America's Crazy War on Soccer

Fergus Pickering

I've always found football (what the Americans call soccer) a very witless and boring game played by the likes of Wayne Rooney and managed by the likes of Alex Ferguson.I'm sure the Americans are right to anathematize it. As to their curious obsession with riunders (a girls' game) well, there's no accounting for taste. Cricket is, of course, the only team game for nature's gentlemen. The yanks should try it. It used to flourish in Hollywood, America's Jerusalem.

campbell

I've read the article over at Andrew Sullivan. It is a piece of irony al la 'A Modest Proposal'. Isn't it? Surely?

Drace

The money quote, of course, is, "Last year all three of my kids were on three different soccer teams at the same time." That should give you a hint.

Scott

I couldn't agree more with Stephen H. Webb. Soccer is a sport for women and children. Men play to win, not to tie. Everyone doesn't go home happy in a man's game. And men don't flop around on the ground crying after getting kicked in the shin.

flagwaiver

As any sensible American can tell you (and I happen to be the only one), its not riunders that's a game for girls. It's rugby.

George

Soccer is indeed a European plague. All the pussified suburban shemales have a game they can get all worked up about now. It's really a sad sight. The perfect socialist game - minimum reward for maximum effort.

peter

This is perhaps the most ridiculous debate ever. I appreciate soccer. I think it is a game of grace and requires a great deal of athletic ability. These players (C. Ronaldo, L. Messi, Henry, Fabregas, Torres) are incredibly gifted. I would like to see Stephen Webb cross a pass with the perfect touch running full speed ahead or bend a shot around a wall of defenders. Soccer is a wonderful game.

Steve

I emailed the soccer coach at Wabash as well as Prof. Webb suggesting they have lunch. Webb's reply was that he had already sent the article to the coach and they had discussed, among other things, people's thin skin. His intent was tongue and cheek, though whether he succeeded in passing that along is debatable.

Soccer is alive and well in the States and does not carry the stigma that may be perceived across the pond. It's certainly one of our second tier sports, but we've had baseball, football, hockey and basketball dominate for so long it would be hard pressed for any sport to break through that barrier.

And of course we here in America know that your beloved sport will not destroy us. On the other hand, Bank of America sponsoring Liverpool might just be the end of the England as you know it, no?

Cheers mates!

John

I would suggest that Webb is quite serious. His attitude toward the sport closely parallels the American right-wing attitude toward the feminine--tolerated but stigmatized. All the proof required may be found in his ruling that soccer is a game for girls. As the tolerated-but-stigmatized venture goes, that's what we Americans call a two-fer.

Chris

Really, I'm just always reminded of this:

hxxp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VgZjzHRQlo

We just find it boring in comparison to other sports. It doesn't have the right matchup of action vs strategy.

And, why deal with Soccer, when Hockey is basically the same game, same strategies, only more action packed.

zacksback

This is about the third "modest proposal" published in the USA recently that's leading me to believe the canard that irony and satire go right over OUR Yank heads to be totally a**-backwards.

Not Massie's head though. He fully admits it's meant in jest, but finds it conveniently useful as a platform from which he can launch the usual, tired, anti-American bashing. A silly satire in some obscure toff publication morphing into a headline of AMERICA'S WAR tells me one thing: Massie and his ilk really miss Bush. :)

matt

I kind of sympathize with my fellow American- except for an important caveat. Soccer as played in kid's leagues here in the US is an emasculated game which has been introduced as a purposefully non-competitive alternative to "more brutal" traditional American sports- the ones where the kids actually care. This neutered version of soccer, nothing like the cut throat game played by the kids of other countries, isn't teaching kids much.

Tim

Who goes with Fergus? I do...up to a point. I have nothing against soccer but I must say that cricket is the grandest and most rewarding of sports. Sadly, or perhaps for the best, America is largely unaware of cricket's existence.

A.R.Yngve

Picture this scene:

An American tourist enters a British pub packed with half-drunk, singing, shouting Brits. He orders a can of Budweiser, notices that the other excited guests are watching a soccer game on the telly... and he says in a loud, sneering voice:

"Ahhh, Soccer! That's for girls."

I ask you: Will he leave the pub alive?

Howard

If someone's going to go after odd and effeminate European sports, how about men's field hockey?

Broadway Joe

Meanwhile, Major League Soccer continues to flourish despite its ill-fated obsession with a certain English midfielder, what was his name again?. The tongue may have been firmly inserted in the author's cheek, but it does well to illustrate the American far-right's paranoia and xenophobia.

GO SOUNDERS FC!

dandy

"Soccer is just the metric system in short pants"

Mikeyes

No, the only reason Americans have not embraced soccer (that tells you I am American) is that everything is measured in the metric system. We simply don't understand it (although everything is lighter, taller and faster in the metric system.) As long as we are shown the best soccer in the world in meters, it won't fly.

Rugby, a sport that should be perfect for Americans, suffers from the same problem. How much is 130 Kg., anyway?

Nonetheless, I enjoyed playing both games and watch them faithfully on cable TV. I wish they put on more cricket, however.

The Hearn

As an American, I can report that I don't mind soccer, as long as the match in question has some gravitas. I couldn't care less about "Major League Soccer," but I'll gladly watch Liverpool take on ManU.

Sadly, Cricket is completely untelevised in the states. I'm hoping that they might deign to show a few overs from the Ashes this summer, but I shouldn't hold my breath.

ndm

If Howard thinks field hockey is too effeminate he ought to try shinty which is no-rules field hockey - you're even allowed to hit your opponents with BOTH sides of the stick. Actually, field hockey was the co-ed sport of choice on The Meadows back when I were a lad.

I saw a US-Wales rugby international with what I suspect was not a full-strength Welsh team since the Lions were somewhere in the antipodes. The US team appeared to be big white guys who hadn't made the college football team and were to a man about six inches taller than the Welsh team. It took until about half time for the Welsh team to realise that since they were just much faster and nimbler than the Americans they could just run round them. And run rings round them they did. It wasn't quite as exciting as France @ Murrayfield in 1984 but these days aren't very common.

dHoser

If you hear an American complaining about how weak soccer is, ask him if he likes baseball - if he does, he likes a far less manly game than soccer. On top of which, he probably believes his own myths about how baseball was conceived of by Americans...

Coach Jeff B.

Some fifteen years ago, my high school (American) football coach said to us: "Soccer is a Communist plot to weaken the world."
He was an idiot and a d!ck, but I think he actually believed that and probably still does today, as he continues to teach high school students.

And I now play soccer at least once a week and haven't played football in years.

Life is good, Komrades.

Hayward

When the FIFA World Cup was held in the USA in 1994 many spectators and viewers of the broadcasts of matches were amazed that the same players, apart from substitutes, played for the entire match. No offense, defense or special team players AND no time outs. The actual play ran for 90 minutes plus any injury time.
North American “football”, for the Canadians have their own version, maybe a game but is it a sport? It appears to be more like an exercise in logistics and management somewhat similar to a war game.
It seems to be intervals of "play" between much other stuff. It takes nearly three hours to "play" just one hour at the Super Bowl.
Incidentally the FIFA 1994 World Cup holds the record for the highest attendance in World Cup history and was also the highest-attended single sport event in United States history.
This despite the doubts concerning the number of football fans in the USA.

Mikeyes, SI has taken over in the US part of North America. Most goods manufactured in the US or imported into the US are manufactured to SI. Very little is made to the old British Imperial System or the US equivalent. SI is the base in most military, medical and scientific fields.

Hayward

Howard,
Have you ever played hockey. It is very, very fast as it is mostly played on a synthetic surface. Play requires great hand/eye coordination to both control the ball on and off the stick and in putting through pass short or long. Then to put a ball into a goal that is c.2m high by 3.5m wide when defended by a goalkeeper similarly equipped to that of ice hockey takes great skill.
Ice hockey is an amazing sport, very enjoyable to watch, but to excel you have to be from a country where the children learn to skate about the time they learn to walk.

talleyrand

Baseball is just as boring as soccer. But I am a chauvinist for one American sport, football. That game is much more interesting and strategically stimulating (but more complicated and difficult to unerstand) than either baseball or soccer, and contrary to european characatures, is not just for dumb meatheads. NFL playbooks run hundreds of pages, and preparation for a game requires hours and hours of film study.

Ed

American Football, the supposed sport of choice for real men in the USA is anything but. Think about it, they get all dressed up in those shiny skin tight uniforms, they put on fake muscles, they perform highly choreographed routines, and if they are successful there is all manner of ass-patting and strutting. He- men, indeed. Not there's anything wrong with that.

Annette

Perhaps being the sole woman on this comment board.... I LOVE SOCCER!!!
It's a TEAM sport, everyone has to play together to make the team work. As far as the 'lack of goals' goes, well, it takes skill to score a goal.
See, I went to a couple of baseball games. I've never been to anything as boring as that!!
You sit forever, then, after 45 or so minutes, someone actually hits the ball and some men go scurrying for bases. More likely than not, nothing will come of it. Baseball players get to be as out of shape as anyone - they may or may not run a couple of times in a game.
Now, playing soccer, you HAVE to be in shape. There's individual as well as team skill involved.
As far as S.Webb's argument of:
Any sport that limits you to using your feet...
well, what about any sport that limits you to a piece of wood??!! Or, what about the sport that limits you to the use of one's hands??? Say, Basketball, volley ball.
as soon as you get to that argument, you lose. Period.

Sporting should be about breaking kids down before you start building them up.
I don't even know where to begin on that argument. Child abuse, perhaps??

Grow up, there's another world out there besides the USA. The other world doesn't per se care about Baseball, or basketball, or american football.

Live with it. Or without it, and it seems you might be losing your own daughters!!

Eduard

Football (short of association football that's why it is somtetimes called soccer) is the universal game. The most popular game in the world. Only in the United States ... It is a bit like the International System of Units. That is also universal. Only in the Unied States... The United States resist always global standards when those global standards are not set by the United States itself.

JoeMama

What a load of nonsense! It's American football that is socialist top down management. Every single play is dictated. 'Soccer' on the other hand allows for far more individualism and creativity. 'Soccer' players are athletes and artists, 'Football' players are cogs in a machine. Maybe Americans like 'football' because you can be fat and still play. Can't be fat and play soccer. Come to think of it...w/ the current obesity epidemic in America soccer should be embraced and 'football' banned as the inhuman game it is. And talk about boring! At least w/ soccer the ball is always in motion. W/ football we have 5 seconds of action followed by watching a bunch of buffoons walk around, followed by a fat man up in the box explaining what we just saw. Retired Soccer players are in exceptional shape usually. Retired football players can barely walk w/ their knee and back problems and kidney and liver problems from years of abuse and steroids. Doesn't that say it all?

Michael Brett

Soccer will never be taken seriously in the States because there is not enough scoring and for the flopping. I actually enjoy watching high-level soccer, but the non-stop flailing when anyone is even remotely touched really pisses me off.

And that is infecting other sports, particularly basketball where there is a large European presence. As there is in hockey, which is also plagued by flopping.

My question to you, dear European comrades is-why endemic flopping in your sports? In American football, which has been getting attacked from all sides on this thread, you almost never see flopping. Say what you will about that sport, but feigning mortal injury is one quality I'm grateful it lacks.

P.S. I am aware that rugby also features no flopping. I also find rugby as easy to watch as FoxNews.

Bilejones

Soccer v American "football" (i.e. handball)

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig7/boukhonine1.html

Chris

You will have to note that it took two of my countrymen to write that small article.

dave

@Mikeyes: you are grossly misinformed. Soccer does not use the metric system (except that it is translated into metric for the rest of the world who don't use British Imperial measures).

The goal is still 8 feet high and 8 yards wide. Center circle and penalty arcs are 10 yards radius. There are 6 yard and 18 yard boxes in front of the goals, etc.

The fact that you get these plain facts so completely wrong shows you know NOTHING about soccer and your opinions are therefore less than worthless - your opinion about soccer is totally incoherent and uninformed by any remote connection to reality whatsoever, as are the opinions of the vast majority of my fellow American soccer bashers, for the most part older people who are out of touch with reality and are using soccer as their personal scapegoat for other things they can't attack openly.

chris barnes

Let's see. An NFL game stretches upwards of three hours or more, and in that time, the ball is actually in play for maybe 15 minutes, meaning more than 90% of watching a game is spent watching guys standing around, huddling, reviewing plays, conferring with coaches and officials and waiting through commercial breaks. And 75 percent of the players in uniform are just ... watching from the sidelines. And soccer is boring?