| Written by Maria Elena Salinas |
| Monday, June 03 2002 |
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| I should start off by being perfectly honest: I am not the world's biggest soccer fan, but I am a soccer mom. The last time I got excited about a game was when my daughter Julia scored a goal for the St. Philip's Rockets at the YMCA. Her stellar performance on the field cost me a trip to Disney World. This month, a much more serious case of soccer fever will cost millions of soccer fans around the world many sleepless nights.
Every four years, World Cup Soccer has a way of taking over people's lives like no other sporting event in the world. Not even the Olympic Games can generate the level of nationalistic passion seen at a World Cup Soccer match. Fans will sell their cars, mortgage their homes, deplete their pensions -- even steal from their neighbors -- just to raise enough money to see the games in person.
A win can be cause for declaring a national holiday. A loss can result in a national day of mourning. Elections have been postponed if they coincide with a soccer game. A nation's economy can suffer if the national team does badly. Fans have been known to commit suicide or even murder after a soccer loss. In 1994, Colombian defender Andres Escobar made the fatal mistake of scoring a goal for the opposing team during a game against the United States. A few weeks later, he was shot to death by a disgruntled fan in Medellin.
For some reason, the United States has been immune to soccer fever. Even the creation of a professional soccer league and playing host to the World Cup in 1994 did not help garner the level of enthusiasm that exists in other parts of the world. For the most part, soccer in the United States remains a sport for little girls. Both my 5- and 7-year-old daughters play it. And while many boys their age play soccer, their heroes are professional baseball, football, basketball and hockey players.
There are many theories as to why the United States is indifferent to soccer. Veteran Miami sportscaster Jim Berry believes that Americans are too impatient for soccer. "They cannot stand to sit and watch a sport where after an hour no one has scored," he told me.
Fernando Fiore, sportscaster for Univision, which has exclusive Spanish-language rights to the games in the United States, disagrees. "Americans sit through two hours of baseball, and the scoreboard could read 1 to 0." He thinks the real reason is that there is no soccer tradition in the United States, and that owners of baseball, football, basketball and hockey teams -- who would be hurt by the promotion of a new sport -- have worked hard not to build a soccer tradition.
The passion for soccer also has a lot to do with the fact that most children in the world grow up playing it. All it takes is an empty street. Any line can serve as the goal. If you don't have a ball, an empty can to kick around will do. An Argentine friend, who vows to lock himself up in his room for the entire month of June, attributes the lack of interest to American sportscasters who cannot yell the traditional "gooooooaaalllllllll" when a team scores with the same zealous tone as others around the world.
This year's World Cup in Japan and Korea will be particularly difficult for fans in this hemisphere. Many games will be played in the middle of the night, U.S. time. So don't be surprised if you hear your neighbor's television on full blast at 2:30 in the morning. If you hear someone screaming and cursing in the middle of the night, don't call the police right away, thinking it's domestic violence -- it could very well be that the opposite team just made a goal. If your co-worker doesn't show up to work, arrives late or walks around with bags under his or her eyes, it could be that he or she has a fever, a fever that no medicine can cure. After all, this is the season for soccer fever. |
