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Showing posts from June, 2010

Don't be 'Joe Fan'

The response from Wednesday's USA last minute thriller versus Algeria felt like the crest of a crescendo that had been swelling since 2000 or so, or maybe even 1996 at the outset of MLS. My favorite US Soccer fan type is 'Joe Fan' who only watches soccer for 1 month out of every four years. He knows general soccer lingo. He even knows the favorites to win the tournament. None of these, though, is his calling card. You'll know Joe Fan by this very one thing -- as the World Cup is discussed among him, he'll whip out his anti-USA soccer spiel that he's been working on all week, or worse -- the one he heard from Michael Wilbon on PTI the previous afternoon. Most Joe Fan-types have these things in common: They think soccer is boring because there isn't much scoring. Soccer isn't even as big as hockey in the US, so it must not matter much. He thinks that since the USA isn't a top 10 favorite to win the World Cup, they must not be any good. He sees the USA