10 Differences Between Soccer Bars and Football Bars

The rare tie in the NFL makes fans sick. The 2008 Donovan McNabb tie and his subsequent admission that he didn't know NFL games could end in a tie may have done more damage to his legacy than puking on the sidelines at the Super Bowl. Soccer fans accept the harsh realities of an unfair life. Just like their beloved existential philosophers and post-colonial authors, soccer fans realize that we live in a cruel world, and sometimes no victors can climb out of the muck. Though this world view has done great things for their art, I have to say that it makes the sport pretty fucking disappointing.

Though the craft beer trend is sweeping America (if you don't believe me, ask your buddy who home brews in his closet), American sports bars are still the home of Bud Light, Miller Light, and other urine-based macro brews. American sports bars don't put their efforts into varying the taps, but rather they put the good old-fashioned U.S.A. brand of know-how into figuring out unique ways to serve booze. Beer towers, booze bowls, beer pong, beer bongs, vortex-twisted-wide-mouth-self-cooled-and-ventilated bottled—Americans lead the world in creating bold new ways to drink shitty beer. Soccer bars put their focus into offering decent beers by the pint. Even bars that are temporarily switching over to soccer bars for the World Cup are forced to put something decent like Newcastle or Guinness on tap unless they want to have a riot on their hands.

Watching the England-Italy game over the weekend was like walking into a cool night club. Selvedge denim and Warby-Parker ruled the day. Fans thought twice before tearing their hair out in dismay, as it takes a lot to muster the reckless abandon to muss that elegant coif. Even hardcore fans opted for a finely tailored Union Jack blazer rather than the American fan fashion favorite—the poorly painted beer belly. Even less fashionable match-ups like Brazil-Croatia attracted a number of fans who would have been right at home in a menswear blog. I'm not saying that you should dress up if you decide to watch the Cup in a soccer bar, but I am saying that you may want to leave those Brett Farvre endorsed Wranglers in the closet where they belong.

The classic American sports adage is "It ain't over til it's over." And can you blame us? Final basketball scores are always 107-105, hockey regularly ends in a shootout, and the fourth quarter drive is an essential part of the elite quarterback's job description. Points matter, but you can always tell yourself, "there's a lot of game left to play," even if you've hit the two-minute warning. For soccer fans, a point by the opposing team doesn't just take the air of out of the room, every point against your team is enough to send you spiraling into depression. In a sport where points are so rare, a two point deficit feels almost insurmountable. If your team gets down by three you might as well spend your time remembering where you parked your car or trying to get the waitress's number because the game is pretty much over.

Since goals are so rare in soccer, fans have to delude themselves into believing that there's more going on than there actually is. When a ball sails fifteen feet above the net, fans stand up and pull at their hair as though the ball missed the goal post by the slimmest of margins. When the ball softly rolls into the hands of the opposing goal keeper, the fans turn to each other and say, "Close one. Great save." This may be a hard thing for football fans to grow accustomed to, as ever-changing rules and a rulebook the size of Ulysses have conditioned us not to get excited about a touchdown until there's incontrovertible proof that the receiver had possession, got both feet down, and Goodell wants them to win that night.

Soccer fans wear scarves. They don't just wear them on the way to the bar on a particularly cold day—they wear them all the time. In the heat of midsummer, they'll accessorize their t-shirt jersey with a matching scarf. This may seem like a small detail, but it's important that you don't mistake the entire bar for male models or struggling musicians. This is a tradition. Granted, it is a tradition that looks just as dumb as wearing overpriced, over-sized replica jerseys, but it is a tradition nonetheless.

Don't get me wrong: soccer is not a quiet affair. There is roughly the same amount of yelling, cursing, and bragging about the accomplishments of strangers that goes on at an American football game. It's just that something incredible happens between exciting moments: the fans listen to the announcers. I don't think this has anything to do with the boorish talking-just-to-hear-yourself-talk tendencies of us Americans. It's just that soccer announcers are actually interesting. Over a weekend of watching games, I heard soccer announcers throw around words like "talismanic" and "butterfly-like." During a particularly slow moment in the Italy-England game, one of the announcers engaged in an extended metaphor about breakfast cereals that even your college fiction professor would have found a bit indulgent. Instead of poetry MFAs, in America we get the smug idiocy of Chris Collinsworth. When American announcers aren't busy tossing out platitudes like, "he really loves the game" and "he's a real blue collar guy," they're busy fawning over whatever announcer used to play the game or promoting the upcoming schedule of 60 Minutes followed by a rerun of Two Broke Girls. If we could pay a tax to train soccer announcers to work NFL games, I suspect Americans would gladly opt for a tax hike in a heartbeat.

The fierce rivalries contribute to a less than gregarious atmosphere during World Cup matches, but so does the game itself. Football is a marathon, not a sprint. If you get to the bar early to get a good table, one football game can take up four hours of your time. Soccer is played in a pretty brisk two hours of non-stop action. There are no commercials, no lengthy instant replays, no ten-minute long jingoistic national propaganda moments—there's just soccer. As a result, there is a lot less time for bullshitting, eating wings, and arguing about fantasy football than there is during an NFL game. I often tell my friends who don't like football that they'll probably enjoy coming out for day-drinking and catching up with friends on Sunday. I would tell my friends who don't like soccer to just stay home.

Sports in America are synonymous with kitsch. We go to the bar and expect to see "field goal kicking wings" and "running back ribs" on the menu. We expect waitresses and bartenders to be dressed up as referees or cheerleaders. We expect the already chintzy décor to be made even louder with all manner of licensed NFL wall hangings. Going to a soccer bar will teach that all you need to be a sports bar is sports on the television. Apparently, it is possible to run a sports bar without menus filled with puns and a staff forced to wear costumes to work. Who knew?