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.
You might want to reconsider.
When I see American kids playing soccer, I see kids who, if not for soccer, would be playing baseball. I see kids who, if not for soccer, would have become tommorrow's high school, college, and professional baseball players.
That's why I HATE soccer.
So a kid prefers one sport over another. Big deal. Who knows if that "kid" would even be good at baseball?
I dont understand the point of your post.
LOL!
Quite often, the kid has little if any say in it. Those who do have little or no experience to go on. After all, they're kids.
Who knows if that "kid" would even be good at baseball?
That's precisely the point. We'll never know. If soccer wasn't an option, he'd be playing baseball.
You could always look at like this...every kid who is playing baseball is missing out on soccer. All those little leaguers will never know if soccer is really their game because their playing baseball. boo hoo.
c'mon this is silly.
That's an unfounded fear. Athletic kids will play multiple sports. I played 3 different ones on an organized level and at least 2 more on an unorganized (sandlot) basis.
Who cares? Soccer sucks. Having said that, Google's home page is kind of funny today...
I might look at it that way if I was a New World Order commie socialist. But, I'm not.
The summer sport of Americans is baseball.
Interesting. I attribute the intense dislike for soccer to a general backlash against the incessant squealing by liberals, demanding America to like soccer.
I'm sure a lot of the dislike for soccer is because of how the Euro-trash worshipping section of liberalism always says America's lack of fondness for the sport is an intense character flaw (interesting these are the same people who tend to decry ALL American sports watching and probably never watch soccer either). But the blind slamming of a sport just because it's being discussed is not unique to soccer, some folks just have to share their taste no matter what.
Dislike for soccer here is just part of the ignorant eurobashing.
Click on any thread about Airbus and you will see what I mean.
Soccer is great!
Oh, the 'excitement' that is MLS soccer!
It's like watching a wolf lope behind the weakest moose in the heard. Yeah, someone's likely to win, but damn it takes too long for too little action.
Actually, Drew Carey, a pretty conservative/libertarian is a huge soccer fan, and he has a tv series on now about world cup and his travels with the US team.
Equating soccer to liberalism is just stupid, and typically xenophobic.
Sports is anathema to liberalism. This love for soccer is more fake than Pam Anderson's DDs.
They still might become tomorrow's baseball players, most athletic kids play multiple sports, and a lot of highly successful athletes recommend to parents to have their kids play multiple sport to prevent burnout and to expand their overall athleticism. Wayne Gretzky says a lot of his success in hockey is because of the amount of time he spent playing lacrosse, caused him to view the game differently and handle his stick differently. And really who cares which sport they grow up to play if they grow up to play any at all, isn't the important part that they have a long, productive, healthy, fulfilling life; the youth of today does have a purpose for later other than providing sports fans with entertainment.
Yeah, and baseball is just nonstop beehive of activity!
LOL
Soccer is a strategy game, each goal is exponentially important, and the players are true athletes. I'd like to see an NFL player run nonstop for 45 minutes.
Goes back to backlash. We don't like Euro because they became all socialist. If they were ore like the way they were in Post WWII, we'll hate them aa lot less. Unfortunately, the communist rot is deep.
Tell it to the liberals. They love it because its "global", "European", gentlemanly, elegant, blah blah blah.
Their love for soccer is equivalent to the Last Lady's claim that she was always a Yankees fan.
Since libs wrap themselves so tightly on the altar of soccer, I'm not surpriesed to see FReepers hit back as hard against soccer.
I am a dual citizen with Ireland, hardly a socialist nation.
Assigning a political philosophy to a sport is just lazy thinking. 192 countries vied to get into the World Cup.
I don't think it's equating soccer to liberalism, I think it's equating a certain type of "liking" soccer (which really doesn't involve being a fan of the sport so much as using it to bash America) with liberalism. And within that context it's accurate, every World Cup the sports world gets filled with columns by well documented liberal sports writers talking about how stupid Americans are for not liking the sport, not that they actually watch the sport of course they just want America to know that not liking it is stupid.
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