Since this is my personal space on the internet I'm going to use it as I see fit. Though no one is listening, I'm going to take a moment to wax poetic about the sport I'm beginning to fall in love with.
Let me get this out of the way quickly, for the sake of being honest and forthright. I'm still relatively new to this sport. Soccer. Football, I mean. I actually wake up before dawn on Saturdays now to watch the Premier League on NBC Sports, which is not something I ever thought I'd be doing.
But I'm still just an apprentice of the game. I first started following Manchester United in the 09/10 season, which you may recall as Year One of the post-Ronaldo era, and I've learned a lot about the club since then. The history, the glory. Sir Alex is a god, Ryan Giggs is a legend, the soft-spoken ginger in midfield is vastly underappreciated outside of Manchester. He scores goals galore, as the song goes. I've learned that people who say 'Man U' should be ridiculed to no end, and that Scousers are a bunch of wankers. Or, wait. Wankers are Scousers. No, the Scousers are definitely wankers, as are the Geordies and Gooners, I think. Either way, apparently my spell-check wasn't programmed by a soccer fan.
There have been so many outstanding moments since I began following United, but we never forget our first, right? Unless our first was the Auld Slapper, am I right? Sorry Rooney, but you brought that on yourself.
But back on topic, that first memory of mine is Michael Owen's injury time winner at Old Trafford against City, right after Craig Bellamy took Rio's wayward pass (or whatever that was, I'm still not sure) the length of the pitch to tie the game at three all. Isn't it ironic that Michael Owen, a Liverpool legend, is the centerpiece of this, my first experience with the magic of Old Trafford? Must sound strange for you lifelong United fans. On top of that, it was the immortal Ryan Giggs who found Owen at the far post with a beautiful long ball that Owen slipped past the goalkeeper and into the net. I leapt from my chair in rapturous joy. I paced my living room, waving my arms in the air and talking shit to my dog, who was a City fan probably. Then I went and played FIFA for like, three hours straight, I don't know. But it was glorious.
It goes both ways, though, doesn't it? I think we all remember the final day of last season. I was watching City's match against QPR because ESPN happened to have the game streaming on the Xbox, so when I heard that City was somehow down by a goal with only minutes left, naturally I had to tune in. United just about had the trophy in their grasp.
And that's when the spaceship tragically crashed into the Etihad Stadium to collect Comrade Tevez and bring him back to the planet Crustyassneck. Remember? They had to end the match two minutes early and United was handed its twentieth English title. Remember that? Yeah, I done seen it. I seen it with my own two eyes.
But in all seriousness, you know what really shocked me about that whole ordeal? As soon as Aguero scored and won City its first league title since Nixon was dragging his jowls through halls of the White House, I shut the TV off and it was like the whole thing never happened. It wasn't on the news, it wasn't on the radio, it wasn't in the newspapers the next day. I mean, it might've gotten a mention on the back page somewhere but I didn't exactly search for it. In England it was all over the place, but not here in the States. I could pretend that it never happened.
Contrast Manchester City's gut-wrenching victory with my Niners' recent Super Bowl loss. I can't so much as flip the radio on here in the bay area without having to hear about their inability to score with first and goal on the one yard line. It's awful. I mean, I think my eyes are still crossed from watching that shit, and the world just won't let me forget it. My friend Joey Montana says it'll get better soon, though. He's been great through it all. Joey is very quiet, and in fact I think I'm the only one who can hear him. He says it'll get better next season when we rebuild the secondary. Joey is a great friend.
But anyway, what was I talking about? I suppose there are positives to keeping our game- our wonderful, glorious game- an afterthought here in America, and a selfish part of me kind of wants to keep it a secret over here. It's just, you know, it's my thing. It's my sport. It can be yours too, as long as you don't say something stupid like, "If the good lord wanted us to play soccer, he wouldn't have given us hands."
I'd still like to see MLS grow and become a better league. We have the athletes here in the states to compete with the rest of the world, and I don't think anyone would argue that. Landon Donovan recently made a comment about how Lebron James would be one of the world's elite soccer players if he'd simply chosen soccer over basketball... I don't necessarily agree with that, but you see my point. We just have to convince those athletes to choose soccer. To choose the adventure of plying your trade overseas, in front of those famously passionate crowds, even though they'd be making less money than the elite baseball, football and basketball players do. I'd love to become a San Jose Earthquakes fan, I really would. But MLS just can't compete with the history and the excitement of the European game. Maybe the answer is importing more aging superstars, a la David Beckham? I don't know.
Or we can just forget about it. We can be selfish. Manchester United and everything we love about the club and the sport can be our little secret. People might laugh at us. They might think it's weird that we like to wake up at 5AM on a Sunday so that we can yell at Nani for being selfish, or celebrate a Robin Van Persie volley, or make fun of Carlos Tevez' fucked up neck.
As much as it bothers me to hear American sports fans trash the sport, even if some of their points are valid, I'm kind of over it. The game is great enough that I don't need validation from the people around me. I can't wait for the World Cup in 2014, I can't wait for the summer transfer window, and hell, I can't wait for this Saturday's match against Norwich and I can't wait to read everyone's thoughts about it.
So, I think I'm done rambling. Just felt like expressing my ever-growing love of the sport and, in particular, the mighty Reds of Manchester. Also, the treble is ON.
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Edit: Trebles are stupid anyway.
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