there's knowingness and then there's knowingness

there's a special complex of feelings reserved for american soccer fans who really know their stuff. it's commendable for a casual fan to know who manchester united and barcelona are or that zinedine zidane had something of a noteworthy pre-headbutt career. and i can only consider it a good thing that i see multiple berkeley students sporting chelsea shirts on their way to class just about every morning. yet i can't help but have a less benign attitude toward these people when they call soccer 'the real football,' or when they never say 'game' instead of 'match.' it rings hollow to me, and i always have the temptation to put them in their place when they try to pass their shallow impressions of the english premier league off as real opinions (opinions that always seem to seek fortification in the overuse of club nicknames). i want to browbeat them and intimate (or employ a less subtle verb) that i happen to know that zidane was a judo champion as a youth; that i knew william gallas would be a great fit for the premier league two years before he left france; that only a complete newbie to the scene (or an irishman) honestly thought the France-Ireland qualifier should have been replayed after henry's handball.

the era that bred this haughtiness was the period right after the 2002 world cup. as a graduation present in honor of my having graduated valedictorian, my dad bought me and my brother a directv subscription for the summer's tournament, ending a spell of years that required me and my brother getting rides down to my grandpa's house to watch epl review shows. after the world cup, i devoured fox sports world's soccer lineup, going so far as to regularly wake up at 6:30 a.m. for bundesliga fixtures. only a couple months after the world cup final, i had developed an odd penchant for the argentinean league. the highlight of the league was a river plate side that featured notables like ariel ortega, fernando cavenaghi, and nelson cuevas immediately post his fifteen minutes of fame for paraguay in the world cup. but to me, the star of the side was chacho coudet. he regularly terrorized hapless opposing defenses from the right flank in a style very reminiscent of an in-form lee bowyer, and it was little surprise that his form saw him secure a spell with celta vigo in spain at the end of the argentinean season. (is that the clausura? i don't remember.) i insisted to my brother that eduardo 'chacho' coudet would be the next argentinean star. i sensed that his hyper-effective play would see him become the toast of europe, and i went to great lengths employing my generally superior versing of the argentinean game to intimidate lesser soccer fans into believing like i did. in the end, i think he made thirteen appearances for the vigo side without a goal before screwing off back to buenos aires.

every time i want to destroy a casual soccer fan, i try to remember my chacho coudet expertise and shut up.
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being disappointed in america: our 1998 world cup campaign

on june 21, 1998, the united states men's national team took on iran in its second wc 98 group stage match. for months mainstream news reports had highlighted the upcoming game because of all its obvious political connotations. (thinking back to it now, i realize that i may have been a member of the last generation to experience true american marginalization of soccer- that the national team was mentioned on abc world news tonight seemed extraordinary at the time.) the game became a great example of the kind of weird and not-quite-personally-resonant humanitarian cosmopolitanism to which international soccer often contributes; that is, the event was depoliticized into a joyeaux noel-type premise that really heavy-handedly underlined soccer as a symbol of mankind's universal positive traits. but jens jeremies had made a mockery of supposedly soccer-induced virtue by cynically kicking claudio reyna all over the pitch in the us's first game against germany, and germany's victory ensured that winning the iran game would be pretty much imperative when it came to the us following up on their good performance in 1994.

foreign correspondents had descended on tehran (apparently), and at halftime, with the us losing, they reported on the bedlam that had greeted the iranian team's successful efforts. that the iranians were celebrating was bad enough for a ten-year-old who had spent the entire fourth grade wrapped up in the american cause for soccer legitimacy, but what was most piercing was that the abc correspondent actually seemed happy for the iranian celebrants. their ebullience had crept into the voices of these supposedly american journalists. today, i remember less about the game than the way i felt about the game. i remember that a then long-haired brian mcbride pulled a goal back. i remember ty keogh talking about how good khodad azizi was, as if he were an expert on the persian game rather than having simply noticed that he was one of iran's few players based abroad. i remember frankie hejduk falsely letting on that he was actually a good player, but that's about it. what i really remember is the poignancy of the end of america's wc campaign. the fatalism sweeping around me and being exacerbated by the apparent perception of the loss as 'a remarkable story' by other americans who should have been crying like i was. i then had to go to a barbecue at my grandpa's in honor of a visiting uncle from back east. i was sullen the entire time, and things were made worse when someone explained that 'his team lost.' my team? it was your fucking team, too! we're all americans- why do you hate soccer more than you love america, i wanted to know. thankfully, my dad, who probably didn't care a jot about soccer but was a first recon marine lieutenant during the hostage crisis, was adequately disgusted at having lost to the ayatollah et al. i was thoroughly disappointed in my countrymen.

four years later, after having rode the wave of euphoria that buoyed all american soccer fans during our run to the quarterfinals, i noticed that the comedown after losing to germany was a lot sharper than i had expected, given our expectations-exceeding performance in korea and japan. i stayed up after the end of the match to enjoy the deserved lauding the team was to get from the morning news shows. and they got something of the sort from the good morning america. fans who had watched the game in times square were interviewed, and one guy in the middle of the shot was sporting an oversized uncle sam hat and very tear-streaked red, white, and blue face-paint. the interview ended, and the show cut back to the hosts. then one of them uttered, "aw, poor guy! his team lost." i went to bed very mad, another four years of waiting in store.
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strangely remembered youth: ode to luis oliveira

american soccer fans from the eras preceding my introduction to the game often point to divergent hooks that got them into the european league scene: pbs reruns of bundesliga fixtures, nasl, and 'soccer made in germany' episodes aired during the eighties. but earnest fans of my generation will point to the computer game 'fifa 98: road to the world cup.' a groundbreaking game (by my ten-year-old recollection), fifa 98 locked in many false impressions of professional soccer that would take years to undo in my mind. foremost amongst these misapprehensions were:

1. andy gray's commentary is delightful.
2. zinedine zidane is bald and his name is pronounced 'zih-dain.'
3. bernard lama was good.
4. competent professionals play indoor soccer.
5. oceanic world cup qualifying is entertaining.

but besides outright misperceptions, there were also perceptions shaped by novelty and novelty only. most specifically to this post was the whimsically-pixellated character of luis oliveira, the brazilian-born forward for belgium and fiorentina. a dynamo up top beside batistuta for la viola, oliveira demonstrated the best of fifa 98 attributes (pace) and a wonderful blonde mop on top of hazelnut-hued skin. think henrik larsson color contrast before he disgracefully sheered his dreads. the very idea of a blonde black dude who was from brazil, played in italy, but represented belgium just tickled me beyond what is today explainable, and thus i chose fiorentina as my favorite side in italy. the smattering of serie a games i saw before the turn of the millennium turned out to be the autumn of oliveira's career (he was shipped off before 2000 to begin a drawn-out descent into the basement of the italian professional game and i believe directly replaced by enrico chiesa), but he turned me on to fiorentina.

the deal was eventually sealed by a controversial photograph of edmundo feeding a beer to the chimp, pedrinho.


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remembrances of things past

When trawling through the disparate scraps of time which, after having coalesced, pass for my memory, I am confronted with only one constant. Be it called soccer, voetbal, or fitbaw, the sport officially named "association football" creates a framework through which I can comprehend a personal history that would otherwise be untethered to time.

From this sprung an idea of almost infinitesimal importance: What if I were to revisit the players, clubs, and matches that make up my younger self and determine what they actually meant? My teenage self, though well-intentioned, viewed the world through a decidedly unique prism - one that deemed Taribo West the best defender in the world, in fact. Now, having aged gracefully and gained at least a modicum of perspective, it's time for me to question memories that might change the way I view my past self.

Of course, it's incredibly unlikely that anything of the like will occur; instead, I predict that my self-indulgent ramblings will merely ensconce my past assessments in the comfy recesses of my mind, leaving you, the reader, to shake your head, whistle quietly to yourself, and remember things like they actually are. If that's what happens, I'm okay with that - this is stuff that deserves to be remembered, regardless of context or importance.

To ensure that this does not descend into a solipsistic mess, I have a partner named dugarry. Together, we hope our noms de plume will evoke memories of the elegant and authoritative French team that reigned during our target years, but we also remain aware that readers may pivot instead to our inspirations' individual failings (for the record, Stephane Guivarc'h and Christophe Dugarry scored 9 goals in 69 appearances for their nation, a strike rate that would insult even the likes of Chelsea era Andriy Shevchenko). Be that as it may, at the very least we will produce oodles of content for you to ponder over, dissect, debate, and/or disdain.

Have at it.
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