Simon Kuper in this weekend’s Financial Times compares American sports’ failure to capture the global imagination with the worldwide appeal of football (or soccer as Americans call it),especially the English Premier League.
Some of the reasons for the EPL’s greater global appeal may seem obvious: football supporters’ greater passion (even Osama bin Laden picked up on when he watched Arsenal several times in London in 1994, acording to Kuper), media visibility (it may explain why Real Madrid does not get the same respect outside of Spain that lesser English clubs get), straightforward rules (basketball’s global expansion is also facilitated in this way) and branding (what Kuper refers to as ‘heritage’).
Kuper even throws in this great anecdote by Cape Town activist and left-wing intellectual, Mike Abrahams, expounding on the cultural appeal of British club football:
‘… Mike Abrahams, a gang member-turned-intellectual, grew up in a poor township outside Cape Town, sitting in the library reading British boys’ magazines such as Shoot and Tiger. Football cartoons like Roy of the Rovers and Billy’s Boots shaped him.Abrahams didn’t identify with white, imperialist Britain – except in football. “People in the Cape follow English football very seriously,” he says. “One of my friends, his first child’s name is Shankly [after Bill Shankly, the former Liverpool manager]. And this is an activist! You can say England is a bitch on Friday night, and on Saturday afternoon you go to a sports pub to watch English soccer.”
I know. I grew up in Cape Town and care more about Liverpool FC than my hometown team, Ajax Cape Town.So far so good.But Kuper also offers up another curious reason for the English Premier League or soccer’s appeal: Americans don’t know how to colonize like the British.
See for yourself here.
