Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Why I am not hopping on the women's soccer bandwagon

I’m hardly a fan of soccer, but that is not the reason why I am as disinterested in the women’s World Cup as I am the men’s version. There are some who claim that people all over the country are in a tizzy over the US team’s success, but that is like the claim that the extremist minority who make-up the Tea Party speak for all Americans. The success of the US women’s soccer team—relative to the men’s team—is due to several factors, the most important of which are the fact that it started on a level playing field with the rest of the world; the first women’s World Cup was staged in 1991. More importantly, because there are fewer opportunities for women to play professional sports in this country, there is a much greater pool in which to draw athletes from; the fact that the US is one of the larger countries by population, it shouldn’t be a shock that it can field an outstanding team (relatively speaking).

It’s odd, but if the African immigrants at work who are soccer fans and the odd American watching out of curiosity had not tuned to Brazil-US soccer quarterfinal match on television, I would not have cared who won. But unfortunately the television was tuned to it, right there in front of my unwilling face. Thus I couldn’t help but notice that while the Brazilian team was mixed-race, the US team on the field was all-white. In fact, I checked a website that had a photo and brief bio of each player on the team, and every last one of them was Euro-American. Suddenly, I was interested; I wanted the “US” team—to lose. Why? Because this wasn’t the “US” team—this was the white team envisioned by that shriveled-up, Arian-Nordic dinosaur of a Swedish coach. Pia Sundhage, besides that, also had the “privilege” of disposing of Briana Scurry—and its last non-white player. Scurry wasn’t just some mediocre talent kept on the team as a “token”; she was the starting goalie on those first teams that most “fans” have predictably already forgotten about—you know, that ones that won two Olympic gold medals and the 1999 World Cup? Of course, it was white players like Mia Hamm who got all the attention, and when that 2007 “incident” occurred, most people didn’t even know who Scurry was, except that she was black.

That “incident"--which will forever be the only “memorable” event that I will ever take from women’s soccer--was the Hope Solo prima donna tantrum at the World Cup semifinals. Coach Greg Ryan, for some reason, chose to field Scurry as the starting goalie in the match; maybe it was because Ryan thought he needed Scurry’s experience, or he thought that Solo needed to be taken down a peg because of her self-promoting arrogance. Whatever the reason, Solo’s juvenile self-obsessed wailing and whining on the sideline—perhaps rubbing off on some players who were empathetic to her “plight”—led to lackluster play and a self-fulfilling prophecy of a lopsided defeat, 4-0. Because of the backlash by Solo supporters (since she attended the UW, local sports commentator were particularly submissive), Ryan was forced to resign.

On the other hand, US men’s soccer teams—not as successfully because they started out from behind and draw from a smaller pool of athletes—seem to welcome diversity. It is also my decided impression that regardless of the sport, white women are much more likely to view minorities as “threats” to their swell-headed self-obsession. I noticed in the past that people like former tennis “greats” Chris Everett and Martina Navratilova never miss an opportunity to denigrate the Williams sisters; perhaps they resent the fact that there hasn’t been a white American player to challenge their success and put them in their “place”—no American other than Williams sisters has won a tennis grand slam title since 2002. Many commentators claim that racism doesn’t exist in some sports venues, particularly those in traditionally “white” sports, merely because it isn’t explicitly stated; but this is just a mendacious mechanism for avoiding the truth. When attitudes are instinctive, words are less important than actions.

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