Inter Milan and Bayern Munich square off in today’s UEFA Champions League final live on your local Fox station. The fact that the final will be shown on regular network television, on the people’s television, shows how far soccer has come in a relatively short period of time in the United States.
Taking a long view, even ten years ago, the UEFA Champions League final would have barely registered with the general public in the U.S. Certainly, we’re still not at a point where Inter vs. Bayern will match the popularity of a Super Bowl, World Series or NBA Final. Not even close. But soccer’s popularity in the States is without a doubt on the rise, which is sometimes hard to notice when you’re standing in the growth.
In twenty years, the U.S. will have a concentrated population of well-versed, soccer lovers. Between Fox Soccer, Fox Soccer Plus, GolTV and internet feeds, we can now watch soccer around the clock, and many of us do.
The explosion of international soccer’s availability has created a situation where average U.S. fans in twenty years will have a lifetime of knowledge about teams thousands of miles away. Americans in twenty years traveling to England will be entering pubs talking intelligently about English Premier League (EPL) players who played twenty years prior as if EPL sides are their local teams. Americans will be talking about legendary players, epic transfers, and those moments that define European seasons with the sophistication that many Americans talk about basketball now. I just hope we learn that we don’t need to statistic people to death. We’ll be adept at reminiscing about the first serious wave of American players that laid the foundation for the wealth of American players who will certainly be playing in Europe come 2030. This will be the equivalent to U.S. fans today intelligently talking about Chelsea, Everton or Bayern Munich players from 1990. It will undoubtedly be an impressive feat considering most Americans don’t have this encyclopedic knowledge of the European game now, let alone this level of knowledge about American soccer.
Traveling in Europe, locals are still shocked to come across Americans who know the game. For those of us who follow soccer and travel, answering elementary questions designed to test our soccer knowledge is tiring, especially considering how little it takes to impress. In England, all you have to do is mention something relatively obscure, such as the West Ham academy’s influence in populating the EPL with top players and people will look at you like you just wrote out the periodic table from memory. In Germany, mention retired German internationals other than Jürgen Klinsmann or Lothar Matthäus and you’ll get the same look.
Today we have Americans calling into European-based, soccer radio shows, flying across the pond to catch matches, joining U.S. based English Premier League and La Liga supporters clubs, and walking around cities wearing old JVC, Siemens and Carlsberg jerseys. When you look at these developments in perspective, it is easy to see how far soccer has come in the United States and where this is all going.
So while today’s UEFA Champions League final is just another yearly battle between Europe’s top club sides, in the United States, the match being shown on regular people television is a symbolic moment to notice how far we’ve come as consumers of the international game. It’s easy to spend our collective time and energy focusing on how far America as a nation needs to go to accept soccer. But these are these moments that we should notice and appreciate because recognizable moments like this don’t come around too often.
World, be scared. We are paying attention, and this is just the beginning.
Nice write-up. Still, there is something in me that is kinda wistful for the days when North Americans were pretty much ignorant about international soccer. I remember when the World Cup came here everything seemed so bright and fresh. People were just getting exposed to the game. Yes, all the comments about how boring it is, etc., were there as well. But there was that moment of discovery, that magic that comes with the mystery of 22 men kicking a round ball across a field, why was it so important in much of the world?
With increased sophistication comes heightened expectations and, with that, a tribal mentality that plagues the European scene. I hope the American soccer scene don’t start too closely emulate the foreign traditions, like hooliganism.
FOX airing the CL reminds me a bit of that 1994 vibe.