The World's Game

The only team sport I participated in back in high school was soccer. At the time, in the early eighties, it was not recognized as a team sport by the Nashville Interscholastic League which was the predecessor organization in my hometown to the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association. It was considered a club sport and I was not eligible to letter. Our coach was a young female teacher Barbara Couch who taught me Spanish 1 and 2 and had the team scrimmage against Vanderbilt University's woman's soccer club. I watched the first game for the United States yesterday as we contested football powerhouse Great Britain. Once again in an international match, England's top player Wayne Rooney fizzled, showing more of his temper than his ball skills. The British side's manager made a rather mystifying decision to start a goalkeeper inexperienced in international matches and it came back to haunt the Brits as Robert Green had evidently stopped the progress of Clint Dempsey's long almost desperation try which would have been a routine save for an American high schooler and inexplicably allowed the ball to trickle through. I am in no way a soccer fanatic but the patriot in me would watch the US challenge our former colonial masters or the rivals from the former Soviet Union even at tiddlywinks. Britain had the marquee players, dominated the pace through most of the match, but in the end, we tied which must be regarded as a win for America as we were such heavy underdogs with the ABC/ESPN commentator, who had been a member of the British team for more than thirty international matches in the past, predicting his old team would thrash the US three to one (3-1). Hopefully, American soccer will defy expectations and finish well. England is already disappointed and I am certain that the USA would throttle any other country in the world at what my countrymen regard as real football.