It’s weird to be a grown adult and look at myself as a kid. Mostly because I can’t pinpoint exactly when things changed or when I made growth. Inside I’m still this same person. A boy trying to impersonate what I think is adult behavior.
There's a few things you may not know about me, and they’re not all good things. I grew up in a privileged household with two loving parents and plenty of space to play and develop. I never wanted for anything. I would even go so far as to say I was a spoiled little brat.
In 6th grade I cried and threw what I would describe as a tantrum when I didn’t get the gift that I wanted from my parents for Hanukkah. My family didn’t even celebrate hanukkah, we just used it as a way to honor my grandparent’s heritage. I never went to Hebrew school and didn’t have a bar mitzvah, and yet my friends would pick on me for being jewish. I was in 7th grade when one of my usual nicknames my friends would call me when I beat them in a video game was “fucking rat jew”, or “fat jew kike”.
Those were normal names I was called probably hundreds of times throughout middle school and high school. Keep in mind I have never been a practicing jew. I remember one time all of my friends were piling into the car to go to Six Flags Great Adventure. We had one too many kids to fit in the car, so the dad of that same friend who called me names suggested we “put the jew in the trunk.” And that’s where I sat on the ride to Six Flags Great Adventure.
I was young and wanted to fit in. Feel accepted.
There’s always been a place in the world where I have felt that way - where I fit in and am accepted. When I needed a confidence booster I would look at my trophy shelf - filled with individual and team awards in soccer. It was a place where I could go and just have fun. Just enjoy what life means to live.
I was genuinely a great player, but early on in my high school soccer career I fell completely out of love with the sport. I was burned out and wanted to pursue other hobbies - like spending 12 hours a day in World of Warcraft.
The end of my playing career spelled the beginning of years of darkness.
Being called a fat jew kike and a pimply jew rat while you’re learning how to view yourself in the world destabilized my self-worth. Pair this with my first real relationship ending in my girlfriend cheating on me, and a diet that consisted strictly of chicken nuggets and diet coke, and wow is that a recipe for a disaster of a human being.
But alas that was me. The inedible mush that was born out of that horrible recipe. I stopped caring about small things in life. I stopped loving being alive. Despite it all I barely squeezed into an acceptable college that would make my parents proud. Except I decided it would be a great idea to share a room with that friend from high school - you guessed it, the one that would make fun of my jewyness.
Things weren’t great in college, and I was on a slippery path towards ending up in my parents basement for the rest of my life. It’s incredible how small the difference is between that and where I am now. I’m serious too. I can see it now, how close I was to genuinely giving up. And I’m not talking about giving up on a hobby, or school, or self-improvement. I’m talking about literally giving up caring about anything. Not caring about myself or others or the world around me. I was standing on the edge of a cliff at that moment in my life.
But I always had one strand of rope hanging on and holding me back. Something that I could look forward to - Premier League mornings where I could watch Tim Howard, Clint Dempsey, and sometimes Landon Donovan against the best teams in the world. My playing days may have been over but my passion for soccer had rejuvenated - mostly due to the success of the USMNT in the 2009 confederations cup, where the U.S. defeated the greatest national team of all time and lost a heartbreaking final to Brazil.
My freshman year of college in the dorms I couldn’t get myself out of bed. I was failing every single class and didn’t attend most of them. I was procrastinating my own demise by thinking “it’s not that bad” or “this will all work itself out eventually”.
I couldn’t do anything but play World of Warcraft and eat Wendy’s all day everyday, and yet I could not wait to wake up at 6:30 on the weekend to watch the Merseyside Derby where legends like Stevie G, Dirk Kuyt, Tim Cahill and Tim Howard would go toe-to-toe.
I started going to Red Bull games in Newark about 30 minutes north of Rutgers University where I was attending. I started writing about the team for a now-defunct online newsletter. Little did I know back then that this particular hobby likely saved my life, and it was the start of a journey to cover the game.
It wasn’t all perfect though. While I did care about something, it wasn’t the right something. I still neglected school, my friends, and my family - opting to set the grenade that was my grades aside for the time being.
I was kicked out of Rutgers after my freshman year for a GPA that was below the minimum acceptable average.
I had a decision to make. Do I live the rest of my life in my parent’s house playing video games, leaching off of their hard work, or do I commit myself to being a little bit better each day until the point I can make something of myself.
I chose the latter, and it started with getting my mind and my body right. The 2010 world cup was the thing I could anchor to. I could see it in the future and drive myself towards it. Days went faster when I was productive. If I could fit in a workout, and a few classes at community college while I worked full time, then I could see my favorite team a little bit sooner.
At the time I was living at my parent’s house in a small suburb of Princeton, New Jersey called West Windsor. My dad and uncle owned a quaint independent clothing store across from the Princeton University campus and had some connections to the school. The family store had been there over 100 years starting with my great grandparents - the connection to the town ran deep.
Coincidentally Princeton University was where Princeton Alum Bob Bradley would be training his USA squad in preparation for the 2010 world cup. I had to go.
I got to watch the team scrimmage and train over the course of a few days.
Then the World Cup started and my passion never looked back. The US got out of the group stage and lost an extra-time soulcrusher against Ghana. It didn’t matter and I didn’t care. I would follow this team to the end of the earth for the joy they brought me.
A crazy thing happened after that. I got better too. My self-esteem rose steadily over time as I began to learn new things about myself. I learned How committed I could be when I was purposeful instead of my usually infinite capacity to procrastinate. I learned that I actually enjoyed learning, and wanted to transfer out of community college to earn a 4 year degree. I learned that my self-worth wasn’t in the hands of others.
Between the 2010 and 2014 world cup I transferred and graduated with honors, I met my future wife, I started a career, and I was finally happy again. I hadn’t been that happy since I was an innocent kid. Before people called me names and made fun of the size of my nose.
The 2014 World Cup was a truly beautiful time in my life. I look back on it with tragic longing. The world felt different then - do you feel that way too?
All of my friends and my girlfriend now wife were gathered around the tv every day to watch the games. At night we would play ping-pong on our makeshift table in the kitchen, and we’d spend the nights laughing in great company until we got too tired and meandered to our respective rooms for sleep.
The elation at the Dempsey goal, the despair as Ronaldo whipped in a perfect cross, and the sheer intensity of Tim Howard’s defence of his net. All of it was emotion you can’t find elsewhere. Soccer is special like that.
If 2010 to 2014 was good for me, 2014 to 2018 was my time to become complacent.
Things were good but not great. Was I really putting effort into my relationships with loved ones? Was I really doing my best to pursue a career that could support the life I wanted? Was I really trying to be the best version of myself?
The thing I could always look forward to and depend on was in a crisis of its own. The US Men’s National team didn’t qualify for the 2018 World Cup. A few years earlier Donald Trump had been elected, and I started to notice small cracks in society’s care for one another.
It was here and there, but you could see the fabric of us unraveling. I’m not even pointing at a side right now. Society just unraveled. Not only did people passively stop caring for eachother, people were actively being mean to each other.
It’s not like this everywhere. I was fortunate enough to live in England for two years during the Covid era. Yes every place has their problems and the UK isn’t perfect, but it wasn’t like this on a person-to-person level. George Floyd is killed with a knee to his neck, kids in school are shot everyday by someone with a manifesto, a politician isn’t home for an assassination attempt. And yet those obviously horrible acts are met with wild conspiracies fueled by vitriol. The point is to inflict pain on each other.
It seems causing emotional or physical harm to one another is now commonplace in America. And as someone that has lived a lot of their life online, anti-semitism and blatant racism started to rear its ugly head again.
When people see this picture and say it’s not a big deal, it’s only a few people, why do we care? When people see a modern day klan marching for white power. Or when people see Kanye utilizing his free speech to spew these ideas, that’s not the only thing that’s happening. People are seeing that there is permission to not only harbor hateful and dangerous views, people feel comfortable expressing them out loud.
Views and opinions like me being a kike jew rat that deserves to burn in hell just for existing. A dozen people on the side of the road, or one millionaire on twitter quickly becomes something else entirely. You are free to express your opinion but you are not free from consequence.
That’s where we are now in 2022. And barreling closer to the 2022 World Cup in Qatar I find myself with a feeling I can’t really place. It’s somewhere between angst and faux excitement.
I want to be excited about this team and I want to be proud of my country because I really do love it, but the patriotism I would feel towards seeing the stars and stripes is mixed with the oil of our current environment. I guess a violent coup will do that to you…
I want to be excited about the greatest sporting event on earth. One where the US hasn’t been in 8 long years, but a World Cup built on slavery, corruption, bribery, and treatment of certain populations makes me feel resentful.
I feel resentful because Qatar 2022 is the way I see the world working these days. If you have enough money and lie enough, then things will work out for you. If you don’t believe millions of jews were exterminated in the holocaust but you are a millionaire or you’re famous, then things are absolutely fine. If you’re a doctor who made millions as a snake oil salesman and you live in New Jersey, you should really consider running for senator in Pennsylvania. If you are a country that imprisons gay people and require slave labor to build modern infrastructure, maybe you should consider hosting the most important sporting event in the world.
And yet with this backdrop - I’ve been working. I’ve been working on myself. I’ve been a loving husband, a good friend, a learner, a creator, and now… a dad-to-be. There is still hope for me and you.
There is a stoic principle that you can only control your own actions, and that it’s not worth spending effort on things outside of your control. If I control my own actions, and I provide positivity back into the world, and my wife does the same and my coworkers and my friends do the same and you reading right now do the same, then that makes a small difference to giving us just a little bit of hope.
The USMNT and the World Cup have always paralleled what I’ve been going through in my life at the time. And I do have hope for them - because it’s not about what happened before or what will happen after, but about the exact moment of those 90 minutes. The 26 brothers will be playing for that moment and nothing else. And in that moment anything can happen.
Jake, thanks for writing this. It's not easy to open up to people, even within person-to-person relationships. But, you took the risk of opening up to the world. I appreciate the hard work; and I enjoy the fruits of your labor. Good luck to you and your family.