Ok enough already ESPN…world cup soccer is not that interesting. 8 hours of your broadcast day should never be devoted to the discussion of whether or not a team will get lucky enough to win games 1-0. I hate soccer. It’s a rejects game, a game for people who on the whole couldn’t think fast or catch a ball…or even throw a ball by the time they were 10….interesting.
I am not ignorant of the sport. I love sports in general and I see them all for the unique snow flake that they are, so trust me, I have made this decision based on years of seeing soccer paraded around in front of me on TV, in the communities, and most of all by people who don’t live in America and somehow think they found the greatest thing since sliced white bread.
Soccer is devoid of several key characteristics that make any sport watchable. That is a biased (yeah I call myself on my own BS) statement but I assure you that I am not without the chops necessary to completely validate it.
Here are the three top arguments I hear that people believe make soccer legitimate:
#1 it is the most played sport in the world, #2 it is an athletic/talented game, #3 it takes other worldly stamina to be a professional soccer player.
Ok lets go 1 by 1.
Soccer is the most widely played. There’s a reason for that though. Kids all over the world can cut the head off a goat or kick a coconut in the street and call it soccer, and that’s primarily where most of the world exists. When I was a kid I generally became bored with kicking a can, or just punting a pigskin football. It’s easy. I can learn the fundamentals for soccer in an hour. That cant be done with other “skilled” sports.
Soccer is for the poor. That’s as true and as clear cut as it gets. You don’t need pads, or a mouth piece, or upper body strength to play it. (women love soccer…no upper body strength required) and most of all, sissies and rejects the world over who don’t have hand eye coordination can find a sport to identify with. The ball is big and easy to see and no worries, we may not even require you to touch it for 90 whole minutes.
#2 the talent is hit or miss in soccer. Generally the most talented people are the forwards. The strikes….the dead ball people. By dead ball I mean the person that kicks it in from the corner or scores on a penalty kick or just generally gets the opportunity to take a breather look at the entire field and then make a decision.
Soccer is not played on reflex or synapse it’s played one move at a time. The last time I checked checkers isn’t considered a real sport.
For years David Beckham has been considered one of the most talented athletes of our generation when in reality he’s a 160 lb Englishman/twerp who wouldn’t survive one practice in any other real sport. I could kick his ass. He kicks a ball from the corner and someone else heads it into a 30 ft wide net from ten feet away. Wow that’s talent.
“Dead ball skills” and other fancy terms used in soccer are really just a bunch of phooey. In hockey we call it in “throwing it in front”….it’s real talented stuff. Assuming that I can kick a soccer ball 40 yards or so (and I can)…It’s rational to therefore conclude that I could also set up dead ball plays for other people to clean up the garbage. See, at least in hockey we call it garbage scoring…we’re proud of it. In soccer you make 30 million a season for it because the rest of the world is in awe, not knowing that it takes little to no athletic ability to do that.
#3 soccer is not that strenuous. There are millions of cross country runners, track and field people and just general middle aged women that jog 5 miles every night and they don’t get commendation for it like soccer players do.
The field is massive, I agree it would be a bitch to play on it….but that would only be true if there wasn’t 100 players on it at one time. They kick it to a teammate…who then turns 180 degrees and kicks it to another teammate and etc. This goes on for like 10 solid minutes and eventually the ball travels the distance of the field but no one player is required or even expected to cover that distance all by himself…..in any other sport that’s played as a team (real football, hockey, basketball, rugby, water polo, ok that last one is a bit ridiculous) every single player may be EXPECTED to cover the entire playing surface at all times.
Soccer is not that fatiguing. There are plenty of stoppages in play…defense is catered to by an abysmal idea of what constitutes offsides (you can never be behind a defender before the ball even if the defender is a dumbass and plays up too far…so please soccer players don’t run too hard to get a breakaway! Wtf?)
….and quite honestly it’s boring as all sin. I don’t care how loud a stadium of 200,000 poor drunk Europeans can sing….soccer is a lay sport for lay athletes who for the most part can’t compete elsewhere….because if they can, they do. Soccer is a fundamental.
Ever wonder why lots of real athletes play it and then move on to more talented sports? Because running and footwork is the basic building block of all sports. And a real athlete wants to take advantage of all the talents the body can produce…not just his legs. I can play soccer I just don’t enjoy it. In high school and low level colleges I could play midfield for any team. I might even be able to play up. If you’re a pissed soccer fan and want to challenge me to it…go ahead…I play hockey…footwork is what we do….don’t be mad that I just took the cover off your simple sport.
Seriously, whats next? I guess that’s how Curling got to be an olympic sport. Don’t get me started. Thank you for the proliferation soccer. You suck. Soccer is far worse than just this…the proliferation it starts goes much further as is discussed by Chuck Klosterman in “Sex, drugs, and Cocoa Puffs”…
Read it….its eye opening.
Everyone gets to play in soccer…parents can drop their ADD kids off to run for an hour and they get to play. Skill or earning minutes doesn’t exist. Parents do the same thing with other sports now expecting it to be like soccer….little do they realize that any coach worth his salt will only play the kids that work hard enough and develop the talent necessary to actually play the game. We’re not all born equal athletically…that’s absurd. And then parents punch coaches for not playing little Johnny who sucks and can only run. Or worse yet get the coaches fired.
Kids play soccer to avoid the embarrassment of missing free throws, striking out, getting burnt in the secondary or not possessing the upper body strength to shoot a slap shot etc….or just to avoid physical sports, aka sissies. (these are Klostermans views and though I am highly jealous that I didn’t come up with them first, I am in 100% total agreement with him.)
In conclusion, I can only appreciate the athletic appeals of soccer when half the stadium collapses and cuts into the soccer buying market. Any real athlete can play soccer with ease and generally does so before moving on to bigger and better things. Soccer is for hippies who stay with one stupid movement and convince themselves it is the best game in town….
when is real football season gonna start?
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