Shelves bare of jerseys as soccer fever hits

Jeffrey Libby

Thursday, June 20, 2002 | 10:21 a.m.

Johnny-come-lately U.S. soccer fans won't have much to show for their new-found World Cup fever when the U.S. squares off against Germany Friday morning -- at least not on their backs.

Las Vegas is sold out of U.S. soccer team jerseys, retailers say.

Many retailers didn't have the team jerseys on the racks to begin with. And wholesalers, also caught sleeping, won't be able to renew supplies until October.

"I wish we had some," said Tim Calabro, a salesman for the Sports Authority. "But we never had any. If you're looking for some, a friend of mine at Sportco can get them."

But at Sportco Sporting Goods, the answer was the same.

"We do not. They're next to impossible to get," Jason Pasco, team sales manager, said.

"We only have Germany and France left, one of each," said Rocia de la O, a sales assistant at the Soccer Field. "One customer said, 'Please tell me you have it (a U.S. jersey).' He almost died right there. But the USA, we couldn't get it."

With its upset win over Mexico on Monday, the U.S. soccer team advanced to the World Cup quarterfinals, something no U.S. team has done since 1930. But the soccer fever infecting Las Vegas sports bars and casino ballrooms -- even when most games air in the wee hours of weekdays -- appears more worldly than the nationalistic fervor typical during the Olympics.

"We've been slammed," said Jason Sunshine, a bartender at Nikki Lee's Sports Bar and Grille, noting that each of the Japan and South Korea games attracted close to 100 Asian-American fans. "With the type of electricity they brought, people with no idea about soccer started watching and rooting along with them."

Bo Bernhard, a UNLV sociology professor who studies leisure, sports and gambling, said that type of open-minded enthusiasm is explainable in part because soccer is a new sport for most people in the U.S., and because many Americans have recent roots in other countries.

"This is the first generation of Americans to come of age who grew up playing soccer," said Bernhard, who is 29. "We grew up coached by football-playing dads."

The new enthusiasm could also signal the awakening of "the sleeping giant" that the soccer world has always seen the U.S. as, Bernhard said.

Casino sports books are already registering the beginnings of that mountainous confidence.

"We've got the wise guys (professional gamblers) betting $2,000 on a baseball game. We've always had that. But now we're getting just the general public betting that much on soccer," said Perry Swanson, race and sports book manager at the Palms.

Still, there are grumblings from American fans who think soccer, the world's most popular sport, is for sissies and primitives.

"What's interesting is that the anti-soccer venom is almost as strong as the new passion for the game," Bernhard said.

"I don't know if it's because soccer runs counter to the old-boy network of established sports commentators, but it's like a lot of things, like socialism -- people around the world have a different understanding of it than they do here in the United States."

Others, like Monica Bravo, sales manager at Soccer World, are still on the edge, not quite ready to dismiss the sport, but not ready to join the fray either and call themselves fans.

"Not really," she said. "The games start so late at night. I like soccer, but I'm not to that point."