The Soccer Gap: What conservatives are missing.

National Review Online ^ | May 31, 2002 | Robert Ziegler

[marshmallow]

I'm partial to most all sports. More or less. I try to take each on its merits.

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.

[amused]

They have that it's called Hockey

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.

[LibertyGirl77]

and it is anti-Christian

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)

[1rudeboy]

I disagree. In fact, it is only a matter of time before some hand-wringing, milquetoast "journalist" writes a piece bemoaning our single-minded fascination with a sport that is played in countries where people are starving.

[LaBradford22]

Soccer is a fine sport. It's fun to play, and requires considerable athletic skill. No question about that. The problem with watching soccer is that it is hit or miss. I've watched a few exciting soccer games. But I've also watched a lot of soccer games that were played almost entirely at midfield, meaning that, in over 90 minutes of play, there was a total of maybe four or five shots on goal. BOOOOOOOORING!!!!!

[Cacophonous]

Of course I'm kidding. I do dislike soccer though.

[GoreIsLove]

by that logic, jim druckenmiller and ryan leaf should be leading their teams to the super bowl every year.

[philosofy123]

Soccer is a SPORT. Two teams against each others, similar to hockey and basketball, except there is no time out or instruction from the coach during the game. Football Americano, as it is called sometimes, is similar to a teacher who is teaching you a subject, and during the test, he keeps stopping the test to correct you. It is a TEST !

[Phantom Lord]

Don't even try to tell me that a portion of soccer fans the globe over dont hope that the opponents star player gets injured on or off the field and is unable to play.

[GoreIsLove]

I would think the loss to Brazil in the second round that year killed any chance that soccer would be big in America. It's was probably one of the most riveting sports contests I've watched, ranking up there with the Tyson/Buster Douglas fight.

[Hotspur]

I find your vigorous defense of soccer somewhat strange. My favorite sport is hockey - and I couldn't care less whether someone likes it or not. Why do you feel the need to promote soccer to the detriment of all other sports? Is soccer your God? It would seem so

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.

[Phantom Lord]

Now that's class. Why would anyone want to watch boring ol' soccer when you can spend seven hours hanging out with people like this?

Another example of how soccer fans look down upon fans of other sports as inferior and as uncultured mental midgets.

[Catholicguy]

A great soccer match is like the Iliad and Odyssey compressed into 90 minutes.

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.

[Chief Inspector Clouseau]

FROM THIS MORNING'S BALTIMORE SUN (yes, I know it's a socialist rag, just read the d**n article!)

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.

[NittanyLion]

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.

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.

[1rudeboy]

Not an editorial on why we should like the game and watch it and contain complaints about us not liking the sport.

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.

[KC_Conspirator]

he way its participants (at the highest level, at least) roll around on the ground and feign injury.

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.

[Phantom Lord]

These of course aren't world championships, which is what we're talking about.

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.

[Catholicguy]

In the old days, National Review had balls. Now, they are infested with Neo-Cons (Old Leftists) and they promote kickball or soccer or football or whatever the hell it is.

I consider it less entertaining than Tournament Bass Fishing

[untenured]

Football Americano, as it is called sometimes, is similar to a teacher who is teaching you a subject, and during the test, he keeps stopping the test to correct you. It is a TEST !

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.