A face
27/06/2010, 8:22 PM
How Middle America is coming to soccer ball
ROUND OF 16: USA REACTION: ‘USA!” the Tony-nominated New York actor Danny Burstein proclaimed in a Facebook message minutes later. “That damn World Cup is exciting!” Hey, just keep handing up those butter-fingered ’keepers and there’s no telling how far we can go. Despite having reached the World Cup’s knockout stage twice previously in the past 16 years, America had until quite recently retained a firm grasp on its title as the leader among the anti-soccer nations of the world. Which is not to say that as a nation we actively disliked the sport embraced by the rest of the world. Most of us simply didn’t care.
But that was then and this is now. That a change might be in the air has been evident over the past couple of weeks, and in recent days a man would be hard-pressed to walk past a Manhattan pub that wasn’t showing one of the matches from South Africa. And we’re not talking about just the “soccer pubs” catering to the immigrant trade here. The patrons of a chic café on the Upper West Side and those of some shot-and-a-beer bucket-of-blood in Hells Kitchen will be watching the same telecast this afternoon when Team USA goes up against Ghana in the first knockout round.
Read more at www.irishtimes.com (http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/sport/2010/0626/1224273367462.html)
ROUND OF 16: USA REACTION: ‘USA!” the Tony-nominated New York actor Danny Burstein proclaimed in a Facebook message minutes later. “That damn World Cup is exciting!” Hey, just keep handing up those butter-fingered ’keepers and there’s no telling how far we can go. Despite having reached the World Cup’s knockout stage twice previously in the past 16 years, America had until quite recently retained a firm grasp on its title as the leader among the anti-soccer nations of the world. Which is not to say that as a nation we actively disliked the sport embraced by the rest of the world. Most of us simply didn’t care.
But that was then and this is now. That a change might be in the air has been evident over the past couple of weeks, and in recent days a man would be hard-pressed to walk past a Manhattan pub that wasn’t showing one of the matches from South Africa. And we’re not talking about just the “soccer pubs” catering to the immigrant trade here. The patrons of a chic café on the Upper West Side and those of some shot-and-a-beer bucket-of-blood in Hells Kitchen will be watching the same telecast this afternoon when Team USA goes up against Ghana in the first knockout round.
Read more at www.irishtimes.com (http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/sport/2010/0626/1224273367462.html)