SOCCER SPOTTING

The NBA 's annual world tour to further familiarize foreign fans, attract overseas business partners and sell merchandise abroad stopped in Madrid in June. The event featured Dwight Howard and his human-head-sized shoulders, 76ers point guard Jrue Holiday and the Milwaukee Bucks Dance Team. A huge crowd streamed through the parking lot in front of Real Madrid's Santiago Bernabeu Stadium, stopping to play NBA Live at the EA Sports tent, wait in line for the three-point shooting contest and participate in the giant 5-on-5 tournament. The Spanish basketball fans piled on all the NBA clothes they owned for the event and, with no real regional alliances except to los hermanos Gasol, created a comprehensive collage of NBA popularity and unabashed frontrunner love. The Lakers, Celtics and Heat in general as well as Durant, Kobe, Lebron, Wade, Howard, Rose and Jordan in particular were well represented. The relatively new basketball enthusiasm also led to some crazy hodgepodge outfits, as evidenced by this guy below.

Kevin Garnett Celtics jersey and Lakers shorts. Plus bonus DayGlo green laces.

This same phenomenon exists at MLS soccer games at which you will see, and likely wear, an assortment of European football attire unrelated to the Dallas Burn/New York Red Bulls game on the field before you. Somewhere, someone defiantly dons a Barcelona top and Real Madrid shorts much like our bipolar NBA fan above.

The last time my brother and I went to a Red Bulls game, we each chose a team (I, Barcelona and he, Manchester United) an counted how many jerseys we saw. I forget who won the contest, but the combined number in support of those teams rivaled and possibly exceeded the amount of Red Bull merchandise in the crowd. I acknowledge that Thierry Henry and Rafa Marquez both arrived from Barcelona earlier that season, but that does not explain the huge number of Holland, ManU, Real Madrid and AC Milan jerseys dotting the stadium.

Lately, the soccer shirt as fashion statement has spread to other, non-soccer events. At this past weekend's Lollapalooza music festival in Chicago I noticed scores of jerseys before I finally snapped thirty-five photos of different kit-wearers on the final festival day.

Although there definitely was an elitist, I-know-more-than-you-do vibe similar to that exuded by the wan hipsters who wear mid-90s Champion brand NBA jerseys (the"Hoopster" cliche documented on Deadspin.com the past two years), a lot of the guys were just bros repping their teams. Albeit teams more or less cherry-picked from the top of the EPL, La Liga and World Cup standings or arbitrarily selected for franchise mode in whatever version of FIFA they first played.

Check out the website http://soccerspotting.tumblr.com/ for a daily dose of globalization evidencing, europhiliac and patriotic portraits of Americans wearing soccer jerseys like these:

Top to bottom: AS Roma, the ubiquitous Barcelona and the US National Team's Clint Dempsey

Yeah, soccer jerseys are becoming a hipster fad.

Wilkommen, Jurgen

After five years of courtship behind manager Bob Bradley's back, the US Men's National Team finally sealed the deal with Jurgen Klinsmann. Klinsmann, a former striker, was one of the best players of the 1980s and 90s and helped West Germany win the 1990 World Cup and a unified Germany, the 1996 Euro Cup. He scored 11 World Cup goals (6th most all time) and was the first player to score at least three goals in three different tournaments. On the club level, he excelled for Chelsea, VfB Stuttgart, Inter, Bayern Munich, Monaco and Tottenham before settling in Southern California. In 2006, he coached Germany to a 3rd place Cup finish.

Artwork: Stickers and markers on paper. Green t-shirt. German footballer figurine purchased at a dollar store in 1995 and found in drawer beneath hairbrush, bag of Pogs and old cell phones.