Sport and the New Political Divide

The political divide today is less the traditional left-right than nationalist-internationalist.

This was brewing before Trump. But it has become the new normal. It’s a fault line people are still willing to cross, because it’s new. We love our nation, but can we love another without betraying it?

My point today is that this fault line has appeared in every area of our lives. Not just in politics, but in economics. It has appeared in music and art. And it has appeared in sport.

I have described how it works in sports here in Atlanta, where the Atlanta United “football” team has taken intown’s love from the Atlanta Braves. They moved to Trumpistan, specifically suburban Cobb County, with its long history of racism aimed at the central city. The bridge on I-75 over the Chattahoochee to Cobb County is still named for Lester Maddox, for gosh sakes.

That line is now being drawn more fully than ever before, and more quickly than I would have thought possible. While sports radio and newspaper sport pages give minimal coverage to the Five Stripes (here’s a derisive nickname I offer for our team to the NYCFC “pigeons” – the JuicyFruits) they also ignore the US Men’s National Team, which played out a 1-1 draw with Mexico on June 11 , while the Tonys and Game 6 of the NHL Finals were on.

Previously I wrote about how local media supports the Braves and ignores United. Today I want to talk about what’s happening on the other side.  

Major League Soccer recognizes what is going on, and is preparing to exploit it. The league is expected to announce a new tournament soon,  pitting the best of Mexico’s Liga MX against the best teams in MLS.

This is bigger news than it appears. U.S. soccer fans took to the sport through English clubs like Manchester United, and are only now starting to cotton to German clubs thanks to German-born players like Jermaine Jones and German-developed Christian Pulisic. Only the most knowledgeable can even name more than one Liga MX club, the most famous of which is called America.

Liga MX and MLS both participate in something called the “CONCACAF Champions League,” but MLS has never taken it very seriously, and Mexico has always won it. The winner gets a chance to lose to Barcelona or Real Madrid.

This is starting to change. Both leagues are improving. Mexico coach Juan Carlos Osorio once coached in MLS, failing with both New York and Chicago, but he believes MLS will soon be among the best leagues in the world and is anxious for Liga MX to climb on board the growth train.

Liga MX has a much better scheduling system than MLS, which plays for six months and then has playoffs that often make the 8^th or 10^th best team league champion. The season starts in July with an Apertura, a round robin which ends in an 8-team championship tournament and one team relegated to the second division, or Ascensio. A second round-robin follows in the spring, the Clausura. The league has six teams drawing over 30,000 fans per game, 16 drawing over 20,000. MLS last year had just 2 teams drawing over 30,000, and 10 drawing 20,000. 

More important, Liga MX is a big TV draw. Even in the U.S., more people watch Liga MX than MLS.  On TV, Liga MX even outdraws the English Premier League. What’s most surprising here is that Liga MX is cottoning to MLS, not the other way around.

Thus a delicate dance is dawning, one in which Yanqui fans learn about Mexico, and Mexican fans get to enjoy beating a Yanqui invader. It could become one of the great sport stories of the next decade.

This has everything to do with politics.

Millions of people are slowly being drawn out of the regional or national orbit of baseball, football and basketball, into the international orbit of soccer. Identifying with a U.S. soccer team, as opposed to even an English team like Chelsea, is a political act. Imagine what it will mean when you see a bunch of white kids wearing Club America jerseys a few years from now? 

Yes, that movement is now in opposition to the forces of the government, and to all the forces of the U.S. sports establishment. This is what makes it fun. I’d much rather opine on the intricacies of the beautiful game than watch yet-another former football star die, from brain injuries that are a natural consequence of playing the game, or watch another billionaire like John Malone take another city for a billion or so to build a baseball palace imitating Fenway Park.

By the way, United will be fine. Martinez is back on the field, and Brad Guzan will shore up the defense, making Alec Kann a better goalie in the process. We will be a tough out in the playoffs.

Which brings me to more MLS reforms. Did you know that most club soccer is played on a free enterprise basis, while U.S. sports are all socialist? (This includes MLS.) Teams like Chelsea build and own their own stadia, without government help, and even TV revenues aren’t evenly split, the winning teams taking more and relegated teams paying a real economic price.

U.S. sport is Karl Marx. Soccer is Ayn Rand. Take that, Cobb County.