It’s a Tuesday morning at 9 a.m. at LIV and I’m sitting on a couch that’s been overrun with marks from high heels. I’m not at the famous Miami club after a long night of partying and blindly swiping my credit card. I’m here for the International Champions Cup, a tournament taking place primarily in the U.S. this summer, featuring clubs such as Real Madrid, Barcelona, Manchester United, Manchester City, Juventus, Bayern Munich, Liverpool, and more.
Past stars for these clubs—like Lothar Matthaus, who captained the 1990 West German National Team to a World Cup trophy, and Sami Hyypia, who played for Liverpool’s European championship from 2005—are here. So are American lovers of European soccer, who are getting hardons from Italian footballers, and big-money American sports moguls, who are, presumptively, looking to cash in on being associated with Manchester United playing Real Madrid on U.S. soil. I’m there as a modest New York Red Bulls supporters who just likes to follow his local club and has no interest in watching Messi or Ronaldo from the comfort of my own home on a Saturday.
I pissed a lot of people off when I said that Zlatan Ibrahimovic signing to the MLS’ Los Angeles Galaxy was a magnifying glass on what’s wrong with soccer in America. That people still ran to big names, preferred the European product on TV to watching a local club in person, and didn’t form meaningful, long-lasting allegiances with clubs in which they have geographic connections. I still feel that way, and no one can tell me any different.
A few hours after writing that story, I got an invite to hop on a plane a week later to attend this event.
I wanted to travel to the heart of the Euro snobbery that occurs in football in America to see how people viewed the sport. I kept hearing how a tournament that featured clubs that would play several times in states such as Michigan, New Jersey, and California would foster genuine, long-lasting connections for Americans who have an interest in soccer.
As champagne glasses clinked and you could see the execs counting up the expected money, I had the opportunity to talk to a handful of soccer legends. Except I didn’t talk about their careers, their former club’s chances of winning their league or landing a big-name transfer. Rather I just wanted to talk to successful European footballers about what they thought about the sport in America and what they thought American fans of the sport could do better and how they could better engage football. And, of course, whether having an affinity for a club thousands of miles away was the answer into becoming a bona fide football lad. Here’s what they had to say.
Lothar Matthaus, Bayern Munich, World Cup winner
Sami Hyypia, Liverpool
Michael Essien, Chelsea
Joleon Lescott, Manchester City
I don’t know what I was looking for on this trip. I really want to see football grow in the States. I want to see packed stadiums, I want people to realize that the sport isn’t just an international game, and I want genuine rivalries and passion to bloom and to read headlines about Orlando City supporters getting into a fracas with Atlanta United. I want there to be a unique, distinctly American version of what the rest of the world views as football culture.
I don’t think I found that at the Fontainebleu Hotel in Miami. There is, however, value in bringing these big clubs over to the States. Everything needs a starting point. A 14-year-old kid might need to go see Juventus play Benfica at Red Bull Arena this July to get their passion sparked for the sport. From then on, hopefully, they don’t view the sport as something that’s watched strictly in HD, rather it’s something you experience and live out in person. I’d be dumb to say this isn’t a massive deal. Seeing the world’s best footballers in your own country is a huge draw, and it’s the same reason people get excited to see Zlatan, David Beckham, or Thierry Henry play in the MLS.
But the questions that remain: How do you get Americans to care about soccer once these big clubs have traveled back to Spain, England, or Italy? Once El Clasico gets played in the States, how do you get us Yankees to genuinely support a local football club? Is watching international football on TV, singing songs about places we’ve never been, and chanting in faux accents the American version of football? I hope not. But let’s view things such as the World Cup and International Champions Cup as vessels to get people onto the soccer train. Maybe those people will eventually turn up at your local ground.
