| Exerpts: Selected Wit
& Wisdom from Soccerhead
ãall rights reserved by Farrar, Straus &
Giroux and/or Jim Haner
Related Links
& Acknowledgements
On the early days of U.S. soccer:
Here on the banks of the Hudson River is where the American
game found its most fertile ground a long time ago; before
the turn of the twentieth century -- in fact, before the
Civil War. As the story goes, soccer landed here before
it ever got to Brazil, carried over by Irish, Scottish and
English immigrants, people who have never heard a story
(especially a true story) that they couldn’t improve
over time.
On coaching kids:
Promising youngsters would suddenly abandon the ball in
the middle of an offensive sweep and wander off toward the
woods singing the theme song to SpongeBob SquarePants (“He
lives in a pineapple under the sea…”). Others
would lie down on the field, roll over onto their back and
stare straight into the sun until they were temporarily
blind. Picking grass bouquets was a hugely popular activity
up and down the roster.
At first no one seemed to care that we were getting clobbered
every Saturday morning, and that was good, because I didn’t
have the slightest idea what to do about it. But as the
year wore on…certain parents started giving me the
dead fish look – the cold marble eyeball of dashed
expectations, the outward symptom of their dawning recognition
that I was almost entirely clueless. This, then, was how
I came to begin researching the tactics, philosophy and
history of the game.
On Game Day tactics:
Dubbing ourselves the Hornets, we amassed a dismal record
in our first year: zero wins and 13 losses, all of them
hideous beatings, including a season-closing 15-0 blowout
in which one of our own players scored four goals against
us for the other team and won himself the nickname Wrong
Way Carlos…
Trying to keep them organized was like trying to nail Jell-O
cubes to the side of a moving bus…I tended to fret
for a few minutes, panic, then start spouting traditional
coaching slogans at the top of my lungs, like, “Somebody,
please, stop that guy!” and “Ooooooh, damn,
not AGAIN!”
“All that yelling doesn’t do any good,”
my son informed me as we drove home after a particularly
animated display of such leadership. “Half the time,
we can’t hear you. And you never played the game yourself,
so you have no idea how hard it is to do what you’re
telling us to do.” The kid in the blond bowl haircut
was eight years old at the time.
On The American Mind:
It is a truism in soccer that no other sport so keenly reflects
the cultural values of the place in which it is played,
and our blind faith in offensive muscle is bred into us:
we believe we can break down any problem, no matter how
gnarled, and bash it into capitulation by force of will,
ingenuity, or arms. Why, we ask sheepishly, does soccer
remain the one thing that we cannot do better than everyone
else? The reason is that soccer is a defensive sport, and
defense requires patience, and patience is not a virtue
that the rest of the world would ever ascribe to us. We
are, everywhere and always, on the offensive.
On girls (and boys):
Intellectual capacity evolves differently – faster
and more finely – in girls than it does in boys. Girls
are better at recognizing symbols, patterns, and external
cues. Their memories and language skills are more acute.
They learn quicker and retain more. Their abstract reasoning
is far superior. Boys, meanwhile, develop earlier in the
frontal “monkey” part of the brain. This gives
them an edge at tracking moving objects and peeling bananas.
Together with their higher muscle mass, their monkey brains
make them better at physical tasks. But the job will get
done faster if there’s a girl around to get them organized.
Fortunately for the Hornets, Shelby was one of those rare
girls who could stand the smell of them.
On the “Babe Ruth of American
Soccer”:
Billy “The Big Bomber” Gonsalves was a six-foot
one-inch, 210-pound Portuguese gunner from Fall River, Mass.…with
a booming shot that could tear the bark off a tree. Olive-skinned
and dark-eyed, Gonsalves began his career in the New England
textile leagues in 1927 and went on to play professionally
in six different states and four major cities – Boston,
New York, Chicago and St. Louis – absorbing every
style then in fashion and incorporating them all into his
own repertoire. “He was a gentleman,” recalls
one former teammate. “Even his hair was perfect.”
On parenting:
Teach kids early mastery of anything, and you increase their
chances of surviving the rest. Encourage them to face their
worst fears, to struggle, and they won’t fold later
when things really turn mean. Keep them moving, in rough
physical contact with the world, because life is not kind
to weaklings and fat people. Never has been, never will
be. Call me insensitive, but I didn’t invent the rule.
The meek may inherit the earth, but they’ll have trouble
collecting the rent. Above all, don’t let your kids
get hit in the head, because that’s where their brains
are. For us, soccer filled all these requirements.
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