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10 Reasons why soccer is a liberal sport:

(1) Defense has all the advantages. It is far easier succeed by preventing anything constructive from happening than by actually achieving something yourself. A 2-1 result is considered a high scoring affair, and ninety minutes of futility ending in a 0-0 tie is deemed beautiful by soccer purists.

(2) Government, in the form of the referee, frequently determines the outcome. Because goals are so rare, a frighteningly high percentage of games are decided by a referee’s arbitrary decisions (e.g., the recent Netherlands/Mexico game in the round of 16). 89 minutes of ‘beautiful play’ resulting in a tie score can be flushed away by an erroneously granted penalty kick in the last minute.

(3) No replay. No appeal. With a game so depending on officiating, one would think that every reasonable effort would be made to get calls right. One would be wrong. One official, no instant replays. And just to make sure we get the point of who is in charge, the referee runs continously for 90 minutes so he is at his best when the game is on the line at the end.

(4) The offsides rule. It is obvious that in a sporting contest, it is terribly unfair for one team to conspire to get a player behind the last defender by means of superior speed or strategy. There out to be a rule to give defenders who are slow of foot or slow of wit an equal chance. Oh wait, in soccer there is.

(5) Flopping and the law of unintended consequences. Because the government/referee so often controls the outcome (see #2), players spend great amounts of time and effort perfecting their acting skills to fake falls and various other grievances, in hopes of being declared a victim and awarded a penalty in compensation by the authority.

(6) Penalty kicks. If it’s still tied after 120 minutes, the games is decided by penalty kicks which is another way of saying luck. With 24 foot wide goals and 80 mph kicks, the only way for a goalie to stop one or two out of 5 kicks is by guessing the right way to jump. I guess if the outcome is decided by chance rather than skill, no one needs to feel bad about losing a hard fought match.

(7) Pretentious commentary. When my seven year old daughter emerged from the clump of players with the ball and went on to score a goal, it was a good play. When a grown man emerges from the clump of players to score a goal it is ‘inventive’ or ‘creative’ play. Similarly a bad play is ‘lack of attention to detail’ and boring scoreless play is ‘tactical’.

(8) Injury time. Every other major sport with a time limit has precise methods for time keeping. Keeping with the spirit of arbitrary government power, the referee selects gets more or less absolute discretion to add minutes to the end of the match. Moreover, no one knows until after the deadline expires how much time will be added, a practice remarkably similar to ObamaCare.

(9) More unintended consequences. Speaking of health care, most soccer players are remarkably skilled at faking injuries to stall or disrupt the flow of play. Injury time is supposed to partly compensate for that, but ironically, once the injury time has begun, a player can run 30 or 40 seconds off the clock by writhing on the ground with a fake injury, with no additional time added.

(10) Fatalism. If there were ever a cure for the notion that, at least in athletics, skill and hard work will prevail, it would be a game where the outcome is determined by a referee, or a luck, or faked injuries. No wonder English soccer fans have adopted Monty Python’s “Always look on the bright side of life” as their unofficial anthem.