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One Fan’s Reaction to Watching U.S.-Honduras Eighties-Style

I watch most U.S. national team games cloistered in my own soccer nerdom, hunched over a computer or slouched at a friend’s house where I can bitch freely about the team’s dry ideas and dire first touch. This is how a lot of us watch games. As a whole, U.S. fans are a nerdy and pessimistic bunch. We pick apart 1-0 wins over Trinidad & Tobago. We fear loud noises and confrontations at bars with Steelers fans over television-space. Saturday’s game against Honduras, however, forced us to come together with an energy and pride that we rarely exhibit.

Because FIFA gives television rights to the host nation of World Cup qualifiers, most Americans could watch the game against Honduras only at a joint willing to purchase Media World’s closed-circuit feed. In my Northern California neck of the woods only a few bars coughed up the bucks. Those older than me tell me that this is how they used to watch boxing matches and old U.S.-Mexico qualifiers. Anyways, I’m pretty sure it was a good gamble for the places that funded the game. I’ve heard conflicting estimates about the cost of the feed (ranging from $1,500 to $3,000), but even if the Irish pub (good old Danny Coyle’s) where I watched the game paid twice this I reckon it made more than enough to fund a few more Guinness posters. Paying $20 a head, U.S. fans packed the place to “capacity”, at easily over 300 people. Considering profits on drink prices, I expect the joint to unveil at least one fresh urinal in the coming months.

Danny Coyle's might hope for some more closed-circuit games

It was an impressive gathering of American soccer die hards. Over 100 late bastards couldn’t even make it inside. So they watched pressed up against the bar’s fogged glass windows. I don’t usually get sappy watching U.S. games, but I couldn’t help it. Here, I felt connected to the vibrating and illusive pulse of the game in this country. Maybe it was the alcohol, or the result, or the way we all watched the same grainy feed that played meaningless replays instead of live scoring opportunities, but we all felt the same simplified emotions. Here, confusing my neighbor’s beer with my own, we tended to agree, rare for fans of any team . We groaned collectively at Conor Casey’s start. We laughed and whooped at Casey’s goals, the first one of which he knocked in with the back of his keg-sized neck. We grunted at U.S. turnovers. We covered our faces before Carlos Pavon sent his 87th minute penalty kick over the bar.

As the clock ticked on, it slowly sank in. This is how much of the rest of the world watches games, not in the intellectual towers we construct for ourselves, but together, in a patriotic bliss that makes us forget our faults. We push under the pool table our sputtering relationships, our bills and our fears. And in our uniquely thick-skinned American way, we expunge our imperial guilt for helping to violate the human rights and economies of whatever third world country we’re playing. We root for our country in a game played on as level terms as our messed up history allows.

I don’t expect to watch a game in this way again. As we move through the 21st century, I imagine that World Cup qualifiers will only get easier to watch in the comfort of our own homes, even if we have to pay for them on an individual basis over the internet. But for once I was thankful for limited cable rights, although I felt bad for all those who missed the game and all the poor souls shivering outside the bar window. But inside we were the beating heart of U.S. soccer, too enraptured by the atmosphere and blunted by booze to think critically. “I’ll never question Bob Bradley again!” I will remember believing this. Pouring out of the bar, we steamed like severed heating pipes into the crisp San Francisco night.

Not that I’d like to watch every game like this. The magic would wear off. But I’d at least like to know that the option is out there. Anyone experience something similar? Horribly different? At the same bar? Where you the guy I accidentally elbowed in the face?◊

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