oh yeah, works for me. or maybe with the ball on fire, it sets the goal and goalie on fire as it goes in... 8^)
Posted on 06/11/2010 5:23:41 AM PDT by markomalley
Soccer is running America into the ground, and there is very little anyone can do about it. Social critics have long observed that we live in a therapeutic society that treats young people as if they can do no wrong. Every kid is a winner, and nobody is ever left behind, no matter how many times they watch the ball going the other way. Whether the dumbing down of America or soccer came first is hard to say, but soccer is clearly an important means by which American energy, drive, and competitiveness is being undermined to the point of no return.
What other game, to put it bluntly, is so boring to watch? (Bowling and golf come to mind, but the sound of crashing pins and the sight of the well-attired strolling on perfectly kept greens are at least inherently pleasurable activities.) The linear, two-dimensional action of soccer is like the rocking of a boat but without any storm and while the boat has not even left the dock. Think of two posses pursuing their prey in opposite directions without any bullets in their guns. Soccer is the fluoridation of the American sporting scene.
For those who think I jest, let me put forth four points, which is more points than most fans will see in a week of games—and more points than most soccer players have scored since their pee-wee days.
1) Any sport that limits you to using your feet, with the occasional bang of the head, has something very wrong with it. Indeed, soccer is a liberal’s dream of tragedy: It creates an egalitarian playing field by rigorously enforcing a uniform disability. Anthropologists commonly define man according to his use of hands. We have the thumb, an opposable digit that God gave us to distinguish us from animals that walk on all fours. The thumb lets us do things like throw baseballs and fold our hands in prayer. We can even talk with our hands. Have you ever seen a deaf person trying to talk with their feet? When you are really angry and acting like an animal, you kick out with your feet. Only fools punch a wall with their hands. The Iraqi who threw his shoes at President Bush was following his primordial instincts. Showing someone your feet, or sticking your shoes in someone’s face, is the ultimate sign of disrespect. Do kids ever say, “Trick or Treat, smell my hands”? Did Jesus wash his disciples’ hands at the Last Supper? No, hands are divine (they are one of the body parts most frequently attributed to God), while feet are in need of redemption. In all the portraits of God’s wrath, never once is he pictured as wanting to step on us or kick us; he does not stoop that low.
2) Sporting should be about breaking kids down before you start building them up. Take baseball, for example. When I was a kid, baseball was the most popular sport precisely because it was so demanding. Even its language was intimidating, with bases, bats, strikes, and outs. Striding up to the plate gave each of us a chance to act like we were starring in a Western movie, and tapping the bat to the plate gave us our first experience with inventing self-indulgent personal rituals. The boy chosen to be the pitcher was inevitably the first kid on the team to reach puberty, and he threw a hard ball right at you.
Thus, you had to face the fear of disfigurement as well as the statistical probability of striking out. The spectacle of your failure was so public that it was like having all of your friends invited to your home to watch your dad forcing you to eat your vegetables. We also spent a lot of time in the outfield chanting, “Hey batter batter!” as if we were Buddhist monks on steroids. Our chanting was compensatory behavior, a way of making the time go by, which is surely why at soccer games today it is the parents who do all of the yelling.
3) Everyone knows that soccer is a foreign invasion, but few people know exactly what is wrong with that. More than having to do with its origin, soccer is a European sport because it is all about death and despair. Americans would never invent a sport where the better you get the less you score. Even the way most games end, in sudden death, suggests something of an old-fashioned duel. How could anyone enjoy a game where so much energy results in so little advantage, and which typically ends with a penalty kick out, as if it is the audience that needs to be put out of its misery. Shootouts are such an anticlimax to the game and are so unpredictable that the teams might as well flip a coin to see who wins—indeed, they might as well flip the coin before the game, and not play at all.
4) And then there is the question of gender. I know my daughter will kick me when she reads this, but soccer is a game for girls. Girls are too smart to waste an entire day playing baseball, and they do not have the bloodlust for football. Soccer penalizes shoving and burns countless calories, and the margins of victory are almost always too narrow to afford any gloating. As a display of nearly death-defying stamina, soccer mimics the paradigmatic feminine experience of childbirth more than the masculine business of destroying your opponent with insurmountable power.
Let me conclude on a note of despair appropriate to my topic. There is no way to run away from soccer, if only because it is a sport all about running. It is as relentless as it is easy, and it is as tiring to play as it is tedious to watch. The real tragedy is that soccer is a foreign invasion, but it is not a plot to overthrow America. For those inclined toward paranoia, it would be easy to blame soccer’s success on the political left, which, after all, worked for years to bring European decadence and despair to America. The left tried to make existentialism, Marxism, post-structuralism, and deconstructionism fashionable in order to weaken the clarity, pragmatism, and drive of American culture. What the left could not accomplish through these intellectual fads, one might suspect, they are trying to accomplish through sport.
Yet this suspicion would be mistaken. Soccer is of foreign origin, that is certainly true, but its promotion and implementation are thoroughly domestic. Soccer is a self-inflicted wound. Americans have nobody to blame but themselves. Conservative suburban families, the backbone of America, have turned to soccer in droves. Baseball is too intimidating, football too brutal, and basketball takes too much time to develop the required skills. American parents in the past several decades are overworked and exhausted, but their children are overweight and neglected. Soccer is the perfect antidote to television and video games. It forces kids to run and run, and everyone can play their role, no matter how minor or irrelevant to the game. Soccer and relevision are the peanut butter and jelly of parenting.
I should know. I am an overworked teacher, with books to read and books to write, and before I put in a video for the kids to watch while I work in the evenings, they need to have spent some of their energy. Otherwise, they want to play with me! Last year all three of my kids were on three different soccer teams at the same time. My daughter is on a traveling team, and she is quite good. I had to sign a form that said, among other things, I would not do anything embarrassing to her or the team during the game. I told the coach I could not sign it. She was perplexed and worried. “Why not,” she asked? “Are you one of those parents who yells at their kids? “Not at all,” I replied, “I read books on the sidelines during the game, and this embarrasses my daughter to no end.” That is my one way of protesting the rise of this pitiful sport. Nonetheless, I must say that my kids and I come home from a soccer game a very happy family.
LOL
And still ranked #83 in the world. Depends on who you play, after all.
Glad to see them hold Mexico to a draw, though a win would have been better. (My two favorite teams are the USA and whomever's playing Mexico!)
I will say the Stanley Cup is the only time I watch the NHL. The NHL has the same problems all the other major sports team have: too many teams. Years ago you could get behind some forlorn team because they hadn’t won for umpteen years. Now there are about thirty teams in all the leagues, and the talent is diluted. I can’t get excited about the Florida Marlins, the San Jose Sharks, or some other nondescript team. And I liked hockey when it’s teams were mostly from Canada or the northern U.S. cities. It’s more interesting to read about the wishes and desires of a long-suffering resident of Winnipeg than it is to read about someone from Dallas whose knowledge of hockey is minimal. Even though my knowledge of hockey is minimal. (smirk)
Last time I checked, MLS is plugging-along rather nicely. Turning a profit, (reasonably) filling its stadiums . . . .
Amen to your whole post. I might add that it would be nice if they shortedned the regular seasonand the palyoff season so that the most important hockey of the year could be played when there would theoretically be ice on the ground in at least one NHL city.
oh yeah, works for me. or maybe with the ball on fire, it sets the goal and goalie on fire as it goes in... 8^)
Obama? YES
Illegal Immigration? YES
Soccer?
Hardly. People often say music is the international language of the world ( In other words, if you travel and play an instrument, you can speak to others whatever their nationality)
I would put forward soccer ( football) comes a close second.
First, if you become an expatriate, one of the easiest ways to make friends is through soccer ( I'm currently the chairman of the JIFL ( Jakarta International Football League ) and we have teams from Japan, Germany, Latin America, Denmark, as well as numerous others. Our refs as well as approximately 20 players are also Indonesian, so we don't exclude the locals.
Second, soccer is the ultimate easy to play sport as you only need the ball. But most importantly, especially if you do business abroad, whether you are in Iraq, England, China, or Timbuktu, you are a real ignoramus if you can't talk Pele, Rooney, Zidane or Maradona.
They do all right, I suppose, at an average attendance of about 16,000 (although that figure is skewed by the League’s particular popularity in Seattle).
I think the Euro Leagues are much more popular here than the MLS is, which is actually the case in most of the world.
Most domestic leagues have poor support, even in countries where soccer is the dominant sport, more people follow the famous Euro teams.
The one thing the Euro soccer leagues have over any American sport is that whole deal where the worst/best teams at each level move down/up to the appropriate league. That is just plain smokin’ cool.
I think it would be cool to adopt that to college football. Forget conferences, have the best 13 teams all play each other, and see at the end of the year which one has the best record. Every year, the bottom three drop out, and you bring in the best three teams from the second-tier.
Manchester United seems to have a pretty fair fan base around here, perhaps because it’s our own city’s namesake (in NH).
There are teams from every region of the world playing in the finals. The Europeans and Latin Americans are definitely the most fanatic, but unlike American football, soccer is at least somewhat popular in almost every country in the world. 204 national teams tried to get into this final. 32 teams from one country tried to get into the Super Bowl. There is simply no comparison.
The only thing about soccer that I don't like is that we aren't the best at it. It should be a matter of national pride to dominate the sport, but instead we leave it mostly to the Europeans and South Americans. Most of us have accepted defeat, often using various coping devices to explain it away (soccer is not important, it's for pansies, etc.).
!!!!! Brilliant !!!!!
What about Manchester City?
Check NBA or Major League Baseball rosters lately, we sure don't dominate those sports anymore.
Yes, them, too. I’ve seen various European soccer jerseys in the sports bars around here, which I assumed was either the result of a genuine interest in the leagues or a clever way to promote conversation with pretty girls.
Diana Moon Glampers Bookmark
I finally went ahead and ordered my Everton jersey.
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