While postwar literary lions like John Updike and Philip Roth looked to the diamond to find poetry in sports, the new generation looks to the pitch (field). David Remnick, The New Yorker editor, and David Hirshey, a prominent editor at HarperCollins, are soccer aficionados, and Franklin Foer, the New Republic editor, gained fame with his 2004 book,
“How Soccer Explains the World.”
A new generation of literati is now following in their footsteps.
“It’s almost guaranteed that almost any male literary person under the age of 45 is going to be somewhat versed in soccer,” said Sean Wilsey, a writer who helped edit “The Thinking Fan’s Guide to the World Cup,” a 2006 compilation of essays by the likes of Dave Eggers and Robert Coover. As a conversation topic, it has become inevitable at book parties, in part because it is both sophisticated and safe. “Isn’t it sort of a relief to talk about the English Premier League instead of the sad state of publishing?” he added. “It’s a great default topic.”
Among younger American writers who came of age on Nick Hornby’s soccer books like “Fever Pitch,” rooting for
Arsenal, Mr. Hornby’s club of choice, is almost de rigueur, said Rosie Schaap, an American-born memoirist who considers herself a die-hard Tottenham Hotspur fan. (She also writes the monthly Drink column for The New York Times Magazine).
“Any time I’m at a book party or reading, and soccer comes up in conversation, I find myself surrounded by young men in shabby-genteel, loosely fitting tweed jackets gushing over the Gunners,” Ms. Schaap said. “In such settings, being an Arsenal supporter is even more predictable than having an M.F.A. or a pair of horn-rimmed glasses.”
For on-trend types with an internationalist bent, supporting (never rooting for) a Premier League club (never team) is not just a pleasant diversion, but a public display of global cultural literacy.
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Still soccer remains, in the eyes of many Americans, a world game. And that world game is surging in the United States thanks to the explosion of foreign soccer on television and the Internet.
When Roger Bennett, a New York-based soccer pundit who grew up in Liverpool, moved to the United States in 1996, he remembers having to follow big Everton matches by telephone, his father holding the receiver up to the radio back home. Now, cable television is filled with soccer: Spain’s La Liga, Germany’s Bundesliga, Italy’s Serie A and Mexico’s Liga MX. On the Internet, fans can follow matches from the Italian second division, check out Brazilian highlights on YouTube, and take in the latest gossip for VfB Stuttgart. In fact, Mr. Bennett has become a leading evangelist for American soccer converts through his popular
Men in Blazers soccer talk show on
Grantland and SiriusXM, which he hosts with Michael Davies.
“It is often said that baseball blew up in America in the age of radio, and the N.F.L. rose to dominance once television took over,” Mr. Bennett said. “Soccer is the perfect sport for the Internet era. American fans can follow games and instantaneously track information from global leagues both big and small, feeling as close to their favorite teams as if they lived within a thrown beer of their stadium.”
Despite the many soccer offerings from around the globe, and right here at home, the Premier League remains the vogue-ish choice for many New York creative types, according to Mark Kirby, a former GQ editor who in 2012 helped found
Howler, a sumptuous soccer quarterly that was hailed by The Guardian as “a football magazine fit for aesthetes.”
“We noticed that all of our friends were trying to figure out which team to root for in England,” he said.
He cited several reasons for the fetish for English soccer in particular: the Premier League’s ubiquity on television, the lack of a language barrier. And, of course, there is garden-variety Anglophilia.
Mr. Bennett, for his part, suggested another: the early start of the games in bars.
“You should never underestimate the allure of daytime drinking,” Mr. Bennett said. “If you’re in a bar at 7 in morning with a pint of Guinness, you have a social problem. If you are in a bar at 7 in the morning with that same pint of Guinness and
Chelsea is on TV, you’re a football fan.”
