Everyone knows that sports can be a unifying force for a community. Jeremy Lin's emergence, for example, has rallied New Yorkers, Asian Americans and Ivy Leaguers around Knicks basketball, while during the NFL season people across Colorado (and the rest of the country) were swept up in Tebow Mania. During the Summer of 2010, the World Cup and USA Soccer had a similar effect on American sports fans - everywhere you went, people wanted to talk about Landon Donovan and Clint Dempsey, celebrate our improbable last second victory over Algeria or lament our crushing Round of 16 defeat at the hands of Ghana.
We're more than a year and a half removed from the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, however, so I wasn't expecting much of a reaction when I wore my USA Soccer jersey around Stanford's campus yesterday. I was, of course, showing support for the squad after Lead Day's impressive 1-0 win over Italy (in Genoa, no less) in an International Friendly, but guessed that most people would assume that I just hadn't had a chance to do laundry recently. Little did I know that the jersey would become a major conversation piece throughout the day, however, and would prove to be a secret key that opened the door to a room full of hidden international soccer fans.
As a predominantly New York sports fan living in California for the past two years, I usually find myself with virtually no one to share my rooting interests with. When I'm back in New York, on the other hand, almost everyone you meet considers himself a New York sports fan, so conversations about the Knicks or Giants come as no surprise. Wearing my USA Soccer jersey around yesterday, however, struck a perfect balance, sparking a number of surprisingly insightful conversations about the team's upcoming schedule, Terrence Boyd's emergence and our chances in the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. My outfit provided a signal to others that it was OK to approach me about USA Soccer, and that I wasn't the typical American out to prove that the world's game was inferior to everything the U.S. has to offer.
It wasn't too long ago that I would have poked fun at some guy wearing a USA Soccer jersey on a seemingly random, non-World-Cup-year Thursday (don't get me wrong - some people did that to me, too). Now, I realize the beauty and joy of being a fan of Team USA's soccer team, and have come to truly appreciate being part of a modest-but-growing group of supporters. While soccer may never overtake baseball and football (or even basketball, for that matter) in my heart, I think I've enjoyed identifying with USA Soccer fans as much as, if not more than, I have connecting with Braves or Giants supporters. I'm looking forward to wearing my jersey a bit more often over the next two years, before World Cup 2014 hysteria settles in and the secret fraternity of American soccer fans is temporarily breached.
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