… and it’s nothing to do with John Harkes, although he certainly doesn’t help

The year was 1973. The place was middle America. I was ten years old and a by-and-large useful player, certainly  a lively one, on my soccer team. The only professional soccer player I had ever heard of was Pele. I was about to learn of Johan Cruyff, who would become my soccer idol – and I could get my hair to look sort of like his, unlike with Pele. The US Soccer Team, which I didn’t even know existed, was in the midst of a fifteen-game winless streak. Imagine being a ten-year-old soccer-loving boy in your native country and not knowing that you had a national side.

The city near my town was St. Louis. We had our own popular NASL team, the Stars; but I’d never seen them play, though I saw them on the news and vaguely recall hearing the names Pat McBride, Al Trost and Denny Vaninger. Peter Bonetti of Chelsea was the goalkeeper for one season. Still, the Stars were not a topic of conversation in any sector of my limited social circle.

Later when I was in high school, apropos of not much, there was a team called the Jacksonville Tea Men (Archie Gemmill actually played for them). They had moved from New England where you can understand the name ‘tea men.’ We do that in this country, move sports franchises and keep the original nickname even though it no longer worked – Los Angeles “Lakers,” Utah “Jazz.” Tennessee Oilers only makes sense if you introduced some kind of Jed Clampett “bubblin’ crude” imagery. But I digress.

Maybe some little American kid somewhere knew there was a national soccer team; maybe that little tyro had even attended an international match. The following summer I watched on ABC’s Wide World of Sports highlights (which was all we could get) of the World Cup Final between Cruyff’s Holland and West Germany, picking up some new soccer names in the process – Beckenbauer, Adi Dassler, etc. Perhaps I wondered where the USA team was. I am certain that I wondered where Pele was. Our country’s athletes seemed to do OK in the Olympics and things like that. Why weren’t we in the World Cup? Turns out the boys didn’t qualify – and had not for twenty-four years (1950) and would not for another sixteen (1990). A frankly biblical period of time in the wilderness. But did many Americans – particularly children, the fans of the future — even know about it? I suspect relatively few. I had to look it up. World Cup? What World Cup? By the time the USA made it to a World Cup Finals in 1990, I was twenty-seven and already taken.

My point – if I may be allowed to make it — is that, even though I grew up playing and loving the beautiful game, I was denied (or failed to rise up and grab) a club to support. Soccer, other than my participation in it, was unknown in my family home. None of my four older brothers played or cared. I spent the bulk of my energy, as regards professional sports, lobbying to be taken to a Cardinal baseball game or an NFL game. When I was fourteen and might possibly have begun to assert myself (like, “Dad, would you please take me, your son, to a professional soccer game in St. Louis?), the Stars up and moved to Anaheim and became the California Surf. Stars would have been fine in this case (Hollywood), but Surf was probably better; although I’ve always yearned for an LA team to be called the Sunset Strips or, even more randily, the Errol Flynns.

And I definitely did not have anything like a national team to clutch to my heart – until the late 70s when I chanced, unfortunately, upon … England.

In 1977 — about the time Elvis Costello entered my life by turning up on American TV, beginning to play “Less Than Zero,” stopping bizarrely mid-intro and launching into “Radio Radio” — my public TV channel began airing “Soccer Made in Germany,” hosted by the great Toby Charles. Mr. Charles gave us such handy commentating phrases as “that wasn’t far off target;” or “a second bite of the cherry there for Bittcher;” “Mr. Meuser of Ingelheim looks at his watch,” and my personal favorite, in reference to the thundering penalties by Dusseldorf’s Gerd Zimmerman, “he doesn’t care about direction; he just boots it.” When I heard Toby Charles’ voice, I inexplicably pictured Jackie Stewart’s face with his signature, touring cap.

Each Sunday morning for four years I watched a 90-minute match condensed into about 45-50 minutes with time left over for the goals/news of the week from the Bundesliga and world football. On Saturday in the early evening the show would be repeated. I would watch it again, thus beginning my lifelong habit of joyously viewing the same match multiple times even though the result was a foregone conclusion.

Bongartz, Bonhof, Russman, Abramczyk, Fischer, Kargas, Schumacher, Volgts, Simonsen, Schwarzenbeck, Muller, Heynkes. These were my notions of what a real footballer looked like. And one of my favorite aspects of the game was not knowing how much time had been added on by the referee. It was like a secret amount of time after the clock had stopped, like an extra present under the tree. Each mad rush down the field, each desperate volley into the penalty area surely must be the last. But no. The referee continues to watch the weary players, refraining from raising the whistle to his lips. Unbearable, tantalizing, almost sexual tension.

Back then, when very few teams fielded more than one foreign player, the style of play in each European league was distinct. Bundesliga football was clever, surgical and ruthless. English football, I was soon to learn, was madcap, honest and heroic.

Still, no news from Team USA, and, as far as attracting me as a supporter goes, they were running out of time.

In 1977, Liverpool and England’s most exciting player, Kevin Keegan, transferred abroad to Hamburg. Two years later, Tony Woodcock moved to Cologne. These two players, now part of “Soccer Made in Germany,” sparked my interest in English football, still unavailable on American TV.

Then it happened. For some reason, Soccer Made in Germany broadcast an English Division One match between Ipswich Town and Nottingham Forest. I remember like it was yesterday. The players who stood out to me were Paul Mariner and Peter Shilton. I now know that both clubs were packed with superb players, famous names, led at the time by immortal managers, Brian Clough and Bobby Robson. The supporters were mercilessly packed into the terraces, their faces five feet from the touchlines. The visuals were irresistible. I was hooked. Not long after, the program featured an international match between England and Scotland – the first time I had ever watched either team. Ray Clemence, Ray Wilkins, Kevin Keegan, Steve Coppell and Trevor Brooking 
for England. Kenny Dalglish, Graeme Souness and Joe Jordan 
for Scotland. This was full-bore, red-blooded stuff – football the way I liked playing it and the way I liked watching it. England came back from one-nil down to win 3-1 at Wembley.

In the summer of 1982, I was living in Chicago so was able to find bars showing the World Cup. I sought out England matches, which turned out to be spellbinding affairs. What finally captured my body, mind and soul was that the team went out of the tournament without having been beaten. How brave. How unlucky. I was gutted. This was my team. Part of me wishes it had never happened, but I was now an England supporter and would remain until somewhere between 2002 and 2006 when I just couldn’t take it anymore. Actually, the Beckham red card in 1998 was a watershed moment, the beginning of the end when I started thinking, “What am I doing?” But it took me several more years to finally pull the plug. These days, I still adore watching all manner of European football. And although I will watch England in a major tournament (because I watch every match in a major tournament), I no longer consider myself an England supporter. Truthfully, the matches involving the three lions are very close to unbearable in their tedium and predictability. I suspect the same applies for the players.

I am adrift, unmoored. In the last World Cup, when England played the USA in the group stage, I merely sat back and enjoyed myself, caring not at all who won the match. I feel no particular joy when the USA wins nor despair if they lose. I just don’t have it in my blood. Worst of all, I no longer even despise Argentina and Germany. In fact, I actually like them.

I look on at video of my compatriots in bars all over the country going crazy, like their counterparts throughout the world, as the seconds tick away in a tight, frenzied USA match. What I see are people younger than myself, people who were still young and impressionable (as opposed to jaded and twisted), perhaps even children, perhaps yet unborn, in 1990 when the national team appeared in a World Cup Finals for the first time in a generation. I see fans who came of age in 1994 when we hosted the Finals ourselves. Remember? It was 100 degrees in Dallas and Orlando and Andy Townsend’s hair turned blond; Jack Charlton wore a big white baseball hat.

So perhaps I was born too soon to support the USA. Too much happened to me during those lost years of the 70s, 80s and 90s – The Hand of God, Gazza’s Tears, pathetically listening to England matches on a short wave radio.

I don’t think any of those young fans chanting “USA USA” know who Toby Charles is and what he meant to my generation of soccer enthusiasts. I ponder this as I sit at home in front of the TV, with my family and my dogs nearby, the stadium loudspeakers belting out “God Save the Queen,” and I mutter, “Come on, Eng-er-land!”