The best way to understand how intense a rivalry is in 2011 is to spend some time on the internet – particularly on team discussion boards where fans talk to other fans to feed an echo chamber of self-congratulations.
That’s not to knock these places – some of my best work can be found on the U-Sector board (of course it has a much more intellectual discourse as compared to most) – it’s simply to point out that higher the level of irrational and occasionally frightening displays of hate are, the bigger the rivalry is. This is especially the case when those displays also include nonsensical assertions that they don’t actually care about said team.
City v United, Yankees v Red Sox or Leafs v Habs – different sports, different cultures -- it’s really the same everywhere.
Take the Mexico v USA rivalry. And take BigSoccer’s Mexico boards (no, please take them). There, any suggestion that the US is within 400-years of Mexican football development is met with disdain normally reserved for the serial killer of children. They even have a name – Spazzo -- reserved for those stupid enough to disagree with that assertion. So, you can imagine what the board’s reaction was after FC Dallas became the first club from a US-based league to win a competitive game in Mexico last night, when they beat Pumas 1-0.
[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]
It's like when the 40 year old virgin loses his virginity to a 500lb girl. You might not still be a virgin but you still suck.
And that was one of the moderators.
There was some truth to the typical Mexican fan’s reaction. Pumas dressed a line-up of mostly reserve kids and if the first team had played it might have been a different story. However, one doubts how forgiving the Mexican fan would be if, say, a New York Red Bulls reserve side lost to a team from Trinidad and Tobago. Wait, we don’t have to because that happened. The reaction was roughly similar to Nelson from the Simpsons favourite refrain – Nah-HA!
And that’s why MLS fans should make no excuses for the win last night. As the old cliché suggests you play the team in front of you and if Pumas wants to disrespect you by dressing a third choice line-up then make them pay. That the MLS team could last night shows just how far the league has advanced. There was a time when they wouldn’t have.
In the first year of the CCL the MLS clubs were incredibly disrespectful to the competition. They dressed kids as much as possible and traveled with as thin a squad as they could get away with. They were embarrassed and chastised by many of their own fans for it. Now, MLS takes the competition seriously and the results are coming.
Mexico is a fair bit ahead, but the results over the last two years – as underlined by last night – show that it’s not as far as many of their fans think. If they keep approaching games like Pumas did last night it won’t be long until
another MLS side repeats what Dallas did last night.
And then who would the “spazzos” be?