Women's Soccer... Yup... We're Still Stuck in "That" Place

Abby Wambach's dramatic stoppage-time header, Hope Solo's amazing reflexes, and an incredible 10-women team effort saw the United States Women's National Team triumph over the anti-soccer tactics of Brazil and capture the nation's interest.

Unfortunately, no matter how many heroics these women perform there will be one thing that they can't triumph over.. the blatant sexism that exists in our media. It's nothing new, but just like American soccer bashing, the mainstream sports media just can't seem to get enough of it.

Today's attack on what should be a seminal moment in American soccer history comes from the site, "Tauntr" (which I won't even link to to give them the page views they crave), who's sole mission seems to be make bad jokes that piss off everyone.

"Tauntr is a new brand in sports entertainment that stands for original, edgy, humorous and intelligent multi-media content. Games, videos, animations, images, articles, comics and taunting tools are distributed through platforms such as the web, mobile devices, print, radio, TV, merchandise and live events. Our very unique, rapid content creation company is comprised of professional writers, animators and designers as well as a game development team. Tauntr content is designed to evoke emotion, spur debate and achieve viral activity."

There will be a few of your that tell us that we've played right into their hands with our outrage, but we tend to fall for the trick a lot when the lamestream (yeah Sarah Palin... we stole your word!) sports media trots out their tired attacks on soccer. Being the promoter of American soccer and soccer in America also comes the responsibility of being its defender. An attack on soccer, men's or women's, is worth a sturdy rebuking.

Tauntr in their juvenile "Beavis and Butthead" sense of humor decided to make "propaganda posters" to help promote women's soccer and make even help them get the "right to vote". Very clever. We're still making voting jokes 90 years later.

Here are the posters in reverse order of how they're on the Tauntr website.

Exhibit C

We'll only half mention what a shitty Photoshop job this is. So eager to make the joke that they don't even try to do it with any creativity. Women's soccer is only an opportunity to see someone take off their shirt. Go to a beach. 

Exhibit B

Sigh. An accomplished coach gets reduced to being compared to a man in the looks department.


Exhibit A

At first this one wasn't so offensive to us. We used the original "Rosie the Riveter" image in our post yesterday explaining our "lust-to-love" affair with the Lady Nats. After seeing the rest of the posters, we realized the entire project was meant to be demeaning, it hit home that this one wasn't even celebrating the women's strength but mocking them that it took until the closing minutes of the match to get the job done.

Fine... Tauntr rolled out a bunch of tired stereotypes about women and soccer. We get that. This is their shtick. We're at the all-star break for baseball and basketball and football are in the off-season and locked out. They're desperate for content.

If they REALLY wanted to ACTUALLY be edgy as they claim in their "about us" they could've made propaganda posters that DID promote the women's game. The Abby Wambach poster would've been epic without the cheeky parenthesis, the Alex Morgan and Hope Solo poster should read "We're more than just a bunch of pretty faces... we'll kick your ass", and if the graphic artist dropped the "who looks like a man" line from the Pia Sundhage poster it might have been a legitimate criticism of the men's team.

Opportunities lost for a quick, cheap joke.

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The Great Jersey Question. Buy American.

This is how is should look.

At Saturday's shambolic U.S. National Team game the goal was the fill the stadium with red.

Nike had earlier debut their red national team strip and helped outfit the American's unofficial supporters group, the American Outlaws, with a cool Shepard Fairey designed "Indivisble" collaboration to add to the already red 2011 AO members shirt.

The result? A "Red All Over" supporters section to rival any other behind the goal.

The rest of the stadium, from crowd shots and close ups revealed a similar red wave, but fueled less U.S. fans, but the brighter red of the Spanish National Team and red and blue Spanish side Barcelona's jersey.

Sigh. Here we go again.

In the United States, a nation of immigrants and one of the most diverse countries in the world, American soccer fans are no longer surprised to be outnumbered within their own stadiums. Its one of the reasons the American Outlaws and the Free Beer Movement were founded; to grow the sport here and grow our presence each game day. It's readily conceded that for matches against teams like Mexico and other nearby Central American nations the visitors will turn out in force.

On Saturday, however, the USMNT was betrayed by its own. Americans in Spain jerseys. Americans with Messi's name splashed across the back. Americans in Manchester United jerseys!

Let's play a game. How many DIFFERENT jerseys can you spot?

For high profile matches this is also not uncommon. But it is infuriating. Americans who seem to go out of their way NOT to support their country of birth.

Were many of those people from Spain living in the United States? Yes. Completely acceptable.

Were many of those people of Spanish-decent honoring their heritage? Yes. Also totally fine.

Were many of those people Americans of little connection to Spain or Spanish teams sporting the colors of World Cup, European Cup, and Champion's League winners? Yes. Not OK.

The beauty of the Spanish National Team was on full display on Saturday and the dominance of Barcelona a week earlier at Wembley against Manchester United in the Champion's League Final and we can appreciate the fact that both of these teams are probably the best example of the greatest of soccer in our day and, for many, represent what has brought them to the sport of soccer and created their connect to it.

If this is what soccer IS for you... super. If this is what you want to treat people to for the Free Beer Movement... go for it.

But we just cannot condone wearing those teams to our National Team games.

It isn't something jingoistic or Tea Party-fueled nationalism, but a enduring and deep love for this nation and the desire to see AMERICAN soccer succeed so we don't replicate Saturday's result again and again.

We own loads of soccer jerseys. Many different clubs from around the world. Many different National Teams as well. One from Honduras where we once lived. Another from the Netherlands, our ethnic roots, and even one from Hong Kong where a sister once visited. They are worn with regularity, but NEVER on a U.S. game day.

We get it. America likes winners. Spain and Barca are winners. Here's Sporting News' Brian Straus, post-game in the media zone:

As someone said to us on Twitter, "That kid, if alive in 1980 would have worn a USSR hockey jersey at Lake Placid."

That's the mentality for many soccer fans in America, "Maybe if the U.S. wins a few more games."

Sure this Spain game was a set up, but what else does the National Team have to do for some people?

Isn't qualifying for six straight World Cups good enough?

Paul Caligiuri's 1989 "Shot Heard Round the World" (to qualify the U.S. for its first World Cup in 40 years) didn't get ya?

Didn't our magical run to the 2002 quarterfinals and oh-so-close knock out to eventual finalist Germany grab you?

What about Landon Donovan's stoppage time game winner against Algeria last summer? Really? That didn't do it?

What will do it? Maybe the goal posts (for lack of a better term) keep moving for some soccer fans in America.

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What is comes down to is really a choice. A choice where, today, right now, we can make an investment in American soccer and not just soccer in America. We've got an opportunity to get in on the ground floor of building American soccer and soccer in America. To invest, to spread, to share, to love through ourselves and through others and to others.

It's not perfect, but it is ours. It still has a long way to go, but as the Preamble of the Constitution states, "In order to form a more perfect union". We're working on it.

Spain and Barcelona and Liverpool and AC Milan are going to be just fine, but Major League Soccer and the U.S. National Team need your support because if American soccer fails.... soccer in America fails.

No more high-profile international friendlies. No more World Football Challenge. No more World Cups in the United States. It all dies.

We're not being dramatic. If Americans can't prove they're hungry for soccer (and watching loads of English Premier League on Fox Soccer doesn't count) then the clubs take their business elsewhere. They chase the China yuan or friendlies in Qatar.

The Free Beer Movement wants everyone to become fans and everyone's path to becoming a soccer fan is different. In the end, though, we want you to become American soccer fans. Even for us our first experience with soccer was Michael Owen and Liverpool, but more crucial to our development was the 1998 Men's World Cup and the 1999 Women's World Cup. Locked. Us. In.

That the natural evolution we're going for. Get into soccer. Get into American soccer. (And, of yeah, do it with beer!)

When the United States National Teams rolls into your town, fold up your other jerseys, and put on the red, white, and blue.

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On Moments of Silence, Moments of Fighting and Soccer Hating By Proxy

Saturday night was a great moment for the United States National Team. A scrappy, all-hands-on-deck-performance from the red, white, and blue secured a 1-1 draw with South America powerhouse, Argentina. The U.S. did not dominate, control possession, nor trouble the Argentines for long stretches of the game, but, as the game of soccer goes, found that one magic moment where youngster Juan Agudelo pounced on a spilled save and brought the Americans equalizing euphoria.

The game was marred, however, by two incidents on either side of the contest. Before the match kicked off the stadium held a moment of silence for the victims of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan where, in footage that later appeared on YouTube (and many other websites), a fan yelled "konichiwa bitches" and it was picked up by the TV broadcast microphones. Post-match a group of American and Argentinian fans got into a scuffle that too was caught and posted on YouTube.

Both incidents marred what was a banner night for U.S. soccer. Taken in isolation there were the actions of a few stupid (possibly intoxicated) and rude individuals. Brought into the Inter-Net-Blogo-Sphere through the power of the media, video sharing sites, Twitter, etc and now these people are the representatives of American soccer to the larger world.

While American soccer fans were busy celebrating the emergence of the 18-year old Agudelo, the discovery of the Germany-American Timothy Chandler, the future of Jozy Altidore, and the gritty performance of the National Team, the outside world was putting these unrelated incidents under the microscope and serving them up as an indictment of our fans and our sport.

Just when it seemed soccer bashing was falling out of favor with the "lamestream" media types it rose again, but this time in a sort of proxy war on the sport. Certain like the rising of the sun, they came out during last summer's World Cup to copy and paste their tired attacks on soccer, but this week it was not about the game, but its fans.

Before the sport was the main focus of their ire. The silly, foreign game played with feet was for women and children the only other past-time with the same demographic was abandoning sinking ships. And that's what soccer was in America. With the increasing success of the National Team (of both genders, finally) and our domestic Major League Soccer; these old guard attacks seemed like the last breaths of a dying, bitter beast.

Then came "konichiwa bitches"! The line, originally from a Dave Chappel sketch, but that's neither here nor there.

A soccer fan, and an American one at that, acted incredibly insensitively to Japan's plight and the moment of silence in memory of the lives lost, and the whole sport was painted with one color.

Sports talk radio that wouldn't have given one minute to the game's results were now discussing the rudeness of the American soccer fan. Howard Stern had a go at it too. Comment sections of video boards and what-not took the moment of stupidity and connecting to foreign policy. Great. Frankly we thought it kind of ironic that the blow hards that can't stop talking for a second would be all over criticizing people who interrupted a minute of it.

If/when you watch the clip certainly there is a lot of chatter going on in the stadium. The shout of one fan in particular is the easy target, but to lay this one on the American soccer fan for their behavior is a tough accusation as well. In a stadium where the American soccer fan was in the minority (as we so often are) how can this be an attack on us?

Critics of the sport, no matter how many of how few numb skulls there are use these sorts of situations as live ammo. The American soccer fan is rude, insensitive, and therefore their sport is not worth the time of day. A proxy attack on the game through the acts of a select few. On political websites it is referred to as "nutpicking"; find the extreme example and use it as the poster child for the entire group.

The brawl following the match is worth less in column inches, talk radio air, and my time, but still gives enemies of soccer a clear target. The American soccer fan is uncivilized and much like the worst elements of the European soccer community.

Thank goodness that the rest of the American sports world have such upstanding citizens. The point isn't to drag other sports down this dark path as well, but to step back and to realize that we all have out unsightly elements in the stands. Whereas some parts of European soccer have allowed their racism, homophobia, and general malice toward fellow fans become the rule rather that the exception. American sports, and American soccer, is not so.

Using the actions of a few to represent the whole is a cowards way of attacking a sport that is increasingly becoming a part of the sporting mainstream. Three well-written and major web articles from this same match even point to the good natured, fun-loving, and confrontational-free nature of the United States' largest supporters group. (Exhibit A, Exhibit B, and Exhibit C), the American Outaws.

So stop it. We're sorry that people like soccer. We're sorry that you don't. We're sorry that you continue to hang on to outdated notions of what is and what isn't in the American sporting landscape. But don't go there.

Don't lump all fans into one group and do not let a few fans represent a sport as a whole in this country. That's just lazy "journalism".

To expect anything else, though, would be a stretch.


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