Posted on 06/24/2010 1:22:08 AM PDT by Chet 99
By John Houder Columnist
Published: Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 6:01 a.m.
Last Modified: Wednesday, June 16, 2010 at 2:12 p.m.
The United States is a nation of differences. We all live together under one flag, but we're divided by geography, religion and socio-economic class. We disagree on trivial subjects like politics and important ones like whether or not the series finale of “Lost” was a complete disappointment. (It was.)
The only thing that transcends those boundaries and ties us together as a country is our mutual understanding that soccer is a pretty stupid game.
Everyone, from the richest Wall Street CEO to the poorest, bus-station hobo, will agree that soccer is an intensely boring sport where players are more likely to get hurt writhing around on the “pitch” in fake agony than they are while actually playing the game.
Where is the excitement in a 90-minute match that ends in a score of 1-0 or, often enough, 0-0? How many games can you watch before you lose all hope that something interesting will ever happen? Why don't they just pick up the ball or punch each other like in a real sport?
If we don't hate soccer, we certainly approach it with the same detached ambivalence as we do the metric system or photographs of other people's vacations. We understand that it's important or interesting to someone else, but we just don't have the time or energy to care about it ourselves.
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Haha -
I can appreciate that. IMHO, football is checkers, and soccers is chess. I take chess anytime.
(I’m being friendly. Were I having a bad day, I’d have written that football for me is arm-wrestling, or curling.)
The secret to futbol’s hatred in the US is plain old jingoism, nationalism, ethnocentrism. “The greatest nation on earth” cannot stand to not be The Greatest at something, hence the World Series here played by teams of a single country (yeah, yeah Canada too), and Super Bowl World Champions in an 11 minute “sport” played in only one country.
Also, a team in football that is down by 7-10 points in the final two minutes of the game has a realistic chance of catching up whereas once a team goes up 2-0 in soccer, the game is pretty much over at that point.
I've tried watching World Cup soccer but never could get much into the game. I would rather watch the Word Series of Backgammon or the World Series of Solitaire."
With respect everything you said there was wrong:
The average goals per game in any soccer league is not 0.5. It's more like 2.5.
A team 2-0 down with two mins to go in soccer and 7-10 points down in NFL is not a fair comparison. The 7-10 points are fake points. The high scoring is fake. 21-7 in NFL is merely 3-1.
It's also unfair in timescale. The last two mins in NFL is the equivalent of 10 mins in soccer. Many teams do come back from 2-0 down in soccer. I would bet any sum the comeback stats are the same as 14-0 down in NFL after the two-minute warning. In fact your own country came back from 2-0 down and SHOULD have won the game.
The fact you could not get into the game is no fault of soccer. Try getting most British people to like NFL and they will call it boring too.
In fact, strangely enough, most would condemn the game as many in the US do about soccer. It's not only slow and boring but slightly gay. All that protection, dancing and putting your hands were they should not go.
They are wrong too.
A person has to be intelligent enough to understand the game, but not smart enough to be bored to death by it...
The problem between soccer and American culture has little to do woth the nature of the game. Americans do watch long, drawn out athletic competion (golf and auto racing). The problem is with how the game is played.
The first problem is the officiating. Americans value getting the call right over expediency. Americans would rather see a game stopped to review video in order to get the call right, than to have it continue under a bad call that could affect the outcome. Case in point- our game against Slovenia. For the rest of the world, expediency is more important than justice. Just look at their court systems. Officiating in soccer is notoriously inconsistent, and it is especially scandalous that the premier event should have so many bad calls.
The second problem is the whining and feining of injury. Get-up, shut-up and play like a man. America is a nation where Johnny Unitas quarterbacked a game with three broken fingers on his throwing hand. Where Tiger Woods won the Masters on a torn ACL. Where Byron Leftwich led Marshall on a game winning TD drive on a broken ankle. Where Cary Suggs stuck a gold medal winning vault at the Olympics on a broken foot. And we tune into the World Cup to see some Italian crying because he got pushed?
Why all the animosity in either direction? If you don’t like it, don’t watch it. Unless you find something inherently interesting debating the form within which advertising has taken over “pastimes.”
When I was in high school, I always said soccer was for the guys who were too scared to play football but too proud to be in the band.
Soccer is the world’s number one sport by far. The World Cup is truly a world championship. There is no need to associate it with the third world (it was invented in the UK) or to demean the game in order to elevate another.
I do think that was uncalled for.
I think you just defined the qualities of a good coach, no matter what the sport.
“I am Dutch.”
Your team is playing here in Cape Town tonight, although it seems they’re through to the round of 16 anyway.
If you don't understand a game and its subtleties, then you won't like it. American football is a niche sport worldwide. Like Australian Rules football, it is played in very few other countries around the globe. Baseball and basketball are far more international sports along with golf and tennis. And soccer is the ultimate international sport played in every country in the world.
I love American football and soccer. It is not a zero sum game. My advantage over you is that I understand the subtleties of both sports having played both. Everytime the World Cup comes around, we get the usual group of soccer haters who feel obliged to attack "The Beautiful Game" because it wasn't invented here or they don't understand it. Each to his own, but it really is foolish to put down one sport to enhance another.
No, I don't know that. Soccer is boring.
Goede Morgen Mijnheer!
Do you watch much basketball? Do you know what the "flop" is? Kevin McHale made a Hall of Fame career out of it. Soccer players play with injuries like broken arms and collarbones. And have you ever been kicked in the shins or bumped heads?
Here is a list of the World Cup Top Ten injuries and how some played thru them
Whatever cat...you can analyze this in many ways and I won't bother to counter. Bottom line (for me) is the game is HOPELESSLY BORING to watch.
I will add though, the game is indeed growing in popularity in the US, and I am happy for all those who enjoy it. Everyone likes what they like for their own reasons - fine with me.
Good luck to The Netherlands!
Soccer is baseball w/o the action.
Absolutely 100% agree. That's why we have hundreds of sports to enjoy, and many channels to surf.
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