Major League Soccer starts it’s 14th season on Thursday when Drew Carey’s Seattle Sounders (yes the Price is Right guy — he’s part owner of the team) plays the New York Red Bulls (yes, owned by the company that produces the energy drink). No other sport in the United States produces the angst and animosity that futbol seems to engender. It even makes academics go into a frothy rage about the socialist, collectivist, third-world, effete scourge of the world’s game. take for instance this polemic attempt at satire? by a Wabash College philosophy professor about the secret leftist-socialist plot to turn America into the La Rive Gauche.

The left tried to make existentialism, Marxism, post-structuralism, and deconstructionism fashionable in order to weaken the clarity, pragmatism, and drive of American culture. What the left could not accomplish through these intellectual fads, one might suspect, they are trying to accomplish through sport.

While the article might have been intended as satire, the article is a compelling read, much in the the sentiments in the article, which some genuinely hold (here and here), remind me of Lyndon Larouche supporters who stand outside supermarkets yelling about the Queen of England being a heroin dealer are compelling.… what they’re saying is absolutely deranged (you must be very proud Wabash College!), but you’re dumbstruck wondering how they got to such a place. After thinking about it for far longer than I should, here’s what I think.

He’s right. The soccer bashers are right.

Not about the actual game being boring. There’s no way to objectively assess that. 1 billion fans worldwide can’t be wrong! Rather I think he’s right that soccer as it is organized throughout the world signals a shift in the American sportscape, and I argue, is very well suited to structural changes in global technology. American sports are corporate enterprises and players are marketed as larger than life to create a distance from the “fan,” much like a rockstar. One is supposed to idolize these figures, but in no way should they identify with them or hope to interact with them. Soccer globally is organized differently.

Globally, soccer teams are “clubs” with significant “fan” input into key decisions like the election of a club president, like shareholders of companies. This is true even for billion dollar clubs like Barcelona and Real Madrid in Spain. Soccer “fans” are not considered “fans” at all but rather are referred to as “supporters.” A supporter connotes a different level of investment in the “club” than a “fan” has in a “team.” A supporter identifies with a team. A supporter is likely part of a “supporter’s group” that organizes pre and post game experiences. These groups become much more than a group of fans but a thick-tie network of friends who integrate the “club” into their core identities. As an example, here is a video of a rally at Portland city hall by the “supporters” for the Portland Timbers, a team that currently plays in the United Soccer Leagues (2nd division American Soccer). The team is working with the Portland city council to renovate a downtown stadium to attract a Major League Soccer franchise to the city.

These supporters perform many vital functions for soccer “clubs.” They add atmosphere and vitality to a “club” through cheers, chants and songs. Here are some examples from supporters groups in Major League Soccer:

Barra Brava (D.C. United)

Red Patch Boys (Toronto FC)

Texian Army and El Batallon (Houston Dynamo)

In the absence of mainstream media coverage of the sport in the United States, these groups provide supporters with information about club signings and practice reports through blogs like 3rd Degree (FC Dallas), United Mania (D.C. United), and others.

Finally, and most importantly, they serve as a basis of recruitment for clubs. The ongoing vitality of Major League Soccer in the United States is closely connected to the growth of supporters groups. The model is very much like Jonathan Zittrain’s description of the Internet as a generative system, a medium which allows users to innovate by tailoring the product to their individual needs. The success of the Obama campaign, according to this post by Zack Exley was the ability to convert a top-down fundraising model into a generative system where volunteers were empowered to “get creative” in recruiting new adherents to the movement while still maintaining a centralized structure.

Because of the European tradition of “clubs’ and “supporters,” Major League Soccer has a leg up on being a generative sport in the way Zittrain describes. There is a built in advantage to creating the types of identity attachments that can produce “open source” work on behalf of the team (atmosphere, recruitment, information spreading) in ways that conventional American sports are not set up to do. There are analogues at the professional level in the U.S., like fantasy leagues. And at the college level, the connection to a university provides the closest thing to “supporters” in the United States. But there is nothing quite like a supporters group.

There is a solidarity that emerges among supporters groups, but I take issue with the Wabash College professor’s characterization that it’s somehow effete and anti-competitive. It’s definitely not Foucault and Marcuse sipping Vermouth at a cafe and clapping politely at a nice cross. It’s open source, participatory, free culture, sports and if the MLS brass were smart, they’d be cultivating it an supporting it at every turn!!!

Oh, and if you’re interested in seeing what a supporter’s group looks like, tune in to ESPN2 at 9pm Eastern/ 6pm Pacific time this Thursday for the Sounders/Red Bulls. The new Seattle franchise even has a marching band…seen here: