The Gifts of Soccer

To many Americans, soccer is simply a sport played by kids and Europeans. As such, most consider it barely a sport at all; it can’t compare to football and baseball in popularity. It’s about as popular as hockey might be, if Canada were on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

But soccer is not without its gifts. Indeed, soccer’s gifts to us

The gifts of soccer are many: Soccer gives us the gifts of agility, balance, speed and grace. It gives us the gifts of a ballet dancer and a Tae Kwon Do master. It gives us the gifts of a master tactician and a master strategist.

Soccer’s gifts are those of the ancient world. Though its current rules were formalized by athletes at Cambridge University in 1848, forms of soccer existed in China hundreds of years before the birth of Christ. Ancient Romans played harpatsum; Ancient Greeks played phaininda. Precolombian native Americans played pok-a-tok, asqaqtuk and pasuckuakihowog. All were predecessors of modern association football.

Soccer’s gifts are those of historical drama. By the Middle Ages, the sport was called “mob football,” and its only rule was a prohibition against outright murder. Whether it arrived with the Roman occupation or the Norman Conquest centuries later is unsure, but what is known is that the game was played between neighboring villages, with “teams” – sports historians use the term loosely – fighting to get an inflated pig’s bladder between a set of markers at each end of town.

Soccer’s gifts are diverse. Soccer has influenced a wide variety of sports, including rugby, American football, Australian rules football and basketball. No other sport can claim such a broad field of influence.

Soccer’s gifts are those of togetherness and understanding. In the mid-1970s, soccer was perceived by much of America as an immigrants’ game, and not until Pelé, one of the greatest players in the history of the game, was coaxed out of retirement in 1975 to play for the North American Soccer League, did the country get its first real taste of a sport that would eventually come to dominate its suburban parks.

Soccer’s gifts are linguistic and political. The term “soccer mom” came into usage in American English during the 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns, to describe middle-class and upper-middle-class women with school-age children, and the concerns that come with motherhood. Soccer moms became a hotly pursued demographic in subsequent elections.

Soccer’s gifts are many. Soccer gives us the gift of fair play, of exercise, of the outdoors on a sunny day.