It's funny. I’ve been planning my soccer book, America’s Game: How Soccer is Played, Taught, and Celebrated in the USA, since October, but only now that I’ve told my plans to the world — or at least to the readers of Goal.com — has it sunk in that this is actually going to be a lot of work. Or, more accurately, that this considerable amount of work I’ve been arranging for the last several months will actually have to be completed by me.
That work starts with what I call privately my Rollicking Research Road Trip, my three-month, nationwide journey to root out soccer in all its forms. A quick jaunt down to Florida, then out to California through the Southern regions of the country, up the coast to Seattle — a Sounders home game strikes me as a "must cover" — then back across to New York and Washington D.C. through Utah, Colorado, and the Midwest. According to Google Maps, just the main part of my tour, traveling from major destination to major destination without side trips and day excursions, will have me in a car driving for a total of nearly six days. It’s more than a little daunting.
My calendar has one color for where I’m supposed to start and end the day, one color for the campgrounds where I may end up staying and one color labeled "Couchsurfing." (Not to mention colors for appointments actually pertaining to the book, possible appointments pertaining to the book, and for World Cup games I’d like to be near a television for.) Fortunately, I’m young enough to still be in touch with many of my college friends who are scattered across the country, and I have very few qualms about enlisting their furniture and floor space as temporary sleeping quarters if they so much as hint that this is okay with them.
Not that I'm complaining; the trip is half the fun. After all, this project is partially an excuse to spend a couple of weeks in the part of the country where they actually have In-N-Out Burgers. (It’s also partially about building my personal brand recognition in pursuit of my lifelong dream of one day being named head coach of the national team of the Faroe Islands. Óli Holm, president of the FSF, if you’re reading, call me.)
But mostly it’s for the sake of the game, to learn all that I can about American soccer and share that with those of you who care. I hope to write about soccer in this country not as a coherent whole, following one narrative thread there and back again, but as a collage of disparate images, assembled into a picture that’s far more complete than what the former method could produce.
To do that, I have to travel. I want to find as many different variations of the American soccer experience as I can. I’ll go see MLS, WPS, and lower division pro games; watch U.S. Open Cup qualifying tournaments; talk to futsallers and beach soccer players; interview coaches foreign and domestic who are spreading the game here; attend some premier U.S. soccer camps; and play in as many pick-up games as I can manage (I’ll have to, if I hope to keep eating In-N-Out Burger).
I want to write about the Latin American influence on soccer in the USA, to figure out how much the typical soccer mom knows about the game, and to discuss the loyalties of American fans who all but ignore soccer in this country in favor of following foreign players and leagues.
Of course, not all of this will make it into the finished product. At a certain point there will be some authorial judgments made, and since they’re my column and my book, it’s only fair that I get to decide what goes into them as representative slices of American soccer culture. But I see no reason why those authorial judgments have to start now, before I’ve even started the Rollicking Research Road Trip. I want to branch out, to get beyond my own concept of what constitutes American soccer.
And for that I need your help. I’m soliciting ideas: Places to go, games to see, teams to watch, groups to play with. If you have a suggestion for any of these, send an e-mail before the first of May to americas.game.book@gmail.com. Tell me where you want me to go, and who or what I’ll be there to see. Tell me when this is happening, and keep in mind that those suggestions with flexible time frames — that aren’t just taking place on one day or over one weekend — are going to be a lot easier for me to get to. Most of all, tell me what makes your game or your team or yourself representative of the American soccer experience. Tell me why your ideas matter, why those of us who follow soccer in this country should care about your stories.
I can’t promise to make it to every event that gets suggested — I do have a schedule to keep, after all. But if it’s a good idea with a good story behind it, I’ll do my best to check it out.
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