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World Cup 2010: African Americans Give U.S. Team Chance of Success

By Madison J. Gray on Jun 10th 2010 4:20PM

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World Cup 2010: African Americans Give U.S. Team Chance of Success


Football season starts Friday!!

No, we don't mean that football. We mean the football of Pele, Maradona, and Ronaldo. We mean the kind of football where you don't use your hands at all, but use your feet always. We mean the football that just happens to be the most popular spectator sport in the world. We mean what you Yanks typically call soccer.


Here at BV we understand that America has sadly been hindered from enjoying The Beautiful Game (otherwise known as the FIFA World Cup) the way that people do in other parts of the world. But fortunately we are staffed with well-traveled journalists who are happy to impart the thrill of announcers shouting "GOOOOOOOAAAL!!!" followed of course by entire populations rejoicing in nationalistic revelry even if they are engaged in civil war.

But that doesn't mean you can't get football fever too because, yes, there are African Americans playing in this year's World Cup. In fact, eight of the 23-man U.S. squad will compete in South Africa this Saturday in the Group C opener against England.



There are probably two reasons why you haven't been exposed to soccer in the way that you should have been. Firstly, domestic sports lend themselves to domestic television because of the way they are split into innings, quarters or periods, plus the number of time-outs. That allows advertisers to pay for the herculean costs of bringing Kobe Bryant and Kevin Garnett to your screen. Secondly, there are few, if any world class soccer players that Americans are familiar with for the preceeding reason.

Forwards Jozy Altidore, Edson Buddle and Robbie Findley, Midfielders DaMarcus Beasley, Ricardo Clark and Maurice Edu, goalkeeper Tim Howard and defender Oguchi Onyewu each play either Major League Soccer in the States or internationally.

Several are making their second or third World Cup appearance and because they bring experience to the American team that it rarely has, the U.S. is being looked at as possibly making it out of opening group play and into the quarterfinals.

Team USA has not won a World Cup in its 80-year history.


Watch Nike's World Cup video:

"The only Africans in this world who are not playing soccer are the African Americans, so if you want to be true Africans, you must play the sport of Africa," Danny Jordaan, Chief Executive of the World Cup, told USA Today as he encouraged American blacks to take a closer look at a sport in which brothers all over the world are seen playing.

Beside that, this is the first World Cup ever played on African soil, in South Africa, to boot. If you'll remember just 20 years ago, we were holding out hope that the nation would drop apartheid and free Nelson Mandela. Because of that change, it's something for people of African descent worldwide to celebrate.



Now, I'm a soccer fan, and I'm not naive. I know the predictions don't exactly fall in Team USA's favor in the opener, but in the World Cup you can lose your first game and still wind up advancing, depending on what other teams in your group do.

Yes, ultimately my money's on Brazil this time. Their coach Dunga (Carlos Caetano Bledorn Verri) has assembled an offense-heavy team led by Ricardo dos Santos, better known as Kaka, to thwart a hungry Italy, Argentina and Germany. So get ready!

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