By David Magee
Commentary
So this is what we have come to?
It was bad enough that the United States has not been able to properly dispatch pesky Iraq in the wages of war. Now, we have seen our troubles magnified by tiny little Ghana, which promptly eliminated the stars and stripes and everything they represent from the World Cup of soccer being held in Germany.
A long-time soccer powerhouse like Brazil or Argentina beating the United States, I could understand, but Ghana? The American team was ranked higher and considered before the World Cup began to be much stronger than Ghana, but to no avail. Score another loss for this country that should not have been.
I have heard multiple pundits on television and read the suspicions of several scribes as to why this big, proud and strong country is not the dominant powerhouse some of us would like it to be. Some have made sense, others have not. But when I went looking for answers in the days after the U.S. loss, I turned to the only soccer team I really know much about at all, the local East Ridge Express 92 boys squad.
Comprised of young men aged 14 and under from the Chattanooga metropolitan area, the team plays Division 1 Select soccer and in the Premier League ? the highest levels of competition in all of youth soccer. Consistently ranked among the top 50 teams in America by several services that keep track of such things, the team is good.
Just two weeks ago, the team claimed the Tennessee Division 1 state championship in Memphis and leaves Thursday for Little Rock, Ark., to compete against top teams from Texas, Florida, Alabama and the like for a chance to win the Region III and play for a national championship.
I follow this soccer team closely because child number two, a son, plays for it. A reserve forward, he is good in the large scheme of things locally, but is far from the best on this unit. That distinction goes to any number of young men named Jesus, Chino, and some others I?m not exactly sure how to spell.
Made up of a mix of Hispanics and Caucasians living from Ooltewah to Lookout Mountain to North Georgia to East Brainerd, the team is representative not of the typical American youth select soccer team in its high-brow state, with rosters filled by hordes of children of upper- and upper-middle-class parents, but of the typical American landscape.
And that is why I love the team so, since, for some reason soccer in the United States, which has grown exponentially in popularity in recent years, has for the most part been on a movement of assumption that more money and higher stakes make it all better, no matter what that does for talent development. So out of place does our melting pot team look at tournaments that the term ?misfits? has been overheard on more than one occasion.
At times, our team seemingly is out of place. Take the events of just last week when, while trying to secure hotel rooms for the regional tournament, officials tried to house the Express 92 boys at Little Rock?s luxury Peabody hotel. Naturally, the team balked, preferring something more in line with a Howard Johnson?s.
It is not that the team and its parents cannot afford the Peabody ? it can, of course. The point is that the East Ridge Express 92 boys do not belong at the Peabody. The teammates just want to play soccer, period. Passion for the game is one commonality that brings the mixed-background squad together. They are only seemingly out of place until they get on the field together.
Most of these boys play soccer at every opportunity sun up to sun down, enjoying a relationship with the ball and envisioning how to overtake a defender with fluid fantasy. Several are known to be spotted on fields late in the evening, solitarily working on skills day after day. One child I know intimately will not sit idle at home for more than a few minutes before putting on cleats, grabbing a ball, taking to the yard and firing ball after ball into a backyard goal.
The bad news, however, is that from Connecticut to California to right here in Tennessee, the stakes of youth soccer are being raised every day structurally speaking, turning the sport into an stiff, parental-based ideal run more by money and hierarchical positioning than anything else. In Ghana, that is not how it happens. Most players on that World Cup team began playing the game on sandlots just because they loved it.
I just read a similar story about Brazil, a perennial world soccer power. There, young boys play the game much like children of this country learned to play basketball on playgrounds and in the streets. Uninhibited by such strict, inhibiting structures, their games develop with freelance creativity, imagination, and, most importantly, passion.
That is not how former Brazillian star Pele learned the game, nor is it how American basketball stars like Larry Bird or Michael Jordan learned their game. I am hopeful, though, since this country has more than enough firepower in athletic talent in every corner to one day consistently defeat the likes of Ghana and Brazil in soccer, or anything else for that matter.
But until the American movement takes note and realizes that great sports achievement in this country comes from passion and not pocketbooks, it might be a while.
E-mail David Magee at dmagee@david-magee.com
Commentary
So this is what we have come to?
It was bad enough that the United States has not been able to properly dispatch pesky Iraq in the wages of war. Now, we have seen our troubles magnified by tiny little Ghana, which promptly eliminated the stars and stripes and everything they represent from the World Cup of soccer being held in Germany.
A long-time soccer powerhouse like Brazil or Argentina beating the United States, I could understand, but Ghana? The American team was ranked higher and considered before the World Cup began to be much stronger than Ghana, but to no avail. Score another loss for this country that should not have been.
I have heard multiple pundits on television and read the suspicions of several scribes as to why this big, proud and strong country is not the dominant powerhouse some of us would like it to be. Some have made sense, others have not. But when I went looking for answers in the days after the U.S. loss, I turned to the only soccer team I really know much about at all, the local East Ridge Express 92 boys squad.
Comprised of young men aged 14 and under from the Chattanooga metropolitan area, the team plays Division 1 Select soccer and in the Premier League ? the highest levels of competition in all of youth soccer. Consistently ranked among the top 50 teams in America by several services that keep track of such things, the team is good.
Just two weeks ago, the team claimed the Tennessee Division 1 state championship in Memphis and leaves Thursday for Little Rock, Ark., to compete against top teams from Texas, Florida, Alabama and the like for a chance to win the Region III and play for a national championship.
I follow this soccer team closely because child number two, a son, plays for it. A reserve forward, he is good in the large scheme of things locally, but is far from the best on this unit. That distinction goes to any number of young men named Jesus, Chino, and some others I?m not exactly sure how to spell.
Made up of a mix of Hispanics and Caucasians living from Ooltewah to Lookout Mountain to North Georgia to East Brainerd, the team is representative not of the typical American youth select soccer team in its high-brow state, with rosters filled by hordes of children of upper- and upper-middle-class parents, but of the typical American landscape.
And that is why I love the team so, since, for some reason soccer in the United States, which has grown exponentially in popularity in recent years, has for the most part been on a movement of assumption that more money and higher stakes make it all better, no matter what that does for talent development. So out of place does our melting pot team look at tournaments that the term ?misfits? has been overheard on more than one occasion.
At times, our team seemingly is out of place. Take the events of just last week when, while trying to secure hotel rooms for the regional tournament, officials tried to house the Express 92 boys at Little Rock?s luxury Peabody hotel. Naturally, the team balked, preferring something more in line with a Howard Johnson?s.
It is not that the team and its parents cannot afford the Peabody ? it can, of course. The point is that the East Ridge Express 92 boys do not belong at the Peabody. The teammates just want to play soccer, period. Passion for the game is one commonality that brings the mixed-background squad together. They are only seemingly out of place until they get on the field together.
Most of these boys play soccer at every opportunity sun up to sun down, enjoying a relationship with the ball and envisioning how to overtake a defender with fluid fantasy. Several are known to be spotted on fields late in the evening, solitarily working on skills day after day. One child I know intimately will not sit idle at home for more than a few minutes before putting on cleats, grabbing a ball, taking to the yard and firing ball after ball into a backyard goal.
The bad news, however, is that from Connecticut to California to right here in Tennessee, the stakes of youth soccer are being raised every day structurally speaking, turning the sport into an stiff, parental-based ideal run more by money and hierarchical positioning than anything else. In Ghana, that is not how it happens. Most players on that World Cup team began playing the game on sandlots just because they loved it.
I just read a similar story about Brazil, a perennial world soccer power. There, young boys play the game much like children of this country learned to play basketball on playgrounds and in the streets. Uninhibited by such strict, inhibiting structures, their games develop with freelance creativity, imagination, and, most importantly, passion.
That is not how former Brazillian star Pele learned the game, nor is it how American basketball stars like Larry Bird or Michael Jordan learned their game. I am hopeful, though, since this country has more than enough firepower in athletic talent in every corner to one day consistently defeat the likes of Ghana and Brazil in soccer, or anything else for that matter.
But until the American movement takes note and realizes that great sports achievement in this country comes from passion and not pocketbooks, it might be a while.
E-mail David Magee at dmagee@david-magee.com
