Watching Soccer

These days I call it football, even to the Americans I know here, because soccer seems to be a bit of a misnomer for the sport. I do not reject 'soccer' as a term to describe the sport I grew up with, but I cannot disregard the lingo used by the rest of the sporting world for my own momentary linguistic displacement. I tend to refer to 'the match' when making plans with someone to watch the game, and I have caught myself talking about 'the pitch' instead of the field. Sometimes, depending with whom I am talking, I will throw in the word 'soccer' to emphasize the gap between American exceptionalism and yet another international agreement which the Americans have chosen to ignore (or been left out of). What I find interesting is how the word football--as used in America as a reference to soccer--will never take on a life of its own because we created our own game for the word, which, oddly enough, does not use the feet much at all during play.

I am still shy and hesitate when I talk about football, referring to soccer, because the immediate mental associations which surface when I utter the word dissolve my ability to compute the internationally recognized difference between the two. Images of black and white striped referees, the oblong pig-skin ball and yellow flags in American football evoke real heart-shaped feelings of pride in the minds of Americans. And the long string of socio-anthro-political associations of its history could compete only with apple pie and cowboys in a campaign for symbols of the Nation. As an American, I have these associations embedded in me like veins of granite through rock, and I swear it gets in my way everytime I say the word football in lieu of soccer. I often have to explain to Americans and non-Americans about my past with football, my history on the field as a player from when I was "this tall" (my hand 3 feet from the ground) to my love of the sport today now that I am "this tall" (my hand at my head). Something does not sound right if I repeat the word football in my declaration, even if I'm drinking a beer in a sports bar watching the game with English-speaking American nationals.

Does this described the last stage of ex-patriot aculturation--the internal struggle to accept not only the language of my host nation but that of internationally recognized terms for non-American sports? Could it be a final lesson on the importance of globalism and communication in non-political terms? Well, no, that would be absurd. And since the U.S. team made their exit from the World Cup in the first round, a semi-expected loss after performances that showed our effort but not our strength, it may be that we just ain't got much to say on the subject.

[ps--T minus 6 days and counting! See you turkeys soon!]