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The World Cup, Where Fans Know All the Vs.
Scheepers clarifies that "although the social structure in many European countries is less fixed than it was ages ago -- resulting in more options for 'individual mobility,' i.e., the 'American dream' -- thinking in group terms is still more prevalent when it comes to self-definition. The different classes are replaced by different soccer teams one can identify with."
That group identity gets a boost from the nature of soccer clubs abroad, which often hail from neighborhoods with distinctive socioeconomic, class or ethnic makeups, points out Franklin Foer, editor of the New Republic and author of "How Soccer Explains the World." But most American teams represent entire cities, states or regions. When a franchise "tries to represent everybody," Foer says, "they end up representing nobody."
  It's not enough to look like a soccer fan in the stands or at the bar. You have to sing like one, too. (By Martin Meissner -- Associated Press) |
"The English, the French, the Italians and the Brazilians have homogenous cultures, with a predominant religion and a cultural existence that has been there thousands of years," says Mark Spacone, co-founder of Sam's Army, the official fan club of soccer's Team America. "But the culture of America is individual freedom. So you have 80,000 individuals doing their own thing."
A significant element in the emotional algebra of singing is game atmosphere, according to Foer, who says most American sporting rituals "feel kitschy to me. When I go to English soccer games -- even though I can't understand half the songs -- I'm not ashamed to join in, because it feels more authentic."
"I think the parking lot tells it all," says Melnick, who spent half a year in the late 1980s with London soccer fans while researching the "Sports Fan" book. "[Americans] come to the game individually in our cars, thousands of cars in the lot, suggesting our approach is more individualistic and idiosyncratic."
Many soccer fans in other countries, he says, "gather collectively for lunch, then march by the hundreds from their watering holes to the field. . . . The whole existential experience is so radically different."
Soccer fans sing, in large part, to influence the play on the field, says Foer. But in the United States, where "American sports has always been so professional, there's a sense of detachment from what's happening on the field." Foer likens professional American sports to "a Disney spectacle," where it takes mascots, cheerleaders and interactive scoreboard games "to elicit any coherent emotional response."
And although Americans are in the stands to see their team win, they're also conditioned -- for the most part -- to accentuate the positive and not taunt the losers; they partake less of schadenfreude, according to Scheepers. In other words, America's stadiums will resonate with song only when its sports fans learn how to sing in the key of human misery.
