In the Bay Area, I got my first opportunity to watch an entire World Cup round, the quarterfinals, in one location. It was a nice experience, with sparse crowds at the Pyramid Brewery for the first game of the first day (Germany vs. France), but packed houses for every other match. In particular, it was a lot of fun watching Netherlands vs. Costa Rica at Danny Coyle’s. I somehow ended up hitting it off with a large group of crazy guys (and a couple girls), all in their mid-to-late 20s. We joked, laughed, gasped, and drank our way through the extremely tight game. When the Dutch subbed on keeper Tim Krul in the last minute (and every time he made a save in the penalty shootout), our little group filled the bar with a chant of “Krul! Krul! Krul!” In short, watching the games here was fantastic.
The day after the quarterfinals, I met with Momo, a Bay Area native who has followed soccer for the last nine years. Since most of her soccer-watching friends were international students from college, Momo was able to give me a unique insight on what she saw as the interesting differences between the supporter culture of some of the different nationalities in the diverse San Francisco Bay Area.
Momo is of Japanese descent, with both of her parents having been born in Japan. Therefore, she has a lot of experience with the Japanese and Japanese-American supporter culture, having watched games in Japan in the past and having organized a viewing party for the Samurai Blue’s first game of the World Cup, against Cote d’Ivoire. From her observations, Momo reported that the Japanese tend to be quite reserved when watching their team play. They are, according to her, “well-mannered and quiet” with not much chanting and somewhat limited cheering for big events. However, the Japanese are knowledgeable. Even though most of the people who attended the viewing party that she set up weren’t “super soccer followers,” they still knew everyone on the Japanese team and were able to make observations on some of the finer points of the game. Also, despite Japan’s disappointing performance this World Cup, there was little negativity from their supporters. Momo told me that Japanese culture values how you present yourself to others, so this precluded any overt public disparaging of the team. In addition, it also meant that the team and the country’s FA were very apologetic over their performance, going so far as to release a press report to say they were sorry for letting the fans down. After the viewing party (Japan lost to Cote d’Ivoire, 2-1), many came up to thank Momo for putting it together, grateful that she was able to bring them together in love for country and sport.
With the Koreans she knows, it is a completely different story. When Momo first started getting into soccer in 2005, most of her international student soccer friends were Korean, so she got to observe them watching their team in multiple World Cups, including going to a viewing party with her friends in 2010. The first thing she stressed about the Koreans is that they are extremely loud and excitable. At the viewing party she went to, energy was abundant. Chanting and yelling were omnipresent, as was the banging of inflatable thundersticks. Her international student friends were only focused on the Korean team, and even within the Korean team the spotlight was mostly on the several stars who played on European teams. And just as the Koreans are more outgoing than the Japanese in terms of their support, they are also more open with their criticism. She brought up a story about how a Korean fan greeted the team at the Inchon airport after their sub-par performance by throwing toffee at them (a degrading Korean insult). She added that, in general, the Koreans just aren’t very optimistic.
And then we came to the third nationality - the Americans. While Momo made sure to emphasize the energy the Koreans had, she immediately said that Americans “kick it up a notch.” For them, everything must be flashy. Their entire body must be covered in red, white, and blue. For many, that includes facepaint (while volunteering to do facepainting for the USA-Portugal viewing party at Civic Park, she received several requests to paint an American flag covering the person’s face). Americans also know a lot about their own team, but most lack the knowledge of the game’s finer points to understand some of what goes on as well as fans from Korea or Japan. This may be the result of a large number of “bandwagoners” who just pay attention because it is the World Cup. But these new fans are ever eager to learn about the game, constantly asking questions of Momo, me, or anyone else who follows soccer. What stuck out most to her was how optimistic Americans were. While other nationalities get depressed rather easily, Americans never lose hope that their team can pull off the win, no matter the odds.
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