A European Soccer Primer

Being an American fan of European soccer — and one whose only firsthand experience with Europe is completely colored by Amsterdam's finest cannabis — is sort of like being an anthropologist. "You do things that way? Verrrry interesting." I'm sure it's no different for Europeans trying in earnest to get into American football. It's impossible not to compare and contrast the Modus Operandi of the way American Sports are run to the European way.

But I try to do so fairly. After alI, I have all of the historical context of American sports built into me. I "get" the idiosyncrasies, even if I can't satisfyingly explain them to an outsider. I love soccer, but I can't pretend to understand on the intrinsic level that I understand our sports. The only way to compensate is to try to understand it as much as I can on an academic level, which I'm trying to do, and to love it on the basic sports fan level, which I certainly do. I'm sure an astute European would chuckle at some of my footy observations, but this will do as a primer for my unlearned statesiders.

I. COMMERCIALISM AND THE UNIFORM

Of course, in America, there is no such thing as commercialization of the uniform; if you are out of little league, your uniform is a total tribute to nothing but the team you play for, save for a tiny patch for the uniform maker. We may lead the world in superimposing computer-generated billboards on the field of play when there's a break in the action, but the uniform is clean. Pure, man. Not like the Europeans, where the sponsor logo is front and center on the soccer jersey and the most dominating, eye-catching part of it.

It's easy to take a smug attitude about this until you realize that the the trade-off is — no television ads in soccer except for half-time. I'm not sure how the powers that be package NFL football to Europeans, but if a European were to come here, watch a game, see a touchdown, watch a round of commercials, watch the ensuing kickoff, and then another round of commercials, he'd say, "this is bullshit." And he'd be right. Except he'd probably say "bollocks" instead. Then, you get to explain to him the concept of "TV timeouts" and tell them they are designated breaks for the express purpose of getting some more commercials in and not dictated by any need to stop the game otherwise.

II. ON HOOLIGANISM

Here's another opportunity for Americans to feel smug, because the large-scale violence associated with soccer in Europe is unfathomable here. Certainly, the specter of hooligan-fueled violence is exaggerated and a lot of the individual anecdotes are apocryphal. That said, I feel comfortable stating that something along the lines of the Heysel Stadium disaster in 1985 (where supporters of an English squad stormed the seating section of their Italian opponents, leading a violent chain of events resulting in the death of 39 people; English professional teams except the national team were banned from international competition for five years as a result) couldn't happen here.

The paradox of the matter is that Europe, by all accounts, is much, much less violent than we are. I suppose one dramatic but oversimplified way to look at is, in a violent America, sports is the respite. In peaceful Europe, sports is the excuse to let your animal out.

III. PARITY? WHAT'S THAT?

I'm struck again by the way that, instead of mirroring their own society, European and American sporting power brokers instead emulate the political model of the other side of the pond.

In the free-for-all "workfare" culture of U.S. capitalism, the commissioners of every major sports try to dream up ways to make their league more competitive. As a result, we have concepts like revenue sharing, salary caps, salary floors, and so on. As a result, the NFL playoffs year-in and year-out feature a majority of teams that didn't make the playoffs the year previous. The advantage of this system, I think, is it tells us which teams are truly run the best. If every team is spending in the same range, then the ones that succeed year after year can truly say the outsmarted and out-coached the others (I'm thinking of the New England Patriots with this in mind).

It's very different in the more social-justice oriented Europe. I'm sure I'm missing something, but I never see any of the pro-competitiveness concepts we hear bandied about when reading about soccer. When a player asserts himself on a have-not squad, you don't just fear, as in the U.S., he is headed to a more financially robust franchise — it's more of an inevitability.

The same is true for teams. As best as the history books seem to foretell, Arsenal, Manchester United, and Liverpool will always reside near the top of the standings, with a fourth interloper (currently Chelsea) temporarily joining them. In the last 25 years, there have been only three champions of the Dutch Eredivisie, and 22 of those titles are split between two teams.

As I said, it's difficult to become knowledgeable about a sport unless you love it as a spectator, and it's hard to love a sport as a spectator unless you find a team to love. Several years ago, I chose my English Premier League team to follow entirely arbitrarily (Portsmouth), but now I live and die with them. They are doing surprisingly well this season, but are definitely a have-not franchise as a whole. I'm now reading whispers that the Portsmouth manager, Harry Redknapp, could be a candidate for a coaching vacancy for a financially healthier club in London. Bollocks.