U.S. soccer carves out a niche

[AreliusII]

Posted on Tue, Apr. 05, 2005



Still under nation's sporting radar, U.S. soccer carves out a niche

By JOHN SMALLWOOD
Philadelphia Daily News

PHILADELPHIA - OK, so soccer never lived up to the overly ambitious proclamation that it would become America's professional sport of the 1970s, 1980s or '90s.

And despite the firm belief of some soccer backers, it will not become America's professional sport of the new millennium, either.

Quietly, floating beneath the radar of the hoopla surrounding the Final Four and the start of the baseball season, Major League Soccer kicked off its 10th season on Saturday.

No, soccer never will be the object of fascination in the United States it is in the rest of the world. It never will be called a religious experience or inspire murder and destructive mayhem in its followers, which is a good thing.

But after a decade of MLS, the sport has proved it can carve out a nice, little niche for itself in the American sports market - something not too many people would have bet on when it first was launched in 1996.

Certainly, there are still things to overcome. Attendance and low television ratings are always of concern. Player salaries are nowhere near those of their counterparts in baseball, basketball, football and hockey.

There is still a disturbing amount of disdain and disrespect for the game from the mainstream media.

Yet, 12 years after the success of the 1994 World Cup spawned its birth, MLS is stronger than it has ever been, with the promise of an even brighter future.

With the addition of expansion teams Chivas USA, a Los Angeles-based club affiliated with Mexico's famous Club Deportivo Guadalajara, and Real Salt Lake (Utah), Major League Soccer is back up to 12 teams for the first time since the Miami Fusion and Tampa Bay Mutiny folded after 2001. Further expansion is likely over the next few seasons.

State-of-the-art, soccer-exclusive stadiums exist in Los Angeles and Columbus, Ohio, with plans for new ones for the Chicago, Colorado, Dallas and New York/New Jersey franchises in the works.

The league is sturdy and well past the days when people believed it could fold at the drop of a dime, like the old North American Soccer League.

"We are more relevant today than ever before," commissioner Don Garber said recently.

The impact of MLS has been best demonstrated in the fulfillment of one of its primary goals when it was created. After landing the 1994 World Cup, the U.S. Soccer Federation said it wanted to turn the United States into a world power that could compete with the likes of Brazil, Germany and the Netherlands. The crucial part of accomplishing that was creating a professional league in which young American stars could develop and grow into world-class players.

In that area, at least, the legacy of the MLS cannot be questioned. With a professional league to send its players to, the USSF did what the top European and South American nations do - it identified its top young talent and began nurturing it.

With players like 15-year-old D.C. United phenom Freddy Adu signing contracts, the MLS has replaced college as the destination for most of America's best young players.

The dividends gained from these young stars consistently playing against higher levels of competition were almost immediate. After a dismal showing in the 1998 France World Cup, where it finished without a victory, the United States revamped the national team roster, incorporating many of the youngsters who were cutting their teeth in the MLS.

At the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia, a U.S. team comprised almost exclusively of MLS players finished fourth.

At the 2002 Japan/Korea World Cup, the United States stunned the world by first defeating title-favorite Portugal in pool play and then advancing to the "Elite Eight" before losing, 1-0, to eventual finalist Germany. More than half of the players who started that game were from MLS.

In the last couple of years, several of the Americans' top young talent - like DaMarcus Beasley, Bobby Convey and Landon Donovan - have been transferred to European teams.

The point, however, is that as the United States continues qualifying for next year's World Cup in Germany, it draws from a talent pool that is strongly connected to Major League Soccer.

"We are the league for a new America," Garber said. "We are America's fastest-growing sport. We are the sport of America's fast-growing demographic population.

"We are the world's most popular sport, and we are sure we will make it the most popular sport in the United States."

Let's not get carried away, because that's not going to happen. But professional soccer in the United States has created a nice niche for itself - one that is not going to go away.

[Rover]

Originally Posted by AreliusII

"And despite the firm belief of some soccer backers, it will not become America's professional sport of the new millennium, either. . ."

"No, soccer never will be the object of fascination in the United States it is in the rest of the world. . ."

"(Garber) 'We are the world's most popular sport, and we are sure we will make it the most popular sport in the United States.'

Let's not get carried away, because that's not going to happen. But professional soccer in the United States has created a nice niche for itself - one that is not going to go away."

Awfully sure of themselves, aren't they?

So the people who said MLS wouldn't make it into the new millenium now say it will stay in its little niche.

Wishful thinking on their part.

The three biggest sports in the USA in 1940 were baseball, horse racing, and boxing. One is still in the top four, the other two are fringe at best.

Until the 1960's, pro football was a curiosity, popular only in the Midwest and Northeast. Basketball was even more obscure at the pro level, and remained so until Bird and Magic. Hockey didn't take off until the 1990's outside of Canada and the American teams in the Original Six--and it's headed back to nichedom with its present course.

The moral if the story is this: nothing stays the same. Tastes change, and you never know what's around the corner in sports and popular culture (in the widest use of the term).

Will soccer become a top draw sport in the USA? I don't know. What I do know is that no one with an understanding of sports history would summarily dismiss the possibility that soccer could get very big, as the writer of this article has done.

My advice to sportswriters and editors across the country is to get over the soccer cluelessness they're so proud of, hit the books and stadiums, learn the game, and get ready to write about it. Otherwise, someone smarter and more knowledgeable about soccer will take their job.

[AreliusII]

Originally Posted by Rover

The moral if the story is this: nothing stays the same. Tastes change, and you never know what's around the corner in sports and popular culture (in the widest use of the term).

I would add that the evolution of sport (and anything else, for that matter) is not so much a matter of taste as it is a matter of marketing. Pro American football started getting big with the superbowl. And that required marketing. If horse racing and boxing haven't enjoyed the same leap of popularity then it is due to a lack of effective marketing.

If soccer in the U.S. can be as saavy about its marketing as other sports have been, then we have a chance of taking the place of one of the pimary sports of interest. But, that will require a high level of marketing saavy -- something big enough to capture the mind and hearts of a lot of people (like the superbowl) in a creative way.

[Merrill]

Originally Posted by AreliusII

State-of-the-art, soccer-exclusive stadiums exist in Los Angeles and Columbus, Ohio, with plans for new ones for the Chicago, Colorado, Dallas and New York/New Jersey franchises in the works.

Not Soccer-exclusive Numbnuts (Not you AureliusII, the article writer), it's Soccer-specific. They have as many other events as they can possibly cram into their schedule at these stadiums to maximize their profits.

[clarette]

Um, last time I checked, Philly wasn't living in 1952 anymore. At least it wasn't on the last Real World...

It's kind of funny how so many sportswriters feel so threatened by soccer. Of course, they may not be laughing when a bunch of WWC'99-inspired girls start taking their jobs because they can actually tell a goal kick from a field goal, but whatever gets them by in the meantime, I guess!

[Rover]

Originally Posted by AreliusII

I would add that the evolution of sport (and anything else, for that matter) is not so much a matter of taste as it is a matter of marketing. Pro American football started getting big with the superbowl. And that required marketing. If horse racing and boxing haven't enjoyed the same leap of popularity then it is due to a lack of effective marketing.

If soccer in the U.S. can be as saavy about its marketing as other sports have been, then we have a chance of taking the place of one of the pimary sports of interest. But, that will require a high level of marketing saavy -- something big enough to capture the mind and hearts of a lot of people (like the superbowl) in a creative way.

I'll disagree somewhat. Television was the biggest single factor in making pro football what it is today. The game is perfect for TV, with time for replays and lots of stoppage of play for commercials. That, and the iconic status of Vince Lombardi pushed the sport over the top. The marketing followed.

The NBA is more in line with what you're saying. The marketing of Magic and Bird, and then Jordan set the standard still followed today.

Boxing was killed by the basic stupidity of the sport and the greed of promoters. Horse Racing just can't make the transition to TV, and is the least accessible sport for most people. The Breeder's Cup was a good attempt, but they just can't turn the tide.

NASCAR is mostly marketing and personalities, like the NBA.

Soccer can match or beat all these sports if porperly marketed. We can't match football's hold on TV, but everything else is in our favor. I think the future is very bright, and the present isn't so bad either.

[AreliusII]

America's Lastime
World’s most popular sport can’t find popularity in the United States

By John Mchugh

Instead of hearing the crack of the bat at Pac Bell Park or the roar of a touchdown at Bulldog Stadium, the rest of the world dances to a different tune, that of the ‘beautiful game’ and the ball hitting the back of the net.

The ‘beautiful game,’ as soccer is known, continues to dominate the world sports market, though studies and statistics suggest U.S. sporting history, media and advertising has stunted the growth of soccer in the United States. So what does the future hold for soccer in the United States?

On behalf of sporting goods manufacturers in the United States, a research company called Superstudy, conducted its recent annual study of sports participation in the United States in 2001. It showed that more than19-million Americans played soccer at least once that year and 15 million of the participants were under 18.

The study indicates participation in soccer in the United States has increased in the last decade with an increase of seven percent over the previous year and a substantial 24 percent increase from the 1987 benchmark measurement of 15.4 million.

In comparison to the study, soccer as a spectator sport at a professional level remains underdeveloped. This is particularly in comparison with Europe and South America, where the English Barclaycard Premiership matches had an average attendance of 35,464 in 2002-03 and the latest $1.6-billion television deal reflects the British soccer audience.

A theoretical explanation some historians offer for the relative failure in soccer’s growth is due to the theory that each society has a limited amount of ‘space for sport’. In the United States, this space has already been filled by football, baseball and basketball, which crowds out soccer as a spectator sport.

Dr. Dave Russell is a lecturer in history and the head of the department of soccer and society at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston, England. He understands the vital role the historical background and cultural traditions of the United States have had in preventing the growth of soccer within its bounds.

Russell talks about how a primitive mix of sports allowed the creation of soccer and rugby.

“ It’s this division that has led to sports such as American football developing in the U.S. and not leaving room for soccer to flourish as in the rest of the world,” Russell said.

The Fresno State men’s soccer team was cut from Fresno State’s athletic program last spring along with the swim and diving team before being reinstated before being reinstated on a temporary basis.

“ We’re never giving up,” Fresno State soccer coach Chesler said. “We’re a long distance from our target, it’s a constant emotional thing.”

The Bulldogs face an uphill task of raising $2.7 million to continue the men’s soccer program, but are determined to battle the odds to survive.

“ We’re definitely on our own but we’re so determined. Sometimes the only positive way to look at it is it’s been an incredible learning experience,” Chesler said.

The prospect of women’s soccer in the United States was the major positive sign for the future of soccer in the United States. Unfortunately the first professional women’s soccer league, the Women’s United Soccer Association, suspended its operations after three seasons, failing to attract enough sponsors to cover a $17.5 million shortfall.

The last Women’s World Cup in 1999, won by the United States, triggered the formation of the WUSA. And just five days before the 2003 Women’s World Cup kicked off, poor attendances forced the league to fold.

The United States’ emphasis on advertising and marketing within sporting events such as football and baseball, greatly conflicts with the structure of a soccer game. Although football is played over two halves of 30 minutes, the actual length of a game is usually over three hours. Unlike soccer which is played over two continues halves of 45 minutes, not really suitable for advertising.

The layout of the game does not allow frequent advertising opportunities that are available in football. The 2002 Super Bowl contained a total of 85 product commercials, 35 advertising promos and 33 sponsorship messages broadcast during the game.

A total of 127.5-million people watched at least one minute of the 2002 Super Bowl and in the KN/SRI “How People Use Television” research, the reason for such heavy advertising became clear.

As according to the KN/SRI poll, “45 percent of Super Bowl 2002 viewers said that they were as interested or more interested in the advertisements during the game as in the game itself.”

To emphasize the value of advertising according to the Nielsen Media Research and Advertising Age Research, the average price for a 30-second commercial in the 2002 Super Bowl was $1.9 million, and Anheuser-Busch purchased five minutes of advertisement slots totaling 19 million. That’s in contrast with World Cup 2002, which was said by several television executives to be a “very difficult sell this year,” and something that may have trouble attracting advertising dollars in the United States.

Even so, ESPN attracted the biggest ever soccer audience of 3.8 million for the U.S. 2002 World Cup quarterfinal loss to Germany, despite the 4:30 a.m. PDT kickoff. The media are beginning to become an important factor in the future of soccer in the U.S., and many coaches, including Chesler, think the media need to support and boost the popularity of soccer.

“ The media need to appreciate the important role they play in the future of soccer in the United States,” Chesler said. “The country doesn’t have a background in soccer, so they don’t get behind the national team and the sport; this is something the media can help to change.”

Americans often criticize soccer for being “too slow” and “boring,” Fresno State junior Matt Holt said. “Soccer is never going to become big in the U.S., because we already have established national past times such as football and baseball. Maybe the U.S. national team winning the World Cup would make people interested in soccer.”

[Scilaci]

Originally Posted by Rover

The moral if the story is this: nothing stays the same. Tastes change, and you never know what's around the corner in sports and popular culture

My advice to sportswriters and editors across the country is to get over the soccer cluelessness they're so proud of, hit the books and stadiums, learn the game, and get ready to write about it. Otherwise, someone smarter and more knowledgeable about soccer will take their job.

hear hear. I totally disagree with the author of the article because I think Soccer has an excellent chance of becoming mainstream... oh wait... soccer is the mainstream sport of the world and the US is the odd one out. Perhaps US sports writers can get out of their cave and realize that the US is actually catching up in soccer, not getting started.

[AreliusII]

Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/069107447X/qid=1112812901/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-3213794-1175002?v=glance&s=books

Review:

http://www.habitsofwaste.wwu.edu/issues/2/iss2art4c.shtml

I suspect I'm not alone in thinking that being a soccer fan in the United States is similar to following the indie music scene. Other times, I suspect it's closer to being a passionate devotee of innovative poetry in the Russian Formalist tradition. Based on the subtitle of Markovits and Hellerman's study, it's similar to being a socialist. In any case, following the world's most popular sport while living in the U. S. marks one as an outsider if not an alien. This in spite of the fact that the most passionate fans of soccer that I know vote in U.S. elections, listen to a wide range of music, read books, are fluent in the English language (and often one or two others), and watch traditional American sports as well. And some of course are mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging troglodytes whose very existence suggests an evolutionary diversion that best not be followed if the species is to survive. In other words, soccer fans are a reasonable cross section of the country. Yet the sport they prefer to watch is virtually invisible to the average American.
How did this state of affairs come about? How is it that soccer (have I mentioned that it's the most popular sport in the world?) barely registers on the U.S. radar? How come when it does register, the game is often met with sarcasm, mockery, denunciations, or bemused indifference? If you are an American, think about what you see on the news when soccer is mentioned: do you picture graceful, fluid play conducted at top speed by amazing athletes, or do you picture fans throwing things at each other and squaring off with riot police? Most likely, the latter. Yet most of the world would instantly understand why a legendary coach in England referred to soccer as "the working man's ballet."
Offside attempts to answer these questions, and overall, it does a fair job. Though the book is scholarly in its approach (as befits a tome published by Princeton University Press) and while its prose takes on a leaden pace at times, it's worth reading for anyone who occasionally muses about the contours of American popular culture and the way sports figures into those contours. Of course, the idea that sport is crucial to understanding culture is not an original line of thought. Historian Jacques Barzun said over half a century ago that whoever wants to understand America should know baseball (that proverb should be updated now to read "he who wants to know the American character should learn stock car racing and pro rasslin'").
Still, I would suggest a variation on this approach: whoever wants to understand America might want to know what American sports fans despise. Soccer would be one of those things, and the authors are right to make it the focus of their study, since other sports the Average American Sports Fan might despise are not even on that fan's radar (rugby, cricket, and until the recent Winter Olympics, curling). The two scholars authoring this study have, as I said, gone a long way toward making clear how this state of affairs has come about. One of the authors--Markovits--identifies himself as a fan, while the other remains indifferent to the sport. But whether you're a fan or not, there's much to be said for this book.
Alas, there's one thing that's not to be said for Offside: reading it, you'll never know why someone might become a fan of the sport in the first place. Whether here in the U.S. or anywhere on the planet, the book doesn't convey just how someone might come to love soccer, and that to me is a weakness. I'm reviewing this book as a fan, and this shortcoming jumps out at me. Granted, part of the problem may stem from this book being written by academics for an academic audience. By reason of convention, the prose style has the effect of placing distance between the readers, the researchers, and the subject. That works fine when someone's writing a philological tract on the runic origin of the letter "K" or when a church historian tries to narrate the events surrounding Pope Clement XI's condemnation of certain Jesuit practices in 1715, but if you're approaching any sort of popular culture, the drawbacks become clear. When writing about the popular, the most essential elements are distorted when passion (no matter how stupid) is neglected. Something inevitably gets lost in the translation when authors write in a detached way about things that people are strongly attached to.
That tendency makes the early chapters of Offside a chore to people who have little patience for academic protocol. These readers might be put off by lines in the preface like "Thus, my study on soccer's absence in American culture complemented the existing scholarship on other American exceptions, notably--of course--the Sombartian thesis of socialism's manifest absence in the United States." If you're a sports fan and accustomed to "prose" of the sort that's designed solely to accompany pictures of glaring jocks in ESPN The Magazine, you might be stretched by the range of associations required to comprehend that sentence and others like it. But there is some payoff after the early chapters where the authors lay out their argument. Here is the key observation that sets the stage for their study: "Nearly all modern industrialized countries feature soccer as the unquestioned hegemon in their respective sports spaces. Many also have a second and sometimes even a third sport--though often not of a team variety--that clearly qualifies as a culture . . . . Yet none have three major national team sports (baseball, football, basketball) plus another important one in key regions (hockey) that have shaped a country's sports culture for at least a century, as in the United States."
Well, leaving aside the fact that Australia would fit the bill as well as the U.S. (Aussie Rules Football, Rugby Union, and Cricket, with Rugby League being immensely popular in parts of the country, are all much more popular than soccer there), it's hard to argue with the premise. Before turning to the conclusion, it's worth noting the authors definition of "a culture" (which I elided above): "more than a mere activity in that people follow it passionately, are interested in it on the professional level, talk about it at their place of work or while socializing, and bestow stardom on its successful practitioners in the usual manner of adoration while rewarding (or punishing) them with immense publicity and constant attention." This is a good definition in that it applies to sports, movies, music . . . just about anything that we consider "popular culture."
How is it that soccer operates on the margins of this process, while the sports the authors call "the big three-and-a-half" are clearly at the center here in the U.S.? Essentially, soccer's problem is that U.S. culture, exported all over the world, remains isolationist and insular. Thus, soccer's association with things British helped it get crowded out of the sports landscape from the 19th century on, first by baseball, and then by American football, basketball, and (migrating down from the north) hockey. Because it was perceived as "foreign" during various periods of intense nativism and nationalism, soccer suffered from the stigma of being an "immigrant's game" much as socialism was perceived as an immigrant, foreign ideology.
The back cover of Offside advertises it as an entry in the series "Princeton Studies in Cultural Sociology" and it is labeled under 3 genres: "Sports | Sociology | American History." As a sports book, as I've mentioned, it lacks the passion that accompanies sports. As sociology, this book is... well, sociology, a genre of writing which, outside clinical settings, can easily lead to mistaken diagnoses of narcolepsy. As History, though, this book rocks, narrating a compelling series of events (and tying them together intelligently) in a way that fans and non-fans might find enlightening.

For instance: I'm a fan of Major League Soccer, the top league in the United States. I also watch games from the lower leagues (in descending order the A-League, Division 3, and the Premier Development League). When I was a kid, I was a fan of the Chicago Sting in the North American Soccer League (RIP, 1967-1985). Had I been alive in the 1920s, I suspect I would've been a fan of the American Soccer League (which in its day drew better crowds than the equally-fledgling National Football League). But you get the drift: The United States is a graveyard for soccer leagues, each of which seems to shoot itself in the foot with alarming frequency. And while I still have hopes for the survival of MLS and the other leagues, I wouldn't be surprised if they also limp off into the sunset carrying a smoking pistol and leaving a trail of blood.
But in the 1920s, an era which solidified baseball and football as American passions, soccer was fairly well represented, drawing crowds between 6 and 10 thousand to various New York and New England stadiums in the dead of winter! But the league's members bickered among themselves and couldn't (or wouldn't) figure out how to expand interest in the sport farther beyond the confines of various immigrant communities In 1928, the league appointed its first commissioner--Bill Cunningham, a former Dartmouth gridiron football all star who knew nothing of the sport and who was unable to provide leadership necessary. The league split, with some teams folding and some joining the Eastern Professional League, which was pretty decent, but no better able to survive the Great Depression than was the ASL, which officially bought the farm in 1931.

[AreliusII]

A second ASL appeared in 1933 and survived as a semi-professional league through 1983 (in a way, part of the ASL-II sort of continues in the A-League, but one would need to be a forensic anthropologist to discern exactly how.). Chillingly for me, they too hired a non-soccer man (in this case Boston Celtic great Bob Cousy) in the 1960s. Cousy meant well but was unable to negotiate the demands facing soccer in the US. This is chilling because a couple years back MLS hired as its commissioner a man named Don Garber, who admitted upon taking the job that he knows nothing of the sport. His previous job was commissioner of NFL-Europe, a gridiron football league that plays games in soccer stadiums during the summer when they're not in use. If not for free tickets given to American servicemen and women, no one would go to those games... so in short, MLS hired a man who governed the only league on the planet that regularly plays in front of more empty seats than MLS. But he means well. In Garber's 2 years at the helm, MLS has increased attendance and kept its TV deal with ESPN/ABC, but it has lost two teams to contraction and bumbled its cable TV deal that made all games available to fans who bought the package. Of course, only an American soccer fans can be paranoid about a pattern of history repeating itself like this, but that's the way it is.
That's the sort of anecdotal history that jumped out at me. Others will be more interested in stories about the game in 1926 that attracted 46,000 fans to watch reigning Austrian champions Hakoah of Vienna play an ASL all-star team. Or some might be interested to know in the 1920s a player could make more money playing soccer in the U.S. than in England. Or they might like to make connections themselves and realize that, really, there has never NOT been professional soccer in the United States since the turn of the 20th century. Or they might be astounded to find out that, during the 1994 World Cup hosted by the U.S., the U.S.'s 2-1 victory over Colombia was watched by more people on ESPN than watched ANY baseball game on the same network that season. In short, the real question isn't "why is there no soccer in the U.S.?" It's, "why do so few people in America know about soccer?"
One reason proposed by the authors is that soccer, for whatever reason, hasn't found a widespread identity beyond a series of small, isolated communities. They attribute this to soccer's status as foreign import, etc., and suggest that if professional soccer finds a way to achieve some level of identification with and for fans in various cities, then it will succeed. I think that's right. When the Fire become Chicago's soccer team much as the Bears are its football team, then soccer will have arrived. But it's going to take a long time to establish this identity. In fact, it might never happen given that earlier leagues didn't make any headway over the years. And unmentioned by the authors is the fact that when the Chicago Sting won the NASL championship in 1979, nearly a half million people turned out for the victory parade. This fact is forgotten by all but my fellow Chicago soccer fans, washed away by the Bears' victory in Super Bowl XX and 6 NBA titles for the Bulls.
Some argue that success of the national team at the World Cup would make soccer more popular, and point to the success of the U.S. women's team in the 1999 Women's World Cup (the most watched soccer match on American television was the final between the U.S. and China). I doubt if the U.S. men's team winning the World Cup would have a long-term effect for a variety of reasons. First, because it's not going to happen. Second, because even if it did, the real exceptionalism in America is American-style patriotism. Few people identify with "the country" as a whole because it's so darn big. Most people who claim they "love my country" identify with (okay, worship) something called The American Way of Life, which has more to do with individualized opportunities for consumption than with anything even remotely communal and collective. In other words, most people who consider themselves patriotic Americans and claim to love their country seem to hate at least half the people in it. As a consequence, American sports fans will always save their most exuberant celebrations for victories of their local sports teams, and will have little use over the achievements of national teams, whether it be in sports like basketball, hockey, or soccer (and I'm not complaining about these individualized opportunities . . . since that's how I can be a soccer fan while living in a town where I know only one other person who cares in the least about the sport, and everyone else lives and dies for high school football).
The authors are guardedly optimistic about the future of soccer in the U.S., though I for one would not be surprised to find myself, if I'm around in 50 years, following a league that hasn't even been conceived yet, but which will have succeeded the two leagues that tried to replace MLS. But regardless of whether their optimism is warranted our not, Offside is interesting throughout, and fascinating in places, and worth reading for anyone who sees sports as crucial for any understanding of popular culture.
Returning to the back jacket of the book, there's a blurb written by Princeton's Paul DiMaggio, general editor of the series Princeton Studies in Cultural Sociology. He writes, "Offside is a unique book that combines a sports amateur's engagement and ability to convey the excitement of the game with a seasoned scholar's capacity to use the comparative method . . . [The authors] are so enthusiastic and informed about soccer that the book is great fun to read, even for a reader unfamiliar with soccer. I know of no other book that so effectively and engagingly places sport in its societal context."
Where to start with what's wrong with this statement? Well, first, that a Princeton sociologist could utter that last sentence is disheartening, since the best book for placing sports in a "societal context" is C.L.R. James' Beyond a Boundary (1962, rpt. in 1993 by Duke University Press). The book is about cricket, but it is written with such love of the sport and engagement with the world that even someone with no idea what a boundary is will find it worth reading. For my money, this book deserves a place among the founding texts of the academic discipline now called Cultural Studies (along with Richard Hoggart's The Uses of Literacy, Raymond Williams' Culture and Society, and E.P.Thompson's The Making of the English Working Classes). Offside would've been stronger had the authors drawn on James' insights, especially about the relations of sports to political power, and the opportunities provided by sports to both resist and capitulate to those in power.
Now, I agree with DiMaggio that the authors are quite "informed," but . . . well, they miss the chance to undertake the comparative method by not COMPARING the U.S. to Australia, where soccer also brings up the rear and is often mocked by fans of the more dominant sports. But where I disagree most strongly with the editors blurb has to do with questions of passion. Markovits and Hellerman restrain their passion, and indeed never really address the role of passion in sports at all. However, several authors have explored the nature of soccer passion, and should readers be interested, here are just a few.