It's football, but not as we know it

Football, american style

After a lifetime playing, coaching and watching football in the UK I moved to live in the football free-zone that is the USA. America is an incredibly sporty nation but it is their own indigenous games which rule. You know the ones, that generally involve a humungus amount of padding, helmets and time-outs. There is football in America but it's as far from the beautiful game as you can imagine. Instead it's a tough game played by tough guys, the ball isn't round, it is rarely kicked and each squad has enough members to populate a small city. When the season's over we get basketball and hockey, the latter played on ice not grass, then in Spring it's Lacrosse, a delightful game which involves hitting your opponent with a stick, and Baseball which is basically rounders but played by grown men in pyjamas. 

To find some proper football I have to look for soccer, the American version of the beautiful game. For TV coverage there is the Fox Soccer Channel, but that's a hefty subscription service and also pretty useless. For a brief period during the World Cup in 2010 soccer made mainstream TV and the pundits who normally spend 24/7 arguing about every other sport but soccer suddenly became experts on the game. The USA "victory" in the opening game against England was analyzed in depth, well more specifically Rob Green's goalkeeping was mercilessly mocked, then suddenly the idea was floated that the USA might actually win this tournament. The excitement and the coverage lasted all of 2 weeks till Ghana knocked them out of the competition!!

It's not a completely barren playing field though, as over 18 million people play soccer in the US with over 40% of these being female players. Just about every Town has a programme of some sort and the sport flourishes in high School. Last Fall I got the opportunity work at my local High School when I was appointed coach of the girls Varsity team. To be selected for Varsity is a great honor and can have a big influence on an individual's future, to put it simply Varsity is the school's first team which competes against other schools in the State Championship. When I took the job I knew that there would be a few cultural differences but soccer is football... right? I couldn't have been more wrong. 


First of all there was the language barrier, American English and English might sound the same and use many of the same words but that's where the similarity quite definitely ends. After rabbiting on to my players about the pitch I spotted their puzzled looks and realized that they thought I was talking about the Pitcher in either baseball or softball. I learnt very quickly, therefore, to call the pitch a field, refer to their kit as uniforms, ask their parents to sit in the bleachers not the stands, check whether they had their cleats with them and set up a washing rota for the pinnies!!

The fields also proved to be a challenge and during our season we played on a wide variety of surfaces and sizes. Our own home field was almost square and would have barely been suitable for grazing sheep back in Derbyshire, but I soon found that it was one of the better grass surfaces. At Dover High School the grass was so long there could easily have been chalky white cliffs hidden in the undergrowth, whilst in Pawling we played on a softball field with one goal area scarred by the location of the pitchers mound, a raised sandy area devoid of any grass whatsoever. 

Spot the ball

Then there were the 'turf fields, synthetic 3rd generation astroturf surfaces marked out in a grid iron pattern for football. A football field is 53 yards wide and 100 yards long plus it has two 10 yard end zones at either end. Often the soccer markings started at the back of each end zone which resulted in a longer and narrower pitch than I was used to. Just to confuse me even more the end zones were sometimes a different color to the rest of the field with the school nickname ... Mustangs, Indians, Bears etc ........ painted on the surface.

One really interesting difference though was that two referees were appointed to officiate every game. There were no linesmen and instead each ref was expected to cover one half of the field. This system worked really well and meant that the officials were able to stay in touch with the game no matter where or how quickly the ball was played. On the downside however their interpretation of the Laws of the Game was very creative, rendering the traditional old English tactic of "getting stuck in" totally useless!!! As for any banter with the officials, to put it in the local vernacular... furgeddaboutit!!!!!!!

Having said all this though, the season was incredibly enjoyable and a great learning experience which I hope to go into in future blogs. 

Yorktown @ Brewster