This Is American Soccer, US Soccer, MNT, WNT, and MLS - Tackling the subject of Soccer in the US, and worldwide.

High noon. The crowd is packed with red, white and blue. But Old Glory this is not. The Czech Republic, dressed in the same colors as our U.S. side, is only a short flight away, and their fans greatly outnumber the Yanks.

The next chapter in U.S. soccer begins, but how will it end?

In German, a tough draw translates to Don’t Tread On Beasley

This is the question on everyone’s mind after Friday’s draw found the U.S. team dropped into a group with two strong European teams and arguably the best African contender. It wasn’t the best draw, it wasn’t the worst. It will be, like I believe the competition every team will face come next summer, a difficult road for a U.S. side that we have not really witnessed play at full strength in months. What will the team look like, who will start, and what will the outcome be are the questions I want to know the answers to.

What we do know – we face the Czech Republic in Gelsenkirchen on June 12th at noon, Italy at 3 p.m on June 17 in Kaiserslautern, and then Ghana at 10 a.m. June 22 – is fairly inconsequential to me. For the next six months and change, I will be patiently waiting (as patiently as a soccer fan waiting for the biggest sporting event in the world when they announce the matches half a year ahead of time can be anyhow) to find my answers.

Our Ginga

What did grab my attention during what was the big news of the day for the 350 million people who watched the draw on television (the Super Bowl in comparison garners about 70 million viewers) was a movie shown at Nevada Smiths, THE soccer bar in New York City, before Heidi Klum, a musician to make Siegfried and Roy proud, and finally the draw, hit television screens.

Titled Ginga (which translates to body language or the art of movement in English), it is a film about the essence of Brazilian football. Fernando Meirelles, the film’s producer, described it this way: “Football in Brazil is much, much more that what people think. People young and old, rich and poor play football all over the country. Each region brings its own distinct flavor to the game, as they do to the country. Every part of Brazil has its legends, its hallowed grounds, and its players who possess a quality not found anywhere else in the world.”

I was beguiled by the movie not only because it is a soccer film, but because the production team behind the documentary is the same that created City of God, one of my favorite movies. With just that fact being known, I foresaw a poignant storyline, strong characters, and beautiful cinematography. I was right. Quite simply, anyone interested enough to come to this Website will surely find this movie inspirational. And if you haven’t (and you’re old enough to), watch City of God sometime.

Re-reading Meirelles’ descriptions of Brazil, his last thought drew my attention – more than the draw (it is what it is), more than the movie (you need to see it), and more than the warm feeling I got at Nevada Smiths from being with hundreds of soccer fans holding their collective breath to merely find out who their team will play (in New York City, there are probably fewer people interested in the U.S. team that the teams representing a fan’s birth country). Always on the outlook for answers to that question of mine (What is American soccer?), I was constantly asking myself the same questions over and over again as nameless, countless, and some famous Brazilians strutted their best moves and tricks while sharing their individual stories about efforts both successful and failing to make a life out of this beautiful game. Could you make this movie in the United States, if not now, than in the future? Do we have ginga?

After watching the film twice, I’m still not so sure. Part of me wants to say yes, in its own way, American ginga is alive. There are instances of the body speaking through the feet of guys like Beasley and Landon, trickling down to the kids of King. But Brazil is its own beast. I remember traveling around southern Brazil, while working on a story about slaughter houses and the modernization of the their beef industry. Kids on dusty fields, in the middle of the streets, played soccer all day and played it well. Walking the streets on Porto Allegre, the largest city of Brazil’s most southern state, Rio Grande Du Sol, every corner lot or open space was occupied by soccer. I came along a fenced in field. It was just like New York City’s Rucker Park, the famous basketball court: nameless kids with real talent playing as if there lives were riding on it. For some of them, it did, it does.

Brazil’s soccer is our basketball, an organic upheaval of growth whittled by the natural selection of the playground. Will our courts turn to grass? With the number of Americans playing soccer professionally abroad increasing, just as the number of foreign-born players in the NBA grows, there is hope for the future. Globalization is a two-way street. Body control and thus language come with age, forcing a maturity and knowledge of the physical task at hand. We as a country are still learning to play this game, and in time there will be the opportunity for challenge. Out of challenge comes growth. Winning gives confidence, while losing gives perspective.

Either way, win or lose, what we gain come August will be experience along the continued course, dead ahead, toward our ginga, our movie, and a sport to call our own. Globalization will prove me right.