KICK START

                I can’t recall exactly when it was—maybe four or five years ago—but the sport of soccer took a giant leap forward in these United States when ESPN, the all-sports TV network, began including its international scores on its “crawl,” the info that streams constantly across the bottom of its screens. Suddenly, the real game of the foot took its place in the daily diet of scores and news flashes that Americans breathe in like the air, gaining immeasurably in status. Although nobody I know of marked the event it was a clear signal that finally, and despite the scoffers, soccer had made it hereabouts, with a capital M.

                 The observation is pertinent because soccer will be much with us in the coming weeks and many will be paying attention. Later today (Saturday, June 1) the English clubs Liverpool and Tottenham will have it out in Madrid in the final of the European Champions League, the game’s biggest annual event. It will be carried in the U.S. by TNT and the Spanish-language network Univision, and a large audience is expected. The game hyped itself in the best way by the semifinal matches that preceded it, with both finalists gaining upset victories with late goal surges that bordered on the incredible. The highlight films of those games elbowed out domestic contests for U.S. sports-show air space.

                And starting the following week, on June 7, the game’s Women’s World Cup kicks off a month’s run in France, with the U.S. team favored to repeat as champions. Women’s soccer, like women’s sports generally, usually doesn’t fare well on the American tube, but the combination of patriotism, pulchritude and possible victory has made the quadrennial fest a big draw. The U.S.-Japan final in 2015, won by the Yanks, 5-2, had a U.S. audience of about 26 million people, more than the number that tuned in to any NBA finals or baseball World Series game that year. You can win a bar bet with that one.

                What really is noteworthy, though, is how the day-in, day-out popularity of soccer has taken off in recent years. The sport has supplanted ice hockey as America’s fourth-favorite spectator sport (behind football, basketball and baseball) and in the 2018 Gallup Poll it ranked third among people in the 18-to-54-year-old age category, outpacing the diamond sport. Figures on youth participation are similar, with soccer coming in behind only basketball and baseball among kids six to 12 years old.

                Behind the popularity growth is a mushrooming of soccer offerings on TV; according to various sources the U.S. television audience for the sport has about tripled in the last decade, suggesting the maxim “if you air it, they will watch.” NBC, Fox, ESPN, TNT, Univision and a host of national or regional cable outfits present soccer on a regular basis, and all four of the sport’s international “major” leagues—England’s Premier League, Spain’s La Liga, Italy’s Serie A and the German Bundesliga—have U.S. outlets.

                That’s significant because most of the viewer growth is coming from leagues based abroad. Major League Soccer, the biggest U.S. professional league, does okay on the tube (on ESPN) and at the gate, but its American audience is about half of that of the Premier League (on NBC), and only about a third the size of Liga MX, the Mexican pro league. And just to show that it’s not only Hispanics that follow the Mexican circuit, Fox last year added English-language broadcasts of Liga MX games. Many Americans—especially kids-- have become fluent in the language of the sport, calling zero scores “nil” and a field a “pitch,” and arguing over whether Messi or Ronaldo is the game’s best player. And what about Harry Kane, huh?

                That I am among the group that tunes in regularly to soccer is a source of wonder to me. I have no background in the sport, my only childhood rubs with it coming when I wandered by Winnemac Park near my Chicago home on Sunday mornings and saw teams representing ethnic social clubs kick the balls around. My main takeaway from those games was geographical; they were how I discovered that countries such as Armenia and Croatia existed.

                Like many Americans, my first immersion involved the 1994 Men’s World Cup in the U.S., covering the American team’s pre-Cup exertions and the main competition itself. Watching entire contests at the sport’s highest level put me in tune with soccer’s rhythms and taught me to appreciate its fine points, which can make even low-scoring games interesting. Moreover, I thoroughly admired the players’ athleticism, finding amazing the things they could make the ball do using just their feet.  (If you don’t agree, try kicking a soccer ball with your “off” foot.  You’ll be as likely to take a pratfall as make contact.)  My admiration was solidified before and during the 1998 World Cup in France. It was the best event I ever covered, although much of the pleasure stemmed from being able to spend five weeks in or around Paris on the Wall Street Journal’s dime.

                Further, I have a favorite European club team to help me sustain interest in non-World Cup years. It’s Tottenham Hotspur, one of the teams in today’s Champions League matchup.  I came to the club by way of my ex-pat son Michael, who lives near Amsterdam after a long stint in England, and my Anglophile friend Mike Levy. Our common allegiance had made for many hours of quality bonding.

                It was, I believe, fated that I become a Spurs supporter. For one thing, the team has a Jewish connection, the North London neighborhood from which it sprang being a one-time Jewish base. For another, the club often is likened to my Chicago Cubs baseball favorites in that it has gone an epochal period (59 years) without a Premier League title.

 It’s done pretty well of late, joining the half-dozen clubs that annually vie for the English crown, but it hasn’t been able to shake a rep for playing poorly when the stakes are high. Son Mike says that none of his Spur-fan friends believes the team will win today—it never does in such a match. But—hey!—if Americans can get to like soccer, anything’s possible.