WORK
MIAMI SPEZIAL STICKER
SUPPORT LOCAL SOCCER STICKER
It's been written about ad nauseam in various outlets in the last few years, but it's worth repeating. Today the average American soccer fan arguably has more easily accessible, high quality soccer-viewing options at his or her viewing disposal than the residents of most other countries.
But with satellites and the World Wide Web beaming live feeds from around the world into your living room or your desk at work or your cell phone, it's easy to overlook the soccer at your doorstep. Major League Soccer has done a great job of recognizing this in its recent franchise activations (see, e.g., Seattle, Portland and Orlando, which have become amazing MLS cities in part because the respective residents of those metropolises, be they lifelong soccer aficionados or not, have bought into the idea of supporting local soccer). And this isn't just applicable to MLS cities: amateur (at least, for the moment) clubs have gotten behind their local product in cities like Sacramento, Detroit and Chattanooga in recent years.
Ultimately, for the game to organically grow in this country, for the quality of both play and player to augment and for the sport to become more holistically visible and attractive to a larger audience of American people that may one day represent American soccer on various stages, soccer on all local levels needs support, whether it be for a new MLS team beginning play in your closest city, college soccer across all divisions, the alphabet soup comprising the multiple tiers of the U.S. soccer pyramid, development academy teams and yes, even high school soccer. And support doesn't have to necessarily be in the form of money. Support can mean something as simple as volunteering your time (serving as a coach for a local team or a ball person for your town's PDL team) or your resources (printing up flyers for your local squad). It can also be as simple as going to games featuring these soccer outlets and physically and visibly being a part of your local soccer organization's existence, because the more people that do that, the more prominence that organization gets in your community, the region and the country.
This sticker was inspired by another subject that, in its purest form, keeps a local, grassroots element close to its core ethos: punk rock. It's influenced by the stuff I'd see in Central Jersey growing up from local bands trying to make their names known locally, stuck on parking lot light poles or on the tin walls of the cattle tunnel on the way to Devils games. I might not have known the names on or meanings behind those stickers at the time, but I knew I wanted to be a part of it, whatever it was.