Four in the morning: that brief lull between the last late-night spenders and the first early-morning earners. On 18th Street, in one of the hipper districts of Washington DC, there is a bustle on the pavement. But then there generally is — a 24-hour diner and an all-night pizza place sit next to each other.
It is true the diner has a slightly larger dead-hour crowd than usual. It has been advertising itself as one of the few places in the city showing the soccer through the night: ”Yell Gooooaaalll! With A Roomful of People Who Understand Your Innermost Feelings.”
For Brazil versus Costa Rica ”Gooooaaalll!” got more or less yelled seven times but it was not clear the whole room understood. There were maybe 40 people in the café and about half were watching the big screen. A cop came in, unbuttoned his bulletproof vest and plonked himself down for breakfast with his back to the game. Two men were playing chess.
Anyone desperate to flee the hysteria would fit in here. Eight years after the tournament was held in the United States, in an attempt to integrate the greatest game and the greatest market, not much has changed. The 4am watchers in the diner comprised some Latin partisans, obsessed Brits and just a handful of eccentric Americans, one of whom was telling how his colleagues at work did not understand the game. Why not? ”They’re morons,” he said.
But in a country of migrants every team has a huge number of partisans, as the attendances in 1994 proved. Every game is on cable TV, though sometimes only with commentary in Spanish. The time difference is horrific but the diner does fill up for the most compelling contests at the more user-friendly hours.
For the win over Portugal last week, said the waitress, it did get ”just a little rowdy”. Indeed, reports from another footballing Washington restaurant said that 50 supporters went outside and celebrated noisily. Fifty? Call the cops! Riot! Revolution!
The win was reported in the national paper, USA Today, under the headline ”USA gets world’s attention”. That, however, was well below: ”Lakers hold off Nets 99-94”. Millions have been watching the one-sided basketball finals, which the Lakers, from Los Angeles, clinched thanks to the brilliance of Shaquille O’Neal, a role model to any 2,1m boy who happens to be 170kg and athletic with it.
After the Portugal game my 10-year-old came back from school where he has a Portuguese friend in a class full of Americans. ”So did Tomas get a hard time today?” ”No,” he said. ”Why should he?” Yet everyone knew the result. And nearly all the boys — British, Portuguese and American — then trooped off to their regular soccer practice.
It is weird. In the crowded inner cities, soccer may be considered sissy and less practical than basketball. In the American suburbs it is the organised sport of choice for both boys and girls. But then kids everywhere make a distinction between the games they play and the ones they follow. After all, we do not hear much about the Gameboy World Cup.
The US may be the Great Exception but it is not quite alone. Soccer has never truly thrived in the communities originally colonised from Britain, probably because most of the migration took place before games were fully codified, allowing each place to strike out on its own. Much of Australia also prefers its own form of football; Sydney is a rugby league town; New Zealand and white South Africa go for rugby union; the Raj never got Indians playing much soccer either.
The current theory is that soccer here was beaten down, firstly, because Harvard university, the dominant power in 19th-century sport, imposed its own form of football (ie American) on its rivals. Then it got crowded out of the cities and so never developed a working-class base.
There are two other, more compelling, explanations. One is that soccer has not been pushed by the TV networks because — with a break after 45 minutes instead of every four or five — it fits so terribly with their advertising regime. The second is that the US has never really got the hang of any international team competition.
The top four public-interest sports (American football, baseball, basketball and ice hockey, in roughly that order) are club team games. The next echelon of interest is for individual games like golf and tennis. Soccer probably scrapes into the top 10.
Major League Soccer, the one clearly defined remnant of the World Cup, is still going but has just had to ditch two of its teams. Still, 45 000 did turn up for one game in New York this year; the average is nearer 10 000 but the whole English second division would settle for that.
It is not soccer the Americans fail to grasp but the concept of ”win some, lose some” national rivalry. Seen from here, there are only two nationalities: Americans and the poor saps who ain’t.
Patriotism is expressed in different ways. A fixture is planned against Iraq. It will be played, they trust, away from home. There are no plans for a home leg, extra-time or a penalty shootout. And it will not be just the manager in danger if things go badly.