The Things I Have to Let Go

God, I have to stop getting upset when I watch people talk about Sam Kerr.

Watching the discourse from a continent away, I find myself in a particular position. On one hand, I used to be one of the people that got to talk about Sam Kerr all the time, and on the other hand part of retaining some sanity towards the current task (the Chicago Red Stars) is allowing that to not be my job anymore. 

And regardless of my own attachments, I kind of figured that Kerr's first game against Arsenal was likely to end with me feeling frustrated. Kerr herself went into this one in a tough spot, as meeting expectations would probably only be defined as both scoring and Chelsea winning comfortably (she did, and they also did. I kind of figured that would happen too). I didn't wake up early to watch it live. 

To me, the European reaction to Kerr's move has been oddly divided, with a significant amount of media treating it with the weight it deserved, but also a number of fans bristling at the idea of an Australian former wunderkind coming in and succeeding against their beloved top tier players.

Really quickly, I do want to put two disclaimers at the front of this piece. 1) this is not a criticism of the decisions any athletes have made. I actually think everything I'm about to say underlines why soccer players make the choices they do, and I am on the side of the player always and 2) I'm about to critique a thing that I know the U.S. is also deeply guilty of. The ills that permeate European soccer also exist here, in their own ways.

But the European explosion of women's soccer follows undertones of colonialism that nobody seems to want to talk about. You can even hear it in the language that's been used to underemphasize Kerr's talent: she's a highly athletic player who will struggle against more technical play. It's coded language, and it's an issue that permeates pretty much all levels of the game. 

To back up a little, in my experience, enjoying men's sports usually means turning off a bit of my frontal lobe. Lindy West famously described feminism as ”the long slow realization that the things you love hate you“, which has never been more true in my own life than when I engaged with established leagues. Being a soccer fan is objectively great, but I think this is why the women's soccer community has grown the way that it has. It feels like finally, a thing for us, that we can enjoy with our whole minds.

Women's soccer has represented that ideal for a long time, and it has made incredible gains in the past few decades. But I think, in the early days of the sport, the intersectional inequalities inherent to the space felt unavoidable simply because everyone was struggling. If even those at the top of this sport aren't even getting the support they need, how can we possibly hold everyone to a necessary standard? But in the recent years, we are seeing more legitimate money being poured into the women's game. I'm not sure anyone is getting smarter about how they are using it.

Sports, as they currently exist, don't reward a ton of empathy, despite the fact they survive on the stories told about its players. People worth caring about miss rosters and get traded or dropped for reasons that have nothing to do with the content of their character. Ultimately, it's about winning soccer games. Blurring that line frequently leads to heartache, and the humanity of it all frequently gets lost within the necessities of succeeding as a club. 

But as much as any of us would maybe like to pretend otherwise, women’s soccer exists as a synthesis of identity. It’s in the name. So why now are we determined to create no new avenues, and turn this incredibly special opportunity into a recreation of what the world has already been mapped out to be?

I got mad online on Sunday because Bleacher Report tweeted a shoddy photoshop of Sam Kerr doing a backflip in celebration of her first goal with Chelsea. There's no record of them tweeting about her in the six years she played in the NWSL. I’m not going to dig into the rocky digital landscape of sports writing, but I think a healthy assumption to make is that a publication like BR considers most of their value to be in European football, and haven’t questioned much past that. Recognizing Kerr’s talent when she was playing here would require unlearning not only sexist assumptions about the legitimacy of women’s soccer, but the idea that there can be a soccer product made in America that’s worth writing about.

In addition to the money-pull, the WSL gets to lean on the Euro-centric complex of world football, which itself survives on the life-force of being a colonialist export. Examining the toxicity of these assumptions goes as far back as examining why most South American countries speak Spanish, or why everyone on the USWNT speaks English. This shit goes deep. 

And while some WSL teams are legitimately very exciting, a certain amount of the capitulating from American (and other) soccer fans comes from a troubling lack of effort. NWSL brands have to exist on their own, and that's a nearly impossible thing to ask them to do. It honestly makes me feel for MLS. And while the newness of the NWSL does not make it any less a reflection of American society (I don't feel bad for the U.S. getting a taste of its own medicine here), it being discarded by most of the European continent is a sign. It makes sense as a competitive sport. But as a worldview? Why are we all here again?

I’m also frustrated because I think the U.S. had an opportunity to rewrite soccer history, and instead that's probably going to fall away. There was a brief, beautiful moment when Australia and America could have worked together to create a cohesive competitive club schedule that rivaled anything in England or France.

The U.S. also has the opportunity to use their influence to build up the game in the Western Hemisphere, instead of chasing approval from the European continent. Instead of scheduling friendly tournaments with a grab-bag of mid to top-level Euro squads, the USWNT could balance games against top teams with developing a Pan-American competition that could run concurrent to the Euro’s. USSF has the cultural currency to encourage federations in both Concacaf and Conmebol to invest in their women’s teams, and build all of this up for long-term health for everybody.

But that would require self-reflection, and a different set of standards from the ones that have been propping up this whole business for centuries. It would require deeper analysis into why the U.S. annihilates its Concacaf competition, and it would require investment in teams other than the USWNT and Canada. It would require abolishing the pay to play structure. Instead, we're recreating history. It's unflattering.

We're also seeing this shift in the NWSL. OL Reign FC hiring a man with a history of body-shaming, the Washington Spirit hiring a man with a history of throwing slurs, allocation money being presented as for one thing and then quickly walked back, teams boxing media out for fear of backlash, this is all happening here too. I'm not sure what to make of it all.

Ultimately I think it’s probably more likely that we’re going to watch women's soccer continue to bend towards the society that shaped it. Instead of new diverse faces, we’re on track to see the same men passed around as head coaches for clubs and countries alike. Instead of solidarity, we’re probably going to see the U.S. hold onto its own supremacy of soccer excellence in an uneasy alliance with the European machine. I think some particular soccer teams will win a lot of soccer games.

I think, for me, what’s going to have to happen is that I am going to have to let this go, in whatever way it was holding on to me before. In the same way I have to let go of whether or not Casey Short will ever get to represent her country in an international tournament, I have to stop expecting something to happen in women's soccer other than the perpetuation of its own existence. I think for now it's still better than what we had. I'm not going to pretend I'm sure that's going to be true forever.

I am looking forward to the Chicago Red Stars playing some soccer games though. I'm also looking forward to making deeper connections in the community that's been built up around these teams. I'm looking forward to seeing this sport played live again. New things to celebrate.