Landon Donovan is arguably the best soccer player the United States has ever produced. When he played for the San Jose Earthquakes, the team won its first two MLS championships. Then Landon ended up in Los Angeles via a circuitous route that involved a brief stay in Germany, followed by a return to MLS with Los Angeles, who play closer to his home and who are, as is natural, San Jose's #1 rival. Quakes fans were pissed off at the way their best player ended up with the hated boys from SoCal, and they let Landon know their feelings whenever he and his team visited San Jose ... booing him everytime he touched the ball, bringing a Landon Donovan pinata to a game and giving fans the chance to bust it open, filling the stadium with anti-Donovan signs. All of this bothered Donovan, who was at first puzzled and then ultimately angry. His reaction boiled down to a simple statement: after all I did for those fans, they should show me respect.
Landon Donovan is a better soccer player than any Earthquakes fan, and I'm sure he's also a student of the game and, in his way, a fan. But fans and athletes are not the same. If a Landon Donovan can't understand why San Jose fans would hate anyone who wore a Los Angeles jersey, it's because he's a player first, a fan second, whereas we're fans first. And we're fans, not of soccer or of Landon Donovan, but of the San Jose Earthquakes. When he wore a Quakes jersey, he was our hero. When he switched to the L.A. jersey, he was the enemy. Boo hoo if he doesn't understand that.
Three years ago, the Quakes were taken away from San Jose and moved to Houston, where they have since won two more championships with most of the same players who used to be Quakes. Now, San Jose is reborn as an expansion franchise with all new players, none of whom at first glance was a star. But some astute mid-season moves by the front office have transformed the Quakes into one of the best expansion teams in league history, not just good (they're unbeaten in their last nine matches) but entertaining as well.
Last night, Houston traveled to the Bay Area to play the Quakes. It was a lively, scrappy match with one moment of brilliance from local player Ronnie O'Brien and a goal from Brian Ching, a U.S. national team member who was a favorite with Quakes fans in their earlier incarnation. Ching, though, apparently shares with Landon Donovan a misunderstanding about the role of the fan. Ching, who had played earlier in the week for the national team, started the match on the bench, and apparently the San Jose fans behind that bench spent a lot of time telling Ching what they thought of someone who wore the Houston colors: thanks for the memories, but now, you suck.
When Ching came into the game and scored his goal, he ran straight towards the fan section behind the bench, his face looking full of rage. He was yelling into the stands while he held out the team crest on his jersey (it's a common way to show your love for your club in soccer, by pointing to or even kissing the team crest). He pointed at the stars on the crest (when a team wins an MLS championship, they get a star ... Houston has two, as do San Jose, since their past is considered "theirs"). As he did this, he held out his fingers and counted towards the crowd: ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR! Ching, like most athletes, thinks of those stars as his ... we, like most fans, think of those stars as ours, at least two of them. We don't root for Brian Ching ... we root for the San Jose Earthquakes. Ching, like Donovan before him, doesn't get this. He said after the match that the fans were disrespecting him.
No, they were disrespecting some guy wearing the wrong shirt. They were disrespecting someone who, through no fault of his own, is a living example of the great team that was ripped from the hearts of San Jose fans and stolen away to Texas. His goal celebration was something he felt he needed to do. Good for him, the whiny crybaby.
One of the reasons for the Quakes recent good run has been the play of newly-arrived Darren Huckerby, who played many years for Norwich City. Hucks has been asked on several occasions why he uprooted himself at this late stage in his career, leaving better pay and surroundings closer to his roots, to come play in San Jose. Well, Huckerby was surplus to Norwich's needs this year ... it was time to move on. But Huckerby was a fan favorite in Norwich, and he took that role seriously. He told those fans that he would never play a match against Norwich. And so he turned down more lucrative offers from teams in England, and signed for less money to play for San Jose, in part so that he wouldn't have to worry about playing against his old team.
Darren Huckerby is an athlete who also understands the role of the fan. If he ever did return to the playing fields of Norwich, he would be welcomed with open arms. Crybabies like Landon Donovan and Brian Ching might learn something from Hucks.
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