In Bucks, 2 dead in ‘love rectangle’

Unhappy hour: Jeers for plan to keep bars open to aid schools

To the Editor:

To this teenager who recently ended his Facebook account, your report about Facebook holdouts articulated only the surface reasons people leave the social-networking hub — how it lends itself to voyeurism, wastes time and erodes users’ privacy.

For me, my peers’ substitution of the virtual for the real is more distressing: we are living in a nightmare in which signs have more meaning than what they signify.

On my college campus, it is not uncommon to hear a student implore another to post a status or a photo to Facebook, as if it had no meaning if no one “liked” it or commented on it. Here, reality matters only if understood virtually.

I do not fear that my generation will stop living; rather, I fear that my generation will live for Facebook. But is that a tautology?

SHAJ MATHEW
Philadelphia, Dec. 14, 2011

Borders bookstores around the country have all but shuttered. Magazine newsstand sales have dropped. And Steve Jobs had put it bluntly: “people don’t read anymore.” The good news? The literary world has dealt with these worries long before. Novelists have been composing their elegies for the book since the middle of the nineteenth century. Concerned for the future of critical thought and skepticism, authors have been embedding their fears of a diminished literary culture into their dystopian works. As a result, the book itself has become an artifact, a chronicler of writerly anxiety about the future of reading.

Jules Verne, who inaugurated the tradition of science fiction with Around the World in 80 Days and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, articulated perhaps the first of these concerns about the future of literature. In Paris in the Twentieth Century, a lost manuscript written in 1863 but published only in 1994, Verne feared that by next century, the poetry of his age would be forgotten, instead supplanted by the antiseptic jargon of science. As the book’s protagonist Michel navigates the year 1960, this becomes quite clear. Searching for the works of Hugo and Balzac to no avail at a bookstore, he bemoans how poorly his favorite authors have aged. “So all that fame had lasted less than a 100 years! Les Orientales, Les Méditations, La Comédie Humaine—forgotten, lost, unknown!” To Michel’s dismay, math and science have infected contemporary literature; popular titles include Decarbonated Odes, Poetic Parallelogram, and Electric Harmonies. Aghast, Michel decries the dominance of “science and industry here, just as at school, and nothing for art!” Representing an artless future in which none of the books dear to Verne have endured, Paris in the Twentieth Century evoked a writer’s trepidation with respect to longevity: Will future societies appreciate the value of the classics?

Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 made more grandiose claims about society’s hostility to literature. Books in this novel’s universe are illegal and burned on site. Why? “A book is a loaded gun,” explains Captain Beatty, overseer of government-sanctioned book burnings. Yet, as Bradbury would later add, “you don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” Intellectual thought in this culture is anathema, prized only by a cadre of “book people” who memorize historic texts. A cursory glance at the authors that the book people preserve—Plato, Aristophanes, Gandhi, Gautama Buddha, Confucius—suggests that Bradbury agreed with Verne: he believed in the edifying power of the classics and feared for a society that fails to heed them.

Gary Shteyngart, author of last year’s Super Sad True Love Story, had a more fundamental worry: in the future, people will not be able to read, period. In the novel’s super sad universe, books are only glossed over and scanned for information—never savored during periods of extended concentration. Lenny Abramov, a crusty remnant of a literate era, is the only member of this society who can read and think critically. Yet one day, when Lenny realizes that Eunice, his much younger girlfriend, can’t understand anything he reads to her, he vows to stop reading. “We don’t have to read anymore. We don’t have to read ever again. I promise,” Lenny says. “It’s a luxury. A stupid luxury.” For Eunice and her peers, books are redolent of “wet socks” and nothing more. But for Shteyngart, books are our only hope against anti-intellectualism.

Writing in three different centuries, these authors, taken together, remind us that debates over the future of reading are nothing new. They remind us of the value of the liberal arts, the art of thinking deeply. Perhaps they may have indulged in some hyperbole—Verne’s scientific texts like Poetic Parallelogram—have not taken over the bestseller lists—but by documenting their fears, these writers capture the intellectual concerns of different eras. After all, as Bradbury once said, “I don’t try to describe the future. I try to prevent it.”

“Why sit you doomed one?”

These were not the words the Greeks wanted to hear. It was the summer of 480 B.C. and they had just fallen to the Persians at Thermopylae, which Christian Meier wrote about in his book “Athens: A Portrait of the City in Its Golden Age.” Worse, Athens appeared to be the next target. But the Oracle of Delphi continued, burying a modicum of hope in his inscrutable message:

“Though all else shall be taken, Zeus, the all seeing, grants that the wooden wall only shall not fail.”

The wooden wall. What could it signify?

Many believed the Oracle was alluding to the Acropolis, which was surrounded by a “wall” of thorn bushes. For Themistocles, however, an Athenian statesman, the wooden wall meant one thing: a naval fleet. His interpretation quickly won over the public. Under the aegis of Themistocles, Athens built up a navy of over 300 triremes, or warships, and employed a canny sleight of hand. A messenger, sent by Themistocles, fed Persia’s King Xerxes lies about the supposedly weakened state of Athens, prompting Xerxes to send ships to finish off the Greeks at Salamis. Hindered by the narrow straits near the coast of Salamis, the Persians lost 200 ships — the Greeks, only 40 — in a battle that ensured the superiority of Ancient Greece, and, as such, shaped all of Western civilization.

While refreshing readers on their ancient history, this story from Herodotus’ Historiesalso serves an unlikely sporting purpose — it illuminates the current plight of Arsène Wenger’s Arsenal.

Arsenal imploded last Sunday in a mortifying (for Gunners fans) 8-2 loss at Manchester United, the club’s worst defeat since 1896. They have mustered just one point from their first three games of the English Premier League. Their two biggest stars, Samir Nasri and Cesc Fàbregas, spurned them for clubs offering bigger paychecks and more ambition. And yet, having accrued nearly $100 million from the sale of those two players; their coach, Wenger, has hardly spent any money on new signings, defiantly ignoring criticism from fans and players alike.

Why sit you doomed one?

At the moment, Wenger mistakenly believes the Acropolis is the wooden wall. Consider some of his newest additions: Ryo Miyaichi, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Carl Jenkinson, and Joel Campbell. Wooden wall? More like pencil lead.

While the Athenians rightly struggled to decipher the Oracle of Delphi’s words, Arsenal should have no trouble coming up with their modern-day analogue. The wooden wall, plain and simple, is an experienced world-class player. Miyaichi, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Jenkinson, and Campbell are all unproven teenagers. Even the club’s more recent and more experienced signings, such as Park Chu-Young and Per Mertesacker, have been obtained to patch holes in the squad, not necessarily to dramatically elevate its quality (like, say, the arrival of Kaká might).

These are not words Arsène Wenger wants to hear. (He has already heard them many times over.) It is the summer of 2011 and his Arsenal side has just suffered one of the most severe defeats in its history. Worse, should the slide continue, the team teeters on the edge of being labeled a feeder club to Europe’s true elite.

Just as the fate of the Greeks hung in the balance at Salamis, so too does Arsenal’s soccer philosophy in the next few days. But if Wenger wants his team to exhibit the courage and efficiency of that Greek fleet, he would do well to take three lessons from its leader, Themistocles.

¶ No. 1: Persuade. Themistocles sold the Athenians on his interpretation of the wooden wall; Wenger needs to convince his team and a revolting fan base that his youth policy will improve, not hurt, Arsenal’s style of play and quest for silverware. How can he win over his team and the fans?

¶ No. 2: Discover the wooden wall. Themistocles heeded the Oracle’s warning by mobilizing a huge navy; Wenger needs to remedy his team’s lack of star power and depth by purchasing exceptional players in the transfer market and raising the club’s wage cap.

¶ And No. 3? Be clever. Themistocles duped Xerxes into fighting in the perilously narrow channels of Salamis; Wenger needs to revise his tactics to innovatively accommodate the players he has. These traits helped Themistocles’s Greek force vanquish the Persians. Arsène Wenger, on the other hand, is not fighting a war, but he is fighting for his players, his club, and possibly his job.

Shaj Mathew is a student at the University of Pennsylvania. His work has appeared in The Millions, The Alcalde, McSweeney’s, This is American Soccer, Goal.com, and The Run of Play. He can be reached at shaj.mathew@gmail.com

UT alum Daron Roberts, a Harvard Law grad turned NFL football coach, created a camp to help underprivileged kids make it to college. He couldn’t have done it without a cadre of Longhorns.

It’s 8 a.m. on the first day of 4th and 1 Football Camp and founder Daron Roberts, BA ’01, Life Member, isn’t pleased. At 5’10, he cuts a robust figure, standing at the front of a classroom in crisp khakis and a blue dress shirt.

Roberts’ five-day camp, set at Northeast Texas Community College in his bucolic hometown of Mount Pleasant, has brought together 35 at-risk high school students—students who are now looking at Roberts, defensive secondary coach with the NFL’s Detroit Lions, with a mixture of awe and trepidation on this hazy July morning.

They are in trouble—and they know it. No, a fight hadn’t broken out. No, no one had teased each other. And no, no one had wanted to call mom just yet.

This camp was supposed to mirror an NFL-style training camp. And a few kids had just forgotten their cleats.

But Roberts, who talks more like a CEO than a coach, didn’t bark at his players. He didn’t lecture for long. If his revolutionary camp had been all about football, he might have. But 4th and 1 was never about football.

Sure, the kids refined their football skills on the turf every morning, performing drills under the tutelage of elite NFL and college coaches. But football was only two hours out of a jam-packed day, which consisted of constant activity from 6:15 a.m. to past 10 p.m.:

Yoga. Football. Shower. SAT prep. Lunch. SAT prep. Workshop. Workshop. Dinner. Workshop.
Not your typical summer camp, eh?

The SAT prep is self-explanatory—two hours a day of math and verbal practice—but what of these “workshops?” There is life after football practice, Roberts thought—life for which these kids aren’t prepared, and not by their own fault. So he whipped out his Blackberry and scrolled through his contacts. Who could teach them about what to wear for a job interview? Which fork to use at a formal dinner?  And how to draft a resume?

Often, the answer was a fellow UT alumnus. A litany of them worked at the camp: Sorush Shawn Abboud, BBA ’02, Life Member, taught a class on money management. Alex Hammond, BA ’04, engaged students on the importance of grades and the SAT. Heather Edwards, BSW ’01, Life Member, worked behind the scenes, compiling test-score data for further research. Larry Erwin, BBA ’05, talked about his own story, from playing basketball in a small Texas town to investment banking in New York (and beyond). Roberts’ high school English teacher, Judy Hinson, taught the students proper dinner etiquette. And what’s a high-profile football camp without some NFL players?  Former Longhorn star linebacker and now Kansas City Chief Derrick Johnson ’01, Life Member, met with campers at the end of the week, taking questions on everything from the importance of education to life as an NFL star.

It doesn’t end there. Former Lieutenant Governor Bill Ratliff, BS ’60, Distinguished Alumnus and Life Member, addressed the student-athletes. The camp concluded with an impassioned speech from Longhorns football broadcaster Ahmad Brooks, BS ’05.

The network of Longhorns who helped Roberts at the camp reminded him why he wanted the student-athletes to pursue a college education: “I want to reshape their circles of influence.”

And if they couldn’t teach, UT alumni helped out in other ways—namely, fundraising for the free weeklong camp. Among many others, the indispensable Royce Carr, BA ’74, BS ’76, Life Member, raised money for the camp, enabling all of the student-athletes to attend free of charge. Food, lodging, and the wealth of coaching and teaching expertise for the week would otherwise have cost each camper several hundred dollars.

Then there’s Jake Joseph, BS ’02, perhaps the only other workshop leader at 4th and 1 with a story rivaling that of founder Daron Roberts. Joseph is a Red Bull marketing hotshot turned underwear designer.

Among the sea of polo shirts emblazoned with football team insignias, it’s pretty easy to spot the fashion designer. On the day of his workshop, “Tie or No Tie?” Joseph dons grey pants and a white shirt with the top three buttons undone. His hair is slicked back. Plain and simple, Jake Joseph oozes cool.

After everyone had a decent grasp of the half-Windsor knot, Joseph talked about his own story and the importance of goal-setting.

“[Success] is about reducing the what-ifs in their lives,” said Joseph. “Our innermost dreams and activities require effort. We came up with good ways to get their ideas moving.”

As a part of the exercise, the students said their own goals aloud, one by one:

Don’t party in college.
Get a high SAT score and GPA.
See the world.
Graduate high school.
Become a park ranger.
Provide for my younger brother.
Be better than my brother.
Be a motivational speaker.
Have twins.
Create a camp like 4th and 1 for kids like us.

The last goal struck a chord with many on the staff, not least because it was a surprise—the boy who said it had perhaps the most disciplinary issues of all the campers—but also because it reminded them of the camp’s mission. Every 4th and 1 camper was underprivileged in some way: minority status, first-generation college attendee, or single-parent household.

“And many of these kids are batting two for three or three for three on that front,” said Roberts.

In summer 2006, Daron Roberts boarded a flight back to Boston before his final year of law school. He had just returned from coaching at Steve Spurrier’s football camp at the University of South Carolina, a sabbatical from his grueling hours as a summer legal clerk.

“I was struck by how football attracted so many young people from across the country to Columbia, South Carolina,” said Roberts, who played high school football—first team all-district, mind you—for the Mount Pleasant Tigers. “South Carolina was where I started thinking that I could use football as a hook to get young men energized to study for the SAT and learn life skills.”  He had the itch.

But then his last year of law school beckoned, and Roberts put down the playbook and picked up the casebook. He graduated from Harvard and did what any reasonable person in his situation would do: spurn his six-figure job offers and try to coach professional football.

Wait, what?

Roberts’ itch to coach football demanded a scratch. As the May 17 issue of ESPN Magazine details, he sent 164 cover letters to NFL and college football teams—only to be rejected by all of them, except one: the Kansas City Chiefs. Sleeping on an air mattress in the stadium and rising at 4 a.m. daily, Roberts impressed the coaching staff enough to earn a full-time job as a defensive assistant. He now coaches for the Detroit Lions.

Still, memories of South Carolina stuck with him, and in January 2010 he set out to establish a similar camp.

After securing an agreement with Northeast Texas Community College to host his own football camp in July, Roberts remembered thinking to himself: “I can actually pull this off.”

He set out to raise funds, create a website, and, most importantly, solicit applications for his future “change agents”—students who would later hail their camp experience as life-changing.

Terrance Walker, who was named MVP of the camp, was full of praise. “At first, I was a little intimidated by the SAT,” Walker said, “but I figured out that with a little help and studying, it’s just another test. I have more confidence toward reaching my goals, and I can thank 4th and 1 for that.”

Roberts said that the adult organizers benefited from the camp as well. “Most of us do not get the opportunity to interact with young men at this stage of their development, and all the staff found the experience to be invigorating.”

The day after camp ended, Roberts began working on several additions for the following year. The East-Texas native said there is a “a very good chance” that 4th and 1 will establish a yearlong SAT course for its campers and require accepted students to complete a significant community service project in order to receive an invitation to return.

Sound intense?  Good. That’s what Roberts—and his pupils—want. They like the work. They embrace the challenge. They crave the opportunity. So next July, when Roberts greets his charges at 8 a.m. on the first day of camp, trust that everyone has brought their cleats—and an extra pair.

On July 16, after all the practice SATs, after all the football, after all the workshops, Roberts stood in the dusty high school parking lot with Royce Carr and Derrick Johnson. It was the last day of camp and the lot was empty except for their cars.

“You guys probably have the same story as me,” Carr began. He was the first in his family to graduate from college, and, rather fortuitously, “chose UT because it had a good football team. In return, it gave me a career which I’ve been practicing for 36 years,” said Carr, a geologist.

“The story is that I owe UT a debt that I’ll never be able to repay.”

Roberts and Johnson looked back at him and smiled.

“You are absolutely right,” they said under a burnt-orange Texas sky. ♦

The 2011 edition of 4th and 1 will be held July 11-15. Visit 4thand1.org to donate, recommend a camper, or apply. For more information, email founder Daron Roberts at daronroberts@4thand1.org.

Shaj Mathew attends the University of Pennsylvania. His writing has appeared in The Millions,National Geographic’s “My Wonderful World,” This is American Soccer, Goal.com, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.

The vast conceptual morass of modernism, modernity, and the modern subsumes many different strands. Christopher Mann, in an earlier piece for this site, articulates one such strand quite nicely, ultimately lamenting global soccer’s inexorable march toward “materialistic modernity.” For Mann, the modern robs soccer of its spontaneity, its naïveté, its inner Romanticism. For me, the modern strips soccer down to its most raw and most beautiful form. Mann treats the modern as a cultural condition, one that defines an era of commercialization and celebrity. But it’s also possible to view the modern as an aesthetic category, and in that vein, T.S. Eliot’s version—the one to which I subscribe—illuminates the unlikely literary underpinnings of the beautiful game.

The Eliotian conception of modernism, which I derive from his 1919 essay, “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” presents at its core the idea of “tradition.” In a literary sense, this idea holds that all literature, from the works of Homer to those of Jonathan Franzen, enjoys a “simultaneous existence,” and that this simultaneous existence endows any given work with meaning. We measure artistic significance in this version of modernity by judging the work vis-à-vis the work of “the dead,” according to Eliot. Interestingly, and controversially, Eliot also believes that this canon constitutes a “simultaneous order,” an order that is altered every time a new work enters the canon. Upon a new work’s entry into the canon, a process of modulation occurs until “the values of each work of art toward the whole are readjusted.”1 As Eliot sees it, the present can alter the past, and vice-versa.

Sound confusing? Well, the same goes for soccer, where Eliot’s essay can help us consider the accomplishments of players past and present. Consider the case of Lionel Messi. On the surface, he appears to exemplify the Romantic, full of youthful guile, inimitable skill, and iconically bad hair—an individualist anathema to Eliot’s impersonal tradition. Some say he’s the best player in the world, others say he might be the best player in history. Regardless, these claims are actually grounded in modernity. Eliot writes, “No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone.” How can we evaluate Messi? By comparing him to the players he competes against. Who is Messi better than? Pretty much everyone playing right now. This juxtaposition of the work (Messi) to the canon (worldwide player pool) makes the claim possible. Who else do we compare Messi to? More grandiose claims about his greatness invariably include his fellow Argentine, Maradona. The YouTube videos comparing every single (eerily similar) step of their mazy half-field runs side-by-side—those are extensions of Eliotian tradition, Eliotian modernism, in modern day. Maradona’s run gives meaning to Messi’s, and his past accomplishments situate Messi’s current ones. Similarly, Messi’s current feats alter our perception of Maradona’s past ones. Messi is pretty damn good, but he doesn’t have meaning alone.

Moreover, modernism can reveal to us insights into the success of Messi’s club. Here we must consider Eliot’s depersonalized conception of beauty because, for Eliot, “it is not the greatness” or “sublimity” that matters “but the intensity of the artistic process.” The “artistic process” I equate to Barcelona’s system: for me, the joy of watching the system collectively overwhelm an opponent trumps any ephemeral awe from watching an individual bit of skill from Messi. Barcelona’s flashy players will come and go—see: Ronaldinho—but Catalonia’s most famous onomatopoeia, tiki-taka, remains. Barcelona actually employs an almost mechanical system—the kind of artistic process that Eliot later refers to as “an efficient engine”—that deemphasizes the individual. After all, Eliot says that “poetry…is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.” The Barcelona system neither caters to a superstar—just look at the emergence of former squad-players like Pedro—nor relies on the particular attributes of any of its players (e.g. Ronaldo’s pace for Real Madrid). On the contrary, each player essentially has the same role: pass and move. At Barcelona, “there is no room for puffed-up, show-boating individuals,” says Iain Rodgers for Reuters Soccer Blog. “The players work as a unit, constantly creating space for each other and harrying the opposition into giving up the ball.” Each player is fungible, for “the emotion of art is impersonal.” Behold! Modernist thought is behind the production-line success of one of the world’s biggest clubs.

Next Saturday. Cold. The cacophony of metal cleats. Lionel Messi is in a Blaugrana shirt, standing in the tunnel before the game and thinking. He might be thinking about his coach’s pre-game instructions. He might be thinking about the abuse that awaits him from opposing fans. And he might be thinking about how itchy his right shin guard is. But the one thing that Lionel Messi will not be thinking about is the only thing that is guaranteed to happen every single time he plays for Barcelona. Once he steps on the field, he will give up his self- contained existence and open himself up to immediate evaluation, unfair speculation, and comparison to his peers and his predecessors. Once he steps foot on the field, he will shed his individuality and assume the 112 years of his club’s existence, Total Football, tiki-taka— tradition. Once Lionel Messi steps on the field next Saturday, in the cold, amidst the clatter of cleats, he will become modern.

Shaj Mathew attends the University of Pennsylvania. His writing has appeared in The Millions, Goal.com, This is American Soccer, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. You can reach him at shaj.mathew@gmail.com.

1 In a literary sense, recall how Chinua Achebe’s (recent) criticism of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness has affected the current perception of the (much older) book. Likewise, Edward Said’s Orientalism has revised contemporary opinion on many novels (Mansfield Park, for example) that have already been published.

Article URL: http://www.runofplay.com/2011/02/09/tradition-and-the- individual-superstar/

On the three-hour trek home to Maryland following the USA’s 2-1 win over Turkey, I caught myself asking my friend Chris what he thought about the game several times, in various iterations of the same question. Impressed? What do you think of American soccer? Did the game change your opinion?

Of the four of us making the day trip, Chris is the archetypal American sports fan. He cares little for soccer but has a soft spot for FIFA 10, acquired thanks to many hours productively spent playing the video game with his slightly “Euro-snobbish” friends. That would be the rest of our group: Justin, Brannon, and myself.

Despite the American second half surge, it was readily apparent to Chris that Arda Turan assaulted our back line with impunity, and that Jonathan Spector, well, let’s just say Chris thought he had a rough first half. I felt disappointed in our performance, but his disappointment upset me more. The atmosphere, magnified under the lens of nationalism (and alcohol) did leave him impressed though, but that was a small consolation.

But why did I care what Chris thought in the first place?

Granted, his FIFA skills are decent, but his knowledge of soccer is limited to clueless 30-second SportsCenter clips. And if he took us to a Redskins game, he wouldn’t feel bad if the team played poorly (like always). Perhaps at the core of every American soccer fan’s existence is a certain need for affirmation. American soccer fans care too much about what everyone from the average American to the global football expert thinks of us.

We’re improving. No one takes us lightly anymore. A slowly budding soccer power.

Those are the things we want to believe.

This sort of insecurity gives birth to headlines like, “How Did the English Press Rate Landon Donovan’s Everton Debut?” and “Media Reaction to Landon Donovan vs. Chelsea.” We exulted in Landon Donovan’s overwhelmingly positive display in Toffee blue—just check out the comments sections in those articles—because Donovan, the emblem of American soccer, earned the praise of those whose opinions, in our minds, matter more than our own.

Very recently, Ives Galarcep posted CBS’s portrait of Donovan, manufactured for the American masses, on his popular blog. He admits that “die-hards won’t learn anything [from the interview],” but notes that “it’s still interesting to see these profiles that are clearly made for folks who have yet to catch on to the growing soccer craze in this country.” Ives calls it a curiosity, but the fact of the matter is that we are acutely aware of CBS’s—and our country’s—perception of the state of American soccer, as if the opinion of our less-informed countrymen, rather than the quality of our play, determines the success of our team.

The CBS interviewer, Jeff Glor, states, “For serious soccer fans [read: us], what got Donovan the most attention was his highly successful stint this winter playing for Everton of the ultra-competitive and ultra-exclusive English Premier League.” He’s dead on. But why?

Donovan’s foray abroad represented a rare instance—the success of Brian McBride and Clint Dempsey at Fulham notwithstanding—in which there was “a real energy and respect between the fans and [the American player].” Or, as President Obama likes to say, Donovan’s time in England illustrated a foreign policy of “mutual interest and mutual respect.”

Glor continues, spot on, remarking that “fans who are…predisposed to not like American players, by the end of it, they’re chanting—in the vein of USA—You Must Stay!” Donovan calls earning that respect “incredible.” Our appetite for affirmation whetted, American outlets universally hailed his loan a wild success.

We indulge in the praise our players receive from coaches or foreign journalists, but we take any criticism as a personal affront. Our motto is “Don’t Tread on Me,” a symbol of the American independence struggle. Plain and simple, we are an aggrieved people. After the Turkey game, The Washington Post’s Steve Goff excerpted a contentious bit from English paper The Telegraph on his blog:

“Donovan and Dempsey can be a handful up front if given encouragement. Behind them, America is a land of opportunity for England.”

Cue righteous indignation in the comments section.

TIAS itself used to feature a column called The Barometer—a recurring piece used to gauge American soccer’s progress. But for American soccer fans, every little thing is a barometer. The size of the crowd is a barometer. American media attention swooning over the World Cup is a barometer. What Chris thought of the game is a barometer.

And that’s the problem: We need to stop fretting about assessing where we are so much and divert our energies into figuring out ways to improve the standard of our play. In turn, this better performance on the pitch leads to more approval from the audience we seek to impress. I am, by no means, calling for the end of rigorous analysis of the future of American soccer; however, I simply reject any notion that the perception of others—from home or abroad—should play more than an ancillary role in our self-evaluation.

After all, the one-word chant we hear inside the stadium—and in Justin’s basement after a particularly heated FIFA session—is what matters most: “Scoreboard.”

Last July, rumors swirled about the impending transfer of international soccer star Zlatan Ibrahimovic from Italy’s Internazionale to Spain’s FC Barcelona. What it would take for the Spanish side to prize the mercurial Swede from the Italian giants? According to some rumblings emanating from Milan, $60 million and Barcelona’s cantankerous (yet commensurately gifted) fireball, Samuel Eto’o.

I followed the deal closely, refreshing my catalog of relevant soccer websites and blogs with increasing frequency as I sensed the usual inertia of transfer negotiations giving way to the rapid climax of the matter. But only so much can be gleaned from articles, blog posts, or tweets, I knew. The Ibrahimovic transfer saga trudged on, an ocean away from my plain wooden desk at Harvard College’s Thayer Hall – a rising high school senior, I was taking two summer classes in Cambridge.

The morning of July 24, I woke up and checked the blogosphere once more for the status of the deal. Nothing.  But, in my efforts, I stumbled upon a much more interesting detail: Inter planned to train for their upcoming friendly in New England – at Harvard today.

Internazionale. Walking distance. From me.

Enter ultra-fan mode. White t-shirt, crisp for autographs? Check. Sharpie? After a furious scramble through CVS, check. Still a bit unfamiliar with the campus, I mapped out the distance from my dorm to the field and calculated how early I should depart.

Then I calmed down a little. Okay, so I’d go see the team’s public training session, but that’s it. I would watch for a little bit, inevitably become swept up by Inter’s presence and prowess, and then go to my fiction-writing class.

Then I saw Jose Mourinho on Harvard Street.

Screw the fiction-writing class.

The Inter coach ambled confidently beside two heavyset Italian men in my direction, his managerial hauteur evident. No one noticed him except me.

I enviously eyed Harvard’s soccer team players, who shuttled the Inter players to the enclosed practice field on go-carts with annoying insouciance, as if this were something humdrum, no big deal.

The practice session, even from behind a fence, was a marvelous showcase of talent, replete with sizzling strikes, quick interplay, and mesmerizing – if not “albi-celestial,” as Gol TV’s Ray Hudson says – exchanges between Inter’s impressive cadre of Argentinians.

I left as the session began to wind down, smiling to myself, pleased with what I saw despite my white Hanes t-shirt’s conspicuous whiteness.

Then I saw an angelic figure perched on a small faded blue cooler, extending his lanky, extremely long, pale legs and speaking intently in a foreign tongue on his Blackberrywhile scratching the brown locks on his head. Zlatan Ibrahimovic: the superstar I’d been reading about, apparently pining for the Catalan sun, was now hunched over ten yards from me in front of Harvard’s brick field house, taking in the Cambridge variety.

How was this scenario even possible? Try globalization. In the last 10 years, European soccer clubs have made America the latest theater of their proxy wars for popularity and, in essence, profitability. The European soccer cognoscenti perceive the land of the free as a future giant, one whose youth present an untapped oil field of talent that, upon investment, may yield a few good players into their academies on the cheap. Hence the visit Stateside. The Nerazzurri also came to brand, sell some kits, and perhaps even subtly proselytize American kids into supporting a decent European club they saw in person.

But it didn’t matter if you didn’t have tickets to the friendly against AC Milan or the serendipitous pleasure to stumble into Ibrahimovic. Americans, thanks to Fox Soccer Channel, Gol TV, and ESPN, have an easy time – perhaps even easier than any of their soccer-crazed counterparts across the pond – watching the most high profile matches in England, Spain, and Italy every week.

The fact that I can say, without equivocation, that I know as much about the footballers which grace Premier League pitches each week as an Englishman does – without leaving my suburban Maryland home – is truly amazing. That I stand before a Swedish soccer player – one in the process of transferring from an Italian team to a Spanish rival – in America on the campus of a internationally-renowned university, all after watching his teammates of Argentinian, Brazilian, Nigerian, Romanian, and, of course, Italian descent, is beyond remarkable.

But on July 24, it’s safe to say that I didn’t weigh the media’s hostility or utility to the soccer fan. I didn’t marvel at what information I gleaned thanks to the Internet. And I definitely didn’t remember anything that happened in my fiction class. I just remember this.

My heart flits, springing out my chest and into consciousness. That’s him. I press my palms together vertically, like a supplicant before a god: a picture, please? Saint Zlatan sits languorously on the dull blue cooler, true to the gangly figure I’ve seen on TV. His eyes finally catch mine and I now know my fate lies in his whimsy. Yes or no. Heaven or purgatory.

He takes his cell phone down from his ear and my insides are aflutter. His long fingers motion me toward him, at least I think so, I cautiously approach, not wanting to scare him with my crazed excitement. He avails himself of his preternaturally long limbs and snaps a picture of both of us with my camera. I think I made it to heaven—only later to see a cavalcade of sweaty men in blue “Pirelli” uniforms processing towards me. Now, I’m in heaven.

An hour later, I’m still smiling. I beam all the way back to my dorm room, my white t-shirt now hallowed, dotted with autographs from Inter’s most exalted stars, my camera full of pictures, full of joy. I beam all the way back to my dorm room, my smile irrepressible, my experience unbelievable, my mind still making sense of the day when I read about a European soccer star in the morning and saw him sitting on a cooler in Cambridge just a few hours later.

Um…is that cow going to move?

The engine of the Toyota Innova (think Sienna lite) stutters to a low growl, providing an ambient backdrop in the few seconds of peace. Then a succession of high-pitched, squeaky horns arrest me, and I’m subject to the whimsy of my driver, whose vertiginous lane-changes (every few seconds at least), predilection for honking (often for no apparent reason), and blatant disregard for the few traffic regulations (which may or may not actually exist) make your average Grand Theft Auto player seem like an overly cautious motorist.The cow moves; we veer back on the road; I close my eyes.

Dear God, I don’t want to die young – really.

I landed in Mumbai, India on Christmas Day 2009 for my brother’s wedding, before later traipsing about the states of Gujarat and Kerala. These travels helped me realize that geography is more than the capitals marked by stars inscribed in circles on the globe; more than the yellow dotted flight plan that marks my progress on the flight; more than the varying hues of blue that indicate deepness of the water, the yellows and greens on the map that show elevation.

Rather, I discovered, geography is human. It is the diffusion of culture, thought, ideas–globalization. Landscape isn’t strictly topographic, mind you.  It is the flow of ex-pats in the city, the (mostly peaceful) intermingling of Hindus, Muslims, and Christians, the intersection of spectacular wealth and even greater poverty, history and present, and of course the requisite terrifying driving experience.  It is Mumbai, India.

Look up and see Mukesh Ambani’s $2 billion high-rise apartment towering over the penniless, crumbling slums of Mumbai that Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire made famous.  Glance at the wizened beggar lying listless on dirt in front of a garish Rolls Royce dealership.  Ponder the silver satellite dish that springs up from a destitute Mumbai slum dotted with trash.

Or consider the juxtaposition on the road: the occasional white Audi regally processes along seemingly nameless streets, indifferent to the adjacent dusty, decades-old auto-rickshaws literally overflowing with wiry passengers. They huddle together as the door-less ten horsepower contraption–one that makes the Mini Cooper seem colossal–huffs and puffs alongside the scooters, over the ruts, and through the denizens of the city.

Geography has facilitated the rise of this burgeoning city; while it has recently attained status as the financial capital of India, Mumbai has its economic roots in the port and shipping industry–possible only because of its peninsular location on the Arabian Sea and Thane Creek. Unfortunately, geography’s role is not always salutary–the surrounding water also facilitated the arrival of the cabal of terrorists responsible for last year’s heinous Mumbai attacks.

I am happy to report, however, that the two targets of the attacks, the palatial Taj Hotel and the more austere Trident-Oberoi, stand upright, teeming with trademark elegance, and–more importantly–guests.

Geography, as I’ve come to realize, comprises a panoply of different things; cities and culture, as well as cows and crazy drivers, collectively create a landscape that’s both physical and intangible, concrete and ineffable.

The rustle of textbook pages turning, the hasty unzipping of oversized book bags hardly disrupts this venue’s overflowing intellectual energy. The pounding clatter of fingers pressed against greasy laptop keyboards – a soothing symphony to knowledge, it seems – fills the second-floor air, redolent of fresh Starbucks coffee. College students donning the ubiquitous ‘H’ logo, tourists doing likewise, a few bums clad in sweatpants, and the other denizens of Cambridge flock here, traveling up the cascading staircase past the stack of Malcolm Gladwell books to check out all three floors of the establishment.

It is June 2009 and I take my place among the overstressed, sleepless, and nascent literati at the Harvard Coop, a popular bookstore just outside the campus of one of the nation’s most prestigious universities. School is never out here. A seventeen-year-old high school student, I wasn’t researching a thesis. However, I had enrolled in two creative writing classes for the summer and desperately needed to begin on my final project: a piece of creative non-fiction of up to fifteen pages.

Hours had flown by in my dorm room in Harvard Yard’s Thayer Hall without progress. Instead, I had voraciously consumed my eclectic – and completely electronic – literary diet of news, soccer blogs, and The New Yorker online. Reading was, and still is, my favorite tool of procrastination – and how easy it is thanks to the Internet! I am loathe to brand my online perusing a “waste” of time – in fact, I’ve probably learned more about writing this way than I have in school – but, for all the putative benefits of this side-reading, it gets me off track. Fast.

I’m not alone though. According to a new Kaiser Family Foundation study, kids ages 8-18 spend over seven and a half hours a day glued to computers, cell phones, televisions, or other electronic media. What is more, the authors of the study note that today’s youth actually get 10 hours and 45 minutes worth of media content through multitasking. Any teenager will tell you this isn’t remotely surprising – and, for me, it instantly recalls the image of my friends instinctively whipping out their cell phones to furiously text, even during a conversation or while watching TV.

Still, I’m a bit of an outlier. According to the study, only one in ten young people reported reading newspapers or magazines online; for those who did read online, the average time spent on this activity was a mere 21 minutes.

It’s just so easy to get immersed in a piece. A mere click on my IBM laptop opens up the Chrome browser, and from there, the stories, videos, and links tantalize me thanks to the myriad gadgets on my iGoogle page. I really want to finish writing the overture, the introduction to my piece – but what if Nick Kristof posts a new blog entry, what if that famous soccer player tweets me back, or what if someone wrote on my Facebook wall? I can’t resist. It takes less than a second, so I just hit the “F” key and “Enter” to check the ubiquitous social-networking site once more.

Three notifications.

But I had to get my assignment done: a four to fifteen page piece for my creative nonfiction class. And as they say, desperate times…call for one to cut off the Internet.

So I planted myself firming at the place with the spottiest wireless reception on campus: The Harvard Coop bookstore.

There, I thought, I could focus, motivated by a collegiate atmosphere teeming with brilliance, students tapping away at their literary masterpieces on pearl white Macbooks or furiously scribbling proofs of theorems belonging to esoteric branches of mathematics.

Buoyed by my change of milieu (and lack of Internet), I sat, ordered a coffee, wrote – and actually got several pages done in a few hours.

But never at the Coop did I realize the obvious irony of my situation. A student, who procrastinates by reading (of all things), must hole himself up at none other than a bookstore… in order to do his work and stop reading. Perfect sense, right?

It was my professor who had to point this irony out to me as we conferenced over the writing process and the piece.

My myopia speaks to the differences between my peer group (dubbed Gen M^2 by the Kaiser Family Foundation study) and those only just slightly older. Despite the fact that I had, on many occasions, spent several hours reading books off the shelves at the Coop, I paradoxically saw it, a comprehensive bookstore, as the only place where I would not succumb to my proclivity for procrastination – the only place where I would not read. In hindsight, it seems that Harvard’s cavernous Widener library would be the only place more inane for me to go at the time.

But why didn’t I realize my folly?

Perhaps it’s just the incipient laziness of my generation. Reading something online – a blog post, a news story, a feature article – is downright quicker than pulling out a book. You can scan, highlight – and if you lose interest – move on to another work in a matter of seconds. While this raises the question of whether “reading” online is tantamount to just leafing and scanning through a print copy, it’s efficient and easy.

And with high-speed Internet essentially universal, I see no logical reason to physically use a book when everything is more conveniently online, on a screen. In fact, I could have theoretically completed all of my assigned readings for my two classes using the Internet in lieu of in my expensive textbooks; in many cases, I still did that regardless of the fact that I had bought the book. My peers would likely do the same; the Kaiser study reveals that the only media activity that actually failed to increase among young people over the past ten years is traditional print media. Indeed, the study indicates a roughly 25% drop in print newspaper and magazine readership since 1999. Why? The answer lies in said convenience, as well as the Internet-saturated, online-only culture in which I have grown up.

Mine is the generation of the Kindle – er, iPad. Apart from the little remaining sentiment felt for the hard copy, we are inexorably moving entirely online. And as for those last remnants of nostalgia, our inherent resistance to change? They are the life support to which current print media clings. The problem is, sooner rather than later, the support will wither, wane, and expire as the online revolution – one which I experienced on a Cambridge summer day at the Coop, one which lives each time a teen types a text message – tweets on.