In Pete’s Tavern on Saturday, the oldest continually operated pub in New York, it really was a whole different ball game than the ones the regulars are used to. “We’ve got a few more people than usual,” said Mike Hauge, the former college [American] football player tending bar. “I love the World Cup. I’m not really a soccer fan but I like the idea that everyone in the world is excited about the same thing.”
With 20 minutes to go before kick-off, Hauge switched the TV from baseball — the New York Yankees — to soccer. Switching off the Yankees is rare at Pete’s, but the occasion seemed to justify it. For 90 minutes (and no longer) Pete’s Tavern became interested in the World Cup. “It’s great. We have to watch this game. The World Cup is fantastic,” said Lyndsay Coutore (22) as she sat the bar and drank a bottle of Woodpecker cider.
Pete’s Tavern is a New York landmark, tucked away in a back street just off Gramercy Park. It opened in 1864 and has served beer ever since, surviving prohibition disguised as a flower shop. Jack Kerouac spent time here. O. Henry wrote the classic short story The Gift of the Magi inside.
Drinkers gathered as the game got under way, displaying emotions usually reserved for the Yankees. Matthew Pess, a 25-year-old engineer, proudly wore his American scarf and lapped up every moment. He groaned at Steven Gerrard’s early goal, yelled for handball at penalty-box incidents and cheered on the American team just like any other World Cup fan. “This is the reason you watch the game,” he said. “It’s the atmosphere. This is the sport I love.” Then he paused to shout at the screen where America had just missed a chance. “You don’t shoot like that from 25 yards out!” he lamented. A few minutes later he was cheering and jeering at the goalkeeping mistake that led to an American goal. “That had to be saved!” he laughed.
Yet Pess and his passion are still a relative rarity. The build-up to the World Cup in America has been a distinctly quieter affair than most of the rest of the world. The back pages and sports sections of the newspapers are still dominated by baseball and basketball. The flags draped from cars, shops and windows in England are virtually absent. The only exceptions are the many bars that are advertising the game — but most of those are aimed at the expatriates and foreign-born. While virtually every pub in England is draped in the flag of St George, the bars in America feature all the flags of the World Cup nations.
Walking through the streets of Greenwich Village, packs of American fans were looking for the Irish bars and expat haunts to watch the games. They wore USA team shirts and carried flags. A few had painted faces. Passersby, on their way to brunch, looked at them with bemused interest.
‘Big four’ US sports
The World Cup is more popular in the big cities, where any nationality from South African to Uruguayan can find a restaurant or bar to be its home base. Elsewhere, it is still seen as an exotic, foreign beast. “In Boston or New York or any big city where immigrants live people will love it. But in Middle America people still would rather know what the result of the St Louis Cardinals baseball game is,” said Frank Shorr, a sports expert at Boston University.
The failure of Americans to fall in love with soccer is as old a story as the World Cup itself and the social reasons are the same as ever. Americans love their own sports. The “big four” of American football, baseball, basketball and ice hockey are faster, more intricate and higher scoring than football, with a tendency to create single moments of high drama and a strong aversion to anything that resembles a nil-nil draw. According to Stephen Colbert, Comedy Central’s fake conservative pundit: “Soccer is just one more thing the rest of the world is trying to jam down our throats, like the metric system.”
Colbert’s persona is a joke but his point is true. Yet every four years the American media promises a great breakthrough in the nation’s attitude to the “beautiful game”. This year was no different. Time magazine put the sport on its cover and an inside article was titled: “Yes, soccer is America’s game.”
But not many really agree. The bubble of football popularity soon deflates. Almost 17-million Americans watched the last World Cup final, but 106 million tuned into the last Super Bowl — and 48-million to the final of the men’s college basketball championship.
So, while the passion was there at Pete’s — and the rest of America — it appeared a transitory thing. “I don’t expect any fisticuffs between American and English soccer fans after this,” laughed Hauge. “The World cup is great but soccer is not that important.” – guardian.co.uk