Why I'll be watching a Non-socialist sport, Soccer, this Independence Day

In honor of Independence Day I thought I'd share some thoughts as to why some of our fellow Americans will be watching a sport, Soccer, more in tune with the American way of life than Baseball, Basketball, Hockey and Football. While some readers of this forum might think that the World Cup is a socialist meeting where everyone gathers to sing the "Internationale" after each of the games, here's why I'll be proudly wearing my US Soccer jersey watching the World Cup Semifinal at 3PM on ABC on Independence Day.

I've been entertained by postings on this forum, and in honor of the American spirit of free debate and the freedom of speech, I believe they all deserve a response. I've tried to address each of the main arguments I've seen so far below. . .

(1) Soccer is socialist- Consider the following. A football coach pulls together a playbook outlining where each and every player will go on the field. The coach tells the quarterback which play to run and when - the exception is the player that, on infrequent occasions, is allowed to improvise, or, gasp, call an audible. The Media praises the coach who can call the play to win the game (Bill Belachek, Phil Jackson, Tony LaRussa) - honoring the U.S. sporting equivalent of Chairman Mao, Stalin and Kim Jong-Il, who can lead our team to victory. That sounds like centralized socialist planning to me.

Think about the NFL, NBA, MLB and the NHL - if you're the worst team in the league, you get to pick the best new player in the draft out of college. No real penalties for incompetence because we all share revenues and have salary caps. All in the name of preserving "competitiveness" because, God Forbid, we wouldn't want one team becoming dominant. Also, don't forget, we must rely on State and Local governments to fund our stadiums with enough luxury boxes because all of us taxpayers should subsidize billionaire owners to pay multimillionaire athletes.

You might want to compare this with European leagues where, if you have a bad year, you are relegated to lower divisions - equivalent to moving the Kansas City Royals down to Triple AAA because they have incompetent managers, players and/or owners. And no, no salary caps over there. No drafts either, you develop your own youth players to play in the major leagues. If you're a team that wants a new stadium, generally speaking, you can pay for it out of your own pocket. If you're a poorly run franchise, you go out of business. That sounds like American capitalism to me.

(3) As for the game itself - I can think of no other sport less socialist than soccer. A coach can select 11 players for a team, but each of the players need to be able to adapt their style of play to the situation on the field. Teams that have players that are physically gifted, technically skillful, but most importantly, can think independently are, more often than not, the most successful teams. (As opposed to robots who must follow the coach's plans as dictated.) With only three substitutes a coach can replace a player in a limited fashion, but just like the business world, teams must succeed with the players they have in a competitive situation.

Great soccer teams are just like great American companies such as GE and Microsoft. You have a CEO setting some general direction to the team, but that coach and that team relies on individuals acting independently to score a goal. Great American companies rely on great individuals working for them. They don't have the CEO calling all the plays to succeed - that's socialist.

No tough guys in soccer? Take a look at this http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/sports/special_packages/world_cup/14856055.htm

Yes, there are few goals in soccer - a goal is actually a major accomplishment, and should be treated as such. People (yes, including some of us Americans) treat soccer as a life-and-death experience because a goal means real success, as opposed to the quick fix, quick high, that is all too prevalent in our short-attention span society.

(3) No one in America watches soccer. Take a look at ABC's TV Ratings - the U.S. vs. Italy game -earned higher ratings (4.4) than the past Stanley Cup playoffs over the past 10 years. The ABC ratings are just below NBC's US Open Golf Coverage and NASCAR Ratings on FOX. If you add in Univision's Spanish ("Copa Mundial") coverage (1.7), you're not too far from the NBA Finals. Not bad for a sport that's not popular in this country, and it's only growing. Here's my source: http://tv.zap2it.com/tveditorial/tve_main/1,1002,272%7C%7C%7Csports,00.html

(4) Last I checked, there are no time outs in life - just a brief rest at halftime.

(5) Don't worry about us not having enough baseball players in the future, baseball has been able to survive since the 1980s with a steadily shrinking pool of American players who have access to modern chemistry - steroids, human growth hormones and amphetamines- to hit further than their forefathers on the baseball field. Just like the countries behind the Iron Curtain during the Olympics. (See McGwire, Mark and Palmeiro, Rafael)

Yes, I'm one of the kids who started playing soccer in the suburbs 25+ years ago - I played through college, and I still play today. I was one of the first who dreamed about playing in the World . . . Cup, instead of the World Series, when I was younger. I was a reasonably good basketball and baseball player through high school - I didn't fall into soccer as the only sport I could play.

Now that I'm a little older, I'm proud to be one of the 30,000+ who traveled to Germany to cheer for the U.S. There are more of us out here than you imagine.

In writing this, I'm not expecting to change too many minds on this forum. But Ain't America great? - No one is holding a gun to your head making you watch a game. However, spare a thought for those of us heading to a crowded bar this afternoon to experience the atmosphere of a World Cup telecast. Don't worry, we also love our barbeques with hamburgers and hotdogs.

One final thought relevant to this forum - Thank God for Rupert Murdoch, who brought us Fox News. If you flip a few channels down on Cable, you might find the new Fox Soccer Channel. No wonder that man is a billionaire, because he knows that the Mainstream Media has been biased against us from the beginning. Does that sound familiar to you?

Why Soccer Sucks

Soccer participants actually fellate one another.

Soccer participants are walking advertisements.

France is successful at participating at soccer. That should say something, especially to the British.

The "World" Cup is not the a World's Cup, but a competition among 32 countries, disproportionately allotted to European countries.

Soccer hooligans.

Soccer is boring. Soccer is absurdly slow. I've had soccer apologists say with false pride how the average soccer participant "runs" 4 miles in a game. Newsflash: that means they are jogging less than 3 miles per hour. Translation: they are mostly standing around. BORING.

Soccer participants act like they've been shot - what pussies. Meanwhile, real athletes like Donovan McNabb or Bobby Baun play on broken legs.

Soccer is too simple an activity.

Penalty kicks. You are determining a winner by a random event that has no relevance to the rest of the game. It would be as stupid as replacing extra innings with batting practice.

Fruity penalty cards. How stupid is it to flash up some card to indicate the severity of a penalty? Richard Simmons was inspired to use them in his diet system. Are all penalties the same? Again, the inability to use the upper torso hampers soccer participants. Use hand signals, you troglodytes.

Psychotic fans. The South Korean loser who set himself on fire is one example. The mental stability of the murderer who killed that one player because he sucked (free clue: all soccer participants suck) is another.

Ties: 55% of games are ties. Ties suck.

Why not use your hands? Or your brain?

Soccer participants do not bathe.

Soccer hairdos.

Pompous pseudo-intellectual Europeans who become soccer fans in order to convince the populace of their link to the common man.

Soccer participants with one name. I can understand why your parents would disown any soccer participant, but they should take at least any last name.

Soccer hilites concentrate on what almost happens. When ESPN has the poor sense to show soccer hilites, they show missed shots, missed passes, etc. Any real sport shows things that actually contribute to the result. Soccer participants do not care about the result.

Soccer fans justify the activity based entirely on its popularity. Not only are the reasons why soccer is popular an argument against soccer, but it really shows how pathetic said activity is when that is the only argument soccer fans come up with.

The correct term for 0 is zero, not nil. Take a math class.

Buy a freaking cup, you pansies.

Soccer is not objective. There is no play clock. The game doesn't end after the clock has run down. This adds bias, subjectivism and appeals to lower intellects, and it destroys the drama from last second victories. Contrast such clumsy timekeeping (shame on the Swiss, who should know better) and the lack of any discernable strategy with the strategic precision of the two-minute drill in football.

Soccer is not objective, part two. The lack of offensive chances leads to ties, which, as we know, suck. Soccer's "solution?" Let's randomize the result (in those cases where a tie suddenly becomes an affront, the "World" Cup) by having penalty kicks.

Soccer participants on the same team have different jerseys. The obviously higher intelligence of hockey (goaltender) or football (offensive linemen) fans and referees is evident, since we don't need a different uniform to indicate a different privilege in the rule book.

Soccer is Third World inexpensive. Ordinarily, this would not be a problem. Most people don't consider buying hockey or football equipment expensive in civilized countries, but in the context of the rest of the world, it is expensive. On the other hand, soccer is dirt cheap - and by dirt cheap, I mean slum kids in Brazil rolling up balls of dirt to kick around.

Soccer apologists say the reason it is not popular in the US is because it wasn't invented in the US. First, soccer originated from the North American game called pasuckuakohowog several hundred years before the British played something resembling it. Second, basketball was the creation of a Canadian, yet is very popular in the US. Third, football was the creation of a Canadian, yet is very popular in the US.

Soccer apologists say the reason it is not popular in the US is because the US is not any good at that activity. The US soccer team won the World Cup in 1991 and 1999. Better find another reason.

Soccer apologists say soccer is an athletic activity. Using the Olympics as a barometer, it is pretty obvious that those countries that lack athletic prowess (Britain, France) are successful at soccer. Interesting to note, despite the inclusion of activities like soccer and walking in the Olympics (and the wrongful exclusion of football and rodeo), how those countries where soccer is not popular outperform those countries where soccer is popular athletically.

Soccer apologists steal terms from real sports. Hint: a pitch is something an option QB does. A draw is a running play designed to counter a strong pass rush. Football is a real sport that involves athletes in pads and helmets, not sissies playing kickball.

Soccer has no honor. There are codes of behavior in sports like hockey, baseball, football and basketball. There is no code of behavior in the activity of soccer: the penis biting should make this fairly obvious.

Soccer markets to Nazis - even today. Umbro markets Zyklon, a type of shoe, to soccer participants. Zyklon was the name of the gas used to kill Jews in WWII.

Soccer uses witch doctors. The same simplistic mentality that avails itself to soccer avails itself to primal mysticism.

Soccer idiots overexaggerate everything. Yeah, soccer deserves a Nobel Prize. Better load up on the security for that award presentation, because soccer deserves it less than terrorists like Arafat. Yeah, a soccer game is a wondrous event in your nation's history. Granted, these nations still have to master indoor plumbing, but please - stop the hallucinogenics, now.

Soccer fans actually set themselves on fire. That's a pretty good barometer judging the mentality of soccer fans.

Soccer cheering has no point. Football fans successfully cause opposing teams' offenses to call timeouts, use up the play clock, screw up audibles or cause procedure penalties. Ask Burt Hooton whether baseball fans affect an opponent's performance. Soccer? They sing songs - which all sound the same - regardless of outcome. It doesn't celebrate performance. It doesn't serve to intimidate. It has no purpose.

Soccer counts time up. Soccer games count the time that has elapsed, rather than the time remaining. This is stupid for a number of reasons. First, soccer games don't refer to time anyway, so why even keep it? Second, why the concern on the past? The score already reflects all important information of what has already happened in the game. In soccer, this is most likely irrelevant anyway, since the score is most likely 0-0, er, nil, nil. The focus should be on the result - which depends on the future. Thus, time should count down. Can you imagine NASA counting up (from, say, when JFK made his speech about landing on the moon in a decade)? How stupid would that be?

Hi Old_Mil-

Not sure how many of these items you came up with on your own, but I enjoyed your response. However, I had always been told that soccer fans were very sensitive to their sport being criticized - it's too bad you don't have a sense of humor.

#1, I'll get to in a moment. (see response 29)

#2, Last I checked Nike, Adidas and Reebok all paid quite a bit of money to the socialist NFL, NBA and MLB, college football and basketball to make sure their emblems showed up on their jerseys. In any event, I would rather see an advertisement for a company on a team jersey because that's the capitalist free market system at work. Successful teams, in a free market, can earn far more money than incompetent teams. It's much better than the socialist NFL, NBA and MLB selling the naming rights to a stadium that my state and local government taxes paid for.

Somehow I think you have a shirt in your closet that says "Just Do It"

[Time out, I'm sure you're exhausted after reading this far.]

#3-Cuba and Venezuela are very successful at baseball, and have very poor soccer teams. Fidel Castro is a huge baseball fan, and wins by the Cuban team are one of his favorite ways to spread Revolutionary ideas. I suspect they sing the "Internationale" at Cuban baseball games because it's a socialist sport.

#4-The World Cup Qualifying starts well before the World Cup tournament for all countries- That's why they call it the World Cup Finals.

#5 - Soccer hooligans?, as opposed to the riots we have, each and every time a U.S. professional teams wins the "World Championship"

[Another time out, due to a short attention span problem.]

#6 - Soccer players run well over 8 miles in a game - closer to 5-6 mph - on average, which includes lots of sprinting. It's funny that you mention this when baseball players run 150 yards during a 3-hour period. 200 yards when they're on the "on-again" steroid cycle and hit a home run. Of course, Baseball requires 3+hours of standing around when you're not running 200 yards. Football players apparently run 400 yards over a four-hour game- but, of course, it's always important to have oxygen on the sideline, because it's very difficult to carry 350 pounds of steroid pumped muscle over five yards.

#7- Hmmm... if Football players were as tough as you say they are, they wouldn't wear any pads like Rugby or Australian Rules Football. Pads look rather silly to an outside observer.

#8- I guess ignorance is bliss.

#9- I'm not a huge fan of penalty kicks, and I would compare it to a showdown between a pitcher and a batter when the game is on the line - However, I wouldn't want to denigrate soccer like that, as a pitcher would stand on the mound, throw back and forth to first base fifteen times, and then have a long drawn-out discussion with Stalin, er - the manager, to throw the exact that the manager ordered him to throw - hopefully within half an hour.

#10 - Yes, wouldn't it be great if we could stop the game completely for fifteen minutes for a commercial, while the referee relayed the exact call using silly hand gestures, when everybody already saw what happened. Or, alternatively, why don't we come up with a completely subjective "strike zone" which changes from day-to-day depending on how the umpire scratched himself that afternoon.

[Sorry, forgot to add a timeout]

#11 - Soccer is far more important than life or death.

#12 - No idea where you get this stat

#13 - Why don't you think on your own - on the field - without a coach telling you exactly what to do in every situation. Or, are you not intelligent enough to do that after practicing hours and hours?

#14 - Sorry - guess again. Since we participate in a non-socialist sport where we learn to think on our own, we are better prepared to have jobs in the capitalist real world once our school days are done. Rest assured that being able to think on our own enables us to succeed in professional jobs, and believe it or not - bathing is not an issue for soccer participants.

#15 Soccer hairdos- as opposed to hockey mullets?

#16 - Wow - sounds like your sports really have taught you the links between socialism and the proletariat. Fortunately, soccer is not a socialist sport.

[Time out]

#17 - Actually only the great soccer players - largely Brazilians - have one name. It's one word instant recognition - like Ali, Kareem, Magic, Michael - or the Babe.

#18 - You must not have read my original post - perhaps you need another time out to read it again.

#19 - I like soccer because it's more in tune with the American Way of Life than your socialist sports. Try reading my original post again.

#20 - Actually, zero and nil are the same. But perhaps your coach didn't tell you that, and you couldn't figure it out on your own.

#21 - So where is that Super "Bowl" that everyone keeps talking about.

#22 - See Post #10 for "Strike Zone". Also Football -"Pass interference" and "Block/Charge" in Basketball. You might actually want to watch a game now and then. After 45 minutes, both teams are alerted that there are X minutes left to play. It's too bad that socialists can't understand this.

#23 - Already answered in #9- I wouldn't want to denigrate soccer by comparing it with a socialist sport.

#24 - This comment is pointless - you're really reaching here.

#25 - So, we must be really bad in baseball if dirt poor Cubans can beat us, and according to you they don't have anything!

#26 - And Soccer is becoming popular in the U.S.- I'm glad you agree.

#27 - Agree wholeheartedly - and now since we see that the World Cup is more popular than hockey based on TV Ratings, we can all see that the premise is wrong- soccer is clearly becoming more popular in the U.S.

#28, #29 and #30 - Here's where I think you make a mistake, but I have been able to figure out a lot about you in your responses.

While soccer is the most popular event at the olympics, it's essentially a competition for 19-23 year olds, and no one sends all of their best players. As you may know, we send teams to Olympic competition chock full of steroids and human growth hormones (see Jones, Marion). Steroid use is not as rampant in soccer as it is in baseball and the olympic sports.

I wouldn't raise this if you were actually trying to engage in a reasonable discussion, but at this point of your response, you seem to be focused on guy-on-guy action - fellatio and biting penises (your words, not mine), and then you drop the hint that you'd much rather see Rodeo in the Olympics. Moreover, you also seem to be really interested in a sport baseball, where since the early 1980s guys have been injecting each other in the buttocks with steroids and human growth hormone (see Canseco, Jose - Juiced)

While I don't really care what interests you in your personal life, it's obviously one of those repressed brokeback mountain guys - not that there's anything wrong with that. While you can charge that soccer players have no honor - I think it's more of a cry for help.

#31- Hmmm, some moron at Umbro names a shoe in an offensive manner, and then the company immediately takes it off the market when it's raised to their attention - Really bad move on the company's part, but try to be a little more honest in your posting.

#32- I don't remember witch doctors at my soccer games.

#33 - Such as "We've done a great job in cleaning up drugs from baseball."

#34 - Sorry, haven't seen anyone set themselves on fire.

#35 - Actually, the cheers are more clever than you think - when the German fans chant "You're nothing but good furniture makers" to the Swedes during a game, it's actually quite clever. Americans are still coming up with good chants, but it's early days still. #36- Guess again - I'm sorry that you struggle with the concept of counting up (i.e. track and field, but everyone on the field knows how much time is left once 45 minutes have passed. Again, perhaps you should watch a game sometime.

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