There’s a Youtube video I’ve been watching about twice a month for the past year. It’s a clip of highlights from the USA-Slovenia 2010 World Cup match set to a track from Mission Impossible II. That game was one of the most dramatic in US Soccer history. We went into halftime down 2-0 absent of almost any hope. The scoreline could easily been 1-1 or 2-1 us, but it felt like one of those days where nothing was going to break our way.

But our fortune immediately changed when the savior of American soccer himself, Landon Donovan blasted one at close range right above the Slovenian keeper’s head. The bar where I was the watching the game jolted from a desert of emotion to a carnivalesque celebration. Then almost 40 minutes later, a lunge by Michael Bradley gave us the equalizer and I almost lost my shit. We should’ve end won that game but we had a goal called offside, it was a bullshit call.

For some reason I’m compelled to watch this one clip over and over again. The high-stakes drama of the game and the epicness of that Mission Impossible song make for a gripping combination. And almost every time, I watch this video, my whole face turns red, my sinuses flare, and my eyes fill up with tears. One time I actually burst out crying. It’s as shocking to you as it is to me because I hate crying and I hate seeing other people cry too. I’m left unable to reconcile my disdain for this emotion with my own red and teary eyes.

That is the effect the US National Soccer Team has on me.

I never feel as patriotic as I do when I watch our men and women play the beautiful game. And just like crying, patriotism is another emotion only our soccer team can unleash in me.

It’s like I finally get all those people who carry the constitution in their pocket, show up in an American flag jumpsuits at political rallies, and use the term “Real America” in a serious manner. Sometimes when I watch Team USA I just wanna yell out “FREEDOM!” and then shred the “Star-Spangled Banner” on electric guitar.

That video and the hundreds of other videos of US soccer highlights inspired to create my video montage.

https://vimeo.com/97905877

By the conventional and cliche standards of determining who’s a “Real American”, I’m about as far as you can get from that caricature. I’m a San Francisco progressive who thinks Nancy Pelosi is too conservative. I speak French. I went to a fancy liberal arts college. I drink $10 19th century Belgian Blonde ales and $5 lattes made with an organic fair trade Sumatra blend. My burgers are made with truffle and my mac-n-cheese with gruyere. I’ve lived in an upper-middle class Washington DC suburb, North-East Los Angeles, and the hippest neighborhood in San Francisco. Not only am I coastal elitist, I’m a bi-coastal elitist. Up until March of this year, I had never been anywhere east of Phoenix and west of Pittsburgh. I also used to drive a Volvo, so for a period in my life I was an latte-sipping Volvo-driving liberal.

Call it selective patriotism or hipster patriotism. I don’t care. But I watch Team USA on the pitch, I’m 110% “If You Don’t Like It, Then Leave It! America Fuck Yeah!” It takes something very unAmerican to make me feel American. Soccer has done what July 4th, hot dogs, and baseball never could do.

This feeling that I’m feeling can’t be described as overwhelming emotional patriotism nor could I find the right word to capture it, even after deep diving into a thesaurus. It’s a state of emotion countless authors and songwriters have strived and failed to capture and understand. There’s probably one of those special German words that has no translation, that describes my emotional state. If you know this term please let me know.

I don’t even remotely feel this way about of our other national teams. I couldn’t bring myself to watch the Dream Team crush some country by 50 points or any of the other 200 events we won gold. The only team that had my attention and unquestioned devotion was our women’s soccer team.

When I saw Team USA in their red, white, and blue jerseys (which I’m wearing right now as I write this) at Candlestick Park two week ago, some sort of spirit fell over me and with it came a wave of elation and wholeness. It was half arriving at the pearly gates of heaven and half kid going to Disneyland for the first time. I shouted every chant as loud as I could, linked arms with my fellow patriots, and highfived everyone within a three-foot radius both times we scored. For that whole match I thought to myself this must be the place.

As our match with Ghana approaches, I cannot remember the last time I anticipated and craved anything with an extreme and spellbound thirst. My restless impatience has caused me to order two jerseys, a US soccer scarf, and a pair of American flag shorts on eBay and changed my desktop background, Twitter header pic, my phone back ground, and Facebook cover pic to a US Soccer flag, as if doing those things will hasten the World Cup.

For all our matches I’ll be proudly wear one of my three jerseys, a stars and stripes bandana, soccer scarves, and my flag shorts. And when I’m screaming every word of the national anthem, I’ll be more American than a bald eagle driving a pick-up truck. And most importantly I’ll be drinking only Budweiser and Coors, because when you watch America play, you damn well drink real American beer.

Opening up to a bunch of internet strangers about one of the most poignant objects of passions in your life is absolutely insane for someone like me who goes to great lengths to conceal and avoid his emotions.

US Soccer makes me feel some type of way, a type of way I’ve come a little bit closer to understanding through writing this so-called manifesto, but I’m still far from truly knowing. And as I write this at 1am, I keep having to take breaks to beat back that welling feeling in my face. My mind’s telling me no, but my bodddyyyy is telling me yes. After I write this I’ll probably watch the Landon Donovan Algeria goal for the 13728th time before I go to bed and pump my fist right at the moment when the ball hits the back of the net no different then when I did four years ago.

No matter how we do in Brazil, I’m going stand with our boys in the red, white, and blue and give them my heart and soul.

And if we somehow make it out of the GROUP OF DEATH, I might rage so hard I open a portal to way more patriotic dimension.