If America wants soccer’s passion, it should start with soccer’s past

The guy sitting below me, whom I’ve affectionately dubbed Mason for his ice cream hair, team jersey and wraparound shades, spent at least five innings of the baseball game laser-focused on the Brazil vs. Haiti soccer match on his phone.

Credit: Nedra Rhone

Credit: Nedra Rhone

I watched the blurs of blue and white over his shoulder as Brazil eliminated Haiti from the World Cup. I suspect Mason and I weren’t the only fans in the ballpark whose attention and loyalties were divided.

In the U.S., new soccer fans of the 21st century fit into two categories: immigrants and their direct descendants and the highly educated, according to Simon Kuper, author of “Soccer Against the Enemy.”

These groups, he said, are the most globalized Americans, and he concluded that among newer soccer fans, the importance of nation was diminishing. “Blood and soil are losing out to satellite TV and nationalism to globalization,” he wrote.

In Europe, South America and Africa, soccer has historically been the primary national sport with influence on politics, social mobility, national identity and international reputation.

Despite the move toward globalization that Kuper suggests in his book, in the U.S., soccer must compete with the more established athletic leagues and reconcile an expensive youth sports infrastructure that runs counter to its foundation as “the people’s game.”

If soccer is war, and many people have said it is, when you arrive late to the battle, as we did in America, passion can seem more viral than homegrown.

Credit: Nedra Rhone

Credit: Nedra Rhone

To understand the deep connection global soccer fans have to the sport, I visited the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, where a temporary exhibition, “The People’s Game: Soccer and Human Rights,” is on view through June 2027.

At the entrance, near a wall of jerseys signed by legends like Pelé, Ronaldinho and Messi, CEO Jill Savitt explained the importance of linking this cultural moment, the World Cup in Atlanta, to the Center’s mission.

“We needed to find a legitimate way to tell a human rights story about soccer,” she said.

The questions — How have fans and players used soccer to advance human rights? How has soccer created community for people? How have soccer uniforms been used to carry a message? — are asked and answered.

It is serendipitous that staff curator Daniel Fuller is a soccer fanatic. As the project took shape, Fuller said he lamented to Chief Program Officer Kama Pierce about American media’s clickbait coverage of sports. He wanted to uncover meaningful stories of change in soccer.

“The more we talk about these stories,” he said, “the more (people) will feel like they can make a change themselves.”

Those stories include the dramatic moment in April 1958 when 12 Algerian players for France’s national soccer team defected to Tunisia to form FLN, the first unofficial Algerian national team. Though they were banned by FIFA, they played 80 matches across Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Africa, using their platform to challenge French colonization, which ended in 1962 when Algiers gained independence.

In Afghanistan, where the Taliban banned women from sports, a squad practiced in secret, digging holes in the desert to bury their shin guards and cleats so the items wouldn’t be found during searches of their homes. Forced into exile in 2021, team members spread out to Norway, Canada and the U.S. In April, FIFA reversed its previous decision and allowed Afghan Women United to represent Afghanistan while living and training in New Zealand.

I visited Robben Island, South Africa, in 1995, just after apartheid ended, but never learned about the Makana Football Association formed in the 1960s and 1970s by political prisoners on the island. They petitioned the warden to start a soccer league that followed FIFA rules. Rivals from different political parties worked together to manage matches while practicing self-governance and establishing the democracy they wanted to see in their country.

Credit: Nedra Rhone

Credit: Nedra Rhone

It is unlikely that soccer will have the same kind of humanitarian impacts in the U.S. — the inputs are too radically different — but already we’ve seen the power of the sport to spur change, as in 2022 when the U.S. Women’s soccer team prevailed in a six-year gender discrimination lawsuit.

Fuller says he has also noticed an evolving soccer culture among American fans in cities like Knoxville, Chattanooga and Portland, Maine, that resembles the European model, one in which passion for the sport is fueled by identity.

“The United Soccer League … has really bubbled up, and it is more of a European culture because it is smaller, more tight-knit,” Fuller said.

The stadiums are smaller but packed. Fans go to the games, win or lose. There are rivalries. But mostly, teams have an identity that fans embrace.

Vermont Green FC, with jerseys made from 27 recycled water bottles, claims to be the most eco-friendly team in America, and fans live by that, Fuller said.

So, while Americans will never have the deep history with soccer that fans from other countries have, we can learn from and respect the sport’s influence on human and civil rights and continue to carry that legacy forward in a way that is uniquely ours.

Read more on the Real Life blog. Find Nedra on Facebook, X, Instagram, or email her at nedra.rhone@ajc.com.