In Part I, I discussed how our collective focus on breaking news, scores and game analysis relegates important issues to the sidelines, thereby impacting our U.S. player pool. In Part II, I turn to a reason why we may behave the way we do. It’s the politics; the one area major online sports outlets treat like kryptonite.
Shying Away From Politics
The politics of moving beyond breaking news, scores and game analysis in soccer can be messy, which may be one of the reasons why the topic is avoided. Another possible reason for the lack of attention to soccer politics may simply be a lack of interest or knowledge from content publishers. This neglect isn’t necessarily malicious; often people tend to focus on what they’ve personally enjoyed or experienced, which influences what they prioritize. So pushing a publisher to dedicate valuable online real estate to soccer’s political and social issues might be challenging when it’s not an internalized priority. But we should not simply accept the status quo because change is hard work. These issues should be key components of soccer coverage and can dramatically shift the conversation about our leagues, clubs and national teams to a much more productive place.
Whether a community has access to soccer fields, for instance, isn’t simply a matter of location. It’s also a political issue. Soccer politics involves attention to budget allocation, community priorities, socio-economics, urban/suburban challenges, and often attention to gender/ethnic/racial dynamics. The underlying political issues are complex. And it is this complexity that doesn’t seem to find its way into our soccer coverage.
Perhaps soccer commentators and publishers are reluctant to become too politically opinionated for fear of alienating audiences. But if we are too scared as a collective to confront political issues for fear of ruffling social feathers, we will never get to the heart of some of the existential issues, such as access, that plague U.S. soccer.
Some off-the-field issues are clearly worthy of coverage, while others are not. For instance, online sports media outlets seem to consider finance and governance worthy of regular coverage, whereas political and social issues remain on the sidelines. Perhaps their thinking is that the financial and governance issues are necessary to the existence of the games on the pitch, whereas political and social issues are peripheral. But ensuring equal access to games, meaning the opportunity to play or the opportunity to compete at the highest level, is also an integral element of sport, and is inextricably tied to fans thinking that the U.S. should have more depth in its player pool.
An argument for omitting political commentary from mainstream sports coverage exists, but it’s not a strong one. The abbreviated argument starts with sport as recreation. It’s just a game. Therefore, sport, as a diversion from our everyday stressful lives, should be apolitical. In short, bringing politics and social debates into the sporting realm taints the spirit of sport. Interestingly, the South African government during apartheid used the same argument to try to convince international sporting bodies to refrain from taking action against South African sports teams.
Avery Brundage, President of the International Olympic Committee from 1952 to 1972, at one point agreed with the South African government’s position that sport and politics should remain separate, once saying that sport should not be used “as a tool or as a weapon for an extraneous cause,” that is, for politics. In theory, he is right.
At its best, assuming that there is equal access to sport, there may be no need to commingle sport and politics. But in the real world, equal access to sport is a pipe dream. Sport is a powerful currency, more universal than the dollar and arguably more valuable. To suggest that sport, in practice, should remain apolitical, at a minimum, takes it away as a weapon from those seeking to gain access to the game, ensuring that the pool of players for our favorite game, Seats on a Plane, is weaker than it should be. At a maximum, ensuring that sport remains politic-free prevents those who may need it the most from using it as a tool to confront systemic, societal inequities beyond the field, maintaining social stratification when it comes to everything from health to education.
Many people have traditionally thought of sport as simply entertainment or recreation with no relationship to politics. But this sentiment originates from a position of privilege. The have-nots need sport to be political. Recreation and politics are not always mutually exclusive. Swimming in itself is not a political act, but swimming doesn’t take place in a vacuum. Swimming from East to West Germany in the 1970s was a political act. Similarly, basketball in and of itself is not political. But playing basketball in the wrong neighborhood wearing the wrong colors might cause a political problem. Whether you have access to basketball facilities is also a political issue. The same principle applies to actions in the rest of our lives. Cooking is not political, but who cooks in your kitchen can be political. Cleaning, speaking, buying, and walking can all be political as well. When it comes to sport, just like any of these other activities, the context determines whether it is political as well as recreational.
Contextually speaking, we like our sport apolitical; at least that’s what our coverage tells us. In the hierarchy of what we deem important based on our coverage, breaking news, scores and game analysis are kings. But it’s the political conversation, or rather politicizing the soccersphere, that will empower us to shift the paradigm to include conversations prioritizing access to the game we spend so much time digesting. Shamefully, as a collective, we all know the power of soccer, but in practice, we seem reluctant to write about it.
Eighty-five percent of the over 3 million players registered with the U.S. Youth Soccer Association in 2009 were under the age of fourteen, leaving only 15% of kids above the age of fourteen. There are a number of assumptions that one can draw from these numbers. One is that that kids under fourteen years old represent the largest number of participants, not because soccer is the game kids want to play, but rather because soccer is the game the kids’ parents want them to play. Sounds like soccer is a recreational activity for the kids of upwardly mobile suburbanites, right? Soccer moms and dads are investing considerable amounts of time and money to ensure that their kids have a safe, recreational activity until their kids decide that soccer isn’t for them. That’s all well and good. It’s what any of us would do. But meanwhile, there are communities where kids come from soccer homes, often in immigrant communities, where it’s the kids who want to play and even have dreams of becoming professionals from well before they are fourteen, and well afterwards in some cases. Unfortunately, it’s often these kids who don’t have the resources that exist elsewhere. Creating the passion to take young players past the age of fourteen isn’t just about manufacturing desire; it’s also about politics of prioritizing beyond suburbia.
Moving beyond-suburbia is also a drive that the numbers suggest might make practical sense. From 1990 to 2000, the numbers of youth players registered with U.S. Youth Soccer Association increased 87%. Between 2000 and 2009, the number of players registered increased 2.5%. That’s a stunning flatline that would drive any business owner into a fit, if not into an unemployment line. What does this tell you? Perhaps simply that since suburbia is getting saturated, youth soccer will need to look elsewhere to continue its growth.
With all the money now coming into U.S. soccer, together with the other competitive advantages the U.S. offers, surely there will be plenty of progress in U.S. soccer to cheer about, and rightfully so. A quick look at the past few decades of U.S. soccer reveals much to be proud of. But rather than pat ourselves on the back too often for now having more players in top leagues in Europe, or grinning every time we incrementally move up on FIFA’s suspect international rankings, we simultaneously need to assess whether our domestic priorities are being met by the status quo or whether we need to shift some of our priorities. These are political conversations, but they aren’t ones that should remain isolated in the halls of the U.S. Soccer Federation because, if we’re being honest, they’ve historically gotten plenty wrong just as they’ve gotten plenty right. This is a conversation that needs to also lie with us – the journalists, bloggers, and fans – as a balance for the deciders who write the checks and sign off on our domestic soccer priorities. It’s time that we get our hands dirty in the political.
But after years of moving in a particular direction, how do we change the course of our conversations? That’s something I’ll take on in the final part, coming soon …
