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More United related footage – RoM videos

Barca: Valdes; Dos Santos, Fontas, Busquets, Abidal; Keita, Tiago, Iniesta; Pedro, Villa, Afellay.

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Ahead of our game against Barcelona in Washington, Manchester United players visited the White House.

Roberto Martinez applauded Cleverley at the tail-end of last campaign, hailing the impact of the 21-year-old midfielder as a key reason behind the Latics relegation survival. The Spaniard is eager to take the Basingstoke born man back to the DW Stadium for a second term, but Sir Alex has rejected this proposal, as he believes it could be time for first team contention for the box-to-box man.

Following loan spells at Leicester City, Watford and the Midlands club last season, and 16 appearances for Stuart Pearce’s England under-21 side, Cleverley is now ready for United. The former Bradford City youth player showcased his ability to score goals from midfield at Vicourage Road, hitting the back of the net 11 times in 33 games, before being awarded Watford’s Player of the Year award.

His form last season was consistently good, as he formed an excellent midfield partnership with fellow youngster James McCarthy in the heart of the Wigan team. His passing, vision and creativity going forward created chances for the attackers in the relegation threatened side, whilst he was energetic and looked to break up opposition play also.

Cleverley will contend a starting berth in United’s midfield with Michael Carrick, Darren Fletcher and Anderson, and if he stays injury free and is willing to spend time on the bench, should get a fair share of game-time as Sir Alex will play him when he shuffles the pack.

Unlike Cleverley, Welbeck has sampled United first-team action before, and had a part to play in the 2007-08 season, making eight appearances and scoring once for the senior side. As opportunities became more limited, a spell at Preston North End was followed by a full season last term at Sunderland, that may well have been the making of the 20-year-old.

The Manchester born man made 26 appearances for The Black Cats in 2010-11, scoring six goals and even made his England international debut against Ghana, the country of his parent’s birth. Steve Bruce used the youngster predominantly as a striker, especially following the sale of Darren Bent in January, and this is his preferred position. With experience playing on the wing, his versatility could be useful for United, but it is believed that Welbeck will be utilised as a forward rather than out wide.

With Wayne Rooney and Chicharito getting the starting jerseys, Welbeck will have to battle Michael Owen and Dimitar Berbatov to be the main back-up, and despite probably getting more appearances than the eight he received in 2007-08, may find himself on the sidelines for the majority of the campaign.

Both players have returned to the club better than they were the year before, but it looks like Cleverley will have a better chance of featuring at Old Trafford in 2011-12.

Gareth McKnight writes for Soccerlens.com.

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More United related footage at RoM videos

Tune in from 1.30am (GMT) for a live blog for a 2am kick-off.

Lindegaard, Jones, Evra, Rio, Vidic, Anderson, Carrick, Young, Park, Rooney, Berba.
Subs: Amos, Fabio, Smalling, Nani, Cleverley, Owen, Welbeck, Macheda, Diouf

Defenders:
Corey Ashe (Houston Dynamo) – 25 years old. Won the MLS Cup with his current club in 2007.
Matt Besler (Sporting Kansas City) – 24 years old. Was named 2008 Senior College Men’s Scholar All-America Player of the Year when at the University of Notre Dame.
Geoff Cameron (Houston Dynamo) – 26 years old. Made the MLS Best XI in 2009 and has made one appearance for the USA against El Salvador.
Bobby Convey (San Jose Earthquakes) – 28 years old. Agreed a $3m deal with Spurs in 2003 but the deal fell through after he failed to obtain a work permit. The following year he joined Reading and stayed there for five years.
Sean Franklin (LA Galaxy) – 26 years old. Was named MLS Rookie of the Year for the 2008 season.
Jamison Olave (Real Salt Lake) – 30 years old. Won the MLS Cup with his current team in 2009 and was named the MLS Defender of the Year in 2010.
Heath Pearce (Chivas USA) – 26 years old. Began his professional career in the Danish Superliga with Nordsjælland. He has played 32 games for USA.
Tim Ream (New York Red Bulls) – 23 years old. He has made six appearances for USA.

Midfielders:
Kyle Beckerman (Real Salt Lake) – 29 years old. Has played in the MLS All Star game for the past three years running.
David Beckham (LA Galaxy)
Brad Davis (Houston Dynamo) – 29 years old. Won the Gold Cup with USA in 2005.
Jack Jewsbury (Portland Timbers) – 30 years old.
Shalrie Joseph (New England Revolution) – 33 years old. Last year he took a leave of absence from the New England Revolution while he was involved in the Major League Soccer substance abuse and behavioural health program.
Nick LaBrocca (Chivas USA) – 26 years old. Last month, scored the 10,000th goal in MLS history in a 1–1 draw with Sporting Kansas City.

Forwards:
Juan Agudelo (New York Red Bulls) – 18 years old. Began his career at the Red Bulls Academy. Has played 10 games for USA.
Omar Bravo (Sporting Kansas City) – 31 years old. Spent the first eight years of his career at Mexican side Guadalajara. Has played 62 games for Mexico.
Omar Cummings (Colorado Rapids) – 29 years old. Has played 23 games for Jamaica.
Landon Donovan (LA Galaxy)
Thierry Henry (New York Red Bulls)
Chris Wondolowski (San Jose Earthquakes) – 28 years old. He is half-Native American and is a member of the Kiowa tribe.

Inactive All-Stars: Kasey Keller (Seattle Sounders FC), Omar Gonzalez (LA Galaxy), Rafa Marquez (New York Red Bulls), Brek Shea (FC Dallas)

However, my purpose here is not to tease our friends in the United States but to explore a strange notion that seems to have taken hold on both sides of the Atlantic, perhaps another example of how we are ‘divided by a common language’.

It has always puzzled me why it is that whenever British football teams play in the USA people get all funny about the word ‘Soccer’, as though it’s some sort of alien American imposition on our language, overthrowing our own linguistic traditions nurtured over decades. You’ll see people here rolling their eyes and making that little gesture in the air with their fingers to indicate ‘quote marks’ when using the word, as if to show how they are hip to the perfidious foreign importation .

Perhaps it’s believed that shows such as Sky TV’s Gillette Soccer Saturday are all part of the corrupting influence of Rupert Murdoch’s Evil Empire, a deliberate and unstoppable corporate Americanisation of our culture. This strange confusion has cropped up in a mild way again, now that Manchester United are currently in the middle of a highly successful US tour, taking in Boston, Seattle, Chicago and New Jersey, where they face a team of Major League Soccer (sic) Stars.

I’m not singling out anyone for criticism here, but even in a reasonably well-informed recent RoM thread there seemed hesitancy about using the dread word, with some safely placing it in the quarantine of inverted commas, ‘soccer’. The odd thing is that the uncertainty occurs in both the UK and the US, becoming a self-fulfilling belief that we Brits reject the term Soccer, a misconception accepted even by those who know that the word was coined in Victorian England. For instance, there is an American website, Soccer-Fans-Info.com, which more-or-less accurately gives the ‘Origin of the Word Soccer’,explaining that it derives from an abbreviation for Association Football, ‘Assoc’, only to spoil things by promoting the hoary old myth about the word with the bizarre statement that:

‘The English will never agree to use the term “soccer” around what they call “football” for centuries’.

As someone who has talked about soccer, played soccer, watched soccer being played since at least the 1950s, I find all this very strange, which has prompted me to investigate further.When did United start playing Soccer, and did they ever stop?

Socca, socker, soccer

Most scholarly authorities say the word was probably created within slangy upperclass English public schools and universities sometime after the establishment of the FA in 1863 and the subsequent codification of association football (in distinction from Rugby football, or ‘rugger’). The earliest reference-book citations come from the late 1880s and early 1890s, with variant spellings well into the early 20th century, including ‘socca’, ‘socker’ and only somewhat later, ‘soccer’.

I went to a minor rugby-playing public school (i.e. a private school) in the 1950s and certainly people there talked all the time of soccer and rugger. You can get a little of the flavour of how public school folk spoke in those days from a short story I found in an old annual, Raymond Glendenning’s Book of Sports for Boys , published in 1949. The tale was set in an archetypal public school and was written by the prolific ‘Frank Richards’ , the creator of Billy Bunter, the much-loved ‘Fat Owl of the Remove’ whose carryings-on I lapped up as a schoolboy myself. Born Charles Hamilton in 1876 ‘Richards’ began writing in the 1900s at a time when the word Soccer was taking hold, not just in public schools but increasingly within working class culture too, in a classic example of under-dog appropriation of upper-class practices which then feeds back into elite circles.

In this later but timeless tale by Richards about ‘footer’, ‘Perkinson’s Last Match’, the hero tells his antagonist what he thinks of him in words that capture with surprising accuracy the way public schoolboys really did speak, in a not-too-exaggerated form:

‘I’ve thought over the rot you talked in your study, and I’ve made up my mind never to play Soccer for Felgate again so long as you’re captain. I wish you joy of your footling foozlers. You don’t know as much about Soccer as a kid in the second.’

When did United first play ‘soccer’?

Of course I was desperate to find out when this public school coinage was first used in relation to United, which is a near impossible task without access to the totality of press coverage of United or their predecessor club Newton Heath FC (founded by Manchester railway workers, probably in 1878).

I checked through as many histories of United as I could lay my hands on in search of the elusive word, initially without much success. I’m not a collector as such but over the last 50-plus years I have accumulated groaning shelves-full of United books, match-day programmes, magazines, press cuttings, scrap-books and all sorts of memorabilia, and so I was able to dig deep. And eventually I struck lucky.

In an excellent resource, The Definitive Newton Heath FC: Manchester United to 1902 by Alan Shury & Brian Landamore (SoccerData, 2002) I finally found the magic word. It was used in the last days of the Heathens’ existence, as reported by the Manchester Evening News on March 15, 1902:

‘The Newton Heath officials have at length decided upon calling their supporters together,and a public meeting will be held next Tuesday evening in the New Islington Hall. As followers of the “Socker” code are invited, also the directors hope for a large gathering.’ (Spelling and quote marks in the original)

Within weeks of the ensuing meeting Newton Heath folded, to be replaced by the newly formed Manchester United, an event that coincided with the period when the word ‘soccer’ came into general use, at least according to the Penguin Dictionary of Historical Slang (based on the work of Eric Partridge). The change of name also ushered in an era of unprecedented success.

The 1900s: United’s first Golden Age

Having established that the word ‘Socker’ was applied to United, or rather Newton Heath ,no later than 1902 I consulted the two classic studies of the club’s early days (both strongly recommended), John Harding’s Football Wizard: The Story of Billy Meredith (Breedon, 1985) and John Taw’s Manchester United’s Golden Age 1903-1914: The Life and Times of Dick Duckworth (Desert Island Books, 2004).

No doubt elsewhere in general football reportage you’d find ‘soccer’ with increasing frequency, but in truth there are not many references related to United in this period that I could find, despite growing coverage of football in the local and national press. One rare example comes from the time of the first ever Charity Shield match in 1908, played between United as League Champions and QPR, who’d won the Southern League. Faced by the huge crowd attending the match, an unidentified partisan of the amateur game complained sniffily that, ‘Professional “soccer” exercises a strange fascination over the masses…’ (Golden Age, p.20)

Half-back Dick Duckworth was the only player who straddled both the final days of Newton Heath and the whole glorious pre-First World War era with United, when they won the league twice, the Charity Shield twice and the FA Cup. In 1910 Dick was invited with two other United players to join a close-season summer tour of South Africa with a semi-official England team, all to mark the independence of South Africa, at a time when memories of the Boer War were very much alive (as my grandfather Tom Oakley, still grieving for his dead brother Fred could have testified). The tour was a great success, with ‘England’ winning all three Tests against the (white) colonialists.

‘England has recognised the growing strength of South African Socker’, concluded one commentator, ‘ the attainment of the game to man’s estate in fact’ ( Golden Age, p. 134).Interestingly, a contemporary cartoon relating to that same tour straightforwardly refers to THE ENGLISH SOCCER TEAM (p.140), spelled in the modern fashion without inverted commas. The word was clearly taking root in the press.

The Wizard of the Wing: Billy Meredith

Nevertheless, with so few examples it’s hard to tell exactly how extensively the word ‘soccer’ was used in those early days, although there can be little doubt it was solidly embedded in the national psyche before the First World War. We can see this in my next example, a caption accompanying a photo of the great Billy Meredith’s Benefit Committee in the Weekly News dated 31 August 1912:

‘The gentlemen in the picture are the schemers for the establishment of the greatest benefit of all time. William Meredith, the great Welshman, whose fame has spread to every country where “Soccer” is fostered is to be the beneficiary, and no-one will grudge another record to the man who has played in more international games than any other exponent living or dead.’ (Football Wizard, p.171)

It feels entirely appropriate that the first individual United player I can link to the word “Soccer” should be the Welsh Wizard, undoubtedly the greatest player of his era, a super-star before the term existed, a player who helped turn the game into a mass entertainment industry, rather than the minority spectator sport it had been when he first started out at Manchester City in the 1890s. He had something of a falling out at Old Trafford after the War and re-joined City but his distinguished career was already nearing its end by then. In 1924 and in his fiftieth year he was surprisingly called back into a first team match for the first time in over a year, for an FA Cup tie against Brighton. His return occasioned an amazing response among fans who turned out in their thousands, as ‘Analyst’ of the Topical Times reported:

‘When I heard that he was to be resurrected for the purposes of the third round against Brighton & Hove, I took myself to the match with every possible speed. And on my way to Brighton I found in the Pullman at least half-a-dozen friends who years before professed that they had lost their fondness for soccer…’ (Football Wizard, p.197)

Note how by then, in the mid-1920s, there’s no need for quote marks round the word soccer. It’s slipped into the mainstream, with no longer any inconsistency over how it’s spelt. From now on the only variation is whether the first letter is capitalised.

For the record, City beat Brighton 5-1 in front of a capacity crowd and Billy amazingly scored one of the goals. With interest in Manchester at fever pitch, City and Billy got to the semi-finals but sadly (sadly? what am I saying?!) Newcastle easily beat City, thus depriving Billy Meredith of his opportunity to play in only the second FA Cup Final at Wembley. It was his final competitive match, ending one of the first great ‘soccer’ careers.

Different Class

Here it’s worth mentioning that there was considerable snobbish disdain in some quarters for association football, especially in comparison with rugby, seen by some as ‘more manly’. During the war a Sheffield Star Sports Special had proposed that the whole of the British Army should take up ‘Rugger’, adding, ‘Let “Soccer”… remain the exercise for the munitions workers who suffer so much from varicose veins, weak knees, cod-eyed toes, fowl’s livers and a general dislike for a man’s duty…’ (1915) ( Quoted in Beastly Fury: The Strange Birth of British Football, by Richard Sanders, 2009)

While we’re at it, just to remind ourselves of the American context of this linguistic exploration there is an interesting line in a book published in that same period, the Handbook of Athletic Games published by Blancroft & Pulvemacher in 1916 which shows how the code has had a longer existence in the USA than is perhaps widely known:

”Soccer football, as it is called in America, is the English Association Football’

‘Soccer’ in my lifetime

One can’t expect many people to know any of this history, here or in the USA, which perhaps explains some of the widespread ignorance on the matter. But now I want to jump forward to my own lifetime to look at the status of ‘soccer’ in Britain, to check whether my own memory is correct that the term was a commonplace when I was growing up.

The 1940s: United’s Second Golden Age:

After Matt Busby took charge as Manager at United in 1945 he quickly shaped the ageing squad he’d inherited into one of the most exciting attacking teams in the history of the game, famous for the classic victory in the 1948 FA Cup Final against Blackpool, which the Daily Mirror said would go down in ‘Soccer records’ as ‘Manchester’s miracle’.

Looking at 1940s football magazines it’s striking how often the word soccer crops up, certainly compared to the early 1900s. In fact it’s pretty well everywhere.

One of the most important publications in those days was the weekly magazine Sport, launched in 1938,not long before the outbreak of the Second World War. It was printed on poor quality post-war ‘Austerity’ paper but had a real following, especially among those wishing to get ‘Soccer News From All Quarters’ or photos of United which appeared pretty frequently as one of the top sides every season.

Sport referred routinely to ‘Soccer’, as in the Cup Final Souvenir issue in ’48 (price one shilling), when the regular columnist Frank Matthews pondered in excited terms why ‘this soccer match should arouse so much interest’ .In the same issue there’s an advert for the game of ‘Subutteo Table Soccer”, a staple for football mags for years. In the United Players’ own FA Cup Final Brochure we find the expression ‘soccer fan’, the earliest use of the term I’ve found, although no doubts it goes back much further. I’d love to know: who was the very first ‘Soccer Fan’?

One regular Sport columnist, astonishingly, was none other than the great Brian Glanville, who is still active today as a highly-respected journalist, contributing Obituaries to the Guardian, including ones on Busby Babe Albert Scanlon in 2009 and Nat Lofthouse in 2011. In July 1949 Brian was giving ‘More Views on English Soccer’, while by 1950 he was writing about ‘Soccer Round the Globe’ and he surely merits some kind of long service medal for his contribution to Soccer.

There were also occasional one-off rival booklets, such as Soccer Highlights 1947-48, with FA Cup Winners United pictured on the front, or Soccer Spotlight 1948-49, with it’s lead story, ‘Bravo! Manchester United’ plus articles on such topics as ‘Soccer’s “Little Men”, featuring United’s diminuitive Cup-winning half-back Henry Cockburn.

All these examples show beyond any possible doubt how the word Soccer was in use all the time in Britain, in official and popular parlance, not just a century ago, but after World War II and for many years afterwards.

The 1950s: Titles and Tragedy

Around the time Matt Busby’s United won their first postwar League title in 1951-52, two major new football publications were launched starting with the classy and ‘essential’ Charles Buchan’s Football Monthly in 1951, created just as the Festival of Britain (my earliest dateable memory) was coming to an end. It was followed by the more austere Soccer Star in 1952, which catered to a more cerebral readership (occasionally including me – if there was a United feature!)

The ‘Charley Buchan’ was a far glossier number than Sport (which folded in 1957) or Soccer Star, with extensive use of colour photos, many of which, of course, ended up on kids’ bedroom walls, mine included. I’d guess the word ‘soccer’ appeared in every single issue, sometimes several times but far more important was the mag’s influence on perceptions of the game, creating an aura of decency and innocence around soccer which didn’t really survive the era of hooliganism in the ’70s. By the time of the Munich Air Crash in 1958 the monthly circulation topped 100,000, which doubled by the time of England’s World Cup triumph in ’66. At its peak the monthly was selling over a quarter of a million with a far wider readership of course as copies got passed around from hand to hand.

It’s interesting to see how often Matt Busby himself employed the word soccer in his first appearence in the publication, in a piece he wrote for the second issue in October 1951. He used the word no less than eight times in a short article, concluding that ‘soccer is a great game’. This itself rather conclusively shows how badly wrong Soccer-Fans-Info.com. got it. Duncan Edwards, Dennis Viollet and Bobby Charlton are others who almost casually use the word in the Fifties, so uncontroversial had it become.

In addition to his successful monthly, Charles Buchan also launched his hugely popular Soccer Gift Books in 1953, an annual which most years ended up in the Oakley household around Christmas time. There were always top quality photos of United players, in some cases the very best, most remembered colour shots, especially of the Busby Babes who won two further league titles in 1956 and ’57 before their tragic deaths at Munich the following year.

(For more on this background I would recommend the anthology, Charles Buchan’s Manchester United Gift Book 1951-73, edited by Simon Inglis, 2007).

Book Titles

Another interesting source for use of the word ‘soccer’ comes from the checklist of book titles relating to United that was published in the club’s official Yearbook in 1987 in response to ‘Numerous requests (which) are received throughout the year from students who are undertaking projects on Manchester United’. It’s like a roll-call of some of the greatest players figures assocated with Old Trafford:

Tackle Soccer This Way by Duncan Edwards (1958)
My Soccer Life by Bobby Charlton (1964)
Tackle Soccer by Denis Law (1965)
Soccer My Battlefield by Nobby Stiles (1968)
Soccer at the Top by Matt Busby (1973)
Tackle Soccer (again!) by Dave Sexton (1977)

And the list even misses some other books, including these from the ‘Holy Trinity’ which probably outsold the lot, especially the annuals:

Denis Law’s Book of Soccer (1965-70)
This Game of Soccer by Bobby Charlton (1967)
George Best’s Soccer Annual (1968-71)

The Writing on the wall

There are many other sources I could point to where the word ‘soccer’ is used without a second thought,right the way through from the 50s onwards into modern times, including match programmes, Supporter’s Club handbooks and Newsletters, not forgetting historical commemorations such as Buchan’s Salute to Manchester United (after Munich), and FA Cup Final Brochures in 1957 and 1963.

When it comes to newspapers one can quote countless examples, from the Sunday Pictorial calling skipper Johnny Carey ‘one of the greater Soccer strategists’ after United had thrashed Arsenal 6-1 to clinch the League title in 1952, to The Daily Telegraph describing, ‘Thousands of soccer fans outside Old Trafford yesterday to pay their last respects to Sir Matt Busby as his funeral cortege made a three-mile journey to the Manchester United stadium’ (28 January 1994).

All this and more demonstrates why I am so puzzled by people on both sides of the Atlantic who have fallen for a kind of collective amnesia over this word Soccer, wiping out significant parts of our collective memory. There is no need at all for our American friends to feel embarrassment over talking about Soccer (not least to distinguish it from American Football), in fact we should all reclaim the word as part of our shared heritage. As it happens, there is one related authentic US coinage which has genuinely enriched the language and captured a whole landscape of modern life, and that’s the term ‘Soccer Mom’, which really did originate Stateside.

But apart from that, if anyone does seriously try to tell you in future that the word Soccer is somehow alien to the British way and foreign to our sporting traditions I would simply point to the front page of the Daily Mirror on 7th February 1958 which carried news of the single most significant event in United’s history.

SOCCER AIR TRAGEDY
Manchester United plane crashes
22 Dead

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RoM videos

Scott the Red: Are you excited about the game?

Guillermo Rivera: I’m excited about the game because it’s an opportunity to have one of the top clubs in the world come into Chicago to play against the local side but the feeling isn’t one of a big match since it’s really not much more than a warm up for United and an exhibition friendly for the Fire in the middle of the season. Maybe it’s fair to say most Fire fans are excited for the spectacle more so than the match itself.

STR: Who do you think is United’s best player?

GR: I suppose it’s easy to say Wayne Rooney since he draws most of the media attention and collects the big paychecks. I’m not certain if Javier Hernandez will be available for this match but Chicago has a large Mexican population that eagerly follows Chicharito’s every move whether it be for the national team or his club side. I’ve always been a huge fan of Ryan Giggs although his career is winding down at this point.

STR: Do you watch the Premier League?

GR: Yes, I love the Premier League and watch it every weekend on Fox Soccer and ESPN here. I’m partial to Fulham though.

STR: Tell us some background about your club.

GR: The Fire have been one of the more successful clubs in MLS since joining the league in 1998. The team has won one league title (in it’s inaugural season of 1998) and four US Open Cup titles (similar to the FA cup over your way). The last two seasons have been a struggle however as the team failed to qualify for the MLS playoffs last year for only the second time and they’re currently in seventh place in the Eastern Conferenec table with 2 wins 5 losses and 12 draws this season. The club does boast a very dedicated, passionate, and loud supporter’s group called Section 8 Chicago which will be hard to miss during the match.

STR: Which of your players should we look out for?

GR: The Fire currently have a fairly talented group of outside wing players in Marco Pappa, Patrick Nyarko, and Dominic Oduro. Pappa is a first choice right midfielder for the Guatemalan national team and the Ghanian duo of Nyarko and Oduro both have plenty of pace. Nyarko may be more technically gifted but Oduro’s pace is blinding (although he tends to outrun himself from time to time). Oduro has been playing in an advanced role of late with Colombian striker Cristian Nazirit, who has reportedly drawn some interest from overseas. If you recall Pappa was a member of the MLS all-star squad that Manchester United faced last year. The team has also recently acquired Argentine central midfielder Sebastian Grazzini and he is expected to see some of his first action with the club on July 23.

STR: What are your predictions for the game?

It’s always tough to predict these matches because they don’t mean much to either side and some of the younger players in MLS are quite honestly star struck at the sight of the “big stars” they’ve been watching on television coming up. I’ll say 4-1 United.

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Follow Guillermo on Twitter. He will be keeping us updated on new before, during and after the game.