Sam's Army in 442

I ordinarily pick up a copy, but looking forward to reading this. Is it a feature article, or just part of larger coverage focusing on England's trip to the U.S.?

 

It's two pages in the front section, similar to the spreads they've done on EPL team tours to the US in years past. The article tries to be complimentary, especially towards the end, but just can't shake the "lol yanks don't get football" snarkiness. YES YES WE CALL IT SOCCER AND SOME OTHER SPORT FOOTBALL HA HA WE'RE SO SILLY

 

Did we read the same article? it takes a direct swipe at "snobbish English cynics". The article is very complimentary towards Sam's Army, but dismissive of US sports fans in general.

 

thought it was a good article. any press is good press....

 

A good article? What did you read. It mentions every sterotype the English have about Americans when it come to soccer and other things.

 

If possible, can anyone scan or copy the article and either email or fax it to me? PM me if you're up to doing this, as I might try to put together a response, possibly to be posted as an op-ed on Sams-army.com

The Magpie

 

DarkHorse Pub (where I go to watch my soccer/football) got a mention in the August FourFourTwo in an article titled:
"Uncle Sam's Barmy Army: Disgusted by US apathy at World Cup 94, one man decided enough was enough. So he built an army"

The article starts out:
"Full time in the Champions League Final, and Philadelphia's Dark Horse Pub is packed with singing, yelling and screaming ex-pat Scousers. Down the front are some American Liverpool fans, keeping a discreet distance but getting off on the buzz. Then some non-soccer types walk in, stare and start pointing at the partying Liverpudlians.
"******** off!"roars a Scouser, "this isn't a zoo!"
Americans just don't get "soccer." They sit on their fat arses, sipping pissy beer and munching hot dogs, only occasionally bothering to utter a few straight-laced "rah rah" chants. They have no fan culture, no concept of what it's like to be part of a uniformly clad mobh roaring your team on with ribald chants..."

Anyway, I figure that whoever they sent over to the US to cover the USA-England match must have stopped over in Philly and caught the Champions League Final at the Dark Horse on the way to Chicago.

I've transposed a few other select passages:

The hoardings at Soldier Field, Chicago - venue for last month's USA-England friendly - are almost entirely covered in England flags. But just next to the flag that reads "Elivis is a stokie" is a banner proclaiming "Soccer Superpower" over a spray-pained Stars and Stripes. Let your gaze wander to the left and you come to a 500-strong phalanx of jumpingt, screaming, yelling, singing mad bastards all dressed in red. You've just eyeballed Uncle Sa's Army - a vibrant island of plasitic consumerism.
OK so it's not exactly Stamford Bridge circa 1970 (although there is one monkey-sideburned retro-skinhead). Ehen again, nor is Stamford Bridge. ANd those snobbish English cynics who are always taking the piss out of American "sawker" fans (and who, for some reason, seem desperate to see football fail in the USA) would be desperately disappointed by the depth of knowledge, the grasp of irony and the crude native wit exhibited by these "Sammers."
"We love you Glazer!" they sing. "Show these limeys how to play football!" they bellow, then question the parenthood and sexuality of every England player to touch the ball. Others werar T-shirts bearing the slogans "Tea is for **************", "Beach Boys kick Beatles ass" and "Beckham is a fairy."
One young gentlemnan is sporting the sogan "Magna Carta this..." with an arrow pointing towards his genitals. "Yeah! to hell wiht democracy!" yells a comrade when he reads it. A cheer goes up. Beer is spilt. The drum is banged. "We own Man U"is gleefully chanted. A stranger fallen amongst these raucous louts might be forgiven for thinking that he had landed in a footballing nation...
And then a few English voices at the other side of the stadium start singing "Are you Scotland in disguise?" Within seconds it's being roared by 30,000 voices.

The fact is that the USA contains hundreds of thousands of hard-core soccer fans. You can see this whenever Poland or Mexico or Guatemala or England play on US soil. THe stadia are covered in flags. The overwhemling majority of Cosata Rican Americans support Costa Rica. And the Mexican-Americans who support the Houston Texans will paint their "football" helmets red, green and white whenever the Mexican national soccer team are in town.
In 2001, a bunch of US fans turned up at Washington DC's Dulles International Airport to "razz" the arriving Honduran team (in revenge for the US team having been pelted with frui, batteries and bags of urine). But they were drowned out by 800 Washington locals enthusiastic ally shouting "Hon-du-ras". There have even been reports that fans have chanted "Osama! Osama!" and burnt the US flag at games within the USA. And while these reports might only be urban legends, the truth is that the vast majority of American soccer fans would definitely fail Norman Tebbit's cricket test.
"How long will it be before the US can play at home in front of a predominantly US crowd?": asks a hack at the US v England post-match press conference. "About 100 years," replies US manager Bruce Arena, dryly.
Mark Spacone- a first-generation American- started Uncle Sam's Army after being "disgusted by the apathy" of his fellow citizens during the 1994 US World Cup (where the US national anthem was often drowned out by booing).
"When the Swiss scored, it was as though you were in Switzerland. We had to do something..."
Mark and a few others issued the followiing plea: "With Sam's Army, we hope to show that our team is not a third-rate organization which has no fan support. No longer will Mexico, Italy, Germany and other teams come here and make our team feel like they are playing in the Azteca stadium when, in fact, they are playing at the Rose Bowl in the USA. Nor will the USSF have to embarrass the true American fan by hiring an idiot who runs around banging a druim to get the crowd fired up! WE could do that ourselves."


But a full decade after the founders vowed to turn the crowd at US games int oa "sea of red", Uncle Sam's Army is still, says Spacone, "a puddle."
He remains pessimistic about hte prospects for improvement, and he belittles the impct the Sammers have had on US sports culture (although maybe we just caught him on a bad day). "It's not much better then it was 10 years ago. You only have to lood at the England game. England have thousands of fans with a hundred yearsof history, all singing together, We got 300 people stood together, all wanting to do 300 different things."
Which is just typical of bloody Americans. Always in a rush. Eleven years might seem a long time, but it took a lot longer than that for British football fan cutlure to take root and flourish. And a thousand fans at an international game might seem small potatoes to a Brit or Brazilian, but how many turn up to cheer on the GB basketball team when they play a friendly? Doe we even have a basketball team? Well, exactly.
The success of Uncle Sam's Army is not merely measured in numbers, but in the fact of its very existence -and the fact that it's spawned hard-core mini-armies at all of the MLS clubs. American fan culture - rotting away in far-from-splendid isolation for the past 100 years - has laplsed into a persistent vegetative state. Uncle Sam's Army are the all-singing, all-chanting, drum-banging wake-up call.
The Sammers' unofficial them song used to be "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" - the choice of plucky losers everwhere. But since the US crashed the top 10 of the FIFA rankings, they've taken more an more to chanting about the "mighty, mighty USA."
It's time to stop sneering.

 

Thanks Matt,

I'm going to start working up a response (commentary) to post to http://www.sams-army.com in the coming weeks.

Think I'll have a little fun at Four Four Two's expense... a response in the vein of throwing a hard, high, inside fastball to a batter hogging the plate

The Magpie

 

Believe me, my tongue will be planted firmly in-cheek, but it will certainly be sharp enough to needle them without reservation.

 

The full passage reads very differently

 

Sorry I was in a rush. Didn't mean to misrepresent them. I subscribe to the magazine and appreciated the articel-- they painted Sams' army in a good light and I respect them for it.