The angriest emails I ever received were from Liverpool supporters, apoplectic at the mere suggestion broke-butt American businessman Tom Hicks was doing more damage to his US sports franchises than his English soccer one. Their missives were littered with “gutteds,” dripping with angst and loaded with venom.
I immediately liked them, and their sport.
The beauty of the English Premier League is the very hysteria hinted at in those emails. The fans are crazy pants, the soccer deliciously addictive, which partially explains why the other football — based in England of all places — is flirting with joining Major League Baseball and the NBA in the fight to become the second-most popular sport on this side of the pond.
We as a country want to like soccer, as evidenced by our every-fourth-year dive into the World Cup. What we hate is the MLS version, lacking in rivalries and skill and drama, or all of the things our football provides. Only the EPL feels so hipster, like jamming to Mumford & Sons before it was cool to do so, or liking "30 Rock" before The Emmys love, or wearing Sperry Top-Siders when doing so was uncool — which was right before it tipped back to cool.
Hipsters tend to sense what is good before the trend becomes popular. The older we get, the more often the dance with what is hip is nonconsensual. I am frustrated to find myself becoming one of those people, people I once giggled at for saying “Did you hear about . . . " right as that thing was just about to jump the shark.
And yet my favorite track on Jay-Z and Kanye's "Watch The Throne" album — "Otis" — is obvious, and I paid my $1.29 to iTunes because the idea of stealing intellectual property is odious to me. The smug satisfaction of seeing "30 Minutes Or Less" in a theater crammed with 20-something males in skinny jeans Saturday was diluted by my doing so as part of a dinner-and-a-movie night that required a babysitter. The profound cliché canceled any hipster factor.
I note all of this as a preemptive admission, so you know I know I am a late adopter of the EPL. The sport steadily has been jumping into our sports conversation, with summer visits and American watching parties and a bigger presence on American TVs. It is not football, pro or college, or even baseball or basketball, very much an emerging indie band to the more established US sports' U2 and Bruce Springsteen.
Yet I am strangely addicted, as are many of my friends.
The lure is not merely the game itself. It is soccer after all. It can be boring at times, even when well played. Of course, so can baseball, and it held national pastime status for forever. The appeal of the EPL is the scene, with heroes and villains and characters and drama. It is as good as the soccer, which is really good.
I love the sound of English broadcaster Ian Darke’s voice. I love how the players crumble onto the ground as if dead, only to bounce back seconds later, this very act as much a part of games as corner kicks. I love the college football atmosphere, with chants and colors and pints. I love the words they use — wages and gutted and fixtures and pitch — giving games a gravitas missing in America. I love watching Wayne Rooney, Joe Hart and, yes, especially Cheryl Cole’s ex (Chelsea's Ashley Cole), playing on a level I am still trying to comprehend. I love how this league siphons down into an even better and more competitive grouping, four Champions League spots on the line. I love the fact I merely talked about finding a PL team and my Twitter exploded with admonishments of Manchester United. Every sport needs their Yankees, if only so we have a target for all of that sport's hate.
The key is having a club. There is no neutral in the EPL, as I am learning.
So as I watched Aston Villa and Fulham on Saturday morning, I began debating what club to claim as mine. The Mans — United and City — were immediately dismissed for being too good. They violate my front-runner rule of sports fandom, namely only longtimers and residents of said city can adopt a really good team without drawing stars. For everybody else it looks like cherry picking, the fans-wearing-Miami-Heat-jerseys-with-tags-still-attached-variety. Fandom should require some blood — and a little pain and geography whenever possible.
I finally came down to Stoke (it has an awesome name, and I read a description of the club as the gritty villain of the league) and Liverpool (the team initially piqued my interest because it has a chance of actually winning and has American ties, Red Sox owner John Henry, the principal owner). Any doubters of EPL becoming a sporting force to be reckoned with on the American sports scene, ask yourself why Henry — already an owner of an iconic franchise — went all in? Oh, yeah, because EPL is big and getting bigger daily.
I am still debating my club, though Texas guilt has me doing a slight lean toward Liverpool. Not that my fandom, still in the very tenuous first trimester and trying to grasp the enormity of the undertaking, compensates for the Hicks debacle. It is me finally understanding what all of those emails were about years ago.
This soccer is not to be taken lightly, and it proves highly addictive once engaged.
