You would think that soccer has as much to do with socialism as philosophy does in this classic Monty Python sketch. But maybe there is a connection and maybe it helps explain the American exception that I talk about in Chapter 5 of Globaloney 2.0.

The American Exception is that the United States, which supposedly defines contemporary global culture, has proved to be very resistant to soccer (or Association Football to use its proper name), which is arguably the most global and most commercial and most, well, most American game in the world.

How can globalization be Americanization if America is not at the center of the most global sport of all?

My friend Sasha Issenberg (author of The Sushi Economy, one of my favorite globalization books) provides one answer in a recent essay “Hog the Ball, Kid” in the Boston Globe.

Some people, Sasha reports, think that the U.S. has failed to achieve its soccer potential because youth soccer is too “egalitarian.” There is too much emphasis, they say, on participation and team play and not enough focus on winning and individual achievement. How can you expect greatness if everyone plays and sometimes they don’t even keep score!

It is an interesting point of view. It would be ironic if America, the most capitalist of nations, failed at soccer, the most capitalist sport, because we made it too socialist!

I’ll copy the first few paragraphs of the article below. Click here to read the entire piece.

Sasha Issenberg “Hog the Ball, Kid” Boston Globe December 20, 2009

IN THE WINNER-TAKE-ALL arena of American youth sports, soccer has always been the exception. From the earliest ages, children on basketball courts and football fields have been taught ruthless competition, even been rewarded for showboating at others’ expense – nearly the opposite of the values we hope they learn in school.

Soccer, however, has offered a refuge: the kibbutz next to the stadium complex, a team-oriented, egalitarian game friendly to both genders and a range of body types. Since emerging as a favorite suburban sport a few decades ago, soccer has thrived under baby-boomer parents looking to teach selfless fitness to their kids.

Such a philosophy isn’t just wishful thinking on the part of parents; it is explicit in the organizing principles of the US game. The tribune of the recreational soccer establishment, the American Youth Soccer Organization, was established in California in the 1960s, under a philosophy more humanist than competitive: “Everyone plays.”

But over the last decade, American soccer elites have begun to question this entire approach. In the realm of soccer itself, they worry that the youth game’s communitarian culture is to blame for the country’s World Cup failures. And as far as the kids are concerned, they argue that the teamwork-first ethic has become a national weakness: a philosophy that stifles native talents and enthusiasm in America’s most popular youth sport.