Soccerhead: An Accidental Journey Into the Heart of the American Game

Soccerhead is youth soccer coach Jim Haner's investigation into the origins of soccermainia

On July 10, 1999, 100,000 Americans, mostly women, did something they had not done before, at least not in such numbers. They showed up to watch a soccer match.

Their attendance at the 1999 Women's World Cup Final took the world by surprise, forcing it to recognize much about itself that it had been in denial of for quite some time. Who were these soccer fans? Where had they come from? Why had no one noticed them before?

Award winning journalist Jim Haner asks these questions, and others, as he sets off in search of the origins of the American passion for soccer, uncovering the game's roots in an early industrial Northeast and following them up through the transcontinental suburban present. But Haner is by no means a passive historian of the game; he is the coach of the Hornets, a rag-tag team of ten nine-year-old boys and one determined little girl. Haner provides us with an intimate view of his team's struggles and successes over the course of season, and of his own transformation from reluctant soccer dad to authentic 'soccerhead'.

Seamlessly weaving personal and historical narrative threads, Soccerhead is both an enticing memoir and a cultural inquiry of the first-order--enlightening, entertaining, and informative--shedding new light on a little known chapter of American history.