Life in 1-1-8

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It's been a long time since Landon Donovan has watched a World Cup from home. Follow us throughout the tournament at http://lagalaxy.com/worldcup.

As a soccer fan, you hear all the stories and the criticisms.  You get the jokes about whether soccer is a real sport, the laughs and looks when you tell someone you’re going to a soccer game.  You definitely get the trolls.  Usually, when I hear some soccer trolling, I decide not to address it, which would be giving it the attention it doesn’t deserve.  But, when someone labels me and my friends, my AO family, as something we definitely are not, it warrants a response.  A recent podcast (name withheld to not give it the promotion) that discussed the USA-Turkey match in Harrison, New Jersey that took place on June 1st decided to start off by taking shots at the American Outlaws.  A Red Bull supporter was on the podcast and together with the host of the podcast, they spent the majority of the first ten minutes of the podcast sending disrespectful shots at AO and the people that consider themselves members.   At first, when my Jersey friends told me about the podcast and what was included on it, I was livid because of how upset that a fellow supporter of their club team made them.  When discussing it with a Detroit friend on Twitter, one of the people decided to try and respond to me despite the fact I wasn’t even talking to him directly.  I informed him (and his friends that tried to troll me into a Twitter beef) that I was preparing for the USA-Nigeria match that I just returned from Jacksonville to watch and that I would deal with them when I returned.  But admittedly, I hadn’t yet listened to the podcast, and I definitely messed up in even engaging with someone when I hadn’t yet listened to it.  So, maybe I didn’t the full picture of what they were trying to say, and in the interest of fair play, I listened to the podcast when I returned home.  While there were a lot of criticisms that I didn’t feel was worth the retort, I will center my response around the one major point of the podcast that I have a huge problem with: the labeling of AO as nothing but a bunch of “shirtless frat bros” and “crackers” from the suburbs. If you’ve ever met me in real life, you can understand why I have obvious problems with that label.  The only part of that statement that applies to me is that I grew up in the suburbs (which I’m not sure should be construed in a bad way…growing up in the suburbs isn’t all sunshine and palm trees).  To just label us all as shirtless frat bros just isn’t true.  Sure, we may have a couple of young men in AO who were in a fraternity in college.  Sure, we have a few people that decide that at a sporting event they feel most comfortable without a shirt on (mine stayed on, for the record, even with the heat and humidity).  But, in the world’s worst-kept secret, there’s a ton of U.S. fans that do that at matches.  But, the biggest issue I had was when the podcast called us just a “bunch of crackers.”  This is where I have to step in and say something, because AO, contrary to the belief of the haters, is a very diverse group of people.   We are people of all shapes, sizes and colors, men and women, young and old.  We come from all walks of life and every corner of these United States (and even Canada too).  To label us by that term—and to be clear, you’ve got a lot of nerve to use that term to describe any group where you admittedly don’t know many of the people in it—is insulting and is a slap in the face to everyone in the organization, not just the ones who by appearance wouldn’t apply.  We have over 18,000 members and every one of them has their own story of how they became an American Outlaw.  We have Red Bulls supporters, DC United supporters (gasp!), Galaxy supporters, Toronto supporters, and even supporters of NASL, USL, PDL and NPSL teams.  We have lawyers, doctors, engineers, teachers, firefighters and men and women of the United States Armed Forces, among many.  It does a great disservice and, in my opinion, gives great disrespect to everyone who chooses to wear the USA flag bandana that the podcast had such a strong opinion on. There’s only one description that applies to each and every member of the American Outlaws and that is: we love our national team.  We spend our last dollar we don’t have to travel to Red Bull Arena, then to Jacksonville then to Brazil to follow the team in their quest to bring home the World Cup trophy.  We save up vacation days at work while simultaneously planning future trips to Canada for the Women’s World Cup and road trips to see the U.S. play in foreign lands.  We yell and cheer so much that we get migraine headaches and our voices sound like worn out pencil sharpeners for days afterwards.  No matter our allegiances, we put that to the side to support our national team as one united voice.  These people are part of a family, one that’s only growing bigger with each road trip we take to follow our team.  And the people we bring into the fold at each match are themselves diverse, which makes AO even stronger. It’s your right to not like the American Outlaws or to think that the group is not for you.  It’s not for everyone, and we are not the end-all, be-all of U.S. Soccer support.  Many great fans I know are not AO members.  You can even hold an opinion about the group of people I call my AO Family even if I or others disagree with it.  But, when you use a pejorative to try and label all members of the American Outlaws, it really says a lot more about you than it does about us.