Posted on 05/31/2002 9:28:33 AM PDT by xsysmgr
The most-watched sporting event in the world has begun, and most of my fellow conservatives in America are going to miss it.
While some of you no doubt are thinking that the Super Bowl and World Series are both months away, the event I'm referring to is the World Cup of Soccer, watched by an estimated 3.5 billion people around the world, including millions in the United States, almost all of whom are apparently liberals.
As a movement conservative and rabid fan of the beautiful game (that's soccer, by the way), I find myself as something of a de facto missionary for the sport to the political and cultural right. What is it about soccer that makes it (in America) the nearly exclusive domain of liberal sports fans?
Growing up in Ohio, I started following the game at age 12 via the weekly PBS program (should have tipped me off right then) Soccer Made in Germany, which featured a condensed match segment accompanied by English commentary. Youth leagues were just getting started in our part of the state, and my interest grew as I started coaching kids and playing in high school, but even then it was made clear that I was involved in an outsiders' game in a conservative area.
When I took an announcement of a big victory to my high-school principal one morning, I was greeted with a dismissive glare — it's not a real sport, after all. When my coach, the parish priest in a mostly Catholic town (and thus the only person for whom it was acceptable to be a fan) threw a party to view the 1982 World Cup championship match, only three players showed up. Once, before an afternoon match, my mom informed me that if I didn't cut the grass beforehand, I couldn't go to my own game. Does the high-school quarterback have to mow the lawn before his games?
As I became a more avid follower of the game during the '90s, I started wondering why all the soccer fans I was meeting were political and cultural liberals. I had moved to Washington, D.C. in 1994 to work for a member of Congress, and even the fans from the midwest, south, and west I was coming across via the vast and intricate underground soccer network (it exists, trust me) tended to be liberals. With conventional media coverage of soccer not abundant in America, soccer fans turn to the Internet for information. But a casual survey on the preeminent web gathering place for American fanatics — bigsoccer.com — again demonstrates an overwhelming presence of liberals among the rank and file. If I deign, on the other hand, to ask a fellow conservative about the game, I am treated to the usual pejorative responses.
For the uninitiated (those of you who don't persecute soccer, but just tolerate those who persecute it), such responses include "Soccer is not a real sport"; "Soccer is for girls"; "Soccer is a Commie game"; "Soccer is boring"; and the most damning of all, "So… you watch soccer… ?"
It is fair to note that soccer has had very mixed reviews from the American public in general, not just from conservatives. While the sport as a national youth activity has grown by leaps and bounds (an estimated eight million children are playing this year), the professional game has struggled to catch on. The U.S. went for almost 15 years without a top-flight professional league, and only time will tell if major-league soccer, the well organized and energetic effort to establish such a league here, will become an American institution. Soccer's TV ratings in the U.S. are low. While the women's national team attracted a lot of attention when they won the Women's World Cup in 1999, fan interest in that appears to have been quite specific to that event, much as it was for the Men's World Cup held here in 1994.
The main drawback to soccer for "traditional Americans" is that it is a game requiring some patience to appreciate. Baseball, the thinking man's game, has been affected by this national attention-span deficit to some degree, and traditionalists bemoan how the channel-surfing highlight culture has hurt the game. Turn on a soccer match and you are not likely to see something spectacular immediately (it's kind of like a Rembrandt in that way). While the seasoned fan can recognize the difficulty and artistry of a lengthy and complex buildup to an attempt at goal — often unsuccessful — much of modern-day, sports-viewing America wants feverish action, and wants it now.
There is, of course, huge interest in the game among many of our immigrant communities. Fans follow their homeland teams via satellite and cable telecasts of matches from abroad. In some cities, thousands of fans will gather at a theatre or recreational center to watch a closed-circuit pay-per-view match from South America, Africa, or Asia. Go as an American to a viewing place with a predominantly foreign clientele and you will still draw looks of surprise that a "Yank" or "gringo" would be interested in "their" game.
This perhaps touches near the heart of the issue for a lot of conservatives. Americans have typically come up with their own games to dominate. We invented football (even taking "soccer's" proper name and redefining it to an almost Orwellian degree), basketball, and baseball and made those our major sports. To the degree that these are played and/or followed elsewhere, they are American exports. While baseball is popular in Japan and parts of Latin America, and basketball in Europe and Australia, they are still "American" games first and foremost. Soccer will never be that. In fact, American football in part began, as legend has it, when a game of "soccer" became too boring, prompting a player to pick up the ball and begin running with it, and the rest is gridiron "pointyball" history.
Golf and tennis are also "foreign" in their origins, but they are not linked as closely to their international roots as soccer, and at any rate already had made deep inroads in the American cultural establishment by the early 20th century.
While eschewing anything deemed international or, worse, "European" suits the isolationist streak among certain conservatives, it seems to me that a much more proper Ameri-centric response would be to embrace the game for the purpose of demonstrating American superiority through it. For instance, doesn't saying "We play the best football in the world" kind of have a hollow ring to it? I mean, who else is there? But if the U.S. were to produce professional soccer leagues that rivaled those in Italy, Spain, England and Germany, and a national team that could defeat the likes of Brazil, Argentina, and France, how much crow would the internationalists have to eat then?
To be honest, my attraction to soccer is just that I like the game. But if the lure of American superiority is enough to get you interested in the game (kind of like when Americans get interested in things like bobsledding and Greco-Roman wrestling during the Olympics), so be it.
The time is ripe. Following the explosion of youth leagues, the quality of the American player development system has improved exponentially. We are even making some inroads on the rosters of clubs in England, France, Germany, and Holland. If American conservatives dedicate themselves to backing American soccer, the resultant energy and optimistic buzz might just push the U.S. men's national team to the final rounds of this summer's World Cup, or at least lower the percentage of the fans sitting next to me who voted for Mondale, Dukakis, and Gore. Help a brother out already! Strike a blow for federalism, apple pie, and the gold standard, and make a commitment to watch the World Cup this June.
By the way, the matches, played in South Korea and Japan, are airing live at 2:30 a.m., 5 a.m., and 7:30 a.m. EST. Happy viewing.
— Robert Ziegler lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and children, and directs media relations for a nonprofit public-policy group.
However, I have one major problem with soccer. The way its participants (at the highest level, at least) roll around on the ground and feign injury. The way they launch into a swan dive at the slighest hint of physical contact. This is the opposite of what I see in most of the other sports which I follow.
In other sports, such as football or baseball for example, players will feign normality after they have been flattened with a vicious hit or stung with a pitch, rather than give the opposition the idea that they have inflicted hurt.
It is this cry-baby behavior which causes onlookers to conclude that soccer players are a)soft and b)duplicitous.
What they need is to play on the small enclosed field
(kind of a cross between an arena football field and a hockey rink)
and let them play shots off the wall
...Then...ta da..Human pinball!!
That already exists. It is called indoor soccer and they even had a profeesional league(I think it went under).
I played in the winter with my club teams. It is played with what appears to be an oversized tennis ball. It is very fast paced with 5 on 5 competition. The shin guards are softer to cut down on ricochets the walls are used extensively for banking passes. There is a blue line rule similar to hockey. I still have a slight scar from that fuzzy ball grazing me and totally "burning" the skin.
You're kidding.....right? (PLEASE tell me you're kidding.)
I'm as bored by soccer as I am bored by most sports (waterpolo and anything during the Olympics are my exceptions), but I don't understand having an irrational hate for it. When I have kids, I'll certainly let them play soccer if they want to, and I will go to every one of their games. And I'll make sure to bring plenty of NRA/Eddie Eagle brochures and articles printed from FR to give to the other Moms. (evil grin)
I love basketball and hockey, almost love Am. football (Detroit Lion fan, so you see my problem), and loved baseball pre-steroids, pre-Selig.
I'm not really promoting soccer, more so decrying ignorance and provincial Americans thinking the world revolves around them when they don't have a clue. That's what the rest of the world hates about us, they're spot on about it, and it's hard sometimes to blame them.
Another example of how soccer fans look down upon fans of other sports as inferior and as uncultured mental midgets.
A "great soccer match" is equivalent to "good tasting brussel sprouts." And soccer isn't like the Iliad and Odyssey compressed into 90 minutes, it is more like "Love Story" thrown into a blender.
American not immune to World Cup fever
----------------------------------------------------
By Tom Mudd
Originally published May 31, 2002
DUBLIN - For the past week, there has been only one story here. While two nuclear nations have flirted with war, while cars ran off a bridge into the Arkansas River, while President Bush made the rounds in Europe, the only story here has been that of Roy Keane. He kicks a leather ball around for a living. And he's pretty good at it.
The story took hold early last week, when the fiery, temperamental Keane, who captains Ireland's soccer team, approached manager Mick McCarthy and said he wanted to go home from preparations for the World Cup for personal reasons. Ireland was stunned.
By morning, though, it all seemed a bad dream after the announcement that Mr. Keane had changed his mind, and would wear the green jersey of Ireland's national team. But no sooner had the nation stopped heaving sighs of relief than the news reached these shores that Mr. Keane and Mr. McCarthy had been in a shouting match, Mr. Keane had called Mr. McCarthy a few choice names and the manager had responded by sending his best player packing.
Since then, Roy Keane has dominated the front page of every newspaper here. And I've been reading every word. Like nearly everyone else in Ireland and in 31 of the other 32 countries whose teams have qualified, I am swooning with World Cup fever. At 7:30 tomorrow morning, I'll probably order my first pint of the day in a packed pub where lots of groggy, green-bedecked people will have gathered to watch Ireland take on Cameroon in the opening match.
I'll cheer myself hoarse if one of the 22 Irish players remaining after Mr. Keane's departure should somehow find the back of the net. I'll probably go along with or even initiate a few dozen renditions of "The Fields of Athenry" before the clock strikes nine.
I can't help it. After three years of living in Europe, I now understand what a big deal the World Cup is to everyone but my fellow countrymen back in the States. I have followed the Irish team - whose chances nearly all the experts had discounted - as it fought with grim determination to reach the finals in Japan and South Korea.
There was courageous match after courageous match. The highlight came when the boys in green, who were a man down after one of the players committed a stupid foul, managed to hold off the vaunted Dutch in a crucial game here. In the end, the team from the Netherlands, which many had written in as favorites to reach the final match of the competition, was out of the World Cup altogether. And Ireland was in.
I'm hooked. I'll be hooked for the rest of my life.
This will surprise some of the people who knew me when, because I used to sneer at soccer for its scoreless draws, for its long periods in which nothing much happens. But the baseball fan in me, the one who loves the last two or three innings of a pitchers' duel, started coming to the fore. And I found myself on the edge of my seat more than a few times.
It's amazing to me that I'm this interested. When the United States hosted the World Cup in 1994, I didn't watch it for more than a minute or two. But I understand the game now, and am in love with it. I love the dazzling footwork of the players, the speed with which a certain victory can turn into a heart-rending defeat, the adrenaline surge when a player on your team shimmies through three defenders and fires on the enemy goal.
And I understand why people even more unhinged than me have been selling off cameras and jewelry and VCRs and anything else they own to raise money to get them to the other side of the world so they can see it all in person.
I'm not that mad. But I'll miss as little of the action as I can manage. And part of me hopes that Ireland, despite the loss of Roy Keane, will reach the final game in the tournament. Another part of me, a bigger part (probably my ample gut), wants the underrated American squad to be Ireland's opponent.
If that most unlikely scenario should unfold, open a window toward the end of June. Because my shouts will probably reach all the way to Baltimore.
And you might even catch a few bars of "The Fields of Athenry."
Tom Mudd, a Towson native, is a free-lance writer based in Dublin.
To be fair, only our culture has so thoroughly pervaded the world. The vast majority of nations strive to put forth a government like ours. We are by far the most powerful military and economic nation in the world. People the world over still prefer to look toward America for opportunities rather than other nations. If Americans have a provincial attitude, perhaps it's because we're the most powerful, most watched nation on the face of the earth.
So let me see . . . folks don't like the game, so they shouldn't have to read editorials that they should?
Incidentally, this "editorial" is a response to a piece that Rich Lowry (I think) did in NR (a long time ago) calling soccer a socialist sport.
And finally, this piece was rather benign. I'm amused by the "outrage" that it created.
Soccer made a couple of rule changes a couple of years ago and this has gone away. Refs now card people for taking dives and it has worked. The melodrama has pretty much disappeared. Another rule change was to not allow the goalie to pick up the ball if his own team passes the ball back to him (unless by a header) so it keeps the game uptempo.
Last I checked, they produced World Champions. But thats besides the point. The cost and time that would be required to actually attend World Cup games and the qualifying games and follow your team is prohibitive.
I consider it less entertaining than Tournament Bass Fishing
Believe me, when head coaches in American football are talking to players during a timeout, it is not just one-way. They are in fact often collectively discussing their options. They have to, because again the game is so complex that they need to bounce ideas off one another.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.