Am I Too Old For Soccer?
FCC transcends generations. How many?
The Bailey
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Is it hard to become a soccer fan?
For an OG, I mean.
I’m not talking about kids. They’re born into soccer, the way the old guys were born into baseball. A couple generations back, life without the Reds was barely worth living. Now, life with the Reds is barely worth living.
Not talking about the 20-, 30- and Teen-Somethings, either. They’re all part of the ongoing generational waves. We’ve moved to an age now when 30-year-old mom and dad are taking 5-year-old son and daughter to TQL Stadium. This shows no signs of abating. It’s known as Built-In Fan Base and it’s very good for attendance numbers.
FC Cincinnati is edging toward a phenomenon not often seen. Fans go to the games now just to go to the games. Of course, winning fattens the gate, and always will. But FCC seems on its way to being insulated from lousy attendance years. The Event is the thing.
Call it the Wrigley Field Effect. You go there to go there. For decades, the Cubs had little incentive to field a winner, because the main event was the field trip to the ballpark.
FC Cincinnati sold out for the 7th time in nine home matches this year. TQL Stadium seats 26,000. FC is averaging 25,513 a game. (In comparison, the Reds are drawing 19,199 souls a night.)
The excitement at TQL Stadium is tribal. I’ve had people who don’t know futbol from foot fungus foot tell me they went to a game and had a surprising blast. You might not understand or especially enjoy what you’re watching. You do enjoy what you’re experiencing.
Wrigley
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So. . . is it hard to become a soccer fan?
For someone like me, the game can seem a little, I dunno, disorienting. If you want to win, why do you allow some of your best players to leave midseason, to compete for their home countries?
Clubs “lend’’ players to each other. What?
Soccer has tournaments right in the middle of the season. FCC hosts Pittsburgh Tuesday night, in a US Open Cup quarterfinal. Maybe the Bengals should host a playoff game or two in mid-November.
We claim baseball is boring, yet we’re good with 1-nil outcomes in soccer. In FCC’s 1-0 win Saturday over the Chicago Fire, the home goalie had exactly zero saves. The Fire made no attempt on goal that qualified as a shot. In the entire game.
And all that play-acting, when players are trying to get an opponent penalized. The NBA T’s up players for that.
That said, the FCC Experience is so good, if you don’t take part, you feel as if you’re missing out as a Cincy sports fan.
And running time is awesome.
Are you a convert? The TML demographic runs the gamut, but many Mobsters grew up playing baseball, not soccer. Are you a convert, or at least have you added soccer to your roster of games you follow?
Do tell.
THE STADIUM NEEDS A NICKNAME., because, no disrespect, Total Quality Logistics Stadium isn’t likely to inspire fear among opponents.
It needs to be something menacing, foreboding, inhospitable to opponents. But also welcoming to the home nation. The Trap might work. The Dungeon, maybe not.
The Graveyard, The Crypt, nah.
It’s hard. The team itself has no nickname. No Bengals in The Jungle. It’s just that Euro-cutesy FC.
Death Valley. . . The Swamp. . . (Between The) Hedges.
(Welcome to) The Roar, The Lair, The Moat. The Pit.
The Dreadful. Welcome to The Dread.
Give it some thought, Mobsters. It’s important.
WHAT WE LEARNED from the Reds weekend that was. Actually, I dislike that way of analyzing a baseball team. In a sport that convenes 162 times a year, a weekend is barely a sip of coffee. What we learn is that 162 game is a long season.
That said, the Reds have had a few chances lately to show they’re ahead of schedule and flubbed them both: 0-6 at home v. the Yankees and Brewers. No big points for taking down the Cubbies and St. Louis.
The series with the Crew, which concludes tonight, has been especially disappointing. Milwaukee has 14 guys on the IL, and the Brewers weren’t formidable to begin with. We take solace in the hitting — the Reds are 13th in baseball in runs scored — and the arrival of Elly De La Cruz. But there is no amount of Elly that can compensate for bad starting pitching.
Graham Ashcraft made another ghastly start Saturday. Ashcraft had a 2.10 ERA in April and a 9.21 ERA in May. Saturday he allowed 10 runs in four innings. The Reds’ starting pitchers ERA is 29th in baseball, ahead of only Oakland. And this year was supposed to be about the emerging development of starting pitching.
All of which leaves you wondering about the future that never seems to arrive. Are the Reds the team that just won five in a row, or the team that looks headed for 66-96?
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Elizabeth and Judd Weiss
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AMONG THE BEST half-day trips here happens every year on the first Saturday in June. Art In The Garden blooms in Augusta, K-Y. If you’re from Ohio, you drive down the river road (US 52), past Grant’s birthplace, to the ferry that takes you across the Ohio to Augusta. Augusta’s downtown in quaint, pretty, interesting with several nice shops and restaurants.
Art in the Garden is a five-block wave of canopies protecting locally produced arts and crafts. We’re not talking little cedar boxes. It’s very nice work by very accomplished people.
Each year we see something at the Garden we’ve never seen before. This year, it was a booth run by Elizabeth and Judd Weis, co-founders of Augusta Distillery. Of course, I sampled their bourbon and of course, the wheated bourbon was sublime. I’m thinking we might have to make it the official adult beverage of The Morning Line.
TML sez ckout Augusta Distillery.
TUNE O’ THE DAY. . . A rarity from the frontman for Mott The Hoople.
I have mentioned this before on the original TML. I was one of the 3-sport brainwashed masses until a friend finally convinced me to watch one match of the 2006 World Cup. I watched and then I took the next three weeks off work to watch every match through the final. I’ve been hooked ever since. So hooked, that I spent the weekend watching the million dollar winner take all 7 vs 7 soccer tournament in Cary, N.C. where Chad Johnson was on a roster. Yeah. Ocho played for a team that was made up primarily of former local and early days FC Cincinnati players. 32 teams from around the world played 2 matches a day. That’s EACH TEAM played two matches a day with the finals on Sunday. Nati FC didn’t make it to the knockout round of 16 but Ocho, in a limited role, played better than anyone thought he would.
The reason OG’s won’t grasp soccer is because old dogs and new rules don’t mix. Anyone that would take the time to learn the rules would find that scoring a goal is incredibly hard and the enjoyment is watching a team play field position, test the defense, get shots on goal, then score.
Prior to football becoming a passer’s game, how many of you OG’s loved watching Woody Haye’s Buckeyes and his “3 yards and a cloud of dust” offense? If you liked that, scoring in soccer is much the same. Credit Woody’s early teams with 1 point instead of 6 for a score, and I would guess the football scoring would be similar to soccer.
Ah…prior to their first year, the Florence Freedom refused my name of the Florence Hendersons. I thought The Ike was great name for the new downtown waterfront music venue until they dropped The Icon part. Now it’s The Brady which would have gone great with their matriarch in Florence.
On short notice, TQL is in the west end of downtown. Call the place “The End”. Welcome to “The End”. Have the stadium speakers blare air raid sirens and then have a reworked The End by The Doors play. Someone get the Afghan Whigs on the horn…I’ll write the lyrics. :)
I’m too old for soccer but not for Ted Lasso…