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Saturday, Nov 28, 2009
The guys looked at me and they smiled uneasily, too, but for the rest of the game something felt slightly wrong, constrained and vaguely unsatisfying, in the atmosphere. Maybe their anti-U.S. howlings had depressed me, maybe I didn't want to create bad feelings, but I felt too self-conscious to just cut loose and scream for the U.S. As for them, they too seemed more subdued the rest of the game. They now knew they had a Yank sitting in front of them -- one with a notebook no less -- and they were decent guys who weren't going to go absolutely over the top in their Spain-rooting (although one worthy in a different section kept yelling "Yanks are wankers!").
In this they were different from British yobs. Twenty years ago I lived in Birmingham, England, for a year, and there were guys in some pubs there who would have happily transferred a hatred of the U.S. into a personal hatred of me -- I guess that's what living on the dole in a barely-heated hellhole with no sun, bad teeth and no chance that your life can ever improve will do to you. But these guys weren't yobs, they looked college-educated and middle-class, like a lot of Australians, and they seemed like good blokes -- like most Australians I've met. But still, there was this funny feeling, knowing that they were holding back and I was holding back.
Australians, I have been told many times now, are much more comfortable with failure than success. They aren't cocky the way Yanks are perceived to be: They get their ya-yas out in counterpunching, in cutting people down to size who have gotten too big for their britches (the "tall poppie syndrome"), using a relaxed, deflating wit to puncture pretension and keep everybody at the same level. Maybe these traits explain why the supposedly chest-pounding U.S. irritates them so.
I never had time to do any chest-pounding even if I had been so inclined, because 16 minutes into the game, Spain scored and never looked back. In one of those innocuous transitional exchanges that so often decide matches, an American midfielder, unwisely challenging for control instead of just playing the ball out or away, lost the ball at midfield to a Spanish striker. As soon as the Spaniard took off down the right side with the ball, you could see the situation was dire. The midfielder was on an island, the U.S. defenders had pushed too far forward and were late getting back, and as the one fullback in decent defensive position raced to get between the striker and the goal, the Spaniard pushed a perfect lead pass to another striker rocketing down the middle a stride ahead of his defender. Blam! High into the back of the net. It was a gorgeous, textbook goal, the soccer equivalent of a long bomb from Kurt Warner to Isaac Bruce. And it must have rattled the U.S. fatally, because nine minutes later the U.S. defense broke down, allowing a Spanish player to come completely unmarked in the penalty area, from where he was easily able to pass off for another goal. The U.S. came back to 2-1 on a penalty kick, but for the rest of the game Spain went into a defensive shell and thwarted every attack. Spain, which won the gold in Barcelona in 1992, added a third goal in the game's final minutes on a nice vulture shot off a deflection by the U.S. goalie. They'll play surprising Cameroon in the final.
At the end of the game, I just had to ask. I turned to two of the go-Spain guys sitting behind me and said, "Why do so many Australians all root against the Americans?" One guy grimaced -- caught! -- then smiled sheepishly. He thought a minute and said, "I guess it's American culture -- it's everywhere, you can't get away from it."
"I was pulling for Spain because I lived there," said the other one.
"Yes, but I don't think most of those people cheering for Cuba in the U.S.-Cuba game lived in Cuba," I said.
He chuckled, then added, "Well, it's the ... I guess you could say arrogance. I mean, if in Spain they do something as well as the Dream Team, they don't act the same way."
He had a point there: U.S. star Jason Kidd unnecessarily insulted the Australian team, saying they weren't good enough to play in the NBA. No class, Jason.
"Or Gary Hall," said the first guy. Hall, of course, is the "we'll smash you like guitars" American swimmer.
"Oh, I think Hall's OK," I said. "He was just spraying testosterone, the same way (Australian swimmer) Michael Klim was. He's an OK guy." They shrugged and said maybe.
"It's really a love-hate thing with the U.S.," the second guy said. He added that most Americans have never traveled and don't have much of a sense of the rest of the world or how they were perceived. We exchanged have-a-good-Games pleasantries and left.
Riding back in a thunderstorm, I reflected on how hard it is for an American to understand how big and omnipresent we are, and how much resentment that breeds. I understood it, I thought, but I still didn't like it. Anyway, the main thing, I told myself, was never again to be on my good behavior. It wasn't any fun to be tasteful and sophisticated and cosmopolitan. They think we're all arrogant, smug provincial blowhards anyway -- so what difference does it make? My new motto: Dare to be an ugly American!
