Every four years it seems, as summer settles in, national newspapers and magazines trot out articles about how we’re living in the pivotal moment for soccer in the United States—a moment in which we finally click with a sport that the rest of the world has obsessed over for generations.

There are always stats to be cited, and examples to be proffered, but I’ve been hearing this argument since my middle school years, during the lead up to the 1994 World Cup, the first hosted on U.S. soil.

(An aside: Doesn’t it occur to the editors of these pieces that the lack of soccer stories they’ve assigned in the intervening four years might be an important clue to the premise in question?) Just as surely, every four years brings an answering salvo of articles snarking about why Americans are justified in their rejection of the international game (Matt Taibbi’s in the current issue of Men’s Journal is at least the funniest recent example, if not the most enlightening).

Despite a vague appreciation for soccer (and a semester living within earshot of cheers radiating from the Arsenal stadium in North London), I’ve remained firmly in the crowd of the skeptics. At least until last week.

It was 40 minutes into the U.S.A. versus England World Cup match Saturday morning that I began to wonder whether my disbelief in the matter wasn’t unfounded.

That was when a perfunctory shot from U.S. midfielder Clint Dempsey slipped past English keeper Robert Green to tie the match at one to one.

The roar from the crowd watching the game on a dozen or so screens at Humpy’s was immediate and resounding. Frightening, almost. In fact, I’m not even sure I’ve seen drunken football fans react quite so emphatically to a play.

Alaskans as a whole have never struck me as the type of people who eagerly identify themselves by their affiliations to a particular group—the image of a solitary and independent individual comes more readily to mind—so in the moments following that cheer, I glanced around at my fellow patrons with fresh eyes.

Plus, I couldn’t help noticing that England in this game was represented by the flag of St. George, not the ubiquitous Union Jack—that is, England was actually England, not the United Kingdom of Great Britain that we normally think of as being synonymous with England.

It’s been said that international soccer is war, or diplomacy, by other means (pause for a moment to imagine a world in which Brazil is the global superpower), and in at least one respect this is a truism. Formerly independent nations—such as Scotland and Wales, in the case of the U.K.—get to field a “national” team of their own.

These two insights got me to thinking: What if Alaska were to field its own team for international soccer?

Bear with me here.

Let’s forget for a moment that the best players in Alaska would probably come mainly from the squads of Juneau and Dimond High Schools, the champions and runners up (respectively) in this year’s state tournament. And certainly let’s ignore for now that statehood bound us more tightly and irrevocably to the rest of the United States than other political arrangements elsewhere in the world. In fact, let’s skip altogether speculation about how Alaska might wind up in a situation where it would field a team of its own; you can seek out some members of the Alaska Independence Party if that interests you. (AIP members might point out to you that Puerto Rico, a U.S. Commonwealth, appears to be a step closer to getting the vote on its political future that Joe Vogler—AIP founder—sought for Alaska. Puerto Rico already has a national soccer team; perhaps AIP members could settle for that?)

Instead let’s imagine what an All Alaska squad might look like. You could start in any number of places, but the Faroe Islands seems to me to be one of the best.

The Faroes are a cluster of treeless volcanic rocks that pop up out of the North Sea between Scotland, Norway and Iceland. The capital, Tórshavn, lies at 62 degrees north, roughly the latitude of Sheep Creek or Caswell Lakes on the Parks Highway, but as you might expect from a string of volcanic islands, their appearance is much closer to the Aleutians.

Although it’s part of the Kingdom of Denmark, Faroe Islands fields a national soccer team of its own. Of course, an island nation with a population that hovers below 50,000 is never a powerhouse. In fact, it’s never been ranked higher than 104 in the world in FIFA rankings. The only win its had in tournament play came against San Marino, another speck of a state, and whoever updates the team’s Wikipedia page goes into great detail about non-tournament victories (including one noteworthy upset against Austria), important draws and even losing games in which the team played well against larger rivals.

Something along those lines would probably be the lot of an Alaska soccer team, too—though thanks to the Caribbean Zone of the North American conference we’d have plenty of other tiny “national” teams to compete with. And who knows: It’s not impossible to imagine that with a tough defense and a few lucky attacks, a handful of Dimond High graduates might pull out an upset against, say, Canada or Honduras, every decade or so.

There’s something to be said for the spirit of a nation that heads gamely into matches against overwhelmingly superior foes. That’s a spirit I think Alaskans would embrace, even if embracing a strange game proved somewhat more difficult.

krestia.degeorge@anchoragepress.com