These thoughts were written by Sophie, one of our 2020 summer interns. The opinions expressed herein do not reflect those of Civitas other than respect for the value of open dialogue.
Recently, in an attempt to introduce people to soccer, women’s soccer in particular, I invited a fellow intern, Maggie, over to watch a match on the projector. My favorite team, the Houston Dash, was playing Sky Blue FC, but they weren’t playing well. It was a match I instinctively knew we would lose, so I muted the commentary and turned towards the conversation—there would be time to explain soccer fundamentals later, when the Dash weren’t struggling to string passes together.
Maggie, however, made a critical error. She asked me how I got interested in soccer. Not that she knew this was a critical error at the time. She probably thought it was an innocent, polite question, the kind of question instinctual to us fluent in Midwestern small talk. Just something to transition from the game on the screen to personal life, which could then become a jumping off point for a thousand other things, none of which were soccer related.
Except, I forgot to give her that transition because halfway through a technical explanation—my dad was a coach, I grew up playing—I remembered being a kid and waking up at 6am to watch, of all teams, the Côte d’Ivoire, to whom I had no prior allegiance to, and being ridiculously upset when they lost. And that brief, nontechnical, tangent to my explanation sent the conversation careening off course.
Soccer, even though it is just a game, has woven its way into my life in a thousand different ways that non-fans and casual observers will not understand. There are a dozen significant moments in my life that I can only remember because they are inexplicably wrapped up in soccer. I have stories of unity, of friendships formed, of sanctuary and refuge, of life lessons and disappointment. I guess I should stop being abstract and just start telling them, right?
Let’s start with unity. If you’re traveling to someplace new, odds are you don’t know anyone. And, even if you are traveling to visit friends or family, inevitably you will not know the people in the airport. Travel is all about the new—new experiences, new people, new cultures. But soccer makes old friends out of first meetings.
An example: it’s 7am in small town Oregon. The United States Men’s team has failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup and I have hitched my heart and soul to the sluggish Argentine side, swayed by the brilliance of Lionel Messi, the greatest player in the world. The problem is my dad and I cannot find a place to watch the game. There’s a bar, but I can’t go inside, though the owner has promised he’ll move the TV so I can watch from outside. The owner does suggest walking down to the local cornerstone, which has a TV and asking there. We do, buying doughnuts, asking if the game can be turned on, and settling in for the long haul.
The next 90 minutes are the most agonizing of my life, except for any time the women are playing. But what I remember about that game is not who scored or Messi’s brilliance on the pitch. I remember all the local old folks, about five or six of them, who trickled in during the game to buy a paper, say hello, have their coffee, and ended up staying to watch the game with me. Most of them had no idea that the World Cup was on, none of them knew the rules, all of them asked me who we were supporting (we! We were a we with these strangers whose routines I was interrupting!) And when Argentina lost, in heartbreaking fashion, each of those strangers told me we’d get them next time.
Those old folks in Oregon cheering on a team they’ll never watch again join the strangers who cheered with me as we sat outside a bar in the 100-degree heat of Las Vegas cheering on the United States Women’s National Team and the airport goers who whooped and hollered when Mexico scored a goal, high-fives spreading through the cluster of us gathered around a TV. I have traveled alone, or been surrounded by strangers, many, many times in my life. But if you put a soccer game on, I am no longer alone.
That match-day friendship extends into real friendships too. Up until college, every best-friend I had either played on the same soccer team as me or played soccer in general. Passion for the same team, or even just love of the game, helped bypass some awkward moments when friend groups would merge or I’d have to drive my best-friend’s boyfriend around. Awkward silences filled by the latest Arsenal vs. Liverpool score, Messi vs. Ronaldo debate, and talk of the USWNT.
In fact, soccer is what saved one of the greatest friendships I have made in college. It also almost destroyed it (That is hyperbole. Mostly. We’ll never know because the match ended in a 1-1 tie.) You see, the first time I met my mailroom coworker, I could not stop talking. Two weeks of nerves and stress bubbled over into meaningless chatter that neither of us wanted. Good heavens, I was reading him a newspaper story about bread at one point! (He does still remember that news story.) At some point, he asked if he could put on a Greek soccer game.
Once the game was on, we engaged comfortably in the familiar chatter of two fans. Did you see that free kick? What was he doing there? Can you read the Greek on the side of the stadium? His divine intervention of putting a game on saved us from the disaster that afternoon was rapidly becoming. Greek soccer led to Premier League games which led to my joining his 7 v. 7 intermural soccer team this year.
Recently, I found a letter my mom’s good friend left me the summer after Freshman year when she had visited and I had been working. In it, she told me to call up my friend from the mailroom and tell him that Liverpool was playing June 1st for the Champions League Final. I don’t think I texted him about the game, but I did just text him about a soccer book I finished that focused on Arsenal.
Beyond the friendships and heartwarming memories of unity, I’ve also learned some pretty useful life lessons beyond, of course, the it’s just a game that people throw out after a tough loss. Which is true, soccer is just a game, but hopefully this article is also showing that soccer goes beyond the pitch. Or maybe I just want to justify the next few paragraphs.
In 2011, while camping in Denali National Park, my family hiked three miles one way to watch the USWNT lose in the final to Japan. I don’t remember anything about the game. I do remember kicking a rock in the parking lot and the long three-mile hike, all uphill, back to the campsite. Sometimes, you can pour everything you have into something, do everything right, train the hardest you possibly can…and everything falls to pieces anyways. When that happens, you walk the three miles uphill to get back to where you started and then you try again. And yes, it took a few more years for me to learn that lesson.
Perhaps the most important thing soccer can offer, though, is a refuge one can use to escape the outside world. Am I enjoying wholeheartedly throwing myself into NWSL games and moving my schedule around to catch the Liverpool games because COVID has left me hungry for any kind of live sport? It helps. Am I watching every single MLS game possible to find a temporary home team because the search gives me something to talk about in a time when everyone is “bored?” Certainly. But soccer gets me through these “uncertain times” because it’s gotten me through worse.
I have felt truly alone twice in my life: first semester freshman year and first semester sophomore year. I’m talking about moving 1,000 miles away, knowing no one, and your roommate is gone the first few days so you still don’t know anyone kind of alone that happens freshman year. I went to a high school my parents taught at so I knew the hallways before I was a freshman and now there are 9,000 kids swarming about everywhere kind of alone. The “Missouri is under California,” East Coast and Midwest just do not gel kind of alone.
Homesick, seemingly unable to fall into the easy friendships that everyone else around me had, struggling through classes, I disliked Boston College with an intensity that could not be properly described. Luckily, I lived on Newton Campus, a two-minute walk from the soccer field. Thursday and Friday nights, along with some Saturdays, in intense heat and bitter cold, I would sit in the metal bleachers, often with my homework, and watch soccer games. My roommate might attend for the first half, or I might know a few faces in the crowd, but even if I was totally alone I didn’t really mind it. Without that soccer field, I never would have returned to BC after that first semester.
Sophomore year, when sophomore switch hit early and hard, and I was spending hours avoiding my dorm room, my feet took me the 1.5 miles to the Newton soccer fields and I watched BC’s soccer teams play like my life depended on it. When Beto O’Rourke dropped out of the race, I cried for twenty minutes, shrugged on a coat, and went to the men’s soccer game. Incidentally, there was a red card given that game, triggering a cathartic release that would have been impossible anywhere else. And my year began its slow turn around when I sat on my floor with a friend, eating matzos and apple butter and watching the men’s team lose to Washington in the NCAA tournament.
Now, as colleges prepare to go back and I continue to sort out my relationship to Boston College, I find myself routinely checking the athletics department tab, hoping that there will be an update on soccer. I am prepared to fashion myself into a photographer or a sports reporter if that’s what it takes to gain access to games. I will consent to temperature checks and COVID testing. I will do whatever it takes to be able to watch BC soccer because BC soccer has saved my relationship to the school countless times. I’m wedded to that field until the day I graduate—for me it’s one of the things that makes BC, BC. I want them to have a season as badly as I want to work with my best-friends in the mailroom.
You see, I have spent my whole life trying to convince people to watch soccer in the hopes that once they watch a match, they will fall in love as deeply as I have. I cannot explain what I love about soccer, the sport, any more than I can explain why I love vanilla ice cream over chocolate—it’s just always been that way. But that night, on that patio, six feet away as my team went down 2-nil, Maggie solved the puzzle for me.
Soccer truly is the universal language, the most egalitarian of all sports. Billions of people watch the World Cup, no other sport has a finale that comes even close to that number. I’ve spent this whole essay trying to establish that point: soccer is the only language I’ve seen spoken on both coasts and in the middle of the country. It’s why I love the sport. It’s also the reason I’ve written two different articles on soccer…hopefully if this approach doesn’t work, my numbers approach might.
Think about it: all you need is a ball and the space to pass. COVID still going strong? Keep the ball low, don’t let it touch your hands. Don’t have someone to play with? You can bounce the ball against the curb like Carli Lloyd did long before she became a soccer superstar. Bored? Soccer is currently the only live team sport on TV right now.
I hope you fall in love with soccer, like billions of people already have. And I can promise you, as much as you love soccer, the sport will love you back. After all, I’m hardly the first fan to have experiences like the above happen. From the first pass, soccer brings people together.
