Soccer in a Football World: The Story of America's Forgotten Game (Sporting) [Paperback]

David Wangerin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 28, 2008 | Series: Sporting

David Wangerin's humorous and thorough book tells the story of American soccer's long struggle from the brief promise of the 1920's, through the euphoric highs and extravagant follies of the North American Soccer League, to today's hard-won acceptance.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

In 1987, sick of defending an “un-American” activity, soccer-mad Wisconsinite Wangerin immigrated to England. After many years of thinking that the U.S. “did not deserve” the game, his mixed feelings led him to research the States’ surprising history with the sport, which has often included plenty of drama if not always plenty of fans. In thorough fashion, Wangerin moves from past to present, covering our unique terminology (why do we call it soccer when the world calls it football?); peculiar rules (we have often played it our own way); governing bodies and leagues (there have been many); World Cup triumphs and missteps (many more of the latter); the ongoing fortunes of Major League Soccer; and, above all, the culture surrounding the game. Neither as narrative-driven as Jim Haner’s Soccerhead (2006) nor as entertaining as Gavin Newsham’s Once in a Lifetime (2006), this nonetheless provides a greater level of detail and is a good purchase where soccer-mad patrons—and there are more of them these days—provide demand. --Keir Graff

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Temple University Press; 1 edition (March 28, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1592138853
• ISBN-13: 978-1592138852
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #575,687 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Good History of the Game in America, March 2, 2009

By 

DubyaW (New Jersey) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Soccer in a Football World: The Story of America's Forgotten Game (Sporting) (Paperback)

This book provides a great look into the history of the American game. Other books (Soccerhead being one of the better examples) have provided short outlines of pre-NASL soccer, but Wangerin is successful at seeking out the distant past of American soccer and provides as indepth a history as anyone will probably ever do. One of his main arguments, that while soccer may never be big in America, it's never been a better time for American soccer, is well proved throughout the book's tales of organizational infighting and inexplicable decisions by almost everyone involved in the sport at its highest levels in the US. This book winds up serving not only as a recounting of the past, but also a warning for the future so that American soccer never falls back into the depths of despair it has in the past.

The few issues I have with the book are that little attention is given to the women's game (roughly 12 pages in the 300+ page book), and it feels that Wangerin rushes through the post-1994 history, only hitting some major talking points of the 1998 and 2002 World Cups and some brief history of MLS. Also, very little is mentioned about the US Youth National Teams. I would also like to suggest that eventually this book be updated, since it ends around 2005. The back of the book mentions David Beckham's move to the US with the LA Galaxy, but the book ends its look at the sport in America before Beckham arrival.

With that being said, anyone interested in soccer in America should definitely check this out.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best book on American soccer, February 26, 2009

By 

Roger S. Allaway (Philadelphia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Soccer in a Football World: The Story of America's Forgotten Game (Sporting) (Paperback)

Many people think that the history of soccer in the United States dates back to around the time that Pele arrived in New York in 1975. This magnificent book very firmly refutes that idea, giving a full account of the sport's history in this country dating back to its 19th-century origins.
---Roger Allaway, Historian, National Soccer Hall of Fame

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Red, White and Blue Soccer!, May 9, 2009

By 

Tom Plum "TC" (Roswell, NM United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Soccer in a Football World: The Story of America's Forgotten Game (Sporting) (Paperback)

If you are a fan of the US National Team or MLS, you honestly owe it to yourself to read this.

This book is about our American game. Now, the Canadians likewise and others call it soccer, the National Team of Australia are the Socceroos so we aren't exactly alone in calling it soccer. I feel more like calling it soccer after reading this book. Soccer!

The author David Wangerin does his homework on the long and often patchy history of soccer in the US. My favorite part of the book was in the evolution of the game in the 1920s and 1930s. Indeed, soccer was vying to be one of the top sports in the US, along with American football ("gridiron" as the author and much of the world call it) and baseball. The depression hurt soccer's attempts to become as big as these other sports back then but within pockets of the US, there was acceptance. Wangerin enumerates on the teams and leagues of the past and we are able to look it up and find out more. Amazingly, besides some very poorly attended games sometimes, a few of the old pro games even saw pitch invasions and near riots, here in the Land of the Free, would you have imagined that? Wangerin seems to often quote attendances as a barometer of the popularity of the sport, maybe an over reliance on that too, it appears to be from a large part of his research that is taken from reading newspaper articles and spending long hours in the library.

Many of the assertions and stories by the author are in fact, concepts we vaguely knew about such as St. Louis being a hotbed for real red-blooded American "Yank" soccer back in the day. He clarifies the history. Though I do believe the author does his homework, when history reaches this far back, we often accept his word but I don't think it hurts to do one's own research on the subject.

His observations are very astute. As an example, he does talk about how the NFL has sought to expand itself into the European market with a European league that has basically flopped twice. What is the problem with this? It seems to be that the fans in places like London would indeed rather watch our top American NFL teams like New England or Dallas or whomever is at the top rather than watch a Euro team that is not going to be close to the quality of those in the USA. Aren't many American soccer fans the same way in being fans of Liverpool or Real Madrid or AC Milan or whichever squad versus cheering for the homegrown LA Galaxy or Columbus Crew type American teams? Yes. So here in this book, we see in some ways, how the old adage is true, "the more things change, the more things stay the same" meaning that we've had a whole series of soccer leagues going back to at least the 1910s but rarely having long term success. The MLS, set up partially in regards to the 1994 World Cup held in the USA (this was done to placate FIFA) has had a gradual growth from careful planning. Still, make no mistake about it, the MLS, Major League Soccer does have struggles it endures as a professional sport.

The woman's game is indeed treated very well, with it's own chapter considering basically history starting with that gender's world cup in the 1990s. Indeed, history in the woman's game before this could have been examined but his coverage is still rather detailed except for that.

A bit on the same note of coverage, the college game is talked about time and again in this book, while not covering it in depth.

The history of our National Team is basically well covered in it's highs such as the 1950 Belo Horizonte game in Brazil along with the low points and that seemed to be the rule rather than exception over the years prior to 1990. It is amazing, that at times, the history of our National team has rag tag records where maybe all games they have played are not even properly recorded anywhere. Pan Am games in 1958 anyone? Admirably, for a long time, the USSF, US Soccer Federation was it's own autonomous organization without government funding or other aid.

What more can I say?? I'm going to support MLS and other American leagues even more so now. I always thought it was a good brand of soccer but I am even more convinced to support these teams. It's important too in the long run and is Americanized versus what the NASL largely was with it's foreign stars.

In short and in my experience of reading some dozens of books on soccer/football, this one stands out and surely should be read by every fan of the American game. It's coverage is comprehensive including other items such as the origins of the US game and the annual Open Cup in the US. Every detail you can imagine is covered.