I have no shame. For years, my football fanaticism was open and available to any team with stylish play. A team I loathed in the past could just as easily recapture a different place in my heart.
In middle school I had a crush on a girl named Maggie. She
was Polish and the biggest Real Madrid fan one will meet on this side of the Atlantic.
She liked European soccer, which meant I liked European soccer.
Eventually, I became a Borussia Dortmund fan because they
played exciting soccer and had these garishly bright jerseys. This devotion
lasted long enough to con my mother to spend more than $100 on a jersey for my
14th birthday. (To this day, the jersey hangs in my closet next to
apparel from future sporting crushes.)
Once Dortmund stopped making routine trips to the latter
stages of the Champions League my ability to follow them waned. The German club
found financial troubles, then nearly folded, before morphing into every
football hipster’s favorite club the last two years.
While Dortmund was in the wilderness, so was my soccer
support. Major League Soccer was in its infancy. Though the Tampa Bay Mutiny
played right up the road, I only went to one game. Apparently a Who’s Who of
American soccer was not enough to encourage me to care.
High school came and went. There were things to occupy my
time other than the nearby professional soccer club and what was going on in
Europe.
The obsession was rekindled in 2002 when I heard Maggie’s
Real Madrid conquered Europe for the third time in five years courtesy of one of the best goals of all
time. (I was so oblivious I didn’t know Dortmund won the German
championship that year until a Wikipedia search more than a decade after the
fact.)
Two weeks later another World Cup kicked off, and I picked
up where I once left off. Of course, had I been a true fan I would not have
worked bagging groceries the day Brazil won the tournament.
Growing up, I didn’t know too much about the technical side
of the game, or tactics. Looking back at my attempt to play varsity soccer I
ran around like a capon with his head cut off.
It was around that time, that I realized it was easier for
me to stop goals from being scored rather than create them. Though I dabbled at
goalkeeper for years, I didn’t really give up playing in the outfield until
college, when it was apparent my touch was far behind the others on our club
team. In goal I was able to read the game, diagnose what teams were going to do
and occasionally stop them from scoring. I hated playing from the back for two
reasons: I was always taught to launch the ball to safety and I rarely had
faith in the touch of my defenders.
In the college years I lost touch with Maggie, but found my
touch on the pitch. Things I was unable to do in high school I could do when
playing with my friends. Eventually, I become good enough to play in goal
because I wanted to, not because there was nowhere else on the field. During that
evolution, I became attracted to teams that added substance with their score
lines.
First it was the Galactico Era at Real Madrid, then the
thrill of Liverpool’s refusal to quit in cup competitions. There was a brief
love affair with Arsenal, but that one-sided relationship was washed away in
disappointment when they lost the 2006 Champions League Final.
Though I thought Juliano Belletti’s goal to vanquish Arsenal
in ’06 was lucky, I became a reluctant Barcelona fan. Barcelona had so many
great players, who moved the ball in a way I couldn’t even imagine. It was a
relationship that lost its luster after the constant diving and theatrics in
2010 when teams had the gall to dispossess, let alone, defeat them.
This was the time I realized I was a soccer vagabond, doomed
to wonder from team to team in the hope some player, or some team would
encourage me to reconsider.
It was only confirmed when I saw Cristiano Ronaldo, who Maggie
later told me is her favorite active player, inexplicably escape three Ivorians
in the 2010 World Cup and unleash a 35-yard shot. The goalkeeper was beat. The
goalpost was another story. It was such an incredible moment of skill — from a
player I thought was a closeted thespian — it still plays in my mind like a
personal Youtube clip.
Ronaldo’s near miss only reaffirmed my preference to commit
to football causes, not football clubs. By then it had been nearly a decade
since the two MLS franchises in Florida folded. Geographically, my choices were
either D.C. United or the Houston Dynamo. But, I hated Marco Etcheverry when I
was younger—maybe, it was the mullet—so the Dynamo became the team I would
support with lukewarm enthusiasm.
An eventual move to Texas, just two hours away from the
Dynamo’s sparking new stadium, deepened my roots. Covering, then attending, a
game in that cauldron of orange opened up the possibility that my odyssey was
nearing an end.
Maybe it was a sign of maturity, as all boys eventually
discover. Maybe it was the enthusiasm for the franchise that a friend and
former colleague imbibed into me. Maybe it was an appreciation for the gritty,
scrappy and winning formula this club has cultivated. Whatever it was, I
realized Texas may not be home, but I am Forever Orange.
Laughs and liveliness,
-Wb
