US vs England South Africa 2010: English Soccer Tyranny, Like Hell, is not Easily Conquered

By El Chupacabra

This is a rant. If you don't like them, tune out now.

US v England, Rustenberg, South Africa, June 12, 2010 at 20:30.

It's on people. Don't try to talk El Chupa off of the ledge. This ain't no friendly. El Chupa is not an Anglophile--oh, no, far from it. Pack your toothbrush, forswear fish and chips, English ale and Elizabeth Hurley and prepare to get it on. Seriously, El Chupa will never forgive Italy for Brian McBride's broken nose and the two red cards in 2006 when we held the cowardly Azzurri to a tie. Never. Few teams other than Italy and Mexico raise El Chupa's blood pressure. But this June he will add another vaunted foe to his list of nasties: Rooney and company--the limey bastards.

We may watch, follow and admire the EPL. But we do so for its international flavor and quality of play. The fact that it has Drogbas, and Van Persies and Torres. We don't watch, follow and admire it because toothless chavs populate the stands high on meth and cheap, high-alcohol English lager.

We were thinking of writing a funny piece using the usual stereotypes of the English in an ironic, gently humorous fashion. But we gave up. And we're dead serious. If you think any football fan in Europe has respect for American soccer, the American team, or American soccer fans, you're on crack. They don't. They may like Donovan, and Dempsey and Howard, but they know we're not deep, and they know and love the fact that our team embarrassed itself and the country in Germany in 2006.

Have you ever noticed how violent are the matches between our boys and the big powers in world soccer? Have you ever noticed that we never get the calls in said matches? And that we frequently acquire red cards on the most ridiculous of pretenses? It's not a conspiracy. It's a deep-seeded psychological resentment of American political, cultural and economic hegemony.

In the view of most of the soccer world, the beautiful game is theirs not ours, and we're like the handsome and successful outsider who comes to the wedding and all the girls want to do him and the local boys get pissed and wait outside to beat the leaving crap out of him when he tries to leave in his fancy new car none of them can afford. You've seen that movie? Right.

As such, I urge my readers to step up and stifle any friendly talk around the water cooler or in your local pub about this mother of all matches. This ain't no weeny roast. Get your Gadsden flag ready, stock the fridge with the American craft and micro brews that now put European and British ales to shame and get ready to freaking rumble. Yeah, we respect the other team, but we don't like them, not at all. It's time to earn the respect US soccer fans so desperately crave by sticking a big thumb in the eye of the Lion.

There's a malaise of mind in American soccer given its status as a sport of the white, upper-middle class, that sees it as a gentlemanly game much like tennis and golf. Bullshit. Have you tuned in on a sleepless night to the 1:00 am game on FSC or Gol to watch an obscure match from South America or Europe only to be astonished at how physical is the play? This ain't tiddly winks, as Elizabeth Lambert has so ably and admiringly demonstrated. And it's time American soccer fans acquire the ruthless madness of fanaticism required to urge our boys to victory. In the words of Thomas Paine:

"The summer soldier [think: polite American soccer fan] and the sunshine patriot [think: bandwagon fan] will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."

In short, it's time to get just wee bit angry people, it's not time to get scared. This is Lexington and freaking Concord not an exhibition game of Old Maid. El Chupa is not at all scared. He can't wait for the bodies to hit the floor. Any US fan who says otherwise better step back.

"Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."