No need to try to explain America's obsession with the recent Royal Wedding. It's something that couldn't happen in America. No royals; hence no royals to marry a commoner. CNN quoted a woman watching the wedding from Georgia, "It's sort of like a fairy tale, an escape from ordinary life for a while."
No wonder as this American is learning about English soccer, I'm feeling as if I'm seeing fairy tales play out.
This kind of stuff just can't happen in ordinary American pro-sport life. The Bridgeport Bluefish would NEVER play the New York Yankees. Sure, individuals can move up through leagues, but not usually entire teams. Okay so that's baseball.
But even just looking at soccer, the English football league system and the American soccer league pyramid operate very differently.
So here is the fairy tale I'm watching right now play out as I understand it.
AFC Wimbledon is in a position where it could possibly move up into Football League Two.
Huh?
I'll have to take a step back.
Once upon a time there was a team called Wimbledon FC. Over the years it worked it's way up through the league system, even beating Liverpool in 1988 to become FA Cup champs. Then came the day they needed a new stadium and were to move 56-miles away from Wimbledon to Milton Keynes. (Wimbledon FC is now known as the Milton Keynes Dons.)
Some fans were outraged! How could their local team move so far away? So they started up their own club and held tryouts in Wimbledon Common for anyone who wanted to play. That club became AFC Wimbledon in 2002.
Here is what as an American I struggle to understand: somehow the new team was allowed in the system and has been promoted through the leagues.
If AFC Wimbledon wins the matches it needs to this month and moves up to League Two, it will be only one league behind the MILTON KEYNES DONS, currently in League One! (Here is an article about AFC Wimbledon in today's Evening Standard.)
Imagine starting from scratch: from anyone trying out on a commons, to possibly going all the way to the top.
It's a fairy tale I'm told is quite common in the game known as Football.
Understanding this (or at the verge of trying to understand the complexities of Football) I now realize why my British-life long football fan-husband kept questioning me about my loyalty to sports teams.
Born in Houston, Texas, I was a Houston Oilers Football fan. I have pictures of me in pigtails wearing a light blue "Luv Ya Blue" blue with the number 7 on the back for quarterback Dan Pastorini.
He asked, when the Houston Oilers moved to Tennessee in the 1990's, what did the fans do?
My answer- uh, well I wasn't going to become a Tennessee fan- Tennessee is more than 800 miles from Houston! I had moved to Dallas and was working in the media there covering the Dallas Cowboys and so... erm... maybe picked up a liking to "America's Team."
Plus I had moved to New York long before Houston was brought it's new team, the Houston Texans. (I still can't figure out how that system works, but it was created from players already in the NFL and it's draft picks all from colleges.)
At least in learning about Football, I'm starting to understand American sports better. I've always enjoyed sports, the history behind the teams, and cheered for my favorite players. And I will continue!
As a plus, it now seems by having hope for AFC Wimbledon, I'm enjoying sport on the level of living out real life fairy tales- even if it's only because the stories aren't the ordinary tales I'm used to reporting.
