Soccer vs Football

Or

If all 32 teams tie each other in the first round, is there a second round?

Or 

New insults to cast back against the old ones cast at us.

This year when the World Cup got under way and everyone started tying everyone I started to hear all the familiar arguments about soccer, and I had the same feeling I had a few years ago when the Bushites poked up the flames of the evolution ‘controversy’:  I was like “Didn’t this get sorted out like a hundred years ago?”

I don’t hate soccer, and to be honest I have tried more to accept this as a form of entertainment than anything I can think of – I mean I’ve only tried pot a couple of times and I don’t smoke it.  Ok, tried it, didn’t work for me, fine.  Works for you – far out.  Don’t sweat me.  But soccer, it’s like I'm more wrong for not loving it, than people are right for liking it.  I mean hey, it’s a fine hobby like chess or volleyball or a zillion other pastimes, far out.  Have your championships, and your cups, and your Kaka, but don’t be hatin’ on me cuz I don’t want to go to the party.

I will be getting to the actual reasons I don’t admire soccer much as a sport a little later, but there is this, I don’t know, politicization of the thing, as in the case of a lot of things that bother petulant Euros about us, that inevitably surrounds the issue.  So I'm sorry, but I have to talk historically, politically, then philosophically, and then finally I can get to why despite its worldwide popularity, I don’t have a bookmark for the soccer scores on my browser.

The Americans are identical to the British in all respects except, of course, language. Oscar Wilde 

OK before we begin let’s talk about soccer/football semantic thing.  It drives fans (mostly Brits) crazy that Americans insist on calling football soccer.  The standard retort goes something like we invented a botched, confusing, complicated version of sacred soccer, and then arrogantly called that Football … and then what?  What, annoying English soccer fan? Pulled the word ‘soccer’ out of our butts just to tick you disaffected coalworkers off? 

What actually happened was that back in the nineteenth century the hoity toity sons of British imperialists wanted to extend their effeminate boarding school activities to the athletic field (or “pitch” I suppose they would say), so they started organizing.  You see when England was the top dog world-violator, the United States was building, and the Victorians were doing what they do best – organizing.  They basically took a “sport” that every pair of street urchins across the world had invented since there were streets -- kicking a ball/box/rock/cat through two posts -- arrogantly declared it their own sport and organized leagues.  In their defense the only trains that work in Myanmar today are the ones the Brits built during world war two, so sometimes organization, imperialism, and greed can work.  In their offense while the United States was inventing a democratically perfect game – baseball; and changing the tedious rules of one-dimensional soccer into an admittedly flawed, but far more entertaining sport – football; the Brits were organizing leagues and apparently there were Rugby-style leagues (where you could use your hands) and Society or Association leagues (where you could only use your feet and vagina).  These two forms of ‘football’ got typically adorable British diminutives: ‘rugger’ from ‘rugby’ and ‘soccer’ from ‘society.’  So the word actually comes from the very twits that complain about us using it.

Basically in the USA, this second name stuck to the third most boring phys ed class activity (after exercising and listening to coach’s lame stories of how he almost got in the Olympics) and Yank kids grew up calling soccer, well, soccer.  And then with the advent of international communication and Uncle Sam replacing John Bull as the world’s slavemaster – a jealous England started commenting “Why in the world would you call football ‘soccer?’ after all it’s about a foot and a ball?”  And Americans basically answered like a girl talking to a stalking ex-boyfriend, “Well soccer sucks, and we have a thing we call football now, so it’s not worth changing its name, so please get on with your life.”  And changed our phone number.

And let’s face it, organized soccer is all over the world cuz the Brits sent it out there, good on ya.  However, in the face of how ‘unilateralistic’ and ‘nationalistic’ Americans are called for calling a British import by its given name; consider that every non-English speaking country that calls it “futbol” or something (where the words in that language are not ‘foot or ‘ball’ – pelota de pie?)  is a reminder of England’s past political sins.

In the world today, there are at least five countries – Australia, Canada, South Africa, and New Zealand, and oh us hopelessly uncultured Septics, that call soccer soccer – though “officially” they have changed it in some places to align with the burgeoning international smelling of money in the thing.  Though what ‘officially’ changing a sport’s name means exactly, I'm not sure – didn’t the States ‘officially’ switch to the metric system or something in the seventies? 

Anyway my take is they should call it ‘vaginaball’ because it honors a way-too-maligned body part, it is more descriptive of play, and let’s face it, more people would get interested in watching.

Getting my kicks abroad

Ok now that that’s out of the way.  I have tried to ‘enjoy’ soccer in at least five, no six, different countries (I had forgotten England lol).   I was watching yet another soccer game in some other country with a small group of fans – ok actually it was one real fan, his wife, a casual fan, and two America-haters who didn’t know a soccer ball from succotash but enjoyed this international pastime of using soccer as a pin attempting to deflate American ego.  And once again I tried, I really tried to enjoy the thing.  I was polite, but not cowed the way many polite Americans try to be when they don’t want to, oh I don’t know, offend the hosts’ national team.  Then the guy notices something on the tv guide – with a phony cosmopolitan smile he said “There is a baseball game on.   Let’s watch.” 

Cardinals/Cubs, great rivalry, good example of good baseball.  The guy gets up and hits a monster shot in the gap, but the outfielder makes a great cutoff to keep the guy at first.  So the runner has to put on the brakes and in the process he gives the camera a panoramic-view of his big-ass butt.

My hosts, not sharing my politeness, bust out laughing.  They ridiculed the ballplayer because y’know “How could this guy be an athlete?”  “This shows baseball is not a sport, he could never play football” (they meant soccer).

The player was Albert Pujols.  Easily the best hitter in the game.  When Pujols retires he will be honored with Babe Ruth and Ted Williams, and these mokes dismissed him on looks.  Now I aint gonna lie, Albert, a Dominican immigrant, does have some badunkadunk – which for a first baseman is not necessarily a bad thing.  When one of those speed demons comes tearing up to first on a hit, it’s nice defense to have them thinking about that bulk in their way.  And that’s one of the many beauties of baseball – and to a lesser extent American football and basketball – there is a job for every physical type – short people, fat people, tall people, whatever.  I mean if competitive sport is some sort of catharsis for war lust, than this is more indicative right?  Heavy artillery, speedy cavalry, workman infantry … ok sorry, that’s another blog …

In soccer there are two physical requirements:

-Can you run ninety minutes straight without a heart attack?

-Do you hot oil condition your hair once a week? 

So while we warmongering, shallow, elitist Americans don’t appreciate a cultured sport like soccer, it’s ok for footy-niks to nickname it “the beautiful sport,” and demand their teams be manned with nothing but leggy hot guys and nothing else.

Funny side story – when I bounced this blog idea off some friends, I had mentioned The Onion ran a comedic story about soccer finally admitting it was gay.  She said “I'm offended by that, I think gay people would have more taste than liking soccer.”

And I too, btw, harbor no homophobia, but if I want to see effeminate men prance around with nice hair for ninety minutes I’ll go to a musical.

Soccer blows

A minor note – another impediment to enjoying the World Cup is the incessant beebuzzing sound of the vuvuzelas.  The vuvuzela if you haven’t been studying your Zulu is a horn that they constantly blow at South African soccer games.  Like many exciting things, it was actually first found in Mexico, but only in the 1970s and I guess Modelo in a can is cheaper so Mexican fans have given up on the horn and they aren’t around as much at their soccer matches anymore. 

Anyway the horn got to South Africa and has been a sort of mainstay for about a decade.  The sound of twenty thousand of them makes a television broadcast of a World Cup match even more annoying than if it was just soccer by itself.  Amidst world-griping about the noise and “Could you please, I don’t know, cut it out?”  FIFA smarmily chastised the world implying we were insensitive outsiders saying that the vuvuzela is a revered African (they left out ‘South’) tradition and how dare we ask them to give up such a sacred rite?  Of course a contrite world, with visions of Shaka Zulu and his native impi’s blowing these things as they deliciously wiped out yet another military contingent of Eurotrash soccer fans, backed off.  Except this ‘ancient’ tradition is younger than my wife.  AND you expect us to believe that in a country where the average black income is 1600 USD a year and white is 8600 USD, that an eight dollar plastic horn is the same as a Sumo wrestler performing a centuries-old salt purification? 

Sister-kissing is actually accepted in many soccer-loving countries

Now for the philosophical.   By definition soccer is a half sport – one can only use half of ones body.  Now this is not meant as a put down, soccer is athletic to be sure, but it’s not a complete sporting activity.  Look I love watching Cirque du Soleil, I've seen about six or seven of their shows, but I wouldn’t want to watch a tournament of acrobats for a month either.

But the crux of my beef with the beefless sport – it’s too hard to score a point.  As a baseball fan I understand the subtler Euro argument that the entire match is a competition -- positioning, endurance, concentration -- but here’s the thing:  the idea of competition is to have a clear winner and a clear loser, otherwise why keep score?  The anemic scores and the eternal ties take away the whole idea of competition.

It’s so bad that even the announcers are consumed in the paradigm.  In the United States’ first match of the Cup, England scored in the first four minutes and the announcers were like “Well it’s going to be very difficult for the Americans to come back.”  Really?  In a one to nothing game it’s just about over with eighty six minutes to play?  As it was, the Red White and Blue (oh yeah England is Red White and Blue too) somehow fought back to make up the deficit of one whole goal, off a mistake by the goalie, and the first match between the two countries in over fifty years ended in a typical soccer anticlimax, a tie.

Now before any of you soccerites start accusing me of being a typical American who constantly needs sexy scoring to watch a sport and can’t appreciate finer things, let me point out a couple of things that should embarrass you.  Low scores means there is way too much attention on what should be less important things – goalkeeping and refereeing. 

In every stinking soccer tournament more stories and grinding of teeth are generated about this goalie messing up or that referee calling some blunder.  Like in England for days after their disappointing draw with the US, there was all this whining and pissing and moaning about how awful the goalkeeper was because of his ‘schoolboy error.’  And I'm sure not one journalist pointed out that the game was a 1-1 tie and if England was so good (which by the way they are not, they haven’t won the cup or even been a runner-up since 19 freaking 66) why didn’t they just oh I don’t know, SCORE ANOTHER GOAL?  I mean this goalie makes one mistake and the overhyped Wayne Rooney can’t get one by the Americans?  That’s the way a real man looks at the story.

Yes yes in the States we have scapegoats and bad refereeing as well and people go ballistic.  In a very famous blunder in Super Bowl XXV Scott Norwood of the Buffalo Bills missed a key field goal to blow the game against the eternally lucky New York Giants.  His name became scorned and his career took a dive, etc.  But that game at the time of his missed kick was 20-19 – in soccer terms the score would be 4-3 -- so at least there was some competition.  In baseball if a 0-0 game were decided by an error, half the stories would be on the bonehead making the error and the other half would be ‘Why couldn’t either team score?”  (In case you are wondering, Bill Buckner’s infamous error untied a 5-5 game.) 

Let us also remember soccer whining reached its height in 1994 when some dipshit pumped twelve bullets into Columbia’s goalie for messing up in the World Cup, the freak shouted ‘Goal!’ after each gunshot.  In that game (against the reviled United States) the more “macho” Columbia team could only muster one goal, but because goals are almost non-existent in soccer, it outrages the lower orders of humans that somebody could give one away. 

Same thing happened to a poor kid in Benin that brought new meaning to 'sudden death' just this month.

The same goes for refereeing, I mean even this year there have been a half a dozen stories about refs screwing up.  One even affected the Americans.  Interestingly not one soccer expert could explain what the foul was, and the referee apparently didn’t have to.  I'm not going to hit this too hard cuz the National Basketball Association has the worst referees in the world, but because basketball encourages scoring, the teams factor that into their gameplans.  Finally, I want to add that it’s obvious reigning champ Italy pays off the refs in soccer tournaments, but we in America are used to international competitions (soccer, cycling, Olympics) to being filthy – which is another reason we don’t get too excited about such silly things.

Access to the net

Not that anyone is asking but my solution to soccer’s ridiculous scores is to double the size of the net.  Simple.  “Cor? Wha’?” Sputters the bitters from flush-faced frecklies across the Empiah.  “You’re daft!  That is typicoo of yer bloody Septics, always wantin’ mo’ flash, mo’ scorin’  Dooble the net indeed!”  OK fine, don’t double the net, cut the net in half, add a second goalie, and make the game a sudden death, first to score wins.  I don’t care about the scoring, I want competition, I want to be un-bored.

In the interest of brevity, I will list the rest of the soccer jabs against blinkered Americans like myself in the Socratic method.  If you have other thrusts I encourage you to add them in the Comments below.  I will answer the ones where I can think of something kewl to say.

You say football is boring, well I think baseball is the most boring sport on the planet.

WTF do I care what you think about baseball?  It doesn’t change the problems with soccer.

Football is easily the most popular sport in the world, over sixty percent of people play it and love it, you don’t see the value in that?

Well seventy five percent of the world eats some sort of gruel with their hands for breakfast that doesn’t make gruel a fine dining experience.

Americans disdain for football is typical of their unilateralism, and geocentrism.  Your attitude reeks of ‘I only play my games, and I'm not interested in your games.”

I don’t know about that, we have adopted wine, sushi, sun dried tomatoes, rebozos, and shea butter.  Why?  Because those things are cool!  Soccer isn’t cool.  Furthermore, at the risk of sounding like a jingoistic butthead I have to point out that the American Constitution, as much as we ourselves don’t always heed it, is a document created out of our lack of desire for following the smaller minds of other governments.  Are we geocentric because we actually think about human rights?  Are we unilateral because we insist our friends do the same?  At the last check I saw that North Korea, Serbia, Slovenia, and Algeria all had teams in the World Cup this year, should we be more “multi-lateral” and adopt their judicial practices along with their quaint love of soccer?

Who the heck are you to judge?

I grew up in Boston, a very educated, very sports-addicted, very judgemental town.  That means I have opinions and I'm used to being hated.

Five million kids in America play this sport, are they wrong?

And at least five times that number of kids are being fed sugar, trans fat, and MSG – don’t misapply democracy here.  There are two reasons soccer is growing in popularity in the States.  First, the population of immigrants from soccer crazy countries is growing (this is my only argument in favor of closing the borders).  The second reason follows after the next insidious question.

My kid plays soccer, how dare you insult my parenthood.

Your kid plays soccer for two reasons:  it’s exercise, and it’s the cheapest sport to play.  And I have nothing against either one of those reasons.  That is the reason it's so popular in the world for cryin' out loud, it's only after that fact that its fans have to create some sort of appeal in it.  Heck, if I fail as a parent and my daughters insist on playing soccer, I am going to bring them to games happily because of those reasons.  But you damn well know they are also going to know how to hit a curveball as well.

I don’t really like sports, but I do like soccer.

Well, that is my point exactly.