Ben and Nathan Matteson

It could well be that a healthy football (er, soccer) association is fated to never quite catch on in this country. Even a thoroughly multicultural city like our beloved Chicago seems loath to support such a "non-American" sport.

So if anyone driving down Lake Shore Drive last Sunday noticed anything unusualÐsay, 36,000 people drinking, screaming, maybe jumping up and down and generally having a damn good time despite the damp and shitty weatherÐyou might've been a bit confused. Certainly you wouldn't have thought that the Chicago Fire (who?) was slaughtering the undefeated MLS leaders from Kansas City. And if you had, then you'd have been wrong because, in fact, only about half that many folks (or about .25 percent of Chicago) came out for the hometown club's mighty effort earlier that day.

No, what the lads came to see, and what seems uniquely capable of pulling the lukewarm soccer fans out of the woodwork, were the infamous international footballers. Still, it's never been properly explained why non-Yank organizations are perceived to be so far superior to the homegrown variety, yet there must be some truth in the assumption despite the mounting evidence to the contrary (for example, the 5-1 drubbing that Hamburg SV of the, according to conventional wisdom, superior German Bundesliga took from our very own Chicago Fire).

Not many American fans are rabid enough over their national team to cross the big pond to offer their support, but when Mexico and Ireland met at Soldier Field on Sunday, it wasn't really surprising that so many bodies in the stands were actually from Mexico and Ireland. But it's funny how the appearance of a national team can turn the average (meaning timid) American with either the slightest amount of ethnic pride or football (er, soccer) fervor into a half-mad animal hungry for human gristle.

For the extra-timid, noise and raucous behavior was kindly subsidized by McDonald's and their seemingly unlimited supply of "bangers" (they must have been for the Irish). What with beer flowing in rivers, flags being run around the stadium, thousands of extremely silly hats and even a bagpiper's drone battling the ceaseless chorus "Me-xi-co! (bang, bang, bang)" it was just shocking to witness the change in the standard white-bread American punters. Under these conditions, a docile chap sipping an overpriced pint and trying vainly to protect his nachos from the drizzle soon transforms into an enraged silverback, drunkenly flinging jalapenos and screaming bloody murder over the din of his bangers. Pure genius, and that's football (er, soccer). (2000-06-08)

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