In The Middle Of World Cup Mad England, I Root For The US

The World Cup starts in two days, but man, it’s proving hard to be an American and show your support. Getting my kids the right “kit” to wear turns out to be an impossible task. Yeah, I’ll get to that sad tale — but I’ll take you through the political divisions of the UK and other stuff along the way.

The World Cup, for my fellow American readers who are (likely) unaware, is like the World Series + Olympics of soccer. Except everyone else calls it football (including, sadly, my own boys) and it really does involve the entire world. It happens every four years. Here in England, the country is reaching fever pitch about heading out to the World Cup football pitch (aka the soccer field).

I use the word England rather than the United Kingdom on purpose. Why requires some background about the UK, which I recently gave to an American who shall remain nameless who was confused about why the Danish flag was flying in an English pub.

It wasn’t a Danish flag — it was the English flag, the flag of St. George, a red cross on a white background. And the “English” flag he was thinking was English is the UK flag, commonly known as the Union Jack (though only correctly called that if flying on a ship; otherwise, it’s the Union Flag). It’s a common mistake. I did the exact thing myself when I first came to England 18 years ago and asked someone what that funny flag was with the red cross.

The Union Flag represents most of the countries of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Those are namely England, which is a completely different place on the island of Great Britain than the separate country of Scotland, to the north of England. Northern Ireland is that chunk of Ireland to the north of the Republic of Ireland on the island of Ireland. The flags of each of these three countries form the Union Flag.

Wales is not represented, which I always especially felt was unfair given my wife being half-Welsh. Talk with her, and you’d think she was English. She was raised in England. But Wales has her heart, especially during the Six Nations rugby tournament, which I’ll visit in a different post next year. Wales is a separate country to the west of England. It’s also not represented because, according to info on that link above, Wales was united with England with the Union Flag was created. That page is also good for those who want to ensure they hang the flag the right way (another common mistake outside the UK). Personally, I always remember by thinking that gravity pulls the little red crosses down.

Of these countries, only England made it to the World Cup. This may seem unfair to the American reader. It’s like the UK has many chances to win. Shouldn’t each US state get to have a shot, to be fair? I agree — it certainly feels that way.

Also understand that others in the UK who aren’t in England aren’t necessarily supporting the country. In fact, the popular Mars candy bar here (a Milky Way in the US) recently changed its logo to say “Believe” as in “believe England can win.” The change confused me. I wondered at first when I saw these if Mars bars were no longer being sold. Then I got it. So did the Scots. And the Scots aren’t rooting for England. They’re even refusing to buy the candy bars, as my colleague Pamela covered on ClickZ recently.

England, of course, is supporting England. It’s reaching insanity. I missed some of it last time around in 2002 because I was traveling during part of the World Cup. But I was here when they made it to the quarter finals. I even purchased an English flag to fly to show support. Hey, what the heck, the US was out of it by then.

Ah, the US. In 2002, we also made it to the quarter finals. I was very excited. My dreams was for both England and the US to make it to play against each other, as which point in a sea of English flags in our village, I’d be flying the Stars & Stripes.

Tragically, the US had to take on the other part of our family for that to happen, Germany. My brother-in-law is German. After we lost to Germany in the 2002 quarter final, I immediately called him up to offer congratulations. His response was something like “you played surprisingly well.” The tone was the best part. It was delivered in a way that made it clear this was the expected outcome. There was simply no way in his mind that Germany could lose to us.

He had good reason to think this, given Germany has won three of the men’s World Cups over time. We’ve won none. And England? They won in 1966, and you hear that date as a constant refrain around here, as the country hopes for a repeat.

Now my two young boys go to football every Saturday at a local recreation center. I have no skills — absolutely none — when it comes to popular organized sports. So it’s good they have someone I can hire to help them   More important, they enjoy it.

Normally at football, there are about 20 kids all wearing the different “kit” as its called of local teams over here, the jerseys of teams that are popular. They wear jerseys of Manchester United, Arsenal and so on. But in the past weeks, that’s changed. It’s all England jerseys, every child wearing the three lions of England.

All of them except mine. My wife — remember her, the Welsh one — refuses to put them in any local team jersey much less an England shirt. At the moment, they’re sporting some Adidas shirts.

Just to be a cruel father, the sort that gets his kids beat-up, I thought it would be nice to get the boys some USA team jerseys. OK, it’s not so cruel. The boys totally understand they are American and British. And since we’re so far away from America, I make it a point to stress American traditions, songs, stories and so on. So they’ve built up quite a bit of patriotism. I asked them if they’d like to wear some USA jerseys, and they said sure, so off I went.

I was back in the US in mid-May, shortly after coming up with this grand plan. I figured I’d be near a Niketown, a place I’d never had any desire to enter before. The closest I’d been was to mock Nike over the years for consistently building one of the most non-search engine friendly sites out there (but that’s going to change soon, eh, Todd!). But Nike’s making the USA team’s official clothes, so I figured they’d have a full selection.

I figured wrong. They had exactly one thing for kids, a jersey that’s like tissue paper thin and none in the right sizes. The material, I was told, is just right to keep any football playing youth cool and comfortable. Maybe. To me, it looked like a recipe for an overpriced shirt to get destroyed.

There was a full selection of stuff for adults. I started going nuts loading on stuff, then took a reality pill and backed off to a single item I was likely to wear, this jacket:

I’ll be wearing that out in Germany later this month. I’m going to two of the matches. Yahoo’s a major sponsor, I got an opportunity to go through them and figured yeah, that’s something I’d like to do — plus it’s a good chance to catch up with the person I’m going with from Yahoo on work stuff. And yep, I’ll get it added to my disclosure page when it happen.

My kids aren’t so lucky. After the San Francisco Niketown let me down, I tried the Seattle one when I was up there a few days later. Nada. And nothing in general in the US. It was like no one was aware the World Cup was even happening. I’m in a country full of kids wearing England jerseys but back in the US, finding the team jerseys for little American kids seems impossible.

I know, I know — no one in the US is aware the World Cup is happening. I know first hand, both from my visit and from the load of Americans i just talked with at a conference. Most of them were, “World Cup what?”

As a reminder, the US hosted the World Cup in 1994. Yeah, it was right in the US, in Pasadena at the end. I was working for the Orange County Register at the time, so I went out to the venue, and we did a big illustration of the stadium plus I helped create the “how the World Cup works” grid for the good souls in Orange County, who like many Americans, didn’t get it (think Final Four).

So we’ve hosted the World Cup plus have qualified to be in it every time in a row since 1990 (how we got in for 2006 is covered here). You’d think getting your kids all kitted out would be a heck of a lot easier! We ought to be behind the World Cup in a big way — and I say this as someone who pretty much loathes football. I don’t care for it — but put us in it, and no surprise, I’m showing a lot more interest.

I resorted to going online when I got back to England. Surely online would provide me more selection. Nope. It’s appalling the lack of apparel. Some shoes, a T-shirt and nothing in the team kit. Shame on you, Nike — shame.

Never fear, there had to be other options. I did some searches. Actually, there wasn’t much. What I wanted was here, a kids uniform set:

Perfect! After all, as the product information from the official store of US Soccer says, “Young fans want to express their pride and passion too!”

Sadly, they’re sold out now. And when I looked, they didn’t have the sizes I needed in stock. But even if they were in stock, there was no way I was ordering from them. They’ve got the gall to charge as much or more for the shipping as the order itself.

I still might have done it, but I found another place that had what I wanted in stock. A place that seemed pretty respectable, since it was the official store of the MSN/Fox Sports Soccer Channel. They had the item I wanted, the sizes I needed were in stock, the shipping was reasonable. I placed my order.

I wait. I wait. I wait. Finally, I’m really wondering where the hell the uniforms are. There’s a big football party coming up for the World Cup that the kids are going to. It would be nice to have them for that.

I check the site — BACKORDERED! They weren’t backordered when I ordered. They were in stock. I send an email. Silence. Nice — you suck, official store of MSN/Fox. Nofollow for you.

Now you can do some searches, but you invariably get products back that are effectively the same as the Fox store. Big Soccer has a great selection. Here’s all the kids stuff, here are US city teams and here’s even what I want. Oops. Backordered. Not surprising, since Big Soccer is simply 365 Incorporated, which also powers Fox and powered a number of other clothing stores you’ll stumble upon out there.

I kept at it. Soccerpro had a nice selection including the item but only ships in the US. Prosoccer also had a nice selection, and they ship internationally! Turns out, however, what they say on the site and what they do are different. I gave them a call before ordering and was told they no longer ship outside the US. So it looks like I’m having them sent to my sister, who will in turn send them to me.

It shouldn’t have been this hard. Nike should have been stocking this stuff in Niketown. The clothes should be flowing everywhere in excitement over the World Cup. Oh well, at least it’s going to be the Anaheim Angels. Oh, I guess not. Man, it’s hard to get behind sports.

I’ll leave off this rambling post with a song. You can’t have a World Cup in England without an anthem, it seems. I tried looking for a list of them over time, plus how they got started, but no luck so far. Maybe I’ll try posting on Yahoo Answers

The one I remember the most — and some Americans may unknowingly recall — was New Order’s World In Motion. Here’s some background from Wikipedia, which completely misses what I remember as the most striking part of the song — how they kept saying Engerland.

Engerland? Yeah, you always hear England called this in songs and chants when the national team plays. No idea how it got started. I assumed it came from the song, but that’s probably not right. Again, I did some looking on the origins, and this Urban Dictionary definition seems weak but the best so far — the extra syllable makes it easier to chant. Hmm, OK.

The official anthem for this year is by Embrace, and there are a number of competitors or unofficial ones. The BBC has a rundown here and highlights a few past songs here.

My wife came across this unofficial anthem and can’t get enough of it:

To understand more, keep a number of things in mind. England’s 1966 victory was over Germany. They’ve been knocked out of the World Cup a couple of times since then by Germany. They fought two big wars against Germany. There’s a bit of rivalry.

Now they’re all going over to Germany. Rather than “don’t mention the war,” as Basil Fawlty would advise, this song is embracing it. It sings songs from various WWII movies — movies, I might add, which are a staple of the British Christmas experience. For whatever reason, Christmas is when The Great Escape and the Dambusters are shown. My German brother-in-law, who is over here every other year for Christmas, shows a good sense of humor.

Anyway, my wife loves the song because she can’t believe they are being so blunt. Oh, and those characters are all popular British celebrities, not just some assorted cartoon characters. I’m sure you’ll recognize Ozzie and The Queen.

And so we go back to the US. Apparently, we have high expectations. I’ll be cheering them on. I’ve got good reason. After a bit of drinking, I agreed to a bet with Thomas Bindl. If I recall (it’s a bit hazy), for me to win, the US needs to make it into the second round OR England needs to go farther than Germany. For Thomas to win, Germany goes farther than England. The stakes. Someone’s wearing Thomas’s lederhosen to the Organic Listings forum on the last day, last session a conference. I hope, I pray, it won’t be me.

FYI, I’m cheering first for the US, then for England, then I promised Motoko I’d back Japan — then I’ll get behind Germany.