Posted on 06/09/2006 8:56:48 AM PDT by 1rudeboy
So you Think Soccer Sucks?
Fine. I am honestly surprised that you could find the energy to type it, or its equivalent. I am not surprised that you are probably the same person complaining that soccer is being “rammed down your throat,” or other such nonsense.
Do you realize how silly you sound? In what sort of universe can a professional sport, any professional sport, be forced upon anyone? Just turn off the sports media. That enough should be understandable to every member of this website, even the re-treads, trolls, disruptors, and shills.
But we need to get a few things straight. Above all else, your team is playing in the largest tournament on the face of our planet. That’s right, your team. Your other teams, be they named Penske, Padres, or Packers, do not perform on such a stage. A Packer fan may tell a Bear fan that his team sucks. The Bear fan will reply in kind. Such is the nature of rivalry. But try and explain to me that soccer is a wussy sport when I see the following:
Mexican fan: Your team sucks.Oh yeah, that’s real testosterone on display. Chicks dig a competitor.
U.S.A. fan: Soccer is ghey.
If you cannot bring yourself to cheer for or even defend your own country, then how about shutting the heck up. If you cannot bring yourself to shut the heck up, then walk into a stadium full of English, German, or Dutch fans, stand up, and shout the same out loud. But please try those fans first. Other countries’ fans may mistakenly deliver you to a painless death. Drink a beer or two if it makes you brave. Remember that there will always be someone braver than you.
I don’t want to hear about how soccer is a “socialist” sport. It’s insulting. To your intelligence. I don’t care to talk about restrictor-plates, revenue-sharing, anti-trust exemptions, or the Fair Catch Rule, whose very name suggests wine spritzers and flower arrangements. Please understand this is not about the superiority of one sport over another. This is about rising to the pinnacle of a sport that gives every country in the world the opportunity to qualify. It’s a sport. It has a ball. It's about being the best. What more do you need?
Americans love to fight - traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble player; the fastest runner; the big league ball players; the toughest boxers. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans despise cowards. Americans play to win - all the time. I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed.1I don’t want to hear that the rules are lame. You don’t know the rules. You all but admitted you don’t watch, so how can you? Injury time, the calculation of which was always the source of debate, is now announced at the sideline as the half is ending. It’s been that way for years. Please try and keep up.
Players take dives. Live with it. It happens in every contact sport. Sometimes a player takes a dive in order to give himself or his teammates a rest. You would also if you just spent the last forty minutes and incalculable miles alternating between a run and a sprint.
Your team needs you. Your country needs you. The next couple weeks will not be easy and will only become harder, and the stakes higher, as time goes on. Sure, I think Landon Donavan is a priss, DaMarcus Beasley is over-rated, and Claudio Reyna is too old. It matters not. I do not expect you to start drinking at 5AM. I do not expect you to march down Main Street with the Stars & Stripes. I do not expect four Chicago cops in riot-gear come to the apartment (my personal best). But I expect you to get behind your team or get out of my way.
Thanks for letting me “share.” Thanks for letting me “emote.” Chuckle if you wish. Just remember that somewhere (not necessarily in Germany) someone in American gear is drinking and dancing with a hot Brazilian, or Swedish, or Australian chick and you are not.
_____
1George S. Patton, Speech to the Third Army, 1944.
Nah, Peyton is actually a decent QB...decent. He just has to be able to seal the deal, i.e. win the Big Games.
Donovan McNabb on the other hand...
I actually like to watch and play most big sports that were invented in the USA, except from Rugby-with-Pads. But hell, not to love football is just wrong. Misguided and wrong.
Greetings from Dortmund. This is the biggest party I ever saw. And tomorrow it's GER vs. POL in our stadium. This city will burn.
Don't forget to watch Dirk and the Mavs destroy Miami.
Explain why all those poor latin countries are so good as bsseball...
I can't watch it as it only runs at 3 in the morning on a Pay TV channel I can't recieve. I can just hope my basketball-crazy friend will tape it as usual.
Oh yeaaaaa. You betcha!
Wrong about what? We must be an inferior country because the majority of us think soccer sucks? Give me a break. Being in the minority in the soccer debate bring American pride to my heart.
Being pushed in elementary school has very little to do with a nation's ability to assemble a few good players or teams. Soccer has been pushed heavily in elementary school in America for over 30 years (ie more than 5 complete waves of elementary school students) and we've only just barely begun to produce enough pretty good players for our national team to make it to the good part of the World Cup. Latin America has a love of baseball that runs deep and long, for an individual player baseball is pretty cheap (a glove and a bat or even a stick and you're good to go), easy for even poor Latin American kids to afford, it's on a school level when you're trying to give 30 odd kids some excercise that baseball gets expensive.
I'd rather have "Der Kaiser"! :-) He is actually helicoptering (!) to every match... That said, the Eastern European coaches seem to be getting results these days... Arena merely looked bored, although it was said he is really p.o.'ed at the team at the moment, for obvious reasons.
Only if you spammed every tennis thread you could find with the earthbreaking news that you think tennis sucks. And I'm not including this thread, where I actually welcomed it.
Speaking of which, I actually looked forward to the World Baseball Classic. I am embarassed that we did so poorly, yet for some reason I saw no need to convince my fellow FReepers that baseball is for girls.
I also didnt see a need to make a thread trying to convince them that its not for girls. ;)
That wasn't the purpose of this thread.
Why, yes I do. Thanks for asking.
I don't think regular soccer should be changed, however. People that like watching it will, and others won't. If I was an advertiser, I'd hate it . . . witness the lack of interest in the current World Cup. That alone will make it a second-tier sport in the U.S.
As far as physical conditioning goes, if I was a parent (and living in a perfect world) I'd want my kids playing soccer, if only to prepare them for the sport of their choice.
Sean Taylor would hit a bitch soccer player so hard, his lungs would collapse and his mother would die of shock.
You know many, many people died playing football until Roosevelt made them change some rules/equipment for safety. That's why they wear pads and helmets, dip.
Actually, the great myth is that soccer is #1 everywhere. Lithuania's national sport is basketball. Basketball has made inroads in many places and it's probably more popular in China than soccer is.
Baseball is more part of a few Latin countries than soccer is, just as it is more popular in Japan.
What I will say is that soccer is only the sport because it is cheap and easy to play, caters to an older mindset. Try to get a bunch of kids to play soccer and it takes about 2 minutes to explain the basics. Try to explain football in that time.
People also tend to forget that North America (meaning Canada and US) invented their own sports and don't NEED a handed down sport. Just the fact that hockey, basketball and EVEN football are so popular elsewhere in the world just shows that OUR Sports have their own appeal and that maybe we just innovated a superior set of options for ourselves. Why follow soccer when you can watch the slower baseball, powerful and dramatic football or the ebbs and flows of basketball and performances like Wade's last night.
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