"It Isn't Easy Being Green"

So tweeted a friend, riding a global wave of empathy for the England keeper, who made an elementary blunder in today's match against the US and, well, cost England the win. At least in the headlines.

It is said that drama requires conflict. On the pitch, said drama falls largely on the defense's shoulders. Attack, defend, counterattack. Without that middle term, it's just attack and score. This narrative structure means that defenders appear to stand in the way - their job is to ruin someone else's game. And when one thinks like this, one only sees the defense playing a negative role. The positive work of defense is largely invisible to those without the patience or desire to understand the game's dynamics - without an appreciation of the art, without an appreciation of defense as the first moment of attack, one sees it at best as a kind of aggressive passivity.  As if defenders were just in the way.

Today was a great day for considering these things.  

Nigeria faced a frightening Argentina squad and held them to a single goal - that goal was won in first ten minutes, before Nigeria's defenders had settled their nerves.  Once they steeled themselves, we got to appreciate especially Vincent Enyeama's performance - stealing one goal after another from none other than God's apprentice, Messi. Enyeama seemed to enjoy the challenge - perhaps he was not happy to see Messi so frequently, but he was eager to show the world what he is capable of.

And a few hours later, the world was talking about Tim Howard - he pulled out one great save after another, and, like his Nigerian counterpart, Howard radiated energy and focus - screaming at his back line to pull themselves together after England stole their goal from yet another jittery defense in the opening minutes of play.

We are all thinking, poor Green - yes, he fumbled the ball and cost the match. But we should also lament that with the likes of Rooney, Gerrard, and Lampard on attack, England put only one ball in the net in the third minute, and then failed to score in the subsequent 90 minutes of play. This will be said, but that collective failure will not register as neatly as Green's one terrible mistake because it can't be captured in a single image, condemned as a single mistake. Howard's marvelous performance is as deserving a candidate for the "cause" of England's failure to win that match as is Green's mistake.  It gave the US room to attack - time and time again Howard collected the ball where others cannot, retaining possession to change the game's direction. But as marvelous as it is, and as much as we are all talking about Howard right now, it won't be remembered as long, or dissected nearly so intensely as Green's fumble.

And that's the keeper's curse in a nutshell.

Film (in production): Gringos at the Gate (Ahi Vienen los Gringos)

Pablo Miralles and Michael Whalen are making Gringos at the Gate (Ahi Vienen Los Gringos), a documentary about the US/Mexico rivalry. The preview below is composed of interviews with fans of both teams filmed before a February match in Columbus, Ohio. They promise to post another video on youtube about the August match at Azteca. A film like this is long overdue!

By the way, it looked like fans of El Salvador outnumbered "Uncle Sam's Army" 6-4 at the World Cup qualifying match played this past weekend in Utah. Too bad US Soccer doesn't have the guts to play a match like that in Los Angeles, where you'd probably get a similar ratio, but four times as many people. Personally, I think it'd be good for all if the folks in charge embraced the fans of the sport instead of running away from them.

Afterthoughts on Mexico vs US

The photo above was taken during Mun2's pre-game show. This NBC Universal channel (which also broadcasts some WPS matches) is sortof a shadow-station (they never seem to be identified in the digital TV's guide). They advertise themselves as "uniquely American" and, like several channels in the Los Angeles area, Mun2 broadcasts bilingually (commercials may be in either language, commentators for music video and sports programs will move between Spanish and English). In this case, however, Mun2 broadcast the match in English, using a visual feed from Telemundo. Going into the match, the guys pictured above said "It's time to choose!" - meaning, among our audience, it's not a given you'll be supporting one team or the other. Kindof fabulous. The commentary was really lame, though - typical American sports chatter in which they talk endlessly about nothing, especially when the US doesn't have the ball (which was most of the time). We started to wonder if they knew the names of Mexico's players.

So we switched to Telemundo, and lo and behold - you could hear the stadium. The announcers had to shout over the crowd's roar, the volume of which had most certainly been turned down for the English language broadcast. And you could hear 100,000 people shout "Puto" every time Howard took a goal kick.

It was a great game, and there is much to say (like: where was Donovan?). But I am most fascinated by the boy-drama of the second half: the Mexican players were totally out of line in trying to force Davies to his feet - three gathered around his prone body, and seemed to yank him up by his neck. (Davies had been hurt on a free kick and was subbed out shortly afterward.) There was nearly a full-on brawl between the two teams. (No cards issued.) Davies scored the US's only goal - quite dramatically threading himself past one defender, then another, then another.... He made genuine trouble for Mexico's back line through most of match. I was really sad to see him leave the pitch, and the fact this drama was centered on him didn't seem accidental.

Shortly afterward the weirdness around Davies, Castello tried to yank the ball (clearly a goal kick and not a corner) away from stalwart defender "Gooch" (Oguchi Onyewu). Those two moments reminded me a lot of our adult league. Every now and again, certain teams love to generate this sort of drama. And they often seem to win. It's as if they stir up the other team's emotions (and distract them), and then focus their own passion on scoring. Sure enough, Mexico scored right after all this. It's a form of psycho-emotional warfare, and it works more often than you'd think it would.

ESPN, by the way, did a pre-game show - the first they've ever done for a game they weren't broadcasting themselves. So much for "Americans don't care about soccer."

I close with this random question - should Brian Ching - born in Hawaii - be playing for the USNT, given this?

Mexico vs USA - Preview of Conversation with Gustavo Arellano (KPFK 90.7 FM Tues 8/11 @ 4:00pm)

[Gustavo Arellano had me on his show to talk about Wednesday's showdown between Mexico and the US - listen here.]

The stakes are high, particularly for Mexico. At home, El Tri are unbeaten against the US. In the past decade, however, they've had a losing record in matches played away from home. Mexico's scandalous 5-0 thrashing of the USMNT the other week was therefore hugely important. Not incidental to this victory is the fact that it was played just outside of New York City, before nearly 80,000 cheering fans - Giant Stadium's largest crowd for a soccer match. Mexican fans dominated the stands, and this clearly inspired the team. (Check out this highlight clip.)

I was at my league matches that afternoon, and could hear cheering erupting from apartments in the neighborhood - over and over and over again. It seemed that the pleasure of beating the US was not diminished by the number of goals. No goal differential would have been large enough - there is a lot of pent-up frustration between the two sides (Mexico hadn't won an away game against the US since 1999, and until the tide turned in the 1990s, the US went nearly forty years without winning a single game against their neighbors, and has yet to win in Mexico).

On Wednesday, the US will be fielding an entirely different line up - namely, the one that beat Spain last month. Nevertheless, Mexico pretty much beats everybody at Azteca. And in World Cup qualifying matches played there, Mexico has only lost once, to Costa Rica. Costa Rica is in the top spot in the World Cup qualifying region. After them, it's the US, then it's Honduras, and after that right now, it's Mexico. They really need to win this one, in other words.

The idea of Mexico not qualifying for the World Cup is too much for me to bear. Let's remember their stunning performance against Argentina in the last World Cup (good highlights here) - arguably one of the best matches of the tournament. They took the game to the second period of extra-time and lost in only the last few minutes, when Maxí Rodriguez chested a perfect cross and volleyed it into the net. The drama of that game was excruciating, and it showed us what Mexico are capable of as a team. They are one of those squads that should be a lot better than they are - and their fecklessness is making their fans (and the Mexican press) insane.

And then we have the phenomenon of Donovan-hate. His goal knocked Mexico out of the World Cup in 2002. The US's leading goal scorer pissed on the field at Estadio Jalisco during a training session before a U23 game against Mexico in 2004. (The official story is that the bathrooms were locked.) This incident was recorded by a television crew and broadcast - leading to the casting of Donovan as the most hated man in Mexico, where he's had bags urine thrown at him on the field. (The US team lost that match, by the way, and thereby failed to qualify for that summer's Olympics.) More recently, Récord (the Mexican sports newspaper) gave out coupons to readers that they could redeem at Radio Shack - not for batteries (which have also been thrown at US players), but voodoo dolls (Donovan is being shown one here). All of this of course makes the whole thing between Beckham and the Riot Squad look pathetic.

(Donovan, by the way, grew up in Redlands, CA and speaks Spanish well enough to give interviews in the language of his rivals. Somehow I suspect this makes him even more irritating for Mexicans.)

Add to all of this the complexity of national identity in the US when it comes to this sport. Be it club or country, teams from Mexico draw huge numbers of fans to games played in the states.

Where the global game is concerned, it is not a given that the US national team enjoys support at home. World Cup qualifying matches played in the US are scheduled in locations that minimize the presence of Latino supports of other teams - later this fall the US plays El Salvador not in Los Angeles (you could fill the Rose Bowl with supporters of both teams) but in Utah (there will still be tons of Salvadorean fans at that game). February's game against Mexico was played in Ohio. The US played Trinidad and Tobago in Tenessee, and Honduras in Chicago.

Over 79,000 people turned out to watch July's Gold Cup final, and by all reports the stadium offered thunderous support for the Mexican side. As Andrew Das wrote for The New York Times soccer blog,

Do not expect Giants Stadium to host any important World Cup qualifiers in your lifetime.

Landon Donovan explains:

Against Honduras in 2001, there were 55,000 people in RFK Stadium (in Washington DC). My guess is 40,000 were Hondurans. We lost. Selling tickets and making money is fine, but our priority is for South Africa. And to have the best chance, we need to play in places that make it harder for our opponents. One time we played Mexico in Columbus, and the temperature was below freezing. Now, that was a big advantage.

However you slice it, this stuff makes a great story - and if there is any place in the world where you can feel the tension in the overstretched fabric of American nationalism, it's in the complexity and intensity of this rivalry.

So, that's the sort of thing Gustavo and I will be talking about. Can't wait!

[In the interview, I mentioned the semifinal match between Turkey and Germany in Euro 2008 as an interesting point of comparison - see this New York Times article for an introduction to the topic. Even if you speak don't German, Turkish, or the Turkish-German version of Spanglish, it's worth watching Tiger Berlin's SUPER-EM-STÜDIO series of reports on the tournament in which he often acts out highlights of the match - this episode previews the Turkey - Germany match, and this one drops you right in the aftermath - note his awesome bi-national jersey, and how in this wrap up episode, puts on the USA sweatshirt which seems to be his uniform of choice. ]