The Problem With American Soccer Fans

Wall Street Journal ^ | June 6, 2014 | Jonathan Clegg

[C19fan]

Growing up as a soccer fan in England, I've witnessed my fair share of horrors. I've seen shocking acts of violence, overheard hundreds of abusive chants and watched Pelé retire to sell erectile dysfunction pills.

Over the years, I've been angered, saddened and ashamed by these things. But through it all, my love for soccer remained undimmed.

But lately, I've discovered there's a new scourge on my beloved game that I simply cannot tolerate: Americans.

[Sherman Logan]

It is also extremely odd that Americans don’t expect those speaking foreign languages to reciprocate.

Nobody in America is offended when a Spanish-speaking person refers to Los Estados Unidos, but we’re supposed to carefully refer to MAY-hee-co and AR-hen-tee-na instead of pronouncing them as is logical for an English speaker.

[Blue Collar Christian]

Adapted from a delicious bacon (Either you like bacon, or you’re wrong) thread:

Either you hate soccer, or you’re wrong.

I’ve been using that on EVERYTHING I have an opinion on. I love it!

[dead]

Is that true? I did not know that.

John Kerry taught me the correct pronunciation of Jenjis Kahn.

[Sherman Logan]

Looked it up, and apparently the lovely story is just an urban legend.

http://www.spanishdict.com/answers/192063/why-do-you-speak-spanish-with-a-lisp

I do know our Hispanic employees in southern CO were immensely amused by our office manager who had been a translator at NATO and spoke perfect Castilian, complete with the th pronunciation of certain words.

She, OTOH, thought they sounded like utterly uneducated hicks.

[dead]

Pretentious snobs exist in every culture, I guess.

[P-Marlowe]

At least with golf you have the nice green scenery.

Better Living through Chemisty.

[b4its2late]

He should be thanking his lucky stars that crappy game they call soccer has any American fans at all. I would ban it.

[Verginius Rufus]

Well, the Spanish pronunciation of Bolivar is more like voh-LEE-var, and Florida should be flo-REE-da.

Plato thought that whatever the Greeks borrowed from others, they improved. Sometimes that's also true of Americans pronouncing foreign names.

[RayChuang88]

The ultra fans of soccer teams are especially dangerous in the Spanish La Liga and Italian Serie A, especially the way they abuse players from Africa.

England used to be really bad, but after the fan tragedies at Heysel in 1985 and Hillsborough in 1989, the police really cracked down hard on the hooligans and also forced a change in stadium configuration to discourage such activities. Today, the fan experience at Premier League stadiums are totally different than what it was before 1989.

[dfwgator]

Thatcher deserves a lot of credit for forcing the clubs to take measures to get rid of the hooligans.

But of course, as typical, many hated her for that, because of the fact that with the increased spending and ticket prices that came with the Premier League, it ceased to be the game of the “Working Class.”

[dfwgator]

I was really surprised that hooliganism was rampant in Holland, especially between Feyenoord Rotterdam and Ajax Amsterdam fans.

Freepers should be familiar with Feyenoord, if only for this:

[AEMILIUS PAULUS]

OLO!

[RayChuang88]

I think English football's association with the "working class" and the hooliganism that goes along with it (stadiums were also falling apart in the 1980's and violence between fans were very common) came to a head with the Hillsborough tragedy in 1989 that killed 93 people. It was the shock of that tragedy--as described in the Taylor Report published in its final form in January 1990--that forced many, many changes in English football, starting with much stricter crowd control and a switch to all-seater stadium configuration. As such, famous stadiums such as Manchester United's Old Trafford are very different stadiums in 2014 compared to even the 1980's.