This past year my sister married a wonderful Englishman, and while it has been a great joy to have him join my family, I find there is no room in my heart for his football team and it's delusionally arrogant fans. Accordingly, I submit the following:
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the sporting bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all fans are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of sporting glory. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that associations long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future entertainment. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former friendship. The history of the present Queen of England is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over the beautiful game. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
She has conspired with her subjects to create an endless series of excuses for failure... cited most often is the dreaded misfortune of being scored on by the best player in the world. (Maybe they've got something here... what reasonable person could predict that Ronaldinho would turn up in Shizuoka in 2002 and snatch an easy victory away from the clear world favorites? Or that a referee would mistakenly allow a goal in 1966, sorry I mean '86? Bad luck, Germ- I mean England.)
She has joined the European conceit that all tournaments must be reachable by train from St Pancras Station; the presence of footballers from Asia, Africa, Latin America, and these United States has apparently not served to make her majesty or her subjects aware that football is played in places not listed in her trusty 1966 Michelin Guide to Western Europe.
She has sent Wayne Rooney out in the world with spiked boots and in so doing, has fomented his homicidal rage and total disregard for the sanctity other people's testicles.
She has allowed her subjects to claim that beating a tiny nation 45 times in 110 matches (and losing 41 times) constitutes “total dominance”, in violation of all the laws of mathematics.
She has repeatedly laid claim to inventing the game of football, before inviting in a succession of Scots, Frenchmen, Swedes and Italians in a futile attempt to teach her subjects how to actually play it.
Her predecessor George VI endeavored through her newspapers to obliterate the achievements of the United States and her sportsmen, by binding all into a conspiracy to alter the news from Belo Horizonte on June 29th 1950 and proudly present England as 10-1 winners in the next day's paper. (If you only have access to English newspapers, you may not realize that the actual score was 1-0 in favor of the United States.)
She has given us only one successful national team coach in the last 20 years: Glenn Hoddle, a man who did his part to promote physical fitness by claiming that disabled people were paying for the sins of a previous life.
She has, through her instruments the Football League and its several clubs, conspired to overprice every man of that nation with an English accent and a pair of boots, then whined endlessly about how nobody with any financial sense (like the rest of Europe) wants to pay £50m for the right back from MiddleofNowhere United.
She has sent her subjects out in the world armed with the cutting edge tactics of the 1950's, meaning every international company has a club team that tries to avoid passing to the English guys, knowing they'll just close their eyes and boot it upfield.
She has endeavored to turn the most innocent among us away from the game of football, by only allowing the ugliest, most terrifying members of her society to take the field, chief amongst them the monstrous creature whose unnatural, mechanical movements make a mockery of the grace and form of man... put another way, one look at Peter Crouch doing the robot and the world's children will be so paralyzed with horror, they'll never kick a football again.
She has through her instrument the Football League confined our players to the bench, no great sin until they were needed by their mother country, in which case they suddenly became indispensable to their club and unavailable to play for their country.
For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses... oh no, my mistake, that one was King George. (Sorry.)
She is at this time transporting large armies of savage mercenaries in England tops and Burberry caps to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation. (Except for the Burberry caps, we actually submitted this complaint to King George too.)
She is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation. That's not a repeat, this time I'm talking about the WAGS.
She has conspired to impose upon us her servant David Beckham, his irritating wife, their incomprehensible whining accents and his collection of stupid haircuts. Sentencing disgraced members of the Empire to transportation was bad enough, sending them here is unforgivable.
In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions, including a friendly invitation to play in a tournament we held in the summer of 1994 have been answered only by repeated injury. A Queen, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to call herself a sports fan.
Nor have we been wanting in attention to our English brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their clubs to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over our players. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.
We, therefore, the representatives of the United States Soccer Federation, in General Congress, assembled for the 50th anniversary of Joe Gaetjens' famous goal, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all friendly rivalry between them and the state of England, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and put a serious smackdown on the Three Lions come Saturday. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.
Bob Bradley
Arizona: Robbie Findley
California: Carlos Bocanegra, Jonathan Bornstein
Maurice Edu, Landon Donovan, Hercules Gomez
District of Columbia: Oguchi Onyewu
Georgia: Ricardo Clark
Illinois: Brad Guzan, Steve Cherundolo, Jonathan Spector
Indiana: DaMarcus Beasley
New Jersey: Tim Howard, Michael Bradley, Jozy Altidore
New York: Edson Buddle, Benny Feilhaber
Texas: Clint Dempsey, José Torres, Stuart Holden
Virginia: Clarence Goodson
Washington: Marcus Hahnemann
Wisconsin: Jay DeMerit
P.S. After all your years of bragging and telling us we don't know anything about football you really can't win by anything less than five goals without hanging your heads in shame... so even if you win, you can still suck it, England.
