In a recent GQ Magazine article, Andrew Hankinson offered a rather scathing critique of MLS supporter culture using several members of Sons of Ben, the Philadelphia Union supporters group, as his guinea pigs. Turns out, his efforts weren’t entirely appreciated on this side of the pond.

I will be the first to acknowledge that elements of Hankinson’s characterization of MLS fans ring true. You don’t have to dig too deeply to excavate heaping piles of awkwardness, ill-informed posturing, and a lingering second-hand stench, especially if you have some familiarity with established supporter groups abroad. But that’s an easy critique of a supporter culture that’s barely a decade old, or in the case of Sons of Ben, barely a few years old. Hankinson’s one-sided analysis also ignores an obvious counterpoint, namely how impressive it is that significant supporter groups even exist in a league that not too long ago almost exclusively (and naively) catered to families and young kids.

Run of Play’s Brian Phillips, Match Fit’s Jason Davis, and Brody Chacha, one of the Union fans profiled by Hankinson, have all voiced their concerns with Hankinson’s myopic depiction of the way some MLS fans choose to express themselves and the underlying claim that MLS supporters lack authenticity. As Phillips aptly points out, authenticity is a fallacy in modern society. It’s an easy thing to claim, but harder to actually pull off in a world where everyone is constantly borrowing everything from everyone else.

But coming from the self-proclaimed home of proper football, Hankinson has every right to judge our soccer culture. In fact, it would take superhuman discipline for someone in his position not to judge, especially when you consider that significant portions of our own supporters are just as judgmental (self included at times). But in return, we have every right to respond. And we should. And we did. In a very neat way, this episode has turned into a rehashing of the Revolutionary War, without the casualties, neatly tucked away between the virtual pages of Gentlemen’s Quarterly. What we’ve witnessed is a gentlemanly tussle using the written word. Fun for everyone, but not very hooligany. Surely, proper hooligans everywhere are disappointed with how this has unfolded.

But without turning this into a debate of cultural relativism where everyone has a valid point or trying to determine who is right or wrong, we probably can accept Hankinson’s view that MLS supporter culture is rife with contradiction and comedy. How else do you explain someone who explicitly identifies as a skinhead, but wants to reject all the connotations that accompany the skinhead movement? What else can you say about professionals and suburbanites who obviously yearn to be pseudo-hooligans in spite of claims to the contrary, yet, from my completely unempirical studies, are more likely to have only brawled on Xbox? While these extreme characterizations hide much of the gray areas, you would have to be a willfully naive observer to ignore these glaring themes in US soccer. But let’s not let Mr. Hankinson forget that his terraces aren’t exactly full of tatted up brawlers anymore either. Poseurness is certainly not, and never has been, exclusively American. In fact, most fans on both sides of the Atlantic largely participate to simply enjoy the camaraderie and support their teams.

The reality is that MLS supporters are in an awkward position where we will be perpetually judged by others until we can honestly create something that outsiders deem worthy. But we don’t have to seek or wait for outside approval. We can simply choose to put our heads down and keep doing what we’re doing, ignoring what other seemingly enlightened outsiders say. However, judging from our quick (and understandable) reaction to condescending attitudes from abroad, that’s not going to happen any time soon. Alternatively, we can continue to proactively borrow from others, but that just makes it easy for those from the borrowed culture to judge.  Or perhaps, we can really chart our own path, an option that I call the Chappelle “Zip it Up; Zip it Out” approach. We create our fan culture from domestic scratch. Everything MADE IN THE USA. Think about that. It might look something like this:

1.  Instead of singing, we could perform spoken word. We invented spoken word.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrPptZLvdjk

2.  We could all dress in denim from head to toe, wear headbands made of bacon, sing country ballads, hum jazz tunes, and freestyle all of our game commentary.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=hp52oY25FW4

3.  We could breakdance to the stadium instead of walk.

4.  We could embrace confusion. From the outside, we may look confused, but really, we’re just a reflection of what we are as a country, a diverse mixture of everyone from everywhere. We could sing songs in multiple languages. Wait, we already do that.

5.  We could start our own terminology for everything, rename positions, and call every player “guy” or “dunn,” except for the goalkeeper, who we would call “Zip it Ups.”

Hankinson would have had no choice but to write a different article if we had adopted the “Zip it Up” approach. But his article probably would have been about how we have completely bastartized the game and have no idea how to support properly. Come to think of it, we were never going to win that article, just like we are never going to win the supporter culture debate any time soon. So, in the meantime, I suggest we have some fun with it and “Zip it Up and Zip it Out!!!”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QOgLFFmTFw

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As a child, it doesn’t take much to become involved in idol worship. Often, simply having an advanced age is enough for children to develop worship-like tendencies toward pretty underwhelming characters. All you have to do to comprehend this mindset is stroll into a kid’s room to see the array of magazines, posters, dolls, cards, and other collectibles reflecting their worldview.

And there’s nothing wrong with any of that.

We set up children to be let down from birth, feeding them visions of an obese man who lives in the North Pole and moves about on flying reindeer, and sneaky, almost criminal fairies who break into bedrooms, fumbling around under pillows trying to land loose teeth. Adding a few super athletes to the list of mythical, yet false idols hardly seems out of bounds.

The only problem is that our fixation with idols seems to remain far beyond adolescence, a reality painfully evident every week when athletes let us down, even though they should have never let us up in the first place.

We adults have billion dollar industries focused on propping up above average athletes until society views them as gods. Public relations machines create campaigns to make us fawn over fellow human beings who are only much better than most of us at playing with a ball. Media machines report on every aspect of athletes’ lives, covering the most mundane facts that we gobble up as if they matter. Ultimately, our expectations rise, much as they did when we were kids. Except as adults, we should know better. At no point was having talent supposed to inherently coincide with moral superiority.

But the problem doesn’t end there. It turns out that a prominent side effect of creating a hero infrastructure is a pool of athletes who view themselves as infallible heroes. From a business perspective, that’s mission accomplished.

When fawning fans and egotistical athletes (shielded by greasy PR teams) converge, corporate entities win. We become segmented demographics broken down by S, M, L, XL, and especially in the United States, XXXL, and monitored to gain insight into our consumption habits, all the while being injected with heavy doses of worship serum by companies trying to convince us that their products (yes, once this transformation takes place, athletes become products) are worthy or worship.

The result is often fans willing to back players of questionable character who are affiliated with their team in spite of mountains of evidence pointing to chronic character flaws. Prior to his most recent straying, there were significant swaths of fans standing behind John Terry as a model leader. That’s in the face of a checkered history of alleged moral turpitude. Steve McClaren got behind him; Fabio Capello followed suit soon thereafter. And of course, Terry agreed with both of them.

Back in 2005, at an event where Terry and other players were launching a Premier League literacy drive, the leader noted, “It’s important to act as a positive role model.” And abstractly, that’s true. But that doesn’t mean that one is a positive role model just because one objectively deems it important to be one.

I should note, I don’t place all the blame for Terry’s flaws squarely on his broad shoulders, just as I don’t exclusively blame Steven Gerrard, TheBron James, Pete Rose or Tiger Woods for making egregious errors in judgment.

Athletes are just as fallible as anyone else, if not more so. Think of all the mistakes you’ve made in your life. Now think about how much more trouble you might have gotten yourself into if you made tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars a week, received free everything from everyone ever since your early days of being sized up for sponsorships, and spent most of your waking hours fending off grown men and women who just want to be close to you or take pictures with you to show their adult friends. It’s not a stretch to imagine that you might err on the side of being a slightly unsavory character.

Reality suggests that these coddled athletes are precisely the people who we should expect to act in ways that are completely foreign to the average human. If they turn out to be solid human beings and great role models, then great. But it’s odd to think we should expect them to behave any better than the rest of us regular human beings, especially once they step away from the seemingly never-ending vacuous interviews and start diving around in piles of money like Scrooge McDuck at the beginning of DuckTales.

But there are still pockets of civilization that are not yet compromised.

It seems that the U.S. soccer universe isn’t as advanced in the hero infrastructure sector. At a glance, our soccer players have always been relatively well behaved (one particularly notorious exception aside). But that may just be an illusion.

While the hero apparatus is hard at work in basketball, football, and baseball, if the theory stands that everyone has a relatively equal opportunity to be fallible, a percentage of our soccer players are carrying on acting fallibly. It’s just that either no one is watching, or no one cares, which is how it should be, and which is why it is no longer that uncommon for European players to crave the anonymity that MLS provides.

It also helps that in MLS, our highest level of professional soccer, a not insignificant percentage of players make less than those who are meant to worship. In 2010, the MLS Rookie of the Year had an annual guaranteed salary of $58,000. One player who started in the MLS Cup final for eventual champions Colorado Rapids made $40,000. These aren’t exactly figures that should significantly skew the behavior of young, impressionable adults.

I guess my point is that if you must worship someone, start with a pool of people in your income bracket or below, and then arbitrarily choose. That way, you won’t be that disappointed when you realize that the Santa at the mall is just a pudgy substitute teacher with a pillow in his suit who just patted himself down with Jack Daniels aftershave. And more importantly, the rest of us won’t have to read countless articles about how Santa is a disgrace and not fit to wear the suit.

This is how you take care of crowd trouble.

Impose a record fine, demand a public apology from the team’s chairman, and threaten harsh penalties for any further problems.

In South Africa, Kaiser Chiefs fans decided to spice up a recent game by throwing vuvuzelas on the field. Oh, and a cabbage too. Unruly, I know.

South Africa’s Premier Socccer League (PSL) prosecutor, Zola Majavu, wasn’t having it. He told reporters:

“Should vuvuzelas continue to be used as missiles they could be banned from PSL matches. If a Chiefs fan so much as throws a piece of bread on to the pitch, Chiefs will forfeit the 500,000 rand.”

Serious words. Fulfilling his duty, Chiefs chairman Kaizer Motaung addressed unsavory fan behavior, saying:

“We call upon (fans) to help identify rogue elements intent on causing disruption. Once (they are) identified we intend to blacklist theses individuals.”

It’s a different approach to waiting to be fined and slapped on the wrist by FIFA or a regional/national federation.

Making a club chairman come out and apologize sets the tone that the club is ultimately responsible for fan behavior in the stadium. I think we’re all pretty sick of chairpersons blaming “a tiny minority” or “rogue elements” as if clubs are completely incapable of preventing fans from acting like clowns. Apparently Majavu is sick of it too, adding:

“I am sick and tired of prosecuting clubs for the same crimes. Something needs to be done. Fines are not the answer and the authorities need to come up with better solutions to (stamp) out hooliganism at stadiums.”

Maybe someone should send this guy to Europe after he finishes sorting out the PSL.

But perhaps the most interesting part of the story — how cool is it that the PSL has a league prosecutor? Cabbage tossers, beware. Your days are numbered.

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Sometimes you need to just take a deep breath and appreciate what you have. That goes for all of us. We complain a lot about MLS, and often our complaints are warranted. But at times we make it painfully obvious that we have as much perspective as Preki has patience.

I was preparing a rant while watching the second leg of the CONCACAF Champions League match between Toronto FC and Motagua of Honduras. Venting about what we take for granted was the goal. For example, I pondered venting about the fact that:

1. In 1995 (fifteen years ago for the mathematically challenged), we had no professional league. Now we have have a full-fledged professional league with teams that regularly play the biggest clubs in the world (yes, in friendlies) and travel across the region to play in a Champions League. Oh, and the fans have scarves, even when it’s warm outside. It’s not the promised land, but it’s land nonetheless.
2. We can now watch soccer literally 24 hours a day without leaving the couch. During many of those hours, we can even watch Americans playing soccer. Not that Americans are so special, but it wasn’t too long ago that you would never see domestic talent unless you went to see a game live. And if you’re so unfortunate to miss a game, you’ve got DVR, unless, God forbid, you forgot to press a button on your remote control. Compare that to a singular option of watching shortened Bundesliga matches on Soccer Made in Germany on PBS in black and white. This wasn’t that long ago. Really, it wasn’t.
3. In 1990, if someone told you to go find the best player playing in the United States, you wouldn’t be crazy to head over to UCLA (where you would have hilariously found Sigi Schmid) or the University of Virginia (where you would have found Bruce Arena, the former Virginia lacrosse coach, getting ready to win three straight national titles). At UCLA, you would have found Cobi Jones, Brad Friedel, Mike Lapper, Joe-Max Moore and Chris Henderson, among others. And at UVA, you would have found Jeff Agoos, Curt Onalfo and Richie Williams. Not bad. Today, the best player in the United States is a player who very recently might have been the best attacking player in the world. And now he plays in New York. Ok, Harrison, NJ. And no one has to say his name.
4. At one point not too long ago, youth players obsessed over where great high school players were going to go to college. Now we only pay attention to the ones who don’t go to college.
5. We have stadiums that are soccer-specific that can realistically be classified as stadiums. Not parks where people congregate to watch a bunch of anonymous guys play soccer. That’s what we call an improvement.
6. In 1995, good luck finding a U.S. National Team anything, let alone the U.S. National Team. Now you can buy USA undergarments and find Landon Donovan bouncing around the late night TV circuit, for better or worse.

That’s something, no? Times have certainly changed.

I’m not in the business of blindly advocating for MLS, a product that has consistently challenged my patience over the years. But there are times when the level of soccer on display does surpass some of the soccer that people assume is superior simply because it’s foreign. That’s not a reason to love MLS, but it might be a reason to support its continued growth, especially when you consider how far we’ve come in such a short time.

Here’s another way to look at it. Many non-MLS soccer fans in the United States consider themselves die-hard fans of foreign clubs. So die-hard, in fact, that they swear allegiance to the club until their last breath. Now if you’ll endulge me for a moment, if you’re one of those fans, suppose your team starts sucking. Sucking so bad that they get relegated, not once, but twice. Are you still signed up? Still a supporter? For those still on board, why are you willing to support a foreign club regardless of how good they are, but only willing to follow a local team if they pass some sort of aesthetic test? It doesn’t quite make sense.

All I’m saying is that every now and then, it’s good to have some perspective about what’s being built right here in our backyard. Every now and then it’s theraputic to recognize that it wasn’t too long ago that the closest you could get to professional soccer in the United States was a poster of Pele and Maradona at a soccer store or your uncle from abroad coming to the States over the holidays to tell stories about players who were probably as talented as Titus Bramble. Again, perspective doesn’t mean you have to love MLS, but it might make your expectations a bit more realistic, which might provide a different lens to view the league, which might persuade you to take a dive into the previously unthinkable. Yes, it might not. But it might.

Anyway, this time, I’ll spare you the rant. Only because I found someone who has given this a little more thought.

I think you get the point, or not.

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U.S. News & World Report loves ranking stuff. If you’ve finished with college and graduate school, there’s little need to head back to the rankings until you have children, or unless you’re me. I have little interest in ranking the conventional. Ranking teams, players, cities and majors no longer have any importance to me. But what about ranking the top colleges for soccer fans? U.S. News & World Report, you’ve got my attention.

Here are the rankings:

1. Indiana University

2. University of Virginia

3. Messiah College

4. Seattle University

5. UCLA

6. University of Notre Dame

7. University of North Carolina

8. Stanford University

9. University of Maryland, College Park

And there you go. Not too many surprises when you consider the success that these institutions have had on the soccer field over the years.

Hopefully, next we can get rankings for the best study abroad programs for watching soccer. I mean why stop now?

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They’re here, they’re there, they’re _____ everywhere!

Last week, Manchester City continued its quest to take over the world in New York’s Chinatown. A host of City players, including Kolo Toure, Wayne Bridge, Emmanuel Adebayor, Micah Richards, Joe Hart, and Shaun Wright-Phillips, broke out in a game of pick up soccer much to the pleasure of the handful of City supporters and curious bystanders.

While gasps of, “Oh my God, that’s [fill in overpaid player's name],” echoed amongst the spectators, only a few feet away, New York residents were sitting on benches, playing basketball, and picking their noses, oblivious to the fact that one-third of this year’s best baby momma drama was playing soccer just steps away.

Not to be shown up, only a few hours later, Manchester United decided to roll into town. Partnering with Hublot and UNICEF, United set up shop at the intersection of 23rd Street and Broadway, right in front of New York’s famous Flatiron Building. The game? A sophisticated kick the ball through a hole contest. It was as mesmerizing as it sounds, but the idea was to raise money for UNICEF, which isn’t a horrible idea. It was far from an amazing spectacle, but there was plenty of unintentional entertainment to be found if you were looking.

The first black SUV arrived an hour late carrying Edwin Van der Sar, Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes and Darren Fletcher. I was pretty confident that I also spied John O’Shea jump out of the SUV and run off into traffic, which was surprising since he’s not run-into-traffic bad.

The players were immediately shepherded into the VIP section where the lemonade was flowing. Security was clearing sidewalks, telling folks in the street to keep it moving, while letting everyone who looked vaguely important or walked with a purpose into the VIP areas. Since I don’t look vaguely important, I walked with a purpose and was soon standing in front of Ryan Giggs.

I began telling Giggs a story about how a regiment of 5 Hour Energy and periodic use of the Shake Weight can prolong his career. But Giggs apparently isn’t open to new ideas. His loss. Then I decided to hit him with a story about the origins of the Nation of Islam, offering to get him a taste of bean pie, one of the few types of pies that are virtually impossible to find in Manchester. Again, he didn’t bite, so I decided to fall back and do what I do best, people watch.

Grown men were losing it, excited to finally be so close to their mid-life man crushes. But it wasn’t just the men who were losing it. A young lady in business attire looked towards Giggs as if he was Scientology and she was Tom Cruise (the couch-jumping actor, not the Arsenal player). She was hardly able to contain herself. She bolted towards the United star yelling, “Oh my God, is that free lemonade?” passing Giggs in mid-question, moving decisively towards a tray of refreshing beverages.

Sure, Giggs is good, but her question did make me wonder if Giggs is as good as lemonade. But perhaps more relevant to soccer’s place in American life, the lemonade lady’s seemingly disoriented state raised a particularly challenging question: How do we define a soccer landscape that is marked by both fanatcism and complete ignorance and indifference?

Last Thursday, we had two teams from Manchester flirting with the American public and Thierry Henry’s MLS debut. Without question, that was a special day for American soccer.  It was a day marked by obsession and ignorance. A day for international superstars to bask in both love and anonymity in a way that is uniquely possible in the United States. A 25 year old, claiming he’s been a United fan for 20 years, since the days of Mark Hughes, inches away from a young lady who is much more impressed by lemonade than Ryan Giggs. A young, American woman able to pick Joe Hart and Shaun Wright-Phillips out of a crowd, several feet away from a guy who would rather pick his nose while watching a horribly awkward 3 v 2 pick up basketball game where 4 out of the 5 “players” preferred jeans to shorts.  It’s hard to define soccer fan culture when you’re dealing with such polar realities.

But that really explains where we are, doesn’t it? The American public as a whole doesn’t yet love soccer, but the game is still far from anonymous. Millions of Americans know nothing about our visitors from Manchester, yet the Americn Youth Soccer Organization has more registered players than any other organized youth sport in the United States. Although everyone involved in the game is not a fanatic, it is hard to ignore that the game is everywhere and the fan base is growing.

Rather than debate whether we’ve arrived, it might be worthwhile to simply enjoy the moment.  We’re at a point where the simple fact that someone likes soccer is reason enough to give them a chance to be your new friend. The same principle does not apply to American football, baseball or basketball.  If someone tells you that they are an American football fan, your first instinct probably isn’t to figure out when you can watch a game together or to learn more about where they watch their games. We’re still at a stage where soccer has unique fraternal qualities distinct from other mainstream American sports.  We’re still at a stage where most of our domestic “stars” are approachable. In fact, most of soccer’s global stars are much more approachable when in the United States than in almost every other country in the world, a phenomenon that we can likely trace to the relative anonymity that many of these players can find only in America.

We’ve got something special here. Let’s not be so hasty to get to the next stage of popularity that we forget to appreciate what we have now. Let’s take time to appreciate the fact that some people still really love lemonade. Maybe we shouldn’t be in such a rush for people to recognize Ryan Giggs if it means we can have a few more moments to enjoy his company without swarms of purring onlookers.

Which brings me back to the beginning. How do you explain the American audience?

We’re fanatics and lemonade drinkers. The fanatics are the foundation and the lemonade drinkers walk around the foundation oblivious to its existence. We co-exist without really bothering one another, leaving each other to focus on our respective interests, soccer and lemonade. We should really focus on enjoying this harmonious state while we can because it won’t be long until we get this soccer thing right. And when that happens, watch out for people spilling lemonade all over your soccer.

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Imagine if Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, Paris Hilton, and the cast from The Hills all loved soccer.  Now imagine that the people who like the aforementioned all liked what you like.  Imagine they showed up at matches, sat next to you at pubs during games, and called into your favorite talk shows … oh, I’m sorry, podcasts. Imagine that Generation Teen Cribs, a generation that craves for attention, loves feedback, and wants to take people on tours of their parents’ houses as if they are responsible for all the glory that surrounds them took an active interest in soccer. I’ve got to say, I kind of like things the way they are.

You don’t want to be popular just because. You want to be popular in the right way. The wrong way will lead to a bastardization of soccer culture in the United States that looks like … MTV.  Those, my friends, are the facts of life — you take the good, you take the bad.

Anyway, it’s about time someone started a Facebook group to campaign against this encroachment on the sport we love. Don’t do it for me, do it for the kids. And yes, I do understand the irony of wanting to use Facebook to fight Generation Teen Cribs. But sometimes you’ve got to pick up weapons and engage where the action is.

Hip hop is rapidly spiraling out of control, and news has turned into pop culture summaries and partisan bickering between people who are hardly qualified to be student government representatives in a high school. I need to draw the line somewhere.  All I ask is for people to leave my soccer alone. Am I just being a stubborn old man? Absolutely. But I find stubborn old men kind of endearing.

Blindly craving additional supporters for the US soccer movement creates all sorts of problems. We need to be careful of creating fervent crews of supporters blindly chanting about things they don’t really understand.  I mean, just look at the Tea Party Movement. It leads to a whole lot of embarrassment; embarrassment that should be avoidable.

Heidi Montag: Soccer is, like, the world. It like includes everything. And music too! (… Harkes-like silence … )  Like!

Paris Hilton: And they wear those cute little shorts and tight shirts!

Hilton and Montag (in unison): I know!!! (Giggling uncontrollably.)

I can do without that.  Chappelle said it best: “I want some answers that JaRule might not have right now!” Well I feel the same way about my soccer as Chappelle feels about his news. I don’t need Heidi Montag’s opinion on goal line technology … ever. Really, I don’t.

So, please don’t pee in my pool, Generation Teen Cribs.  You stay over there, and I’ll stay over here. I won’t go see Bieber in concert, and you leave me and my ball alone.

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This World Cup was great for MLS. If you enjoyed the World Cup, it’s time to give MLS a chance. Can I get an amen?

Whoa … back up. No so fast, champ.

You can’t force someone to pay attention to something they don’t want to pay attention to. Remember the last time you tried to force someone to read a book they already told you they had no interest in reading? Try telling me that I should dive into Harry Potter. I’m sorry, but I determined long ago that anything that eight year olds and eighty year olds both love is a danger to democracy. Not interested. Try telling someone with a negative interest in techno music that they should give it more time. They won’t. Forced conversion is a waste of time. Not only do you waste other people’s time; you more often than not end up wasting your own time.

As a soccer lover in the US, if you insist on giving others the Jehovah’s Witness treatment, you’re just ensuring that you remain the subject of ridicule in the same circles you’re trying to infiltrate. There are better ways to persuade. Beer, for one, is a great tool to persuade others to temporarily open their minds. Ranting and raving? Not so much. At some point, you would hope that people realize that conversion has its own timetable that rarely agrees with the timetable of the already converted.

The growth of soccer in the US is an inevitable topic that breaks out every men’s World Cup cycle. Capturing more unsuspecting souls to not only like soccer, but to become fans of MLS, becomes the practice du jour for everyone with a vested interest in our top domestic league. But how effective are our attempts at conversion?

The US soccer landscape is actually pretty settled.  We know that, for the most part, everything that will take place post-World Cup was already going on pre-World Cup. Bringing Brazil to play the US in August will certainly draw additional fans, but at some point, these sexy events will disappear and we’ll be left with the pieces of the game that have always been here – youth soccer, high school soccer, college soccer, MLS, and the countless leagues smashed in between.

But the question remains: Will attempting to convert our ever-growing US World Cup audience to our domestic leagues work? Probably not. The World Cup and glamor friendlies may put soccer on more radars, but I’m not persuaded that it can successfully convert these spectators into MLS fans. In fact, I’d be willing to wager that there’s very little correlation between successful top level events and any sustainable growth in the audience for our domestic leagues.

Watching the best players in the world feeds the appetite for top level soccer, something that does not yet exist in the US if we’re being honest. Even if we look beyond the World Cup, high-profile friendlies in the US are hardly the proper barometer to measure the state of our domestic leagues as they have always drawn in the US. I recall going to Brazil vs. Germany at RFK in 1993. The crowd showed up, all 35,000 of them at a time when soccer was supposedly barely on the radar on this side of the pond. In 2002, when Real Madrid played Roma at Giants Stadium, the place was packed with over 70,000 soccer fans. These events may just be showing us the potential audience that we’ve yet to capture, an audience that largely is already interested in soccer. So what prevents these fans from supporting our domestic leagues?

Perhaps it’s simply the level of play. Rather than hanging our hopes on World Cups and mega-friendlies, a slow steady investment in improving the level of play is required, while hoping that when there are moments (like the US qualification for a high profile tournament like the World Cup), our teams perform, thereby capturing our collective imagination.

In the US, performance is king. Brazilian tours, at least as related to the growth of the domestic game, are temporary sideshows, an entertaining distraction. When the Brazilians go back to their top flight leagues around the world, we are left with ourselves to look at every day. Don’t get me wrong, we’re looking better every day, but we’re still far from the hottest ticket in town. And at this stage of our development, there’s nothing wrong with that.

There’s the familiar refrain that we Americans just don’t like soccer. But given the number of people who play and the massive immigrant populations in the United States, I just don’t believe that this refrain that we’ve adopted is true. It’s just that our audience is smarter than gimmicks and friendlies, even though our hopes sometimes get in the way of this reality.

Conversion will happen on its own schedule when people determine that there is something worth converting to. It will be less of an epiphany and more of a process of understanding on people’s own terms, experimenting, and then deciding that this new hobby is the right fit for an already crowded entertainment schedule.

We need to get over our fixation of whether THIS is that moment to capture straggling soccer fans. There is no moment for US soccer if we’re talking about our ability to create more fans for our domestic leagues. Moments are for journalists who realize that moments make much better stories than processes. World Cup moments can make people fall for the World Cup, but the would-be domestic soccer fan is quickly returned to reality as they realize that MLS is not the World Cup.  It’s not the English Premier League, La Liga, the Bundesliga or even Ligue 1.

You don’t have to look far to find someone making the argument that certain MLS sides would match up against well against Team X from the popular Y League. But soccer isn’t a game just about scoring. It’s also about the art on the field; art that can make a 0-0 match thrilling. So when we start regularly fielding domestic club sides that can entertain, that can make us dream, then we’ll be able to start converting both soccer fans and non-soccer fans into supporters of our domestic leagues. Simply put, there will be more converts to the domestic game when the product on the field matches the expectation and drama that people require, and for that, we need to be patient and focus on doing things the right way. One exciting World Cup or appearances from the Brazils and Manchester Uniteds of the world are not magic bullets.

So join me in making a concerted effort to refrain from using the World Cup to convert people to MLS. It just won’t happen, not yet. Beer might work. Raucous supporter culture, perhaps. But forced conversion? Meh. Let’s just focus on being patient and leave the conversion stuff to the others who keep knocking on my front door and the Harry Potter fans.

The audience will come, I’m confident of that. It will just take time. In the meantime, just focus on inviting a friend or two for a beer at the next MLS match and enjoy the fact that you can stretch your legs out on the seat in front of you. Soon the seats all around you will be filled with loud-mouthed frat guys with vuvuzelas and you’ll be longing for the days of old like the crabby old-souled people that so many of us already are.

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As their teams go by the wayside, soccer fans often find themselves needing to regroup and find another team to support, lest they risk isolating themselves from the euphoria that is the World Cup.  Rather than relying on sport related reasons when choosing another team to support, some soccer fans choose to go beyond the game and delve into history.  These fans offer some of the most illogical (and often humorous) reasons for their decisions.

While watching the Germany v. Netherlands semifinal match, a fan told me (tongue-in-cheek of course) that he would root for the Dutch because he felt that they have been more contrite in their guilt over colonization, unlike other European powers like the French, Spanish and British.  Mind you, this same fan who makes colonization a centerpiece of his rationale, doesn’t find it hard to cheer for a nation whose colonization of the host nation led to the evils of Apartheid.

Another casual soccer observer was elated by the Dutch triumph over Germany.  When asked why, she jokingly said that she didn’t want the Germans to win because of the sins of Nazi Germany.

Another fan billed the Netherlands v. Spain Final as the battle of Apartheid v. the Spanish Inquisition.  With such choices, he joked that he was stuck and couldn’t in good conscience cheer for either side.

While these historical moments in time are far from funny, holding soccer players accountable for them borders on humorous.  Although the logic is clearly lacking, the level of creativity is not.  How else can one explain pinning the brutality of the Spanish Inquisition on David Villa or the evils of Nazi Germany on Miroslav Klose or the sins of Apartheid on Wesley Sneijder? Never mind the fact that they weren’t even born when these horrors took place. In the court of football opinion, they must be held accountable and made to suffer the excruciating humiliation of losing a soccer match.  Then, and only then, can we reconcile the sins of the past and make things right.

Although these rationalizations are often made jokingly, one has to wonder how heartfelt these statements are in reality.  The truth may actually lie somewhere in between.  Soccer is a rather complex sport because it enables people around the world to interact with one another on and off the pitch.  Because of this unique quality, on the international level, a game of soccer is often more than just a game.  It is a game that is played with the weight of history, with the baggage of politics and culture never far behind.  That’s why the World Cup is observed with such passion. We’re allowed to live out our Old World and New World grudges, whether rational or not, through soccer games, complete with their militaristic anthems. Teams and their fans cloak themselves in nationalist sentiments, and with that comes the good, the bad and sometimes the very ugly from years gone by, a ready-made cocktail for amateur historical commentators eager to display their wit.

The amazing part of such tongue-in-cheek reasoning is that otherwise perfectly rational, logical people arrive at such conclusions.  From doctors to lawyers and teachers, it appears no one is immune from such crafty logic when faced with the prospect of not having a team to support.  It seems that the pull of being a fan and being emotionally invested in a game trumps the need to make sense, which makes sense, since being a fan is more about faith than rational decision making. And I suppose it’s easier to have faith in one team when the other team is guilty of, say, the Spanish Inquisition.

Logic aside, these rationalizations do make for some truly memorable banter while watching a match.  Without them, the World Cup experience just wouldn’t be the same.  And that’s all good, so long as people are aware that they may sound insane.

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A lot of us think that we work hard for our teams. We show up to as many matches as possible, travel to away matches, buy every iteration of every jersey released, and sometimes dress up as buffoons while sober. But there’s something I saw that surpasses all of that. I give you South Korean fans at the World Cup.

Several of us were in the stands for South Korea’s opening World Cup match. The vuvuzelas were buzzing, the sun was out, and the fans were decked out in their finest gear. Then, without notice, as the teams made their way on to the pitch, we saw a white banner pushing back over the heads of the fans below. Soon, a huge white flag flew over our heads, seemingly making its way to the back of our section.

For those who attend soccer matches or frequently watch matches, unfurling flags/banners is common practice. But this was no ordinary unfurling. Often, when you’re caught under a banner, you have no idea what’s on top if you haven’t been involved in the design process. You might be under a FIFA Fair Play banner. You might be under a flag. You might be under a picture of Pokémon. You just never know.

In due time, I figured out that we were under the South Korean flag. But that wasn’t what made the moment memorable. Looking up at the flag, I soon found myself marveling at the time and attention that went into creating the it. The flag was made up of what must have been a million little photographs of people. As fans below the flag began to realize what they were under, you began to hear murmurs of amazement at something that most spectators from afar couldn’t see. This was no ordinary flag. This was the Beatles White Album of flags. We’ve all seen flags before, but this one changed the game.

It was an arts and crafts project on steroids.

Then, as if that wasn’t enough, after the match I saw the South Korean fans carrying the flag out of the stadium.  And this is what I saw:

Amazing, no? It just keeps going and going and going and going …

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