I fell in love with football because I played it, not because I watched it.
I was introduced to the sport by a classmate when I was 6 or 7. My older siblings played baseball, softball and basketball, and my father had played ice hockey his whole life. When I told them I wanted to play football, I was met mostly with confusion.
So, there was no one to take me to a game, and no games to take me to anyway.
Denver, Colorado, had an indoor team for two years in the early 80s and then a pre-Major League Soccer
club that played at a local high school in the early 90s.
If there was a channel broadcasting the European club game, I never found it. Professional soccer was basically a myth as far as I was concerned.
Except for the World Cup. It was my window to a sporting world to which I had no other access.
I understand, sort of, why seemingly every Sunderland fan I interact with at best tolerates and at worst loathes international football.
And It’s really easy to be cynical about it all. There’s the FIFA greed, the exponential wear and tear on players, the constant fear of a Sunderland player injury, and all the weekends we don’t get to watch the Black Cats.
But I spent a good portion of my football watching life waiting impatiently for the next World Cup and the next U.S. men’s national team match, and that’s never left me.
I watched in 1990 when the United States played in its first World Cup in 40 years and gave hosts Italy fits in a 1-0 loss. I watched in 1994 when the U.S. hosted and beat heavily favoured Colombia – and the own goal that led to Andres Escobar’s murder. I watched from a laundromat in 2002 when Torsten Bleepin’ Frings cheated to keep us from tying Germany in the quarterfinals.
And I watched this in 2010.
Sorry, about that. I meant to say I watched Landon Donovan do this in 2010.
The only football videos I’ve watched more in my life are Dan Ballard and Tommy Watson’s goals
I’ve been to 10 senior USMNT matches, only once in a city I lived in at the time, and saw live two of the best non-World Cup wins in the program’s history.
I’ve also attended a handful of Mexico matches not involving the USMNT, and let me tell you, tailgating with Mexico fans is something everyone should experience.
No, I didn’t attend the World Cup this year due to the aforementioned greed, and that’ll probably haunt me for awhile. But I can’t wait wait to watch the USMNT against Haiti this week and then I’ll be again counting down the days – 124! Ugh!! – until the next window.
But I get to watch Sunderland again. And that makes everything okay.
