Haner Scores with Soccerhead

When I read Soccerhead, I felt an incredible kinship with Haner, who has basically gone through the same changes I've gone through in the last few years, gradually turning into a "soccerhead." The big difference is that Haner did not mention playing himself. I play all the time -- my over-40 team won the gold medal at the Keystone Games in July, 2006. I wrote this review for topdrawersoccer.com.

Soccerhead: An Accidental Journey into the Heart of the American Game
By Jim Haner
North Point Press $24 275 pages

If Jim Haner had only written about his personal transformation from soccer know-nothing to soccerhead, this book would have been fun and interesting. But Haner had an even better idea. Into an artful account of how he developed a love of soccer over three years of coaching his son’s team, he weaves the for-the-most-part-unknown history of American soccer. For good measure there’s lots of interesting – sometimes biting – analysis of why soccer can be so hard on the typical, offensive-loving, American sports mindset.
Haner, a long-time investigative reporter for The Baltimore Sun, begins the book with the story of how his wife pushed him out the door one night with instructions to attend a meeting for parents of six-year-olds who were going to play soccer. He was a diehard football fan who had never paid much attention to soccer and went reluctantly. Somewhat to his horror, he ends up volunteering to coach and leaves the meeting with a trunk full of cones, soccer balls and other paraphernalia .At first he didn’t have a clue what he was doing, but he began to get more and more interested and found wisdom in unlikely places. The Salvadoran grandfather of one of the children he coaches tutors him on game strategy. He attends classes, and reads books. His son uses a video game to explain rules that Haner does not quite understand.
Little by little, Haner realizes that all he ever talks about and thinks about is soccer. He goes on a quest, to old New Jersey soccer clubs that have been around for a hundred years, to the Soccer Hall of Fame in New York, to whoever can tell him the story of soccer in this country for the last hundred years. The stories he digs up, the old players he interviews, are fascinating and completely belie the conventional wisdom about there being no history of soccer in this country.
Toward the end of the book, Haner’s son is chosen for a travel team and the writer gets a chance to step back and take a broader look at the American youth soccer scene. Like the investigative reporter he is, he takes note of the ugly side of youth soccer, the horrible incidents of coaches abusing children and parents abusing referees. He packs a file full of such stories in his briefcase and heads off to the National Soccer Coaches Association convention in Charlotte, N.C. hoping to get some answers. He regales the reader with tales of convention craziness, and finds some answers to his questions.
Haner recalls how Anson Dorrance, the storied coach of the University of North Carolina soccer team, “sucked the air out of the room” when he told the attendant coaches of children under the age of high school juniors to “just let them play.” The next day Haner tracks down Freddy Adu and asks the young professional his opinion of the “drill versus play dilemma. Adu said, “Just play. I learned by kicking balls of paper around, you know? Anything round, it didn’t matter.”
As the book ends, Haner tries his luck with changing his coaching tactics. No more laps. No more drills. “We did nothing but play games – weird games, some with no nets and some with four, some with two balls and some with ten.” At games, it almost kills him, but Haner tries to stay quieter on the sidelines. He’s a changed coach, and a changed man, but no less of a soccer nut, and no less a patriot. He writes, “When the United States finally wins the World Cup, it will be with Italians and Nigerians in the goal’ Germans and Koreans in the backfield; Jordanians and Indians at the circle; and Brazilians and Latinos up front. For we are the only nation on earth that can possibly figure out how to meld it all together – and we will be attacking, ever advancing, in the name of all that is holy and good.”
Okay, so he goes off the deep end a little bit at the conclusion, but we can cut Haner a little slack. He has written a brilliant book that contains lots of good analysis, great story telling, and more than a little soccer wisdom.

Soccerhead is available at www.amazon.com.