by
Austin BayJuly 1, 2026
The 250th anniversary of America's Declaration of Independence coinciding with North America hosting the World Cup competition takes me back to a column I wrote in June 2002 featuring my soccer-loving landlord -- 24 years ago, the day after the U.S. team defeated Mexico's powerful World Cup squad.
Now my first sentence contains an unacceptable American verbal and "isolationist" gaffe -- soccer. Herr Franz Saller, my West German landlord and "world football" mentor, would dismiss that word when sober and cheekily mock it when sipping schnapps.
"West German" dates this tale. 1975. The Cold War. Lt. Bay arrives in Bavaria. Seventy-five-year-old Franz Saller rents him a rooftop apartment. Thus, Bay's intensive course in World Football begins.
"Do not call it soccer," Herr Saller said that first Saturday evening I came down to his living room to watch a Bayern-Munchen game on TV. "Soccer is an indication of American detachment. The world plays football."
"Do not call it soccer," Herr Saller insisted. "Bitte!"
Franz Saller was a gray-haired, blue-eyed elf of a man. Six grandchildren, I think. Born in 1900, a year before Queen Victoria died. World War I ended before he could put on a uniform. In World War II, Franz served as a sergeant in a Luftwaffe airfield construction unit -- "a formation for old men like me," he joked. After that terrible war, he started a construction business, building anything requiring concrete.
Fussball, however, was his passion. "I have seen your American football," he'd nod. "Not so much kicking. And big up here." He put his palms over his shoulders, miming tackle football shoulder pads. "Your football. They play only in America and Canada. But this ... " and he gestured toward his TV, "this, young man, is world sport."
Then Saller brought out a schnapps bottle, pouring two shots. "Prosit." He kicked his back in a gulp. I sipped the firewater.
I had trouble following his fussball narration. I failed to locate the striker, the midfielder, missed the attack from the wing.
Still, I had fun. Between Army field exercises, when duty permitted, I'd go see the old man, plopped in his chair watching the telecast. I realized he'd taught me enough to appreciate the game. Star power helped. The mid-'70s were Bayern-Munchen's glory years. Its star midfielder "Kaiser Franz" Beckenbauer ruled. (Beckenbauer would later play for the New York Cosmos.) Bayern-Munchen was the New York Yankees, Beckenbauer a global Babe Ruth. Saller adored Pele. "The Latins," he'd say, raising his hands. "They are inventive. Perhaps you can come down tomorrow. There is a match with many Brazilians."
I had unexpected insights. One evening, the schnapps-swigging elf hit his limit. His tipsy mind entered a merry-sad muddle of nostalgia and sports. "Kaiser" Beckenbauer morphed into Kaiser Wilhelm. Saller's English mixed with German. I did my best to follow his descriptions of German life in the 20th century's first decade. ("Die Kaiserzeit! Best time in Germany. Roses in all the parks. Milk for all children. My parents, Baden-Baden, so schoen ...")
Two weeks or so later, while watching another Bayern-Munchen match, I relapsed and used the word "soccer." "Ach," Saller groaned. "You Americans are ahead of the world in so many ways. But sometimes you are not part of the world. You still use miles instead of kilometers. Oceans, that is the reason. America has oceans. When you Americans reach the World Cup, smaller oceans, I predict."
I last saw Herr Saller in 1976 -- America's 200th birthday. Five decades, many U.S. World Cup matches later, it's 2026. He's gone. Still, I think of him every time I see (yes) a soccer game.
But are oceans smaller? Internet, satellites, personal communications devices create the digital perception of a global neighborhood. Indeed, oceans, like other borders, can be physically crossed.
However, as I write this essay, middle- and working-class citizens in five European nations are protesting uncontrolled mass immigration by ethnic and religious groups who resist political integration and cultural assimilation. World football and kilometers don't unite them.
"You Americans are ahead of the world in so many ways," Saller said. "But sometimes you are not part of the world."
That is a splendid if unintended compliment. For 250 years, the United States, an utterly unique political experiment in human liberty, has survived, adapted, created and prospered. The U.S. Constitution is a political vehicle without equal. Nothing else like it in human history. I'm betting essayists acknowledge that in 2076.