Amanda Palmer's 'Leeds United'

Amanda Palmer is one half of The Dresden Dolls. "Leeds United" is off her solo album, Who Killed Amanda Palmer?. The track isn't directly about Leeds but the pounding on the keys, the blaring horns, the voice hoarse from shouting/screaming/singing taps into the riot of football crowds. She explains that the whole idea of turning out to support your team & getting into brawls with each other struck her as "Roman" and a good subject for her. I think this song is also picking at the interface of unruly feelings and the desire for control with lines like

Who needs love, when there's Law and Order?
And who needs love when there's Southern Comfort?
And who needs love when the sandwiches are wicked
And they know you at the Mac store?

Indeed. It gets more intense as the song expands into mayhem. [Football fandom is folded into these retreats from love & then the flip into chaos.] The vocal was, apparently, done in a single take - all the better to sound "unhinged". "My voice was completely in the gutter," she explains. And what a great place that is. Enjoy.



[I should say, this is a preview for my review of The Damned UTD (2009) - I saw it the other week under the promise I'd wait until its official release to publish my thoughts.]

Soccer in Ciudad Juárez

Amazing that the network of soccer haters produced this gem about fans of Ciudad Juárez's Indios [Click here if the video isn't loading on this page]:



I understand that they just fired their coach. Last year "El Profesor" Eugui led them through improbable playoff victories against Chivas and Toluca. This season, apparently, the team hasn't been doing nearly so well. Let's hope things start looking up for them real soon. Tip courtesy of Pablo Miralles (of Ahí Vienen Los Gringos).

Las Fútbolistas (Great Grandma on the Left Wing)

"Las Fútbolistas" Ángel Zárraga (Mexico, 1886-1946)

A friend recommended this painting to me - amazing, given the year it was painted and the commonly held view that women's football is a recent phenomenon spearheaded by post Title IX generations of American women. By chance, I happen to be just finishing Barbara Jacobs's incredible portrait of perhaps the most successful and famous side in English women's football, The Dick, Kerr's Ladies (see also this recent Guardian story). Jacobs charts the development of this team during and after World War I - Lancashire women working in factories (while men were on the front) formed recreational teams, and then played charity matches to raise funds for returning soldiers. These matches drew impressive crowds by any standard - 10,000, 15,000, 35,000, 53,000, 65,000. People with almost nothing to spend on themselves paid for tickets - and all the money raised (beyond expenses for the players) was turned over to local charities. (Interesting detail: the women's games from these years produced what is arguably the first night match in a Boxing Day derby.)

As these women became national - and even international celebrities - and as women's football developed rapidly into a form of popular entertainment - the establishment decided that it was too dangerous. It was deemed inappropriate for women by the FA in 1921. Jacobs points out that this ban was likely issued as much for reasons of class as gender - these teams forward images of working class women doing something other than laboring as servants and in factories, and breeding more workers to do the same. It also foregrounded the very different gender dynamics within the laboring communities of the northwest of England. Matches raised huge sums to support returning soldiers - wounded, traumatized, and re-entering a very changed labor market (changed, in no small part, by the war itself and by the women's work in the factories). Men in the northwest actively supported the women's game - the success of the women's game, in other words, not only challenged ideas about femininity, it challenged the social organization of relationships between men and women (thus not only were women banned from FA grounds, men were banned from refereeing women's matches).

Jacobs also points out that the FA must have been getting nervous - all of the profits raised by these matches went back to the communities which hosted them. In fact, were it not for the women, the FA could not have taken any credit for charity works during these years. But as thousands of people spent their hard earned dollars to see the women play, and to support their neighbors - it was inevitable that they would begin to ask: "Where does all the money raised by the men's games go?" Indeed!

I am inclined to think that this - the anti-capitalist, labor-oriented ethos of women's football and its fans - must have been the bigger challenge to the (fragile, shifting) social structures of the day. (Jacobs is very good at breaking down the complex class dynamics of sport and leisure in the UK.) The success of the league, and the FA's hysterical reaction proves a point made by a range of radical feminist thinkers - a truly feminist environment seeks to destroy mythologies of gender difference. In doing so, it tackles the very architecture of capitalism. And that's the bit that really freaks people out.

[I am researching the story behind this painting - there is a probably link between it & The Dick, Kerr Ladies - Zárraga was in France when he painted this and other gorgeous sports tableaux. It may have emerged from his contact with French women's teams - one of the great stories of the Dick, Kerr's Ladies were their matches against a French team both in England and in France. Seems very likely there is only one or two degrees separation between the painter and the Lancashire lasses.]

"Are You Serious?" - notes on Williams's outrage

When confronted with the accusation that she'd threatened to kill the line judge, echoing John McEnroe's mantra of complaint, Serena Williams looked at the officials and asked "Are you serious?"

Williams had lost her cool, that much is indisputable. This happens to many of the best athletes when things aren't going as they'd hoped and planned. As she stated herself, her passion got the better of her when it disintegrated into anger. You can see that here as she is walking back to take her serve again, she loses her focus and is pulled out of the game by anger at the quite obviously bad call.



Athletes lose their cool all the time, in a wide range of sports - Zidane's headbutt is perhaps the most famous example of a player losing his temper spectacularly. Of course, that was worlds worse that what Williams did - the two actions are hardly comparable though you would never know it from the media reaction to the tennis player.

Not every athlete has their verbal and affective expression of anger read as life-threatening. No, this accusation - that Williams issued a death threat to the line judge - is the kind of thing reserved for Black and Latino men and women.

In the men's league I help run, a white linesman not used to working in our part of town walked off the field because he felt his life was in danger after a Latino player yelled at him - the center referee, an older Latino guy, was glad to see him go - the guy's racial hysteria had been a problem from the match's start. Our league is mixed, our referees are white, Latino, Armenian and more - they share a commitment to fairness, including an active refusal to allow bias shape how they call a game, and react to players.

Jasmine Cannick writes on Black Tennis Pro's:

Williams could be heard saying to the lineswoman: “I didn’t say I would kill you. Are you serious?”

Yeah, are you serious?

Most Black women can relate to what happened to Serena. We get mad like everyone else. The only difference is that for some reason when white women get angry, they’re not seen as threatening as we are. Maybe it’s the expression on our face. Maybe it’s the seriousness with which we address issues when we are upset. Maybe it’s the tone of our voice. You know that “don’t fuck with me today” tone that can stop a person dead in their tracks and scares the shit out of most white people.

Like comedian Dick Gregory said about Black people’s hair, when we’re 'relaxed', white people are 'relaxed'. You could say the same applies in tennis.

This is an important point. While it doesn't seem unreasonable that an official might take issue with Williams's expressed desire to shove the ball down the line judge's throat, the reaction to it - from the accusation that she'd threatened to kill the line judge to smug media reaction to her "disgraceful" conduct - is quite obviously amplified by racism and sexism, and reminds me of why I'm not such a big fan of tennis (the culture of which can seem as airless and uptight as the country clubs from which it emerged).

Of course such eruptions happen in tennis, and as many have pointed out, it in fact defined the personas of a range of male players. Other sports have furthermore made an art out of conflict between players, managers, coaches and referees. Baseball has perhaps perfected this - fully integrating this drama into the sport. Bruce Weber explains how umpires are instructed to take the abuse directed at them, and how to tell the difference between the anger that is part of the game, and anger which threatens the authority of the refereeing official. His Fresh Air interview is well worth listening to - there he explains how argument with the umpire works:

An umpire goes against his instincts as a human being. Most people when they get in an argument, they try to win it. But an umpire's job is not to win an argument it's to end the argument....

You have to read your opponent....Wait him out, don't bait, don't try to get the last word in, don't insult him, don't do anything that is going to perpetuate the argument.

When a guy is calling your mother all kinds of names, and questioning your ethnicity and manhood...it's hard to keep your head.

You can use all the profanity you want [when arguing with an umpire], as long as you don't make it personal....the magic word is "you." You can say "That was a horseshit call!" but you can't say "You're horseshit!"

Should you say the latter, the umpire has every right to eject you from the game. Does the world stop when this happens? Or when a yellow or red card is issued for dissent? Of course not.

Few sports cultures expect players to accept outrageously bad calls made at critical junctures. And sports have mechanisms for absorbing that complaint into the practice of the game. Referees in basketball, baseball, American football, and soccer expect anger and hostility at such moments, and have experience and professional guidance on how to keep oneself from being intimidated by such things, while also acknowledging that you can't write conflict, dispute, and anger out of the game.

I'm sure Williams wished she said something else. Like: "That was a fucking horseshit call and you know it." But given the culture within which she must work, I am not convinced that this would have made the slightest difference.

[For more commentary on this, see Troubling Comments from the US Open, as well as recent posts on Black Tennis Pro's and Women Talk Sports.]

Tomorrow: European Championship match England v Germany

Tomorrow England and Germany will compete for the European Championship. Germany rules the hen house and has for far too long - having won every European Championship since 1995.

The annoyingly titled Die Besten Frauen der Welt (subtitled in English) shows the level of their training, and that pretty much says it all. Few women's teams in the world enjoy the material and technical support that are given to top players in Germany.

That said, England had a good result against Germany in the last World Cup - holding the eventual champions to a scoreless draw. The English players have a lot of skill and experience - and a lot more riding on their performance than the Germans. They have more to prove to a country that is strangely aware of the women's game (your average Brit can name the best women's team, where your average American can't) and yet hosts a persistently unsupportive media and FA - this is, of course, why so many English players are on WPS rosters.

I'll leave the previews to UEFA & the English press:

The Guardian: England out to poop the German party and England's women are pitch perfect and Who's who in the England Squad.
The Telegraph: England women face tricky Germany test
UEFA's site: Germany, England, ready for a classic

Not sure if it's being broadcast in the US, but you can watch the match here.

David Beckham + Ellen

Another one for the archive in support of David Beckham: Lesbian Icon. Check out David Beckham's appearance yesterday on Ellen, sporting Ellen underwear. [My youtube link to this segment is not working - you can hunt around for the full interview by searching for David Beckham on Ellen.]

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.

Editorial linking the stories of Semenya and Simelane

To follow up on posts about Caster Semenya and Eudy Simelane: Mark Gevisser writes a great editorial in South Africa's The Times calling attention to the links between the two stories, "Celebrated and Castigated." Gevisser asks if the conversations about gender sparked by Semenya's visibility had happened a couple years ago, would Simelane have been murdered? His question is rhetorical - but he goes on to sketch some of the intense contradictions that shape discourse on gender, sexuality, colonialism and nationalism. I really recommend reading articles in The Times for South African perspectives on both stories, and how they relate to each other.

As he was writing this, Semenya appeared on the pages of a Sunday magazine femme-d up, The Times covers the debates about this as well in "Caster Gets Made Over."

Girlie "S'Gelane" Nkosi, Eudy Simelane's teammate and a lesbian activist, murdered.

Please read John Turnbull's story about Eudy Simelane. Turnbull digs a little deeper into the crime reported in The Guardian's story about the wave of violent attacks on black lesbians in South Africa (these are often referred to as "corrective rapes"). [You can find LGBT writing on the case here.] Amplifying the sense that there is a link between lesbian visibility and football, Turnbull explains that a second woman from Simelane's local women's team died recently from injuries sustained in a similar attack. Girlie "S'Gelane" Nkosi was a gay and lesbian rights activist. Turnbull quotes from her memorial program: She "[transgressed] all social gender norms and openly confronted the ills posed by economic exclusion" and was "arguably the most visible lesbian of Kwa-Thema."

Their hometown, Turnbull also explains, had been a kind of queer haven for black men and women in the 1980s - and so these attacks have special importance as perhaps symptomatic of a larger reactionary and phobic shift in the culture of the country that was one of the first to allow for same sex marriages.

As I mentioned in my first post about Simelane's murder, reading from the U.S., it is tempting to see this kind of violence against women as a remote problem. Violence against queer men and women is, however, not as uncommon as people like to think. Butch women, lesbians, effeminate boys and men, drag queens and transgendered people do not have the luxury of imagining such violence as a far away problem. One sad example from my own local papers: Lawrence King, a remarkable 14 year old boy who had come out to his class and wore make up and girlie accessories to school, was shot and killed by a classmate in 2008.

Turnbull offers us a much needed perspective on Simelane and Nkosi's lives. There is still a lot more to be said about both of these women - about their lives and about the justice system that appears to be failing their communities. Judges, it seems, can't bear to acknowledge that the lesbianism of these women is relevant - in fact, Turnbull writes:

This past week, Circuit Court Judge Ratha Mokgoatlheng asked whether “lesbian” was an appropriate word to use in court.

This story leaves me with a sickening feeling of outrage, dread and sadness. It is an all-too familiar story - homosexuality so deeply criminalized that the mere mention of it is prohibited.

Imagine the impact that an openly anti-homophobic and queer positive WPS might have, globally. Imagine if the WPS, and other women's pro-leagues, say, held fundraising matches to support the fight against these forms of violence - used the visibility of its athletes to make a statement in support of women around the world?

Actually, why leave this to women?

What if, oh, say, FIFA saw these horrible attacks as crimes against their own athletes - and stepped in - especially as the World Cup will be hosted by South Africa this coming summer. Imagine if the footballing gods - no doubt worshiped by some of the men committing these attacks - publicly and loudly denounced all forms of homophobia? The English FA is trying to wrap its mind around such a thing. What about football's international governing body?

Imagine posters of Eto'o, C. Ronaldo, Lampard, or Henry declaring "Simelane was my sister."

Sadly, FIFA hasn't exactly been a pathfinder on this issue (frankly, I wouldn't call them leaders on the issue of women's football in general). Still, if gay English football supporters can get FIFA to pay attention to homophobic chants and graffitti in Belgrade, surely we can get FIFA to pay attention to, say, the murder of lesbian footballers?

That problem of scale in the comparison made by that sentence is ridiculous. That alone should make you get in touch with someone at, say, The US Soccer Federation: Phone: +1-312/808 1300. If you live outside the US, go to FIFA's associations site and click on your country's name. Contact information for your national FA should appear towards the bottom of the page on the right. Call them, and ask what they plan to do to raise awareness about homophobia in the game, and regarding the attacks on prominent lesbian footballers in South Africa. If they don't have any ideas, offer them a few, and suggest they pose this question to the Committee for Women's Football, the Bureau for the 2010 World Cup, and the Committee for Fair Play and Social Responsibility.

Thank you John Turnbull for once again offering some of the most solid journalism on issues that matter to international women's football.

England-Russia - from UEFA Women's Champions Tournament 2009

England fought their way back - are slugging their way through the tournament. Knowing a little about how shabbily they are treated by the English FA, I'm pulling for them. Kelly Smith has a crazy-good goal here. Enjoy. Commentary is in Russian. Their next game is against Sweden on Monday. Not sure what time yet - looks like 7:00pm in Finland? I think that's 9:00am Pacific.



[Update: August 31 - England are through to the quarterfinals after drawing against Sweden. UEFA match report here.]

Notes from an alienated fan: Why I want a feminist, anti-homophobic WPS & a more progressive, anti-nationalist/pro-migrant MLS

OK. I know a lot of you read that headline and either rolled your eyes, or muttered "dream on, sister."

I've been involved in a discussion on Big Soccer about Dan Loney's article, "Endless Summer". He opens with a reference to my post about the Galaxy/Barça game. Some Big Soccer readers have been baffled by my overtly political (feminist, Marxist) approach to the game (expressed in comments about Loney's article). Two issues have come up which I thought I should address here: why the politics of sexuality matters to a conversation about the WPS, and what on earth I was suggesting when I wrote:

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?

and:

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?

And so - in the interest of building on the dialogue with Big Soccer readers (and doing so within the platform of this blog) - below is a riff on why I want an actively anti-homophobic WPS, followed by one hypothesis as to how the MLS managed to alienate a lot of this region's most passionate fans of the game.

Part One: speaking as a fan of women's soccer

Some Big Soccer readers are puzzled as to why I insist on talking about the feminist politics of women's soccer, and they also want to know why I insist that homophobic attitudes ought to have no place in the management or ownership of WPS teams. (AEG owns 50% of the Sol, and itself owned by Philip Anschutz, a notorious backer of the anti-gay amendments that made Colorado infamous as the "hate state.")

One of most empowering moments for me, as a 40 something female sports spectator/casual player, came during the last FIFA Women's World Cup. I was in a bar in France, watching the Brazil/US Women's World Cup match. I didn't have access to a TV, so I went to "Le Bar Sportif" and asked them to put the match on (it was about 2pm in the afternoon). There were a dozen people there - a fair amount of grandpa-aged guys, a couple older women, some young guys. I knew Brazil was good (I was even rooting for them a little, because I thought they were the underdogs). Famously, they ran circles around the US.

It was on a major French cable t.v. channel (something akin to ESPN, I guess). It was being called by good broadcasters (far better than the MLS coverage, I'd say), one of those calling the match was a woman.

There is one moment from that match that stands out in my mind: Suddenly, in a fast, fluid, and masterful sequence of moves, Marta flicked the ball over and around the US defender, sending the ball one way, and going the other to scoop it safely to her feet and dribble it past another defender, and then slotted it past the goalie - the whole bar was on its feet.

The guys started shouting "Maradona! Maradona! Maradona!" And the French broadcasters were screaming - "If she were a man, she would be making millions." and "Ce n'est pas juste!" It was a "crise de guerre" - and everyone in the bar started talking about that, too - that it was wrong - criminal - that we couldn't watch her play every weekend.

Half of us were literally in tears - it took us all by surprise (like the US win over China at the Rosebowl). We were united, as any group of spectators is when a player transcends what we think is possible.

It also revealed how much of women's abilities we don't get to see. Because we don't get to see it, we think it doesn't exist at all. And when some series of accidents gets a woman like Marta out of her village in Brazil (to Sweden, then), and broadcasts her skill to millions of viewers - well, that has a huge effect on us all. Marta and her teammates play a "Latin" style of football that is deeply associated with masculinity (even as it involves lots of hip-swiveling!) It's very entertaining, and explosive. They trash-talk, they dive, they sometimes choose to hold the ball where you think they should pass it - and then weave it through the entire backline and score.

I didn't know women could play like that. And I'm a feminist, and fan of the international women's game.

Another revolutionary moment: In England, the WC final match between Brazil and Germany was THE MATCH OF THE DAY - it was broadcast on network television, in a place of tremendous importance to the rhythm of UK football culture. And England wasn't even playing.

My uncle, who normally occupied the living room during those afternoons, moved upstairs to the bedroom (to watch golf).

I sat down and watched it with my aunt - she is the sort of women who would probably have been an athlete had that opportunity been available to her. The two of us got quite emotional, talking about what it meant to us to see women on television, playing football at that level, at that time of day - normally reserved for the biggest Premiership matches.

I have never suggested we stage kiss-ins at WPS matches (though, now that I think about it, it sounds like fun!).

But I do not think anyone can really market women's sports successfully without being a feminist. I also do not think you can actually love this game if you don't appreciate, admire, and respect the people who play it at the highest levels. You can't appreciate, admire, and respect a person if you think that they are shameful - that who they love, who they build their lives with, is something that should be kept hidden as if it were a crime.

The WPS's biggest challenge is the global sexism and homophobia that shapes people's attitudes. There is always already a sense out there that people don't care about women's sports. You have to ask yourself where that attitude comes from. It doesn't come from nowhere. Women's matches are not boring to watch - unless they are played by athletes who have never had decent training or strong competition. (Those deprivations also don't come from nowhere.)

The spectacle of female athletes playing team sports challenges very basic concepts about women (we can handle individual women competing against each other in games like tennis because that is practically the only we way are supposed to relate to each other). Women were prohibited from playing baseball (they used to! Softball was invented to make "America's Pastime" just for men) - they still are, in fact. At some point, girls have to drop out of baseball and be segregated in softball. This is also why women play less sets in tennis than men. Women used to play the same amount of sets, but the tennis associations demanded they play less, so that people wouldn't think that women were as strong as men - players fighting for equal pay responded to the explanation that they get paid less because they play less by asking that they play the same as men, at which they were told "OK, we'll just give you the money." Better give them the money than blow peoples minds with the idea that women can battle each other for just as long as the men do.

The launch of a professional women's league in any sport must find ways to neutralize these attitudes. I agree, turning matches into Chucky-Cheese style outings is not the answer. Nor is turning a match into a political rally.

But geese - openly embracing gay fans doesn't mean you have to turn a match into a political rally (as many of the Big Soccer commentators have suggested)! But it does mean deciding that one would rather homophobes dealt with their fear, or stayed at home. And you know what, I actually don't think the audience for the WPS is dominated by people with those attitudes anyway. So it's really annoying to feel like the league, teams, and the media acquiesce to those anxieties.

I am perhaps an atypical sports fan. I came to women's soccer as a player through the queer feminist environment of the Hackney Women's Football Club. And through them, I learned that I'd rather in some ways see women's soccer flourish as an anti-homophobic, feminist space off the grid of mainstream culture, than see it whitewashed and constricted in order that it not scare off men.

My favorite attitude is Natasha Kai's - she outed herself very casually in an interview with NBC during the Olympics (!). Like it was no big deal. But of course it's a huge deal. It really matters - to every young queer girl who perhaps was feeling (as many, many gay and lesbian athletes do) that if her teammates found out she was gay then she'd have to quite the team. Maybe now she feels that in Kai she has a powerful ally. She has others potential role models - but she will only learn that when she reads the negatives - like: what player is NEVER pictured with a boyfriend/husband? What player do we know the LEAST about personally?

You just can't underestimate the positive impact of the sport on girls and women. For all sorts of reason. And I don't see why that shouldn't be enough - why any WPS team should turn itself inside out wondering how to make men who don't care about the game come to watch a match. Women make up half the population (slightly more, in fact). They earn money, they spend money. They spend their family's money. Why on earth should the business model for the "success" of the women's game be at all organized by the fear of alienating men?

Lest you think I'm a separatist, I ask: Why don't we have more faith in the men in our lives? (We seem to trust them enough to coach the vast majority of teams.) I see lots of guys at matches, of all sorts of ages. They are often more romantic about the women's game than women are! (e.g. "This is how the men used to play - as a team - before it became all about money and militaristic defense.") I don't think they care either way about the sexuality of the players - and we don't need to keep them in the closet to hold their attention.

Part Two: speaking as a fan of fútbol Angelino

To bring this all finally around the the MLS. I think a lot of soccer fans feel like MLS has an ambivalent relationship to the association of soccer with immigrant communities.

It's part of the romance, the mythology of the sport (e.g. the 1950 NT that upset England in the World Cup, the movie "Goal"). But at the same time, many Latinos/as living in the US (be they Mexican, Mexican American, from El Salvador, born here but from Honduras, etc.) feel ignored, undervalued by the MLS.

This is a very large percentage of the population in this part of the country and it is also a heterogeneous community very actively interested in soccer. These are not people who go to one Barça game and never think about soccer otherwise. These are people who can tell you everything about Barça's last couple seasons, sigh over the disaster of Ronaldinho's last few months there, and then rant about the Mexico NT and its managerial antics, and they also have a lot to say about the USNT, and MLS players. These are the television viewers to whom the region's stations cater with Spanish-speaking operators and cable packages Anglos never hear about. They are the readers keeping La Opinión, a Spanish-language daily newspaper, in the black (La Opinión thrives financially where the LA Times struggles because the former is the only place you can read up on international leagues, as well as get reports on the MLS and even local independent leagues).

This is the community to which I was referring in my article. They are a huge market, and have been hard for big corporations to master. Sure, these fans may go to one Barça match for $25, and they may also check out a Chivas or Galaxy match when they can, but lots are skeptical of the efforts of MLS teams to "support" the community (by, for example, asking you to sell discounted tickets to your friends). They don't identify with the MLS teams in the way many wish they would. They are promiscuous fans - of an MLS side, of a team in Mexico, a team in Italy or Spain. They may root one day for the USNT and another for El Salvador, and another for France. They may spend more time in a year watching friends play in Balboa Park then they do at Carson. They may have both a Chivas and a Galaxy shirt - and those shirts are probably knock-offs.

I know that the MLS has figured out that many of the most ardent fans of the game feel alienated from the MLS (I was just talking with folks at Chivas USA about this issue, and they are well aware of the magnitude of task before them).

Here's my cross - the link between gay fans of women's soccer & Latino/a fans of the men's game: I think fútbol fans feel this way because they have been kept in the closet. Chivas & the Galaxy both are working on finding the players that are left out by the US development systems (namely, the poor and/or first generation kids who go to crap schools with no decent athletic program and can't afford club soccer). And they are trying to figure out how to build links to the independent leagues through which much soccer life is organized in this region as a way to appeal to adult fans of the game. This is new to them - and it shouldn't be. This fact - that soccer is more popular, on average, with immigrant communities than with communities that don't identify as such - has nearly ALWAYS been true of the sport.

In the conflicted, paradoxical place of Latino/a soccer fans in the US we get a glimpse of the very powerful contradictions that structure not just soccer culture, but indeed, American cultural identity itself. And guess what, it isn't such a pleasant place to find yourself. Both hyper-visible (as the source of nearly all romance about the sport) and invisible (your community doesn't have enough wealth to be worth the trouble). You are welcome as an idea, unwelcome as a reality.

To suggest that folks are "casual" and not "real" fans of the American game because they don't consistently support the MLS or because they might root for Mexico against the USNT is not only unfair, it unintentionally comes awfully close to suggesting that the largely Latino/a audience of which we are speaking isn't really "American."

Now - again, for the Big Soccer fans - this was the context for my article. My ongoing writing about soccer in this region - and the uneasy relations between the Latin/local scene and the Anglo/national/global-corporation circuit - was left out because Loney's discussion is about something else (the relationship between fans culture of the MLS, and US fans of European clubs who want nothing to do with the MLS).

If the MLS wanted the fans about whom I am writing, perhaps it would have fought a lot harder for a stadium in downtown LA. Some die-hard, long-lived Galaxy fans still bemoan the move from the Rose Bowl to Carson, and speculate that the Galaxy's exile was to appease folks in Pasadena who didn't like having their neighborhood taken over weekend after weekend by the folks that mow their lawns and take care of their kids on the weekdays. That theory for the move was offered to me by a middle-class professional Latina, who is as passionate a fan as I've ever met. And it is pretty representative of the level of trust between some Latino/a fans and the MLS.

With her, I root for something better.

The Real Players of New Jersey: Sky Blue FC wins WPS championship!

Walking into Carson stadium for the WPS final, I found myself thinking that a win for Sky Blue would be good for the league, and perhaps even good for the Sol. The WPS needs to get rid of the impression that there is one team that is far and away better than the rest. The playoff structure, which guaranteed a place in the finals for the regular season champs, did that by clearing a path to the final for the Sol, as if they deserved a free pass. I don't know a single Sol fan who thought this was good for the team.

The Sol have been a bit complacent - sure, they won the regular season, but they petered out toward the end [and only won one of their last four matches]. Given the talent on the roster, I've often thought they could be even more spectacular to watch - but they need a reason to up their game.

Now they have it (game highlights here).

Sky Blue came into today's game as the league underdogs. They started off poorly and fired their coach Ian Sawyers in only the third week of the season. His assistant Kelley Lindsey took over but resigned on July 30th (see "Sky Blue Coach Quits Abruptly"). Behind this is a messy story - her assistant coach (brought on board by Sawyers) was the subject of some controversy (the details of which are obscure). Lindsey's resignation was a response to how management handled the problem with her assistant. It all sounds like a right mess. Making matters even more dramatic, USNT captain and Sky Blue defender Christie Rampone basically turned up on the field for practice before a match against FC Gold Pride and found herself in charge - Lindsey had quit that afternoon. Someone needed to run practice before this important game - as a very experienced player she was a natural choice. Next thing she knew, she was asked to coach out the season.

Whatever drama was unfolding behind the scenes was upstaged by this afternoon's gutsy performance against the much heralded Sol. (See Goal.com's match report.)

There was no question as to who wanted it more - while the Sol showed sparks of life, players seemed to drift in and out of the game. They seemed surprised by the fight they had on their hands. Shortly after O'Reilly's neatly placed goal in the game's 17th minute, Faulk drew a red card for bringing Natasha Kai to the ground after Kai had beaten three defenders and was making her way into the box. Goal.com questions the call, but from my seat, Kai was certain to take a shot. She was in front of the defenders and gaining speed. And she is Natasha Kai. Even if Faulk clipped her heel, as Goal.com says, she did so because she was trying to run Kai down, but couldn't get in front of her.

This was a rough blow for the Sol, as we were barely through a third of the game when this happened. They still played a strong second half, given this fact (the mid-day August heat couldn't have made being a player down any easier - why oh why are WPS matches at Carson so often played under midday sun???).

Miyama was her usual astonishing self, and Shannon Boxx, too. Marta reminded us of why she is so highly regarded, and so aggressively marked. Her frustration was clear: she spent good stretches of the match being marked by three - even four - defenders. She nevertheless more often than not squeezed a pass through the forest of legs. In one instance, she sent a brilliant cross in front of the goal mouth - but there was no one there to finish for her. Abily, as well as Sky Blue's Anita Asante and Karen Bardsley are representing their countries in the UEFA Euro cup tournament. I'm convinced that Abily was very much the missing link - not only because she's a fantastic finisher, but because when she and Marta (and Miyama and Duan) are on the pitch, even the best defenders are outclassed. Today, the Sol attack seemed nervous and disconnected.

Meanwhile, Rosana, Kai, O'Reilly and Francielli played like they'd been on the same team since they were five. They carried themselves with confidence, and seemed to know not just where their teammates were, but where they would be. All in all, Sky Blue played an aggressive and very smart game. Kudos to Rampone for converting all that Real-Housewives-of-NJ drama into something positive.

Watching them play, I found myself thinking about the fact that most of these players - women from Hawaii, London, Texas, Australia, California and Brazil are living in f'ing Piscataway, in a hotel near their home field at Rutgers University. I was thinking about how shitty it must have been to have all that back-room drama going on in an alien environment - playing for a fledgling league for not so much money and even less security. Kai shacked up with Rampone when she agreed to play for Sky Blue, so she'd have some immediate sense of community. Rampone - a New Jersey native - was apparently the architect behind social outings designed to make her teammates get to know each other as well as their new surroundings.

They are a good story, no matter how you slice it.

Now - I just wish the WPS would get real and stop referring to the Sky Blue as the New York team [at least in the team's url: http://www.womensprosoccer.com/ny]. When they drive that trophy home from the airport, they'll be taking the fabled NJ Turnpike. They'll get off not at the Holland Tunnel, but at exit number 9. At least three of these players know the route well: Yael Averbuch is from Upper Montclair, Heather O'Reilly is from East Brunswick (this is her natural exit in fact), and Rampone is from Point Pleasant (aka - "the shore").

As I picture their ride home - elated and exhausted - sleepy heads leaning against the window as industrial monuments slip past - I hear the paradoxically soft and hard voice of Queen Latifah, taking us all on a New Jersey Drive. The basic message: when it comes this place, the road "out" or "up" is always a rough one - but that ride is the thing that makes you tougher. It's the twists and turns that make you faster, and smarter. That rough ride - past people who don't think you have a chance of going anywhere - is the thing that makes each victory taste all the sweeter.

Sisters, Welcome to the Garden State!