Soccer factions have more in common than they realize

It is the reality of professional soccer in the United States that some of the sport’s most diehard fans who live in this country don’t pay much attention to its professional league.

Then, there are those fans of Major League Soccer who go out of their way to snub the levels of international soccer where the game is played at its best, out of a belief that they are somehow showing a loyalty to soccer and to country (although there are also those people who think soccer itself is too foreign to ever fit in here).

SO I COULDN’T help but notice a tinge of irony when I stumbled across a statement announcing a new endorsement deal.

Specifically, DegreeMen is now the official antiperspirant of both Major League Soccer and the Mexican National soccer team.

All those people who like to root for Team U.S.A. and have a favorite MLS team who will talk trash about Equipo Mexico, and all those Mexican futbol fans who will talk trash about Major League Soccer being somewhere around Little League ought to take into account that their favorite soccer entity is taking corporate money from the same source.

Actually, DegreeMen reached its advertising deal with Soccer United Marketing, which works on behalf of many leagues, including both Major League Soccer and the Mexican national team.

SO WHILE THE idea that U.S./Mexico is an intense rivalry on the playing field is a noble one, those of us who want to get into too nationalistic a mental mode ought to keep in mind that when it comes to business, there is little difference.

Soccer is soccer.

The simple reality is that it is an intriguing game, regardless of what level it is played at, and the United States just by merits of being such a wealthy nation that excels at so many other sports, has the potential someday to have a professional league worthy of being the elite in the world – unlike its current status where aging stars like David Beckham of England came so he could claim to have had a stint living in the United States at some point in his career.

Perhaps the next time that the United States and Mexico take the field against each other, they ought to be reminded they’re both using the same deodorant (or at the very least, taking money to pretend that they use the same deodorant).

“WE WOULD LIKE to welcome DegreeMen as sponsors of M.L.S. and the Mexican National Team,” Soccer United Marketing Vice President Kathy Carter said, in a prepared statement. “DegreeMen’s commitment and support of the sport of soccer gives our fans the opportunity to always take on the challenge and the experience of ‘the beautiful game’ in the United States.”

If anything, this coming together of the factions of fans that support soccer in this country is what is needed if the sport is ever to have the same level of attraction in this country as it does in other parts of the world.

Because all too often, soccer matches in this country can feel like cultural clashes. I have been to Major League Soccer matches where the ethnic crowd and the Anglo crowd eyeball each other uneasily – wondering what the other side is thinking about.

And we all have seen those matches held in big cities with strong ethnic populations where the fans turn out in force to root for “the visitors.”

WHICH IS WHY Team U.S.A. prefers to play its matches in places like Columbus, Ohio, while the only way the Mexican National Team gets to play in a Spanish-tinged place like Texas is under conditions such as what will occur later this week.

The Texas State Fair on Wednesday will include as an attraction a soccer match – Mexico versus Colombia, where in theory neither side has an attraction.

Although I can’t help but wonder if that crowd at the Cotton Bowl will consist of Mexico partisans, with a few Team U.S.A. fans rooting for Columbia just so they can be difficult.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: If they share a deodorant sponsor, how long until soccer fans in this country (http://www.hispanicprwire.com/news.php?l=in&id=15596&cha=14) can share an overall love of the sport whose main detractors are the NASCAR crowd.