i'm curious what you guys think of this. when i came here about 20 years ago, futbol was virtually a non-entity in this country, at least among the native-born americans. i was 12 years-old and the boys on my soccer team did not know there was such a thing as professional soccer. in fact, i recall that when certain adults asked me what i wanted to be when i grew up, and i answered 'soccer player', they thought that i meant playing in the world cup. they did not know there were professional leagues.
when we wanted to watch the championship matches of the mexican league, we had to pay $20 to watch the games at a bar, from a satellite dish. there was no soccer on television except for the spanish channels which showed 1 or 2 mexican league games and 1 spanish or italian league match, often a taped game that had occurred during the week.
during the world cup in 1990 i walked into a restaurant and asked if they would put the t.v. on the uruguay v. belgium match, and i received scowls and dirty looks from everyone. they were watching the bob hope classic golf tourney!
anyway i could go on and on with examples of how soccer was dismissed in the u.s. from the time i got here until now. even when i first joined this forum, i started a couple of futbol threads and they didn't last one page without derailing into a "soccer sucks, americans will never embrace" it thread.
all of a sudden, all my american friends who couldn't care less about the sport are asking me about messi and ronaldo and kaká. i hear news stories on the radio about record transfer fees (as though there weren't record fees in the past?) and just last night, while eating at koo koo roo, i noticed they were showing highlights of the manchester match on espn, AND they were advertising that they would be showing an italian league match. AND apparently it is now common practice for them to show soccer scores on that little ticker running across the bottom of the screen.
so what gives? why now? why not 20 years ago? why is it suddenly acceptable to be a futbol fan in this country where before you'd be afraid to walk into a bar and ask them to put on the game?
when we wanted to watch the championship matches of the mexican league, we had to pay $20 to watch the games at a bar, from a satellite dish. there was no soccer on television except for the spanish channels which showed 1 or 2 mexican league games and 1 spanish or italian league match, often a taped game that had occurred during the week.
during the world cup in 1990 i walked into a restaurant and asked if they would put the t.v. on the uruguay v. belgium match, and i received scowls and dirty looks from everyone. they were watching the bob hope classic golf tourney!
anyway i could go on and on with examples of how soccer was dismissed in the u.s. from the time i got here until now. even when i first joined this forum, i started a couple of futbol threads and they didn't last one page without derailing into a "soccer sucks, americans will never embrace" it thread.
all of a sudden, all my american friends who couldn't care less about the sport are asking me about messi and ronaldo and kaká. i hear news stories on the radio about record transfer fees (as though there weren't record fees in the past?) and just last night, while eating at koo koo roo, i noticed they were showing highlights of the manchester match on espn, AND they were advertising that they would be showing an italian league match. AND apparently it is now common practice for them to show soccer scores on that little ticker running across the bottom of the screen.
so what gives? why now? why not 20 years ago? why is it suddenly acceptable to be a futbol fan in this country where before you'd be afraid to walk into a bar and ask them to put on the game?
Who is that, she has an amazing pair of eyes.
