Black People Don't Play Soccer? -- the book

What this speaks to is your ignorance of the significance and root of the term.

"African American" was adopted to allow blacks living in the US with a sense of peoplehood, a culture with which to identify other than the culture of the slavemaster.

After 400+ years of being in the US what kind of connection to contemporary African life/culture/society could they possibly have? Accepting the label "African American" is one of the few ones realistically possible. The only ones that do try to make some sort of tangible connection are intellectuals and academics and even then it's more on form of adopting cultural artifacts like dance, song, language.

How strange, huh? Why can't they just get it? They must not be very bright.

You say you've been trying to introduce soccer to the inner city, well I got a suggestion for you: start by giving them a little more credit for their decisions and stop being so goddamn condescending. Reading your posts gave me a headache: blacks have been sold on stupid ideas, they don't understand economics, they're narrow-minded etc., etc.

Instead of trying to change the mentality of black Americans into liking soccer, work on changing the structural barriers that impede them from taking up soccer. They see it as a white boy sport not because the idea seeped into their heads somehow but because administratively and institutionally soccer in the US really is dominated by suburban, upper-middle class whites.

 

Why black americans dont play soccer?

Let me tell you a little story when I was living in Los Angeles.

I was working at this retail store.

There was a funny guy who was borned in the US. I cant think of his name right now but he was a funny skinny guy, he looked like he never played sports, just a little guy, funny and cool, one of the boys.

He was mixed (this is very common in LA) he was half mexican half nicaraguan ( think thats how you call people from nicaragua). He was fairly light so I guess he passed for an average "white" mexican.

I remember in those days, I think it was Boca playing vrs Chivas, a lot o Argentinos used to come by the store out in North Hollywood in the Valley.

He didnt like to speak spanish but he knew how to speak it. Once he saw me and the Argentino dude talking crazy of the Boca-Chivas game, the Argentino like always was talking crap about how they are superior to everybody and I was just joking around with him.

The LA guy was interested in the conversation, the told me he was a HUGE Dodgers fan but his whole family where crazy about Mexican soccer.

I asked him, are you going to watch the game?

This is his answer, am being honest.

"Nah fool, I watch american sports, men sports."

I know he wasnt being serious, and if it wasnt bc he was a little guy I wouldve gotten mad about the comment.

There you go, make your own conclusions, you want to know what my conclusion is?

I know you guess it, yes that is what my conclusion is. That is the answer anybody would give me wether he was black, white or latino borned in the US.

Now you wonder what I say lets go after Jim Rome and ESPN, but yes Im still the bad retarted kid for getting mad when crap like this happends.

 

It is more likely that we will find more talented African-American players in the way that we got Marvell Wynne... His father was a proven athletic talent, and their family lived in an affluent community so he played soccer. Walter Payton's kid was a very good youth player in Chicago.

The poor black kids just don't really go for soccer. Even the Carribean kids tend to play basketball and football over soccer. There ARE some black kids from poorer communinites playing, but the nature of soccer is such that without good training you won't succeed, and they don't have the resources that other players do. Still, there ARE a lot more kids from poorer areas playing in top clubs these days.

On the other hand, Latino kids play baseball and soccer almost exclusively. There will be a LOT of them coming along, and they are getting a lot more exposure these days. Every new generation of white suburban kids is also more in tune with soccer than the previous ones.

We have plenty of great athletes playing soccer, the problem is really that our youth training system and professional league are not at the top levels yet. It WILL happen eventually, but it is going to take a while.

 

Yes true. But how many children who don't speak Spanish want to watch the Spanish channels. I don't mind it because I love Soccer but for younger childrens its just another setback to me..

Thanks for reading though

 

If you read my entire post or any of it at all one of the first things I said was

 

One more thing - Soccer has nothing to do with color in my eyes. Italy didn't have a black guy on the squad in 06 did they?

That's why it's such a beautiful game. It takes more than speed and power to win.

It takes skill, tactics, technique, speed, power, endurance and more - it's the perfect game.

It's not that America needs Black people. America just needs to find the right talent. America has the advantage over most countries that their country is a melting pot.

African Americans - Asian Americans - South "AMERICANS" - Euro "Americans" - All of these 2nd GEN American born or naturalized citizens..Thats an advantage over most countries - they just need to utilize it better.

 

Roll eyes?

What your post said was that parents teach their kids what they know.

It's more than what they know, it's what's part of the culture. Go to any inner city and EVERY thinks they can ball or play football.

So if that's what you WERE getting at, it wasn't clearly conveyed.

And no one, not the author, nor anyone who wants see more Blacks in the game thinks America needs Black players to be successful. The main point is that there is a significant portion of the population that doesn't embrace the game and it would be a positive thing if they did because it would simply increase the playing pool.

The book (and I'm going to assume you haven't read it) goes into some reasons why Black Americans haven't embraced the game and reasons why perhaps they should.

We actually agree on most everything else so chill...

 

Well there's you problem right there Lou.
Not all Africans are black and not all blacks are Africans.
Thus the term African-American is intellectually dishonest and teaches young black males and females a false myth. This is strike #1 when teaching kids about a sense of peoplehood.

You mean like the Irish under England Crown law or the Chinese in California?

Well I suggested sports.
Specifically the most popular sport in Africa. What a great way to connect.
Nothing brings different types of folks together like sports or music.

Again, it's another bag of goods about false labels sold to the black community in the U.S.
Do you have any friends from Honduras or Brasil Lou?
I do.
They do not and have never even thought of calling themselves Africano-Hondurenyo or Africano-Brasileno.
I wanted to put the term African-American to the test so I asked them since they are decendants of the African slave trade to the Americas just like men and women of color here in the U.S. and have shared in this experience. I asked Coach Angel (one of my son's first soccer coaches) simply what they thought of the concept of African-American and if he considered himself African-Hondurenyo...Angel just looked at me funny and said, "naw I'm just Honduran Sam."
This is where association football and the passion in every nation for its National Football team unifies a culture via the color of the jersey over the color of the man in the jersey.
Pele is the icon of this power to be all that he is as a man and at the same time rise above his skin color to define his culture. It was his persona in that canary yellow jersey that allowed everyone else on the planet to view him not as a black man, or a Africano-Brasileno and not even one of the blacks on the Brasil squad...HE WAS BRASIL!
For my generation of U.S. men, it never occured to us that Pele was anything but the living icon of a nation, a way of life and a man that any Brasileno(a) would never tag with a hyphen. As if Pele could ever be something before being Brasilian.

Mkay.
You said it.

Dance, song and language...sounds kin to Brasilian football. Hummm...

Hence the symbolism in the title of this man's book one could say.

You mean like volunteering to teach and coach in inner city Houston where few others want to go?

Sure it is. No argument here. Yet we are talking about soccer in the inner city.
In my case, inner city Houston where every predominantly black high school has had a soccer program there for the last two decades. So from my black students point of view, and this is again from the horse's mouth, they called it "Mexican Football".
Thus, to blacks in inner city Houston their traditional perception is indeed the white boy tag but the reality they live in is that their neighbors on the block, guys in the apartments and classmates at their very same school they all go to...are not suburban upper middle class whites playing soccer. It is instead latino and Caribbean immigrants who on top of playing soccer there at the inner city High School also often hold down a PT job to help provide for the family.
When you live in this actual real world Lou, soccer lives and breaths in inner city Houston on an entirely different platform form the suburban, upper middle class white concept.

And then there is baseball I brought up and why it now explains the often negative approach to soccer for black males in the U.S.?
What is the new excuse Lou for young urban black boys for tagging baseball, the once iconic sport for black men in this nation, as a white boy sport???
No one has to play a sport they don't like but it is tremendous sign of the times when baseball is looked down on by a new generation of urban black males for somehow being "too white."
My idol as a short stop growing up was Ozzie Smith. When in the hell did pro baseball in the last 17 years become a white boy sport I would respond to my students???
It hasn't...it's just that the perception outweighs the truth for them.

 

The French team won the World Cup because they had incredibly creative players in Dugarry and Zidane, the perfect skillful midfield combo in Petit and Vieira, as well as a rock solid defense, due to their incredibly intelligent marking and anticipation.

It has nothing/very little to do with being black/athletic!!!

 

and how is your comment any relation to mine?

 

as a black kid who grew up in bad neighborhoods i can say why i and none of my friends played the game. for us it was too difficult to get a game going. it wasnt like basketball where we could pick a ball up and play alone. plus we didnt see soccer players everyday on espn like we did with football and basketball. we always saw highlights of those games so it was more exciting to try and imitate them. plus it was like mad expensive to get into soccer leagues and if you tried to play in the ones in the suburbs they wouldnt let you. as baseball dies i notice a lot of my little cousins and friends little brotherds becoming more apart of soccer to fill the void baseball leaves.

for me growing up you played 3 sports. basketball,football,or track and field maybe baseball here and there

 

Interesting personal insight. Very good point about it being expensive, like many good poor hispanic talent that i knew of, they couldnt afford travel either.

 

What?? It's a myth to tell black Americans that they came from Africa, that they have roots aside from picking cotton in Georgia while the slavemaster took away their language, name, customs and religion??

Soccer is also the most popular sport in Italy and Ireland, the Irish and Italians came to the US MUCH later than most African Americans yet most Irish Americans and Italian Americans couldn't give two shits about soccer.

Sports is obviously way down in the totem pole of cultural products that a group retains upon moving to the US.

Don't bring up Giuseppe Rossi, by the way.

Yes.

It would also help seeing and treating them as intelligent individuals with agency that make rational decisions based on the social conditions they're presented with. Not passive, mindless hordes who absorb any lies that is "fed" to them and that are in dire need of a great white savior to straighten them out.

I know what soccer in Houston is like, I was raised in the Sagemont area, went to Dobie, and have ties to lots of schools in the inner city.

They see Latinos they interact with playing soccer and when they turn on the TV they see the mostly lily-white MLS and USMNT. Either way, they don't see themselves as an integral part of the sport. Because they're not.

 

I personally perfer Black, I dont see any sense in calling myself african, You do Have People who feel the opposite, and i guess thats okay for them. for me and my heritage Black is more than a "color' to me. I feel More American Calling myself black, and because I know and cared, that Many blacks before me along with other people had gone through so much crap to Make My country so Great(United states)...To me i dont neglect the africaness of my heritage , i just see being more than that. Im more than just african, Attticks, King, BT Washington and many others Have proven that.... when i see and here people who are places like Jamaica and haiti and panama and Brasil they have serious pride of where they from, and i know I do too Being a American...............AS for the situations as Kobe and Chad Johnson you also have to look what they was exposed to growing up. Chad Johnson lived in South Florida(Miami) where there had to be some type of Soccer exposure at the time to influence him. But not enough to pursue, I remebr reading about him saying that Football and basketball is where the Money was at. he was in better position being a Football Player than being a soccer player from his view?... As for Kobe he was lil more priviledged, lived in italy when his dad's was balling so I sure he had some good soccer exposure. .... I still think that Major players out of US Soccer and MLS need to do better in trying to show inner city or just Black American folk that the game is alil appealing. ... Sorry Kobe can help, i dont recommend Spike Lee though... lol

 

No, it's a myth to teach young American kids, of any skin color, that the word African-American to be checked on an a state wide test or filled in on an application of some sort is strictly for those that are black.
As adults we get it what the word is trying to signify, but it teaches those that do not have a greater understanding of history and or geogrpahy, like our kids, that everyone from Africa is automatically black. It is retarded to use a continent's name to classify skin color. But that is what is sold to us in the U.S.
It's really that simple Lou.

Samba has its African roots and yet at the same time it is Brasilian to the core.
I think you are missing my point in that what happened here in the U.S. was very common up and down the rest of the Americas. Its just that in our other neighboring nations, these roots you speak of grow to become what the nation is about.
What evolved here in the U.S. unfortunately lives under a bullshit hyphen. In the United States, he's not a tremendous basketball player, he is a tremendous African-American basketball player. This line of thinking is marked absent in the rest of the Americas. In Brasil, Ronaldinho is a famous Brasilian footballer and not a famous African-Brasilian footballer.

You need to read more.

Yes of course you're right dude! That is why the Mexican National Team has a very hard time selling tickets to its games here in the U.S.
Or when Iran played our guys in L.A. years ago, yup...sports for the Iranians that day was something they didn't retain upon moving to the U.S.

who?

Why not? It sure as heck worked for our great black savior.

Go Dobie Longhorns

Fail.
3 starters for the U.S. last night were men of color, another one was a Pacific Islander, two others of our guys have Hispanic dads, and from the bench the two subs that head coach Bob Bradley brought on...you guessed it Lou...two black men. Even in these subs, another black man was still left on the bench.
The more I think on where you are tring to go with your reasoning on what soccer players in the U.S. look like the more the facts of the matter turn your thinking on "the mostly lily-white MLS and USMNT" to very weak sauce.

And you are of course leaving out the concept of what U.S. black men and boys see on ESPN when our National Team with guys like Gooch, Beasley, Howard, Jozy, Clark, Adu, Edu, and Wynne take the field in Qualifying this year against an all black men team like Trinidad and Tobago. Let's say that for the game against T&T, Donovan picked up a knock in club play, Bradley picked up too many yellows and has to sit, Jozy has replaced Ching as the starter already and Cherondolo is not fit...that would have Bob Bradley perhaps send out a U.S. Starting XI with Howard and 2 black men on defense, 3 black men in midfield and both starting strikers are black men. That would be 8 outta the starting 11 for the U.S. Lou and Trinidad's Starting XI is most likely all black.
So what is seen on TV is two black men dominated teams playing soccer, one team which has guys from Georgia and California on it.
Read your quote from above again having just read what I responded with and you are able to understand what it is like to post something on bigsoccer that is of epic failure.

 

Here's another example of a black athlete who was a very good soccer player growing up but eventually gave it up to pursue another sport. And like Curtis Pride, he went to William & Mary, too.

Michael "Pinball" Clemons was an all-state soccer player in Florida. He grew up poor with a single, teenage (when he was born) mother in Dunedin, FLA.

He was also one of the state's best HS football players in 1983 but because he was barely 5-6 he didn't get a lot of D-I offers so he ended up at I-AA William & Mary where he lettered in soccer for a season before giving it up to concentrate on football. It was a good call as he became a I-AA All American and the Virginia player of the year, picked over D-I players from UVa and Va Tech.

He was drafted by the Kansas City Chiefs and played mostly special teams for one season before being let go.

That turned out to be a blessing in disguise because he ended up north of the border playing for the CFL's Toronto Argonuats, where he quickly became a cult here and remains one of the most popular athletes in the history of Canadian sports.

He won 3 Gray Cups, the CFL's version of the Super Bowl, as a player was a league MVP and retired holding CFL records for most combined yards (rushing, receiving and returning) in a career and a season. When he quit playing he moved straight into being the Argos head coach and won another CFL title and a couple of years ago he moved upstaris to become the team's president. He is in the CFL Hall of Fame.

There have been calls for him to run for Mayor of Toronto but he apparently doesn't want to get into politics so to temper any "draft Clemons" movements he has put off becoming a Canadian citizen.

Would Clemons have been good enough in soccer to play professionally had he stuck with it? I don't know.

But it's interesting that in the early 80s, as the NASL was ending, a black kid in a poor neighborhood who was a great enough athlete to go onto play pro football, well, was also playing soccer at a fairly high level, relative to his peers.

Who knows how much further along the sport would have been with minorities and inner city kids if the NASL hadn't folded and kids saw soccer as a viable career option instead of giving it up to concentrate on other sports, which I believe is one of the author's points.

 

there's also the side issue that it is possible to be black (or of African origin), and not be American.

A quick search brings up this link, for example, where CNN refers to "African-American" teenagers killed in France.
http://newsbusters.org/node/2783

 

During the '94 World Cup, one of the American commentators referred to Sweden's "African American" players... or maybe he was just talking about Martin Dahlin, I can't remember.

But damn, I wish he was African American. The guy had a good run at the World Cup.

 

I consider myself African American. I realize i grew up in America but I also acknowledge my African roots. I have extreme pride in both my American and African roots. I try to hold onto my African heritage cause I know theres not much of my history known so I never just say I'm American,after all no one is ever just American. When the US isnt kicking but,im rooting for some African country. Usually Nigeria lol.

But i think the MLS and other soccer leagues have to expose the street aspect of soccer to black youth in order to get them into it. Like for me I didnt get into soccer until I saw some highlights of Ronaldhino and other soccer players just having fun on the streets. They were doing dope tricks and having fun looked like so thats how me and my friends got into it.

 

Perhaps the author, or somebody who has read the book, could address this question: was the issue of economics addressed? I ask this because of the implications that the cost of youth sports has on those who play. Back in my day, soccer was hyped as "the cheap sport." All you need is a ball, sneakers, shorts. and t-shirt, and you're all set. Even when I was playing (and our family was not wealthy), soccer was climbing in financial altitude. I used to be laughed at over my K-Mart cleats, when everybody else had Puma or adidas (the cleats didn't bother me, being laughed at about it (and also for being fat) did).

Anyway, at time has progressed, t-shirts and sneakers are no longer "acceptable;" even U-10 has to have the best. Soccer is anything but cheap. Low-income families can't handle that, plus the fees, and they can't send their kids to the academies. Plus, nobody has gotten it into their heads that the inner cities would be the perfect place for small-sided soccer to thrive. 5, or 6-a-side soccer would be great for the inner city, and you wouldn't have to spend a ton on a soccer complex.

Another thing that I think hampers the growth of the game in the black community (and the white community, for that matter) is the feeling that if you're not good enough to play pro, don't even bother. People play rec basketball, softball, and baseball, people who have no aspirations any longer of playing point guard for the Knicks, or third base for the Twins. They go out after work and play in various leagues, or somebody's driveway (basketball). There is nowhere near the adult participation with soccer as there is with baseball, softball, or basketball, mainly (in my opinion), because there is not much of an outlet for anything besides 11-a-side (and burning up a whole Sunday afternoon driving to a park, playing for two hours, and then driving home). Small-sided leagues, besides indoor, are few and far between, and it makes it hard for adults to have access (the demand for fields on the weekends is astronomical for youth leagues, much less for adults). You may not know this, but 5-a-side participation surpassed 11-a-side in England years ago, with league play just about every night of the week (5-a-side games are around 20 minutes long--in and out in about an hour!).

It's amazing how so many kids "outgrow" soccer, mainly because there is an undercurrent mentality that if you're not good enough to play professionally, you should get off the field and make way for someone who is. There is so much pressure that it stops being fun, and many kids simply just walk away. The US has had, since the 60's a mission, sort of a "Space Race," if you will, to win the World Cup. As such, players have been "manufactured" with the technical ability to play the game, but not the passion, the heart, or the soul that kids in other countries have. They're fulfilling a mission, and the aspect of playing just for fun was lost in the translation somewhere. You may think I'm talking out of my backside, but just ask any 20- or 30- something why they stopped playing soccer, and their answer will be something akin to "it stopped being fun," or "I wasn't good enough," or something similar. Some, like me, stopped playing as an adult, when it got too expensive.

Sorry for the long post, I just think that's an important aspect to consider.

Peace

 

Here's some news for you: ALL racial/ethnic/national labels have holes and contradictions in them. That doesn't mean they're useless or "retarded."

First off, there is such a term as afro-brasileiro, even if your friends have never heard of it or don't use it. Second, racial formation in Latin America developed very differently from the US. The key is miscegenation and the English abhorrence to it compared to the Spanish/Portuguese embrace of it.

The differences are vast and much too long to list here but if you're interested I suggest you check out these two books:

[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Racism-Inequality-Brazil-Africa/dp/1588260267/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1234496700&sr=8-1"]Amazon.com: Beyond Racism: Race and Inequality in Brazil, South Africa, and the United States: Charles V. Hamilton, Lynn Huntley, Neville Alexander, Antonio Sergio Alfredo Guimaraes, Wilmot James: Books[/ame]

[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Race-Another-America-Significance-Brazil/dp/0691127921/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1234496742&sr=1-1"]Amazon.com: Race in Another America: The Significance of Skin Color in Brazil: Edward E. Telles: Books[/ame]

All the reading I've done tell me the slave trade ended in the early 1800s, the Irish came mostly in the mid 1800s and the Italians in the late 1800 and early 1900s.

To you a Mexican's a Mexican, right? No difference.

Let me tell you something about my experiences growing up with almost all Mexican friends in good ol' Houston: The overwhelming majority that are soccer fans are born in Mexico or still have close ties to it.

Few 2nd generation Mexicans care about soccer, fewer still 3rd generation ones. It's kinda like with Spanish. The 2nd generation might speak it ok, but it's all but gone by the 3rd generation.

And another thing, many of those going to the stadium don't give a damn about soccer. They go for the noise, the excitement, because it's a fad. Kinda like those sorority girls that go to college football games when they barely know what a first down is.

So the fact that there were a lot of black guys playing for the US last night just erases the decades and decades of white stranglehold on American soccer, huh? You must be one of those racism-is-obviously-over-now-that-Obama-is-president-so-quit-your-bitching types.

Just because, at some point in the near future, if a whoooole bunch of people are suspended, injured, and the stars line up right, the USMNT could field 8/11 blacks then bam!, magically, the statement "blacks aren't an integral part of American soccer" is incorrect? Please.

That there are 8 or 10 or 20 black guys that play good enough to be on the NT doesn't mean squat. The day we see entire black families going to the games, soccer fields in black neighborhoods filled with kids playing, lots of average and bad black American soccer players in the MLS, and black American coaches and managers, then that statement can go to hell.

Until then, it stands.

 

Reading the discussions on the probability of upping the quality of soccer in the USA when more non whites join the game I got amused.

Colour has nothing to do with or any influence on the quality of the game.

The Orange super team of 1974 and the one of 1978 were all white. No colour in sight. The same goes for the super club teams of the Netherlands that ruled the world in those days (1969-1974). Feyenoord and Ajax were all white then.
The Orange super team of 1988 was partly coloured as was Ajax in 1995.
The Orange team of the Euro 2008 was a mixed bag of white European, brown Asian and Muslim.

What matters is the talented (read: no mentioning of athletiscism) guy gets the opportunity to develop his skills and later the right coaching to put it into a team effort. You can get a wonderfull all white team if you put this into practice or a wonderfull all black team or a wonderfull mixed bag team.
But that is the starting point. And once you get (in what ever colour) the super star quality player that sets the standard he is going to be the catalist for the expansion of the game in the USA... I think

 

I am currently an African-American playing and living in the inner-city for St.Benedict's prep, and I can see where he is a coming from, to a certain extent. I mean, our inner-city's definetely contain some of the most athletic and hard working people in the country, and the Federation hasn't really tapped ito it yet. As for saying our entire nation team needs to be black for us to succeed that is just racist and stupid.

 

Clearly you don't understand. The US has a group of super-atheletes the like of which the world has never seen before, and if their power could just be diverted into the world of soccer then surely all before them would crumble.

The thing is the best players in the world so far have generally been completely varied, in the last few years we've had Messi (short, frail build, European heritage), C Ronaldo (tall and "athletic" but white), Ronaldo (explosive power, mixed race, "athletic"), Kaka (European heritage), Zidane (north African heritage), Henry (Carribean heritage), Beckham (white European).

And arguably the best International team in the world has a midfield of Iniesta, Xavi, Senna and Silva all of whom are short and 2 of whom are really skinny and frail looking. The way they play the game doesn't require the ability to explode out with 9.9s 100m pace which is the beauty of soccer, so many different styles of play none any better than the other.

 

Check the Olympic Medal table over the last 70 years.