Some Galaxy fans think a lot of us Angelinos are not really committed to soccer. While we turn out by the tens of thousands to see Barça, Chelsea, AC Milan and Inter, the fact is, most of us take a pass on making the drive to Carson and few of us really care that much about the whole Beckham/Riot Squad thing.
A number of MLS fans find this annoying. On the morning of the Galaxy/Barcelona match, I spent a good fifteen minutes in a heated discussion about this with one such fan. (We were both getting coffee at the local farmer's market, and he was wearing a souvenir cap from the Galaxy/AC Milan match - I couldn't resist asking him about it.)
He wanted to know where all these people are during MLS games. Some MLS fans call those of us who come out for these exhibition matches suckers (for paying for expensive tickets for off-season friendlies), and question the sincerity of our interest in the sport. The more extreme MLS advocates turn to a nativist logic - arguing that if you are in the U.S., and if you care about soccer, then you should support the U.S. pro league - and your local team - above all others.
This is, for many, the eternal problem - there is something intractably foreign about the game here. Even though it's been played in the U.S. for nearly as long as the game has been played anywhere, its fans, the teams, and the players seem eternally alien - the whole enterprise feels like it comes from somewhere else. The attempt to Americanize the men's game is as fraught as any assimilationist project.
I was one of the nearly 93,000 at the Rose Bowl last night. Barça's blue and red seemed to outnumber the Galaxy's white and black by five to one. This was especially the case among tailgaters - hundreds of camps celebrated the club that is més que un club. Folks brought tents, grills, lawn chairs, tiny pop-up goals - cars were outfitted with Catalan flags, Barça chants boomed from their speakers. I wouldn't say that these were casual fans of either the team or the sport.
This atmosphere had as much to do with the evening's pleasure as did the well-played game. It had me mulling over the morning's conversation about the MLS and its attempt to sell us soccer as a national pastime.
I found myself asking: "What do we want, really, for and from this sport?"
Is making a corporate success of the MLS - and lining the pockets of the dubious executives who run it - the lone measure of the game's success? Is rooting for the Galaxy, and giving our dollars to the creepy monster that is AEG the only way to express one's loyalty? Aren't there other ways to imagine what the passion of fútbol fans looks like?
Perhaps it looks like tens of thousands of people playing the game on nights and weekends in pick-up games, and youth and adult leagues. Maybe it's people congregating in local cantinas to cheer and jeer mythological giants on bootlegged broadcasts. Maybe it's the conversations it lets you strike up with the guy sitting next to you on a bus ride.
Perhaps the game practiced here is migratory and local, massive and low-fi.
Why not imagine that one of the best things about soccer in the U.S. is that it isn't a "national" sport, and that it's most successful here where global capital hasn't quite figured out how to exploit us as either a market or a pool of labor?
Maybe we should work on making the submission of our pleasure to the machinery of corporate greed harder, and not easier.
I am talking tomorrow with Gustavo Arellano (KPFK 90.7/4:00pm) about David Beckham, one of my favorite subjects. [Archived show can be found here.] Becks, of course, is much in the news for his reappearance on the LA Galaxy roster in an exhibition match against the other team in his life - AC Milan. (See Nick Green's match report.)
While watching the game on television this afternoon, I couldn't help noticing that the man seems happier. He looks great and seems generally more fit. At the moment, he makes a great case for sleeping around.
It's a foreign concept for the American sports fan, but in the global economy of the beautiful game, players are loaned out all the time. The motivations for such deals are complex, but at least two desired effects can be seen plainly in this case - the guy seems happy, and playing the field drums up interest.
As one sports writerafter another leaps on the booing Galaxy supporters as a sign of his failure, Becks manages to do what no other MLS player can: force U.S. mainstream media to pay attention. [For more on this side of his abilities, read this great When Saturday Comes story about Beckham and media coverage of his transfer from Man U to Real Madrid.] Of course, some complain that not enough attention is being payed to the game itself - but, well, you could say that about media coverage of the sport globally as transfer rumors, crazy club finance and WAG antics dominate headlines from London to Rio.
Watching this youtube video of Beckham reacting to booing fans (one of whom responded to Beckham's taunt by trying to scramble onto the field), I couldn't help but think that the Galaxy and the MLS have let themselves be cast as the staid, uptight American housewives (Carol Brady) to AC Milan's dynamic, knowing, and confident Italian lover (Sophia Loren). As if to confirm this, at 50 seconds you can see one fan holding up a sign displaying the word "COMMITMENT" (and something illegible) to scold Beckham for his bad behavior.
I don't know about you, but that'd have me checking out flights to Milan pretty quick.
Of course I have more to say about Beckham & his continental lovers - but I'll save it for the interview.
Before heading into the stadium I checked out the shop - no skort, or wrap, or whatever it is. The guys working there laughed when I asked if they carried it. Looking at the pile of Marta shirts, I found myself contemplating not the name on the back, but the name on the front. Amway? I decided I'd rather wear a Brazil shirt.
[Note to the Galaxy/SOL marketing folks: Why don't you sell national jerseys for all your international players - that'd be half the SOL squad. How great would that be to see national kits on display (and for sale) for Duan, Miyama, Frisk, Abily, Marta, Wagner, etc.?! China, Japan, Sweden, France, Brazil, and the US?! Seems like a no-brainer to me. I'd have picked up a bunch of those for my nieces.]
Amway is a SOL sponsor - and, well, just look at their wikipedia entry, which has a whole section on the "controversy" pertaining to their not-illegal pyramid scheme, and the cult-like culture of the organization which lures people in to work as distributors for their products with promises of the money they will make as they lure more people in to work as distributors for their product. Sound familiar? It should: Herbalife works the same way, and that name is plastered on the front of the Galaxy shirts. From the Guardian's obit for that company's founder (Mark Hughes: Purveyor of Californian Health Cures to the Credulous/June 19, 2000):
During the next few years the firm [Herbalife] was formally criticised at least three times by the United States Food and Drugs Administration, and subject to a CNN television exposé, a senate investigative committee inquiry, denunciations from a medical watchdog organisation and an $850,000 penalty payment imposed by the California attorney general for making false medical claims and marketing an illegal pyramid sales scheme. This recruited 750,000 "distributors" in what Hughes claimed were 48 countries, including Britain.
I've always been puzzled by the Herbalife thing. It seems really backwards to have a weight loss/vitamin supplements company sponsoring a soccer team. Think in terms of fitness, for example - wouldn't the Galaxy want its message to be something like - get out there and play? Not: "take these magic pills and it will be as if you have played"? And then think in terms of marketing: do you really want to associate your team's identity with a company that's been stained with accusations of not only making false promises to its consumers about the health benefits of their product, but also of falsely representing how much money their distributors will make by signing on?
The more I learn about the corporate architecture behind the Galaxy and now the SOL, the more depressed I become.
All this aside - not that it can really be put aside - it was an entertaining game.
It didn't start that way, though (See Nick Green's post, with great quotes from Aly Wagner about the rough start).
Yesterday it was about 94 degrees in Carson - so neither the SOL not the Gold Pride looked quite right. In the opening minutes there was a general lack of fight for the ball - especially when asked to run it down. The game definitely picked up as the players adjusted to the heat. Looking over the WPS calendar I have to ask why on earth the Sol and their opponents are playing games at 1:00pm and 3:00pm in June, July, and August? The Galaxy play mostly early evening home games, with a few exceptions.
They'll get used to the heat, I guess. But, wow. So much for the weaker sex! They'll be a lot tougher than their corporate siblings. (They are already much, much more fun to watch than the Galaxy.)
A lot of the game's energy was generated by the two Japanese stars on the field: AyaMiyawa for the Sol, and EricoArakawa. They both worked from start to finish, and were quick, great on the ball, and just all around dynamic - superstars, really. And I absolutely loved watching Formiga and Marta go up against each other. They seemed really well matched as Formiga won the ball off of Marta a couple times - I am a huge fan of hers, and can't wait to see her play again.
The game was fun. Especially since I migrated from my $40 seats to the sparsely populated mid-field and found myself behind these gals.
Last summer's Galaxy/Chivas match was fun to watch, even if it wasn’t the most beautiful version of the beautiful game. It was a 0-3 routing – an uncharacteristic result, as the Galaxy have won most of the matches played against Chivas USA, the team with which they share the stadium. But Galaxy/Chivas USA is the best rivalry in MLS – Beckham’s arrival merely turns up the heat, letting Chivas USA be David to Galaxy’s unlikely Goliath.
Lost in much mass media coverage of Beckham’s arrival is the way that most basic terms of the conversation have already been determined by the received wisdom, that “Americans don’t play/watch/care about soccer.” It just isn’t true – and, worse, it obscures the existence of those who do. That sentence describes more accurately the wish that the sport had a different audience than the one it does – especially in the Southwest, where a very large portion of local fans are made up of Chicanos and Latin Americans, of long established communities and recently formed ones, from nearly everywhere. Mexican league games have drawn larger television audiences for Spanish language channels than, for example, Hockey’s Stanley Cup finals; premium cable packages come not only with dozens of movie channels, lots of NBA and NFL coverage, but a myriad of channels broadcasting nothing but soccer – in Spanish, English, and frequently in mixtures of the two - e.g Fox Soccer Channel.
Nobody really needs to “sell” soccer to American consumers – the market is already there. Nevertheless, on the surface at least, the MLS is plagued by insecurity over the development of the sport – playing its season, for example, over the summer (when international players are in demand from teams competing in trials and playoffs for the World Cup, or the Copa America, Euro, etc.) so as not to put US audiences in the position of having to choose between a Pistons game, for example, or the Columbus Crew.
In Los Angeles, any public park with open space has to manage the large and ever increasing demand for soccer fields – many parks respond with signs of stick figures kicking a ball, line drawn diagonally across and captioned with “No Soccer”. New soccer fields are booked months before they open to play. MacArthur park, home of the May Day demonstration for immigrants' rights violently shut down by the Los Angeles Police Department is an informal home to scores of games – from kids kicking the ball with their friends, to pick-up games, and tournaments organized by local leagues. (The recent film “Goal” opens with one of these games). Lafayette Park, just to the west, is home to a small artificial turf field open for about a year, and already host to three adult men’s leagues (not to mention hours and hours of youth soccer), with games starting at 6:00pm (weekdays, 6am! weekends) and ending sometime after 11:00pm – at which point those of us looking for informal games take the field until as late as 2:00am. On a Friday night in the summer, you might watch Lempira play, a team of mostly Honduran locals (Lempira was an indigenous warrior who fought Spanish colonials - the national currency is named after him). They are strong, big, fast, physical. Or Alianza, a team of experienced players mostly from El Salvador (newly regrouped as Inter), and boasting an Olympian (Antonio Serpas) among their ranks. Or “Barcelona” — one of the youngest teams - lightfooted, lithe, and athletic, as one might expect, given their name. (My favorite name, from the Fall/Winter 2007 roster: “Resto del Mundo”) The field is walled in with a high chain link fence, and on good nights dozens of people may be lined along this perimeter– wives, girlfriends, buddies, kids, other teams waiting for the field. Pan back, and you see that this field is surrounded by a network of dirt patches home to as many as a dozen “kickabouts” – pick-up games of mostly – but not only - men and boys of all ages playing around palm trees and park benches, using garbage cans to mark goals.
Further east and to the north, on any given day, most of the fields at Ferraro Fields in Griffith Park are booked through 10:00pm – at best, a new team might rent the uneven patch of dust adjacent to the freeway at 8:00pm on a weeknight. On the better fields, you will find games for the LA Metro and Super Metro division, parallel women's leagues, tournament games organized by area churches, etc. (Again, I am not even touching on AYSO.) South Central – just about the last place in America some might imagine as populated by “soccer moms” — is home to Compton United – local referees identify it as one of the most competitive and exciting youth teams in the city. Women play all over the city – on Monday evenings, the gorgeous 3G soccer fields at the Glendale Sports Complex, nestled in between the 2 freeway and a scrubby mountainside, are covered by women playing games of lung burning 7 on 7.
A comprehensive portrait of amateur soccer in Los Angeles would be a tome no less complex that the city’s population itself. I don’t wear my CF América scarf out all the time: Lots of El Salvadoreans live in my neighborhood, and hate Mexican League soccer, so it’s not a great way to make friends (which is why I keep my Tottenham hat in my pocket until I’m a good distance from my Arsenal supporting neighborhood – don’t get me wrong, I love Arsenal – but that red!). Better to choose a Barcelona scarf: Everybody loves Barça (except, I guess, in Madrid). Anyway, It’s easy to assume that Latinos prefer Chivas USA, but the reality is that lots of Latino fans route for the Galaxy over Chivas USA – partly because the Galaxy have been in LA longer, and partly because, well, Chivas Guadalajara is a team people love to hate. Beware: this crude youtube montage features the all too typical super lame homophobia of haters - largely in the form of "somos gay" scribbles across chivas team photos and insignia. This was one of the tamer montages I culled from a youtube search of "chivas haters."(See NY Times Blog on the subject of Chivas USA & La Galaxy). Chivas USA’s arrival in Los Angeles thus gave instant birth to the best rivalry in MLS – if you are from, say Hondorus, Guatemala, or El Salvador – or if your favorite Mexican team is anybody but Chivas, you may be more likely to support the Galaxy if not out of love, then out of hate. (Recalling Tottenham’s chant, “If you hate Arsenal, stand up!” – after yesterday’s game I can see how Tottenham fans might feel this way.) Even if Beckham’s arrival has drawn more of “Hollywood” to the Home Depot Center, it would take a lot more than that to marginalize Latino - or, in local futbol parlance, Latin - fans. We have a perfect embodiment of the density of LA Fútbol culture in the eternally, queerly fascinating Morrissey - an out Chivas USA fan. For those not in the know, he's a huge icon for the Chicano Goth set - see, for example, the tribute band The Sweet and Tender Hooligans. (The image on the right, a reproduction of a work by the artist Shizu Saldamando captures the mood of this scene eloquently). Anyway, Morrissey apparently even offers discounts to his own concerts for Chivas fans. (What does this mean for his reported comments about immigration and England? How can this person be that person? See Dave Simpson's blog entry on this controversy for more info.)
Watching the Galaxy lose to Chivas (the Galaxy have won the overwhelming majority of these match-ups, and so Chivas fans seems to take particular pleasure from the win over Beckham’s side), I couldn’t help but wonder if the British superstar (Becks) knew just how far from home he’d come. The following day was marked by a more ordinary experience – a sunset pick-up game under the skyline of downtown Los Angeles, in a park dropped in the middle of its industrial parts. Wedged between warehouses and a metro train track, this modest space (open about year) is now home to some of the friendliest pick up games in the city. It’s the kind of thing that seems hard to find in London – in spite of an abundance of green space. Maybe it’s California’s weather, a warmth that can expand into its culture – I saw women older than me kicking the ball around with guys, teenagers and younger kids out with friends and family, and my crew from Lafayette - not the culture of Beverly Hills, but the culture of El Resto del Mundo.
It’s a misty and cool January Sunday - nearly a year ago - and I’m wending my way from downtown Los Angeles to Palos Verdes – a gorgeous and very exclusive coastal region south of the city (not far from Carson, home of Chivas USA & LA Galaxy). The landscape changes from the flat freeway-crossed grid of south LA to the open, breezy boulevards of Lomita (I think), and after an hour I’m lost in a hilly enclave whose streets are lined with eucalyptus & willow, edged with gorgeous running paths and demarcated by wooden signs that look so little street signs that I’ve missed my turn-off twice. This looks like a place where people ride horses and know what a field hockey stick looks like.
I arrive at the Palos Verdes High School, mere blocks from seaside cliffs. It's about ten minutes into the game between Hollywood United Football Club and Palos Verdes Soccer Club. It’s not a beautiful game. The field is pretty shitty, and nobody seems to have much rhythm, except for HUFC’s defense – anchored by Alexi Lalas.
Hollywood United is a somewhat fabled team in Los Angeles. My information here is sketchy, but: They were founded in the 1980s, by mostly Hollywood musicians. I want to say that someone from The Cult (Billy Duffy, who still plays?) founded the team. Check out the very media heavy HUFC myspace page. Anyway, I have the impression that the team was made up of the sorts of guys who used to hang out at the pub-style bar, The Cat & The Fiddle on Sunset Blvd. Rockers, europhiles, eurotrash. I normally use that last word with much affection, here, however, I use it with deep ambivalence.
The team's greying roots in the entertainment industry are still alive - Steve Jones takes the field, Anthony Lapaglia plays goalie (they have an older team they call "Dad's Army" as well as young team that plays in the LA Metro Division). I in fact learned about HU first from my friend Peter, who was playing for another interesting LA amateur team, Dinamo - he was defending Steve Jones, and recognized him in the middle of game - a strange experience I would imagine. (He said Jones is really good, and was fun to defend.) LA Galaxy president Alexi Lalas plays for them - I have a soft spot for him, as we were at Rutgers at the same time - the first soccer games I ever watched were at Rutgers, and were during their great 1990 season when they went to the NCAA championship (only to lose on penalty kicks if memory serves).
I've seen a couple HUFC and HUFC related games over the course of the year, as I've been interested in learning more about league play in Los Angeles County. HUFC is the most visible team in the region - if by visibility we mean mass media attention - though, to be honest, I think they get more press in the UK than back home. They are however, the least representative team if by representative we mean how much they look like the people who play soccer in Los Angeles. There are more leagues in LA than one can imagine - setting aside youth leagues (a universe unto itself), we have adult men's and women's leagues in abundance, and a wealth of opportunities for pick-up games - the latter much easier to find if you are a guy, but not impossible if you are a gal. The men's leagues are mostly but not totally Latino - and with the Latin scene, we have a huge diversity - Mexican, Costa Rican, Ecuadorian, El Salvadorean, Argentinian, Brazilian, Venezuelan, Guatemalan players abound. Add to that Armenian, Russian, home-grown African-American, African, English, French, Korean, Korean-American, Japanese-American - and you get a picture of what the sides are like in LA.
SO, the game that Sunday was representative of a narrow slice of LA life - the teams, while not entirely white (though both were mostly so), seemed cut from the same cloth in terms of class - guys who played NCAA Division I soccer and ex-internationals, which is a pretty specific filter. That slice includes very well funded teams, manned by guys who are really dedicated to the sport (many of whom are fantastic players), but perhaps more upward-looking in terms of the soccer food chain - cultivating something like a 'big club' vibe about themselves.
What struck me most about this particular game was the contrast between the Palos Verdes guys & the HUFC guys – and the three El Salvadorean referees. The HUFC guys were cold and aloof, they eyed me with what seemed like suspicion - with the exception of Lalas, who warm, friendly, and curious about what I was foing. The rest were, like: who is this weird girl? The only women there were girlfriends and wives of players - so I can see how my presence didn't make sense. The PV guys were a bit nicer - as were their friends and family - I talked to a couple moms - soccer moms with 30 year old sons on the field - and they were all too happy to recount the details of their sons' careers playing for UCLA, etc. The HU WAGS weren't featuring me at all.
But most interesting, and forthcoming, were guys working the match as referee & linesmen, all certified by CAFLA, a training school for refs, run, as it should be, in spanish - the defacto language of the pitch in southern california. I catch them as they are loading up their cars long after everyone else has left. And where with the others my introduction “Hello, I’m researching amateur soccer in LA” was met politely, but not exactly with enthusiasm – the ref’s spot my Club América scarf, and so start teasing me about what a disaster Mexican soccer is ("crazy futbol!"). Turns out the three are from El Salvador. We talked about the Mexico/Argentina World Cup match - one of the best of the summer.
This leads to a great conversation about nationalies playing in the leagues - about the rivalries between esp. El Salvadorian players and Mexican players, and then about the subtleties within Mexican soccer culture itself.
The three of them have lots to say about the game I'd watched - HUFCs players complained endlessly about the calls, and about the field – “Ballarinas only want to dance on Broadway” one says, and they laugh about how the old guys are reluctant to admit that they just don’t have the speed to compete against a middling-in-terms-of-skills, but younger-in-terms-of-years team. (HUAC lost this one.) I remark that it seems to me that when guys go up against HUFC, they look at Lalas - who was a hero to American players in the university circuit - and they get really pumped up to win - how many chances in your life do you get to play against your heroes? It seems to me that the teams playing against HUFC have more fun, and relish every good shot, good tackle - take a real pleasure from the game - one less accessible to the HUFC guys who, in the games I saw, spent a lot of time yelling at each other. (Frank LeBeouf in particular - who had little business yelling at anyone in my mind, as he never seemed to be up for a run.)
We mull over this, and they tell me about the better games being played by the Latin leagues – at far flung corners of the LA basin – Whittier, and Compton. They tell me to check out CAFLA training sessions. We stood in the parking lot chatting for a long time - they also gave me their names and numbers, which I much appreciated.
Anyway, I have lots more to say about this - those guys were absolutely right: the most inspiring scenes are to be found in the scrappy urban leagues inand around the city. That's where you'll find the coolest players - like Tenge, of Lafayette Park, who plays half the time on the pitch talking to his girlfriend on his cell phone - and isn't hindered by that in the least - in fact, I think he plays better while on the phone. I have lots more to say about HUFC - especially about their "sister" team, which I tried to appreciate, but just can't support - it's the most offensive thing ever, in fact, such an upsettingly sexist endeavor that it's poisoned whatever generousity I might have had about HUFC. I have to save my thoughts on that for a separate post.
The future of soccer rests in the scenes the CAFLA guys know - the enthusiam, love of the game, knowledge - there is a deep resevoir of talent and energy out there, below Anglo mass media radar. The LA times picked up on this in a recent story about the changing demographics in LA area schools - where many campuses are 80% + Latino - at those schools, there is a tremendous interest in soccer, and those teams are now dominating high school competition. Well - that, and the whole gender issue, is for another day, another post.
Jennifer Doyle lives in Los Angeles and teaches at the University of California, Riverside. She wrote From a Left Wing from late 2007 until late 2013. Scroll through categories below for writing about gender, the international women's game, Los Angeles fútbol and more. You can read the preface to her most recent book here: Hold It Against Me: Difficulty and Emotion in Contemporary Art. Sometime in the near future, this whole blog will be taken down and archived, as she prepares to publish a book anchored in this writing.
I was one of the nearly 93,000 at the Rose Bowl last night. Barça's blue and red seemed to outnumber the Galaxy's white and black by five to one. This was especially the case among tailgaters - hundreds of camps celebrated the club that is més que un club. Folks brought tents, grills, lawn chairs, tiny pop-up goals - cars were outfitted with Catalan flags, Barça chants boomed from their speakers. I wouldn't say that these were casual fans of either the team or the sport.
