Posted on 08/08/2005 11:22:35 AM PDT by onja
mods-If this isn't in the right place please move or cut it.
Why do most Americans hate soccer? It's not just that they don't like it. They are actively against it.
Soccer takes more skill and endurance than the other sports. In middle and high school you take a beating.(Elbowed, tripped, kicked, tackled- All done fairly or behind the ref's back and without body armor) There are many tactics decided by the players(unlike football and baseball). It's a sport many different people can do. Not just people who are huge or work out daily at the gym. Fast people, skilled people, strong people(fullbacks), tall people(goaly), small people, smart people. Footballers don't need much skill. Mainly strength. baseball doesn't need too much skill. Mainly the basics(throwing and catching) and strength. And, seriously, why does everyone think soccer players are gay, weak, etc? They aren't. In middle school half the team played another school sport. All of the highschoolers could easily have played school football or basketball. Out of the hundreds of players I've played I've never seen one who was even acted at all gay.
There is no surer sign of decline of America's culture than the modern-day craze over this godawful European sport. Drive past a park on a clear spring afternoon and your likely to witness a depressingly unpatriotic sight: the baseball diamond lies empty as crab grass grows in the infield, while herds of healthy red-blooded American children dressed in preposterous looking polyester uniforms run around aimlessly kicking a white and black ball nowhere and to no apparent end.
Soccer at any level--from six and under peewee leagues to the pros (I am forever amazed that there are people who would actually pay money to watch a soccer game)--is about as scintillating as 90 minutes of Court TV. Soccer is somewhat reminiscent of ACC college basketball games in the pre-shot-clock era when halftime scores were in the single digits: North Carolina 9, Virginia 7. (What is it they used to say about Dean Smith? The only man who ever held Michael Jordan to less than 20 points a game.)
Soccer is the least offensive-minded game ever invented. They might as well establish a slaughter rule once a team gains a two goal advantage. Throw in the towel. No mas. To overcome such a deficit is to ask the losing team to climb Mt. Everest.
During the second period of one game last year a Good Humor truck drove by the park and on hearing the tinkling of the bells half our team instinctively awoke from their on-field slumber and scrambled from the playing field in joyous pursuit. Finally a prize worth pursuing.
Meanwhile, on the field the game relentlessly continued. For more than five minutes our opponents commanded the equivalent of a five-man power play advantage and they still couldn't score. Now I know what it must have been like to have lived through the Hundred Years War. Soccer is the furthest thing imaginable from instant gratification.
No other activity in life requires so much effort for so little reward. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the action in a soccer game has virtually no bearing on the outcome of the game. Herein may lie the explanation for why so many of my government-bureaucrat neighbors in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. have a love affair with soccer.
In soccer every mother's child is above average. There's no shame in losing (no wonder the French love this sport so much) and a tie is the likely outcome. No one's performance is better than anyone else's and no child can be, God-forbid, judged. This egalitarian philosophy extends to the absurdity of giving every kid a trophy at the end of the season. Even the kids that stunk up the place.
I am convinced that the ordeal of soccer teaches our kids all the wrong lessons in life. Soccer is the Marxist concept of the labor theory of value applied to sports--which may explain why socialist nations dominate in the World Cup. The purpose of a capitalist economy is to produce the maximum output for theleast amount of exertion and work. Soccer produces huge volumes of work and effort but no output.
What makes peewee soccer particularly insidious is that boys and girls play together. The left has converted this sport into a giant social experiment imposed upon us by the geniuses that have put women in combat in the military. No one seems to care much that co-ed sports is doing irreparable harm to the psyche of America's little boys.
At this prepuberty state of life girls tower over the boys and typically have greater coordination. Last year the Pele of my son's league was a kindergartner named Kate Lynn--Secretariat in pig tails. During one game, Kate Lynn stampeded over Justin repeatedly, which, of course, did wonders for his fledgling self-esteem. After the third knockdown, I quietly pulled him aside and advised: "Remember that rule about never hitting a girl. Let's suspend that for he next 40 minutes." But he never did because she was bigger than he was.
If the girls are bad, the moms are worse. They berate the referees. Taunt opposing players. Nag the coach unmercifully to put their no-talent kid back in. One woman paced the sidelines all game in a wild-eye frenzy screaming: "Jeffrey, Jeffrey, Jeffrey..." My kingdom for a muzzle. Once the game mercifully ended she smothered him with hugs while cooing: "Oh Jeffrey you are soooo good at soccer." Take my word for it, Newt, the Republican party is much better off without these women. If she's in, I'm out.
During the games, I usually stand mute on the sidelines reading the newspaper. My refusal to feign interest is a source of great irritation to some of the more fanatical soccer moms. They now whisper disapprovingly among themselves: "Oh, that's Justin's dad. He has an attitude problem." They regard my cavalier attitude as a form of child abuse. Next they'll be notifying the child-welfare league about me.
So the issue of the day is whether we Americans will take back our culture from the un-American soccer enthusiasts. We need to begin to channel our kids energies into more productive activities: baseball, football, tennis, MTV--even smoking would be an improvement.
Soccer is draining America of its top talent in the sports that really matter--like basketball. Charles Barkley recently warned that within the next three Olympics the Europeans will be competitive with the U.S. Dream Team. When Sweden beats the NBA stars in basketball, Americans will assuredly awaken from their slumber. But by then it will be too late."
More team play in ten minutes of any WNBA game than in a whole week of the one-on-one dunk fest that the NBA has become.
Pretty much how I feel.
Hockey keeps it interesting by having a smaller field of play, fewer players, and more contact.
We all have our own opinions.
Not sure where FRANCESUCKS; gets a mention... (but I like it :)
A. Because it is not Football. (American football, NFL, NCAA) (I hate it when the Europeans call soccer football.)
All you need is a ball. Not equipment. Even then when I was a kid we opted for kickball.
Thank you. I don't care to see a bunch of machines going in circles. And as a northern city guy, I don't care for the redneck Ruro-American subculture.
I have my own private NASCAR every time I get on the highway.
In South America futbol is the national pastime in most countries. Probably so in the E.U. and Asia. The players are much beloved but they are kinda nasty and declassee and they are not expected to be anybody's roll model. LOL! In the US it was attempted to be foisted upon us in the seventies along with the metric system, Title IX and yes soccer mom's. The dislike for soccer is just the American grassroots rising up against tyranny. Any soccer loving progressive would understand that. Finally, let me report that outside the US no woman would be caught dead playing soccer even the anglophile daughters of the oligarchic elite that imitate anything american. Then there's the poignant spectacle of the US soccer league purchasing the venerable, but long at the tooth Pele. The world's greatest and most beloved soccer star from Brazil gone to seed playing in New York City add insult to injury. Why don't you like the NFL?
I put golf ahead of soccer. I can play soccer but have yet to break 83 on the links.
I geuss I admire skill more than strength. I think of the pitcher and QB as the best players. Basic summary of what I learned. You all hate it because it's European, sissy(only pro), and not exciting. But to people who understand better it is. I know what the strategies, etc. are. It is more fun playing than watching. I think that football and baseball are boring but you all love them. Each to his own. Thanks for your generally nonoffensive information.
I'm not sure, but I think it has to do with the nearly universal tendency among soccer players to copulate with people of their own gender.
I don't like soccer for the same reason I don't like bicycle racing or Formula 1 racing: It's too Euro-PEE-an.
I am a Northern NASCAR fan. It's a manly sport, and manly men are part of what makes America Great! ;-)
Good point. I love watching the kids play, but rarely, if ever, watch more than a couple of minutes of it on TV. It's better live.
The WNBA, or "Statue Basketball," as I call it. Nice team play maybe, but a bunch of short slow people with no strength who can't leap more than three inches.
But you're right to be disgusted by what the NBA has become. Uncalled traveling and carrying-the-ball violations on every series. Plus, tattoos and trash-talking by lowlifes in sneakers. Not many guys to cheer for.
In our league, the reason the "four passes before shooting" thing comes up is because there's a STUPID rule that a blowout, however they define it, results in a tie game in the standings.
That is just DUMB!!!
Yeah, and the players get brutally injured to gain them. It's violent and suspenseful.
Bogey: I agree, hockey is better than soccer for those reasons. I'm glad the NHL is back this year.
Charles: What I can't believe is that in addition to NASCAR on TV, they actually put these races on the radio too!
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