NSC MINNESOTA STARS - why do we follow?

My story is more of a slow build rather than the love at first sight variety. Growing up in Iowa, I barely knew the sport existed before the '94 World Cup. I certainly had no idea the US had a national team, let alone that there was a professional league, or that Pele had played for the Cosmos, anything like that. But watching that World Cup added soccer to my list of sports I enjoyed. It still ranked well below basketball and hockey, but was better than baseball.

That fall I was a senior in high school. My school started a team, but I was the sports editor for the school paper not an athlete so I followed the team all over the state to watch them play. To say they were bad is an understatement. We had a Spanish exchange student, a guy that was born on the boat over from Iran and another guy who's parents were Jordanian as our only players with any sort of skills or training and only the exchange student had a reasonable level of skill. The rest were either like me or maybe played a little pee-wee soccer. Given there was only one player of any discernible skill, they played him as a sweeper. If the team somehow managed to get possession of the ball, they tried to play the ball to him. At that point he would dribble up the field until he was fouled or turned the ball over. All free kicks were taken by the exchange student and no matter where they occurred, they were put on net. Teams quickly began to foul him around mid-field.

In college, I watched a little MLS, but the coverage was spotty and the league employed that bizarre shoot out that I've come to loathe in hockey as well. The '98 World Cup was a disaster for the US. It was hard to be a fan for me at that time.

However, at the end of 2000 we moved to the Twin Cities, and as a 23 year old who had grown up without anything resembling a pro-team (sorry Waterloo Blackhawks, USHL hockey, Waterloo Indians/Diamonds, Bucks, single-A and Northwoods baseball respectively and UNI Panther athletics) it was important to be a season ticket holder for something. The Thunder were the cheapest one in town and watching the Bundesliga on Fox Sports World on Saturdays when I happened to wake up before noon I wanted to give soccer a real chance. With regular attendance of live soccer I would say I became a true fan, but I wouldn't say I was in love. Not yet.

No, one dreary, drizzly, unseasonably cold summer day in Stillwater of all places, I was watching a Thunder game against Virginia Beach all by myself. Several of the games that season, the first at the Jimmy, there had been an unruly bunch standing and singing funny songs throughout the games and this day was no different. Being on my own, however, I decided to go lurk behind the group and joined in on a few songs. I was well and truly hooked.

In summary, the Dark Clouds were my gateway to EPL and USMNT obsession.

Born & bred to it, my dad took me just before my 2nd birthday to Northampton to watch Jimmy Dickenson play his 764th & last league game for Pompey in a relegation decider. He told me I'd never see a greater player, and he was right.

I started going on my own Easter 73 when I was 9, a drab 0-0 draw v Orient, but the bug stuck, I went everywhere and anytime money would allow to watch my hometown side. I remember it broke my heart when I couldn't go the next week to Huddersfield to watch them, despite the fact Huddersfield was over 200 miles away. lol

As a youth living in northern MN, my parents wanted me to play a sport that was "safe." As a result, I was the only kid living in northern MN (besides my brother) who did not play hockey. We then moved to the TC when I was in the first grade. I later got my first exposure to soccer playing in the traveling leagues and played 10 years of youth soccer.

When I got to HS, I was the only kid that knew how to kick a football--my HS did not have soccer. While I still played soccer in the summer/fall, I became somewhat good at kicking a football. I then went to SCSU and played football with the likes of Todd Bouman, and had a blast getting into any bar I wanted to--when I wanted to--becuase all my football buddies were bouncers at the bars.

After college, I tried to avoid football, however, I knew a few players in the NFL, and got to know their agents. I was offered some try-outs with several professional football teams, but opted instead to go back to school. (Geez, I really should have at least tried out for the Vikings--oh well! I guess I owe this missed opportunity to soccer.) School kept me away from the soccer pitch for a number of years.

When my oldest daughter turned 6, we got her invovled in soccer, and I started to get involved in coaching, and have been playing on various teams for the last few years.

I have not really followed professional soccer up until 3-4 years ago. I guess I never fit into the Eurosnob crowd, although I go to Brits and/or the Local about 3-4 times per week for lunch or happy hour. I also regret not following the Thunder more when they were hear--I really enjoy the professional D2 soccer here in MN.

If I had it to do all over again, I would have focused more on my technical skills. I really do not have a good 1st-touch, my shooting is terrible and I cannot chew gum and dribble a soccer ball.

In 1970 my parents moved further out of St Paul, and the area I moved to had a Scotsman, Dr Glenney that had started a local soccer team. All three of us brothers stopped playing baseball and took up soccer the first summer. Baseball was the most boring sport to play as a kid, just too much time spent standing around talking while one player did something. We all agreed that in soccer it was more fun that everyone on the field got to play in the game. Our NSSA team won most of the games in the north during the seventies, every year we were the team the others hated to play because they knew we would win most of the time. We dominated until we reached the state tournament and would get beat by a better team from Minneapolis every year. They had real coaches with tactics and stuff...

Few St Paul teams had players that started playing at a young age back then, we had great fields including a heading pendulum to grow up using. We would play pick-up soccer games almost everyday with all the kids that lived near me, it was not planned kids just showed up and we would all split up and play. That is where we all learned to love the game playing with our friends with no parents, we would get in arguments, we would cheat, we would team up against other players, we would get hurt and have to sit out, we would go 1v1 and then pay no attention to the side lines and just outrun the other player using trees or anything else we could use to our advantage. We played soccer until football season started then we played football, until hockey season started then we played hockey. We really had no coaches in soccer and I think that's why we all loved it, even my HS coaches that won state did not know how to kick the ball correctly.

Even as young players we knew that we were not coached well, so we would wait until Saturday afternoon and all go inside at whoever's house we were near to watch a one hour euro show named Soccer Made In Germany, that is where we learned how to play the game. We copied everything we saw on that show... We also threw in a few tactical tricks that we had learned from our hockey, and basketball coaches.

As I got older and moved up to middle school (7th Grade) I was forced to make a choice between playing the starting tailback position on the school football team, or playing the right wing on the school soccer team. I chose the soccer team mainly because the practices in football were so boring, and I did not like the twenty minutes of time it took to put on and take off all the pads everyday. Another factor was because my high school Mounds View had such a bad football team with coaches who would not throw the ball, every play was a running play and that just did not work even back then. The coaches all looked like Bud Grant with their buzz cuts, they were all very strict which was not the most exciting thing back in the Vietnam era of 1970-80. Soccer was a euro sport, I eventually also dropped hockey because all the locker rooms and my gear smelled so bad during summer league it made me want to puke some days. We played hockey outdoors standing in snowbanks freezing our feet back then during the winter hockey seasons. Skiing was another euro sport with much more style, I would keep my teeth (this was before the cage helmets were invented) and it did not require other good players, or good coaches to succeed, it was an individual sport where I could control things better than a team sport.

After collage at the U of MN I then went on a twenty year skiing and working (ski retail management) odyssey which took me all over the western US and even Europe;
Jackson Hole WY, Bend OR, Vail CO, Mammoth Lakes CA, Bellingham WA, Crans-Montana Switzerland, Salt Lake City UT...

While in Mammoth Lakes CA I worked as a buyer and manager at a ski shop, in the summer we were also the local soccer shop. I enjoyed buying and setting up the soccer department and had fun selling the young kids their shoes. The US did something I never thought would happen in my lifetime, in the 2002 World Cup we were good, we were really good... and we almost beat the Germans with their "soccer made in germany" hero status I grew up around. That had a huge effect on my next years.

In the spring of 2002 before the World Cup started I was asked if I would coach a U12 boys team. I did, and that year I decided if I was going to be a coach I owed it to my players to not be the type of coaches I had grown up with, well meaning but lacking real coaching skills. So, the next summer in 2003 I took my first coaching course in Moorepark CA outside of LA. Then I took my CYSA-South "D" in Orange CA later that year, waited the year, and then took my USSF "C" in Carson CA 2004 (the first ever USSF course at the new Home Depot Center fields).

So to sum it up... I fell in love with soccer the first time I got on the field with no bulky pads, no coaching stoppages, no set plays called by the coach, no coach yelling at me and my friends telling us what we were doing wrong. I felt light and it was easy to move, turn, stop, and accelerate. I was able to make my own choices.

It felt like being free, it was a natural game, we were kids being creative, taking risks running around without big pads and helmets on, without parents telling us what to do next. We made the plays up as we played and felt strong physically and mentally with the ball at our feet running at full speed towards goal.

That whole feeling of doing something new, something kinda euro (whatever that was), pushing into the unknown areas "where no man has gone", without having parent guidance, but with their positive influence, that part of growing up was later to be a big part of my adult lifestyle which still is going strong today. We played with no boundaries on that pickup field and yet still found our way to the goal.

Love the game, always will even when far away from it, I owe it my full attention.

I, too, am a child of the Soccer Made in Germany generation, listening to Toby Charles and Alan Fountain narrate highlights of players like Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, Klaus Augenthaler and Klaus Fischer. A Fischer reference once kept me from getting killed on a German train by a drunken behemoth from Karlsruhe.

I grew up one block from Denver's City Park, where in the early 1970's I watched top-level amateur teams and players like the Caribbean giant Solomon, and Mexican midfield maestro Hector. The top club of that era was the Denver Kickers, founded in 1956. The Kickers went on to win a total of five national amateur championships.

In 1974, the NASL came to town in the form of the Denver Dynamos. They lasted two seasons before moving to Minnesota and becoming the Kicks. Another team, the Caribous of Colorado, lasted just one season, 1978, before becoming the Atlanta Chiefs. Their ridiculous jerseys were brown and tan, with fringe on the shirts.

I played Denver park soccer, my dad was the coach. He was a proponent of low-cost, recreational leagues where every kid got to play at least half the game. Our early jerseys were reversible cotton t-shirts, and my first pair of new cleats cost $6.99. My dad's recreational philosophy was countered by the competitive Colorado Youth Soccer Association and it's rising star, Bob Contiguglia, who became president of US Youth Soccer and the USSF.

All of my neighborhood buddies had one or two older brothers who played soccer, so we all tagged along, trying to impress our elders. We played wherever we could -- on the school blacktop, in the basement using a ping pong-sized ball or in a small corner of the park bounded by trees and bushes. Using makeshift goals, we played 2-v-2, 3-v-3, 4-v-4 if we were really lucky. Those little games taught us everything about soccer -- dribbling, passing, shooting, defending, combination play -- and cemented our lifelong love of the game.

Implacable cultural/genetic destiny.

I'm Scottish. My mother was born in Newcastle so she is a Magpies fan, but my dad's side of the family and the rest of my mum's family are all Rangers fans. When I was a kid I supported Celtic, but that's another story. Suffice it to say that when I became a man, I put childish things aside and got on board with the rest of my family and Glasgow Rangers.

The first World Cup I was alive for was the '78 and we were on holiday in Spain. My parents were so ashamed at Scotland's astonishingly poor showing (losing to Peru, drawing with Iran) that they pretended they were French the whole time. They returned home by the time we'd beaten the Netherlands. Everything you ever needed to know about what it is like to be a fan of the Scottish National Team is in that World Cup and in those 1978 Group 4 results: Sco vs Peru, 1-3; Sco vs Iran; 1-1; Sco vs Ned, 3-2. Moments of transcendent greatness mixed in with agonising embarrassment.

In '82 I was a bit more aware and can still remember charting Scotland's points-elimination in a little souvenir book. After that, years of Panini sticker albums, furious games with tennis balls on concrete and eventually proper footballs on the school's pitch. I grew up in a rugby town, so football fell by the wayside during high school and then I went to Uni in the west of Scotland (about 20 miles from the east of Scotland, but deep into football country) and I became an ardent Rangers fan. I spent seasons in the Copland Road stand (behind the goal, so maybe that's why I feel comfortable in the beer garden) and every day out of it thinking about football.

There was a long, dry break (although I still go to Rangers games when I go home) after I moved to the U.S., but the Thunder/Stars have helped sate my thirst for football.

For me it was a gradual thing. I grew up in small town Wisconsin and played a bit in some local rec league type stuff, along with playing baseball, basketball and football. This was in the late 70s/early 80s. But for whatever reason, there were no leagues or teams or programs to play on after I was about 10 or 11. And that was around the time of the demise of the NASL as well, so there wasn't really much to hold my interest and I went on to other sports and other things.

Then in the early 90s I went to college on the East Coast. I played a bit again in some intramural leagues and had a couple friends on the school's team, so was aware of the game again, but not much beyond that. Then with the World Cup in 94 being in the US and being on tv, I really started to take an interest again. Although a week or two into the tournament, having recently graduated from college, I took a job teaching English in Korea. So I had to try and watch the games happening back home in the US at really odd times, including waking up at 4 AM on a Monday morning (Sunday afternoon US time) to watch the final before heading to work and being late because it went all the way to penalties.

Then I moved back to the states to St Paul in late 95, and started hearing about the soon to kickoff new MLS. And I also went to my first Thunder game some time in the summer of 96. I adopted DC as my MLS team in large part because Tony Sanneh went to play there part way through that first season. I also started watching the Premier League Review Show with Lionel Bienvenu on FSN (or MSC? I believe it was called at the time), which was tricky since they could never seem to have it on at the same time each week, and became an Arsenal fan as well.

Then I moved to Texas for a couple years and followed the Thunder from afar as well as keeping up with DC and Arsenal. And for the first time I actually kept up with the US in France 98 qualifying and given the results, was excited for the 98 World Cup to begin. Seems strange they decided not to hold the tournament that year, doesn't it? That's how I choose to remember it anyway.

Then in 99 I moved back to MN and in 2000 got Thunder season tickets for the first time. And around that time was when I went from being a casual fan to being much more devoted and involved. I met a number of fellow fans for the first time (in part through this board) and gathered with like minded folks to watch the Thunder and the US. In 2001 I attended my first US National Team game (a win over Costa Rica in KC), and then in 2002 decided to fly around the world to Korea and Japan for almost a month for the World Cup.

Since then I've traveled a good deal around the US and around the world, seen lots of games, made lots of friends, drank lots of beer, and just generally enjoyed myself. Most of the time anyway.

I started loving soccer when I started playing it... 3 years ago.

Do you want to get yourself an object lesson in humility and jumping in at the deep end? Take up a new competitive, contact sport that you've never even tried when you're just starting the full body decay that starts at 30.

I've always liked watching soccer, but I never really followed it or thought deeply about it until I started playing. It says a lot about how beautiful the game is that I can spend six months a year injuring myself and being humiliated by women 10 years younger than I am in co-ed rec leagues and still have the time of my life playing and following it.

Three years ago my job had me traveling a lot to China, and very often the only thing on TV that was in English was the EPL. So I decided to learn what the hell was going on so I'd have something to watch and have been hooked ever since.

Growing up in rural Wisconsin, if anyone had asked about soccer, he'd have had his manhood questioned and probably would have ended up hanging from the goalpost in his underpants.

Learning about the game late in life I feel like I've had something stolen from me, never getting to play or never watching matches. But hey, better late than never, and I never had to watch them run around in short-shorts in the 70's.

I grew up in small-town Minnesota, watching the Vikings, Twins and some racing with the family. I moved to Seattle after college, stated dating a guy who grew up watching soccer with his immigrant parents - in Spanish, from the Mexico tv stations. A month or so before France 98, he said, "There's the tournament called the World Cup. It's a month of soccer games. You can either watch with me, or I'll see you at the end of the month." I said, "Okay, if it's that big of deal, show me the sport." We watched a couple of games before the Cup started and I said, okay, I'll watch. By the end, I was hooked. I was the one waking him up to watch the 3rd round games that didn't mean anything because the teams had already qualified, or not, saying "We can't miss any!" After the Cup was over, I followed my favorite players to their clubs - It's the Norwegian Tore Andre Flo's fault I'm a Chelsea fan.