Marble Falls Sports is a funny thing in the way it both establishes fervent home team divisions and brings people together at the same time. The juxtaposition is easy to see right now as the NBA’s Knicks have brought the highly disparate population of New York City together, and the intense global phenomena of the World Cup uniting soccer fans everywhere.
The World Cup is being played in North America for the first time. Certainly, the justly maligned FIFA, so frequently involved in scandal and corruption, is hoping that having games played in the US finally fires up sports fans to join the soccer madness that sweeps through so many countries. Without a doubt, in my lifetime, soccer has grown from nothing to some level of adoption, even as it trails other sports like football, basketball, and baseball by miles. Going to high school in Louisiana, I had never seen soccer played until I went to college in Massachusetts, but now my old high school has both a boys and girls’ team.
The irony of the US, Mexico, and Canada both coming together as hosts of the World Cup is pretty rich as well. The Canadian premier and the Mexican president are buttressing their poll numbers by standing up to Trump and his intemperate remarks about their countries which is hardly the kind of love feast required of partners is such an enterprise. Trump might go to a Knicks game to a round of booing Bronx cheers or have a cage match for his birthday on the grounds of the White House, but there are no reports, at least not yet, of him going to a soccer match. FIFA might have given him a peace prize to stoke his ego, but neither Trump nor FIFA would surely inflict the president to the loud disapproval of an international crowd at the World Cup final. Fans aren’t likely to be paying $10,000 per seat to see him doze through the games.
The other paradox is that given the Trump administration’s war on immigrants; there is nothing like a World Cup match to serve as a showcase for immigrants. ICE had to agree to stand down from raiding the games, even as the games see immigrants and foreign-born Americans is full regalia everywhere. Each game is a reminder of America as the melting pot, rather than American the world hater.
This all came home to me on a personal level. As a hoot, our son thought it would be great to go to a World Cup match somewhere. He debated Monterrey with a buddy and some other cities, but having a cousin in San Jose, where he could stay, and relatively cheap tickets on offer made a quick trip to see a match in Santa Clara the most feasible. Of the 48 countries with teams in the World Cup, I doubt that anyone sees either Austria, which hasn’t qualified as a participant in decades, or Jordan, which is also not touted as a big winner, as particularly enticing draws. Austria vs Jordan was in fact the reason he could afford the tickets, even if it was in the nose bleed seats in the last row of the stadium.
When he sent pictures home, I was shocked to see the stadium jam packed and a sea of red, the color of both country’s teams. I’m not saying that they sold out all 68,500 seats, but it was bumping. Austria’s policies recently have not exactly been pro-immigrant either, but they were all check to jowl with Jordanian fans speaking Arabic and rocking the stadium. I looked up the score, and Austria won 3-1, so they move on, but I’m not sure that matters a whole bunch outside of those two countries, but everyone of these games makes a point that is worth noting in the Trump America of today.
The simplest point is that sports is more than an opiate of the masses and can bind people together without guns and blood at its best. The more valuable point right now is a reminder that of the more than 300 million people in the US almost all are from somewhere else at some time in the past, no matter what they claim today. Even at 250 years, we are one of many countries in the world and an amalgam of the many, not separate and apart from the whole.
G-O-A-L!