The Life and Times of An Indian Gooner in ‘Murica

Parth Rajwade

17th February 2017 | 7:01 PM

Follow Football Paradise as it tags along with an Indian Gooner debunking the myth of the life as a “soccer” fan in the United States of America.

America, The United States of. Land of the free, home of the brave, and all that jazz. I moved here when I was 21, and as with any 21-year-old moving to the U.S. from a Third World country, I was looking forward to the quintessential pleasures of First World life: a great education, promising career prospects, trying to impress women at bars with my “exotic” accent (only to find out that an Indian accent is NOT at the top of most women’s “Sexy Accents” list) and having my milk measured in gallons, and my weight in pounds.

However, there was one thing I was extremely apprehensive about, something that has consistently stirred emotions in me that nothing else (or no one else) has ever come close to stirring – my passion for playing and watching The Beautiful Game. Why the apprehension, you ask? Well, as any proper sports fanatic will tell you, “soccer” hasn’t historically been a popular sport in the U.S.; pre-1994, many Americans thought of football in the same way someone from Southeast Asia thinks about reindeer – we have never seen one, and aren’t quite sure whether they actually exist. When the 1994 World Cup was hosted in the U.S., there was naturally a spike in interest levels around the country. However, this interest was largely limited to international competitions; for the most part, the average sports-loving American remained as indifferent to club football as the Southeast Asians are to reindeer.

When I first moved to the U.S., I went to grad school in Bloomington, a quintessential college town, for two years. Fortunately, as can be expected from a college town, I quickly came across lots of people from countries all over the world who passionately followed and played football. Pickup games and intramurals (indoors and outdoors), and the streaming of important games at the local bars ensured that for those two years, my apprehension was at bay. This period included the 2014 World Cup, an experience I’ve documented here.

Once I graduated, I moved to Boston for my job. Before the move, my apprehension found voice once more, owing to the limited knowledge I had about Boston. I knew it was a big city, one of the oldest in the U.S., and very “American” when it came to their sports fan-base; it boasted of historically popular teams in each of the “Big 4” American sports: baseball, American football, basketball, and hockey. Hence, I assumed that most Bostonians would have no space left on their sports calendars for passionate “soccer” (goodness, how I hate that word) fanaticism, and I had made my peace with the fact that I might have to watch EPL and Champions League games alone in near-empty bars, after pleading and begging with the bartender to put the game on at the expense of the fifth rerun of the College Basketball game from a month ago.

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