Rooting for America

I am faced with a terrible dilemma.

On Saturday in South Africa, the United States soccer team plays England in a game that will be televised live throughout the world.

The last time the U.S. faced the Brits in a World Cup was in Belo Horizonte, Brazil — in June 1950.

The Americans were mostly part-timers working as mailmen and dishwashers and rated 500-1 underdogs. Then they stunned the world by winning, 1-0. (They called the match the “Miracle on Grass” and even made a movie in 2005 about the triumph called “The Game of Their Lives.” ) The U.S. team was knocked out of the running in the next round.

While the Yanks have improved enormously over the years and there’s now a professional soccer league in North America, I don’t think they’ll beat the Brits this time.

But I am not here to analyze the skills of either nation.

Here’s my problem. I was born and educated in England. However, I have spent most of my adult life in the United States. I still have a London accent, leavened somewhat by my years in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

I was married in Southern California (my wife, Sally, is from Northern Ireland). My children and grandchildren were all born in the U.S. and are as American as barbecued ribs. And I am now a citizen of this country.

I believe that my wonderful life and family have come about as a result of the opportunities presented to me in the U.S. So, come Saturday, which team do I cheer for?

Let me deviate slightly. A few years ago, I attended a soccer match at the L.A. Coliseum between the U.S. and Mexico and was very upset with what I saw — in the audience. There were 90,000 in attendance, about 85,000 of them Latino.

I could not believe what I witnessed. When the U.S. players touched the ball, the large crowd — mostly transplanted Mexicans — booed heartily. They didn’t stand for the Stars and Stripes, and some even threw soda cans at the American team as it took the field.

Now, I don’t want to get involved in a political diatribe, nor am I qualified on the minutia of the immigration law in Arizona, except to say that as an immigrant myself, I think that the new law is an atrocious one.

But what still seems totally unintelligible to me is why fans at the Coliseum who lived, worked, ate, slept and went to school in America were not able to embrace the country they had chosen to live in.

The young Americans on the U.S team are paid peanuts compared with the overinflated salaries handed out to players in England, Spain and Italy, 75% of whom play for top-flight professional teams around the world. The Americans also have not yet had the opportunity to develop the outsized egos and bad-boy habits of some of their European counterparts.

So the bottom line is that at 11:30 a.m. Saturday, I will park myself in front of a giant screen at a World Cup viewing party as “the beautiful game” unfolds thousands of miles away in Royal Bafokeng Stadium in Rustenburg, South Africa.

And I will be yelling, “Go, America, go.”

Ivor Davis is a former American correspondent for London newspapers who has covered four World Cups for KNX radio and is now based in Ventura County.