Winterizing the Summer Sport

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

Old habits, we are told, die hard. Maybe. But they mostly die harmless, too – archaic, endearing thoughts and actions which we pass over with an indulgent smile.


But one or two old habits hang on with mysterious tenacity, and they obscure a vital truth: That things are changing.


Soccer, having been around for nearly 150 years, has accumulated plenty of quaint, innocuous habits and one of the pernicious variety: the notion that soccer is a winter sport.


The Brits, who invented the sport back in the middle of the 19th century, chose to play in the winter. Some 80 years later, Noel Coward got things badly wrong when he insisted that mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun. He overlooked the English soccer fraternity, which was determinedly anti-sun right from the start.


Why they were that way I’m not sure – possibly because there is more winter than summer in the British Isles, possibly because cricket ruled the green fields of summer. But much more likely because they saw soccer as a test of manliness and considered the raw English winter a much greater challenge than the mild English summer.


Whatever – when the rest of Europe quickly took up the sport, it followed the British lead. And still does. Soccer in Europe is a winter sport.


The seasons have spread a little, it’s true. Here we are in September, and European soccer is already under way. It’s not yet winter, but the dreaded summer is over.


Old English soccer habits rule in Europe, and Europe rules the entire world of soccer. Never mind that the sport is now widely played throughout the southern hemisphere, where they do indeed play throughout the European summer (which, perversely, they call winter down there). And never mind that right here in the United States the old habit has been disgracefully ignored, and MLS plays right through a genuine northern hemisphere summer.


But Europe cares little for South America and still views the Yanks as soccer outsiders who are bound to get things wrong anyway.


Right now is when the season begins. This is when European club soccer gets going. The English Premier League, the German Bundesliga, and the Spanish Liga are already operating. The Italian Serie A will start shortly.


Off we go, heading for the traditional rainstorms, muddy fields, and freezing winds. Not to mention the thick fogs, the snowplows, and the inevitably postponed games.


Northern European weather is at its worst from Christmas through January, and most countries in the area now know enough to take a winter break from soccer during that period. But not the Brits, no, sir! Some primordial streak urges them to play on through the tempest, even to increase the agony by arranging a particularly heavy schedule of games over the Christmas holiday period.


Does any of that make sense? Of course not. A summer season would banish all those climatic hardships, which afflict spectators as well as players. And we now know that the modern soccer player has nothing to fear from playing in hot weather.


Soccer as a winter sport is a notion that should have been buried decades ago. Which brings us to the great contradiction. At its top level, and particularly at the international level, soccer is already an undeniably summer affair.


The World Cup is always played in warm, often (as in the United States in 1994) brutally hot, weather. Even the English arrange for their hallowed cup final to be played in May, when the rigors of winter have departed.


Not only the World Cup but all of soccer’s major international tournaments are played during the European summertime. During the period known as the offseason.


This year has exposed, as never before, just how confused this whole matter of The Season has become. The 2004 offseason nominally began when the European club leagues completed their programs in mid-May. But Euro2004 started up on June 12; two days after that finished, on July 4, the Copa America got going and went on until July 25.The Olympic soccer tournament opened on August 11, only three days before the English Premier League played its first game.


And it wasn’t only the playing of major tournaments that took up the summer. Coaches were fired and hired, players were traded, while the English press feasted on a saucy sex scandal at the offices of the Football Association. (Well, since you asked: England’s coach, the $7-million-a-year Swede Sven Goran Eriksson, and the FA’s CEO Mark Palios had both been having an affair with the same FA secretary, Faria Alam. Palios resigned, Eriksson remains the England coach, and Alam has raked in $850,000 from two tabloid papers and a TV channel).


The disappearance of the offseason ought to mean the end of the whole structure of seasons. But the habit just will not go away. And the blind allegiance of European club soccer to the winter as the ideal, the almost divinely correct period for play, means they have ceded summer – with all the advantages that good weather possesses – to the big international tournaments.


That is a bitter pill for the clubs to swallow, because they are already incensed at having to release their players for these national tournaments. The conflicting demands on the players’ time already constitute an ominously ticking time bomb for soccer, with the clubs demanding financial compensation from FIFA, which refuses to even consider the idea.


Logic and common sense – plus weighty considerations like fan comfort and television preferences – say loudly that soccer should be a summer sport. But the overcrowded soccer calendar dictates that it must be played year-round, and the rich European clubs have got the short straw: They have to play in the winter.


The Brits – who started this whole mess – seem absurdly satisfied with the arrangement. I assume they are aware that having their players perform for half a season in bleak wintery conditions cannot possibly be the best preparation for the desperately sought victory in the World Cup – a tournament that is always going to be played in the heat of summer.


But, old habits …


The New York Sun

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