There’s an old pennant hanging on the wall of my office here in Washington DC, tucked between a poster of indoor soccer legend Steve Zungul and a photo of Pelé riding a horse. “Soccer,” it reads, “the sport of the 80s.”
For a century or so, soccer was always the sport of the next decade. Clear-thinking businesspeople tried everything to sell it to Americans, but soccer was always considered too foreign and exotic, an activity best practiced and consumed by outsiders. Even in the mid-80s, when I started playing, it was still very much othered. It’s what drew me to the sport in the first place.
