energy to do so better than than the other guys, than how much more possible might it be that some guy at Google or Dow is working with equal effort on some big money project that is about to become very profitable for their company. Humanity has its moments of greatness.
Choice #1-
Let's say that the players complaining in this picture are correct and that the referee has erred. Players think, if I don't complain (even though I know it will only hurt our team in the end) the crowd will surmise that I think that the referee is correct. Sending the captain to politely lodge the complaint at half-time as is officially called for just won't do. Players can harness fan support to increase their salary next year, so players complain much more than they should.
Choice #2-
Let say that the players complaining in the picture know for sure that they have a groundless claim with the referee. Well, again, it may matter little, since fans only see the play from a distance and don't know everything that the people on the field do. So, the fans are used to garner support on the field so that.... come salary negotiations time, the team management has to admit that player such-and-such does in fact have a big drawing power. "Remember all that yelling and cheering when the ref screwed him?" So, the players will logically complain much more than they should, even when completely in the wrong.
And people say money doesn't change people.
The World Cup final is great, and all. But as readers here have noticed, I think that soccer is truly just a game. The score doesn't matter. The players matter. The subtle successes or moments of revelation of a universal truth matter. Soccer is just the classroom in which those truths become evident.
What truths? How about the answer to "Am I a mean person?", or "What is my life worth?" or "Why does it feel so wonderful to put that stupid piece of leather exactly where I wanted it to go?".
Finally, the fans here prove that it is possible to get caught up in the game and just have fun with it at any age, speed or level.
Inventors, awake!
NCAA is webcasting a few of the the final rounds of Divisions I,II, and III of both the men and women. The one to watch is Wake Forest (#1 in the country) at 10:00 am eastern on Sunday the 30th.
Go here, and follow the "Video" link near the top. From there you select the event.
I have never enjoyed Soccer on TV. The screen is too small to see the entire action. With less knowledge of other sports, I don't know if this is true in other athletic areas. Better Soccer is soccer taken in live. The whole field can be viewed. The small shifts that change everything can be seen, without relying on the camera to accidentally get it right.
I had high hopes that HD TV would solve this for me. It doesn't. It is better, but still not enough.
I suppose TV soccer is enough of a shadow of the real thing that its existence shouldn't be questioned, but tv will not attract new fans. It just isn't that great of an experience. Imagine your first soft drink had been Diet Coke. You might never go back. Tv soccer is the diet soda of the sports world.
Watch live soccer. Full sugar. Full flavor. No weird aftertaste.
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