With Lawrie, the football team's captain, it is more of an instinctive xenophobia fed by the sporting press and soccer tribalism.
The magazine's Letter From the Editors refers to "the question you hear again and again when reading the mainstream press: Will soccer ever make it in America?" The verdict seems to be yes, and Exhibit 1, the editors clearly believe, is Howler itself.
But in a press conference at Soccer City last week the finance minister, Pravin Gordhan, was refreshingly frank: the country's recovery from the recession was "tenuous", and employment in particular would be "slow to recover".
"So the idea of having a soccer press conference smack in the middle of Manhattan at one of the poshest places that you can find in those days was what I did deliberately to get more attention than if I went to some ordinary club".
The soccer press is loaded with screeching levels of talk about gossip and grudge, scandal and frivolity.
Don't tell anyone, but I passed out from fear in the soccer press box on my first day.
The 35-year-old will play her last game on Dec. 16 against China PR in New Orleans with the U.S. Women's National Team, according to a U.S. Soccer press release.
This wouldn't have merited any coverage by the soccer press if it had been one of the countless incidents of violence that have occurred in the stands over the years.
As he came in, a waiter slipped him a press clipping about a soccer game.
Windows in the press box at the soccer stadium were papered over, lest reporters or scouts glean some tactical surprise.
LONDON — Britain's press reached for the soccer analogy to explain why a foreigner had been picked to head the Bank of England, the country's central bank.
