OLDEST IRISH AMERICAN NEWSPAPER IN USA, ESTABLISHED IN 1928
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Caught in soccer’s spell

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

A quiet revolution has been taking place, however. The increased attention given to this year’s expanded ChampionsWorld Series of 11 friendlies involving nine European clubs is one indication of a transformed soccer scene in America.
It was much different back in 1994. The Irish victory over the heavily favored Italian national team in its World Cup “home” city was one highlight of the tournament that attracted media attention, particularly in the tri-state area. But soccer as such failed to thrill the American masses. The great gamble by the authorities of the “world game” to promote interest in the United States, the one major country it had failed to take root, by staging the World Cup here, had apparently failed.
But something unexpected has happened in the years since: soccer has gradually mainstreamed, a process that seems to have quickened over the last couple of years. Globalization has made the sport trendy, commentators say.
“Look at the amount of TV ads that use soccer,” said John Guildea, treasurer of the New York Shamrocks club and a native of Balbriggan, Co. Dublin. He pointed also to the increasing importance of soccer scholarships at college level and the strength of the local amateur game. “We play teams, Greeks and Albanians, that pay players $500 a game,” he said.
Guildea is also a fan of Major League Soccer. “I was a Metrostars season ticket holder for the first three years. The standard is very good, basically English First Division [the level immediately below the Premiership],” he said. He stopped going in the last couple of years because the time commitment needed to his own construction company.
Ronan Wells of Maggie Mae’s bar in Sunnyside is not a fan of the Metrostars or of the MLS, but he admires the progress of the national squad.
“I shouted for the USA in the last World Cup,” he said. “They played some entertaining stuff.”
The widespread coverage of the home-based Major League Soccer and the top international leagues on ESPN, MSG, Fox Sportsworld and other stations has been crucial to the mainstreaming of the sport.
“The demand for satellite is gone. People don’t want to be at a bar drinking beer watching football anymore,” said Wells, a County Offaly native. But he himself watched almost every game in the recent European championships in the comfort of his own home. It’s a far cry, he said, from the day when people had to rely on radio to get Premiership results.
Wells’s bar bused 55 people to watch Liverpool beat Celtic on Monday night and has one going to Giants Stadium on Saturday. “It was tougher this year to sell tickets,” he said, but added it hard to judge in the Irish community, as people aren’t living in the old neighborhoods and many have gone home. He pointed also to the decline in attendance in GAA games in New York.
Guildea took the opposite view: “There’s definitely more interest this year,” he said.
Whether these games actually sell out is beside the point. The fact that Ticketmaster is pushing them more vigorously this year and that billboards are advertising them, shows there’s confidence in soccer.
And as has always been the case in other countries, the different levels of the American game seem now to be organically connected.
MLS, college soccer, immigrant-dominated leagues, soccer moms and dads and their kids, the American national women’s and men’s teams, and visiting European clubs and Latin American nations playing friendlies (Argentina vs. Peru almost filled Giants Stadium last month) are all components of an emerging culture.
“It’s definitely taking off,” Wells said.
Some would argue that immigration is the crucial element. There are now more immigrants living in the United States that at any point since before World War I. It’s their interest that has led to cable coverage, which in turn has put soccer on the media map.
Healthy though the game may be, it may be a long time before Irish soccer fans experience something like 1994 again. The U.S. World Cup was arguably less rewarding for the Irish than 1990 and 2000, the only other times the Republic qualified for the tournament, but it did have that stunning defeat of Italy, an outcome that captured the imagination of many Irish Americans.
The Italians got the lion’s share of the ticket allocation, Giants Stadium being their designated base. But on the day, a clear majority of fans were Irish. Some recall that 90 percent were decked out in green. “I’d say 70:30,” said Guildea, who got a ticket through a process that involved a raffle and paying $250. “The Italians cashed in their tickets.”
His main memory of the game is the departure of Italian fans long before the game finished. “We sang ‘Cheerio.’ “
These days, it’s not something that’s been sung in relation to American soccer.

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