My soccer career ended very early. I was about 12, and I was playing a two-on-two game in one of the unused, semi-public yards that gave the kids in my neighborhood a little room to run. I had a breakaway (at least that's what we call it in basketball). I ran toward the goal—two baseball gloves lined up about 15 feet apart—while my teammate and opponents lagged behind. When I looked back, I saw that they’d given up altogether. This must have thrown me off, because as I came near the goal, I had trouble controlling the ball and keeping it moving forward. In my frustration and anxious desire to score, I finally just picked it up and hurled it through.
Listening to the reactions of my fellow Americans to this year’s World Cup, I’m beginning to think that my story could serve as a metaphor for our relationship with the sport. Frustration is the watchword: “Nothing ever happens.” “You think there’s going to be a good play, and then someone messes it up.” “I turn my head for a second and miss the only goal.”
And it’s true, this time around the World Cup has made me believe that the fundamental problem with soccer is that it’s just too hard (message to the sport’s rule-makers: it would help if you could use your hands). It’s too hard to control the ball long enough to score, which leads to the aspect of the game that Americans don’t get: The total lack of results. In baseball, you get some kind of result with each at bat; in the NBA, you see two points scored on each of roughly 100 trips down the court; in football, teams can sustain many drives all the way down the field and into the end zone. To us, a suspiciously large number of soccer’s results—its goals—look like random occurrences, the products of a lucky bounce off a goalkeeper’s hands or a dubious call that leads to a penalty kick. On paper, we know the sport can’t be all luck—Brazil’s five Cups prove it—but in practice it can seem that way to our untrained eyes.
This year, like any tennis fan, I’ve watched the World Cup, soccer’s biggest event, in tandem with tennis’ biggest event, Wimbledon. Some days I’ve had tennis on one screen on my computer, and soccer on a screen behind it—you can hear the vuvuzelas buzzing away back there. Like rugby, croquet and badminton, tennis and soccer each got their formal start in Victorian England (cricket also went international during this time). The rules of soccer were codified there in 1863; tennis was invented there in 1873. Why this sports explosion? The cricket writer and historian C.L.R. James says that once democracy became rooted in the West through the 18th and 19th century, it quickly became clear what the people wanted more than anything else: They wanted games.
Tennis, invented as a way to sell sets of racquets and balls to the masses and capitalize on the craze for garden-party activities, was taken up by private clubs and became an elite sport. Soccer, played at elite English public schools in the 1800s, went mass all around the world. All around the world, that is, except in the U.S. Here, soccer comes with an elite flavor. Where tennis is a symbol of wealth, soccer in the States is a symbol of liberal open-mindedness, kind of like joining a CSA. Where I grew up, the kids who played it all went to a private, craft-loving, hippie-ish elementary school (think cubbyholes instead of lockers). Where I live now, in Brooklyn, it’s considered a healthier and safer alternative to baseball or American football.
Alternating between the World Cup and Wimbledon over the last week, it’s been hard to believe that the two games came from the same place and time. In soccer, fans live with long stretches where no goals are scored or shots taken. Tennis is nothing but results; something is decided every minute. Soccer is about the quick, shocking burst into the goal that seems to come from nowhere. Tennis is a slow but inexorable accumulation of points. Soccer is a gray area; was he pushed or did he dive? Tennis is clearly marked; the ball is either in or out, and unlike soccer we use the technology at hand to prove it one way or the other. Half of the fun of soccer seems to be crowd participation, whether it’s singing, calling for your opponent’s blood, or blowing a kazoo. Tennis fans are forbidden from making any noise while play is going on. Self-expression versus hushed reverence, messiness versus order: Like C.L.R. James might have said, if democracy does nothing else, it gives every class and group of people their game.
I love the fact that Americans don’t care about soccer. It proves that nothing in the universe is universal, and that a game really is nothing more than a game. (I also wonder if the passion the rest of the world feels for it would be quite as deep if America started to dominate it.) I love that I can see What’s-His-Name Messi on TV and just say, “Oh, there’s that guy, I think I’ve seen him somewhere before…” like any idiot in the U.S. who doesn’t know Michael Jordan from Derek Jeter. It makes me realize that having to care about sports stars can be oppressive, and a little pathetic. It’s nice not to be in awe of at least one group of millionaire athletes. (Except Maradona, of course. He’s must-see TV.)
Can we say which is better, tennis or soccer? One teaches solo resourcefulness, the other teamwork. One speaks to group identity; the other singles out the individual as the most important unit. Both are cruel, both can be decided by inches, both require a razor-thin balance of patience and aggression. Both produce their share of egomaniacs and gentlemen. Both have stuck with their Victorian rules and traditions and avoided drastic changes to make themselves more “fan-friendly” (i.e., dumber). It may try a new ball every now and then, but if any sport proves that you don’t need much scoring to keep fans—billions of fans—interested, it’s soccer. People don't seem to be so easily bored as our entertainment industry likes to think. The most popular entertainment on earth is the one where, on the surface, the least happens.
Whatever soccer's mysterious appeal, I’ll always believe that tennis is the superior sport. It helps that I know how to play it, and how to watch it. I have no idea how to watch a soccer game. Every four years I start to learn, I start to appreciate the moves and dribbles and runs and passes even when they lead to nothing. But after a month it disappears on me again. I admire soccer for, metaphorically, admitting that futility is part of life—the best-laid plans of its players almost always go astray. But, and maybe this is an American thing, I also find that admission depressing. What I like about tennis is that you get to use every part of yourself to succeed—your brain, your legs, your heart—and you have to become a master of every element of it. You do the serving and the volleying; you play offense and defense. And every second game, you get to be in total control. You get to dictate how a point, and those few seconds of your life, will begin. Nothing seems futile when you step up to serve. The ball is in your hand.