I know it’s un-American to say, but I love soccer. Football. Whatever, I love it. I love every little bit of it.
Every four years when the World Cup comes on it’s like sports television Christmas happens on my television, and I don’t even celebrate Christmas. Personally, I find the World Cup way more exciting than most of the crap sports we have on to watch. Especially American football — can we get rid of that, please? It’s a bunch of fat guys in spandex groping and tackling each other over a weirdly-shaped ball, and then when they get it to their end, they do stupid dances. And yet despite the dancing and spandex and man-piles, it’s supposed to be this great bastion of heterosexuality. Who needs that when you could have soccer, the sport where the players regularly make out with each other every time they score a goal and then un-ironically go back to their super hot wives?
Soccer is elegant. Soccer is easy to understand. When they say there are five minutes left in a game of soccer, they actually means there are five minutes left in soccer. And these guys are athletes who run, like, miles every single game, not four hundred pound whales who run into each other like mac trucks. Have you seen the leg muscles on these players? They’re ridiculous. And ladies (or gay men), soccer players are gorgeous. A lot of them double as models for a reason. Have you seen the American team? Or, screw the American team, this year the hotness prize I think goes to the Spaniards and their dark, broody team of suaveness. David Villa! Cesc Fàbregas! And especially… (sigh) Iker. (You can’t say this man’s name normally, you have to pause, sigh, and say his name with reverence. Like so: …(sigh) Iker.)
The thing is, despite my love of soccer, I never watch it unless it’s the World Cup. Because as an American, it’s really damn boring. The MLS is a snoozefest, and trying to choose a European team and then keep up with their games from America is near-impossible. There are so many, you have no connection to any of them, and their games are never on TV, so you’re forced to read about them. And who wants to read about sports? It’s pretty much the fastest way to kill a nascent obsession ever.
What is it that makes Americans so adverse to soccer? Is it the fact that we call it “soccer,” which is a totally dumb name? Is it that there aren’t enough commercial breaks for you to go to the bathroom and re-fill your beer? (Because I admit, if you forget to pee before a half, that is super annoying. Inevitably the second you go, someone scores or makes a really fantastic run.) Is it that people don’t score enough? Is the game too simple? Do we look down our nose at it because you can pretty much play it with a flat surface and an inflated goat bladder, and we Americans need pizazz? Why is it that our popular sports must require an hour’s explanation before you understand them and their nuances? And do we really want to be the nation that dismisses an otherwise universally popular sport just because we’re giant, consumerist snobs?
America, I am begging you, for my sake, use this once-every-four-year opportunity to finally wake up to the fact that soccer is a phenomenon waiting to happen. Please choose to make this year the year where you don’t do what my dad does, which is watch for exactly five minutes before going, “What is this, a giant game of human Pong?” and leaving the room muttering about baseball. Give this a chance. I swear it’s a game that makes for great television — hundreds of millions of people worldwide can’t be wrong.
Please, America. Do this. For me.
Clacked by Julia Hass 
on Jun 15, 2010 @ 10:00 EST5EDT
Great post :-))
I’m just glad you didn’t explain the offside rule because if you’d gotten it right I’d fall hopelessly in love with you ^^;
*POST AUTHOR*
Didn’t they just change that rule, anyway? I only know the basic one of “don’t go ahead of the defender”.
If you mean that you can now be in “passive offside” then yes but that has been the rule for a couple of years now.
It’s hard to put into words that’s why I wrote it :-) Even guys have problems making it easily understandable without visual aids ^^; but it’s not hard to understand once you see a game in progress. Nowadays they also put that neat virtual line on the field and you see why it is or isn’t offside – and get the hang of it after a while. Kind of how I taught myself the baseball rules by just watching :-)
So let me try. At the moment your teammates passes the ball there has to be at least another player closer to the goal line than you other than the goalkeeper. That’s about it.
There’s some funny shenanegans going on once the goalie isn’t in his goal but that’s so complicated not even seasoned players get it right sometimes and have to rely on what the referee tells them. And there are two different kinds of free kicks (direct and indirect – direct can be kicked directly into the goal without another player having to touch it, whereas an indirect kick has to have at least to players touch it – no matter of which team).
There are also a couple of funny rules as to what has to happen should the ball deflate during play and land on top of the goal post or if a goalie decides to throw the ball and it lands in the goal (there are a couple of games on youtube where that happened, for instance one game in Scotland where there was so much wind when the goalie kicked the goal-kick the wind blew it directly back into the goal.). But the basics are pretty simple.
Every time somebody who likes baseball comes up to me and tells me that the offside rules is hard to understand I have him explain to me what constitutes a balk.
Never actually happened because nobody except me around here gives a rat’s ass about baseball. But I’m ready, just in case ;-)
…and it isn’t even when you leave for the bathroom; important goals have happened in the first few seconds when some channels are still on their commercial:P (has happened on several occasions in England)
And yeah, even Europeans stick to World Cups and European Cups;) Mostly because there are national tournaments and multinational tournaments and it just gets waaay to boring…
Also, you can’t really support a team in England if you’re not from England and there is only one player in the entire team from England… national teams just get more pride;)
gnarl, so basically you watch football (I will never call it “soccer”, never!) because the dudes are hot? That ruined a lot of games for me when I was watching recent world-cups in the company of (majorly) women. “Really? You wanna watch Sweden vs. Trinidad & Tobago with me? Why?!” “Oh, the swedish players are sooo cute”. As a serious football fan I kinda was insulted ;) And I wasn’t able to enjoy the game because I was looking at the players… differently ;)
On your other observation: As an European I, too, thought that football was too slow for the US. But then I tried getting into US football (NFL, that is) and, well, that can’t be it. Because that shit was boring as hell. I suspect it has all to do with tradition. Often times you are “born into” being a fan, because your parents/grandparents/uncles etc. already are fans. Or you pick it up for weird reasons when you are a kid (I “chose” my team, Werder Bremen, when I was about 5 years old because I liked their flag). Combine that with the team actually being good at it and you’ve got a reason for success.
By the way: You can watch football easily for free and almost live (slight delay of about 4-5 minutes) via the interwebs. I do it all the time because I am too cheap to pay for it ;) But I really can’t help you with choosing a team to root for. Or maybe I can: Which flag do you like best? ;)
Oh that reminds me…
“I want to watch Holland vs. whatever with you”
“Why?”
“The dutch guys are cute”
(next night)
“I want to watch that new Renee Zellweger Movie with you!”
“Why?”
“She’s so cute!”
The teethgrinding the next 2 hours was hilarious :-)
To each his own, I guess. I didn’t grow up a (n American) football fan, it happened sometime in college. I was born in North Carolina, which is the home of some of the greatest college basketball ever played (And I’m not a UNC nor a Duke fan).
I’ve watched soccer, and can occasionally get into it, but, oddly, its more watching the ladies play than the men.
LOL. No one can blame you for staring at their legs, Julia. But we do have other easy-to-understand sports. Basketball, my personal favorite, is easy and fast-paced, and you still can ogle the players’ calves. But I hear you. I have never been into soccer, but I’m open to giving it a chance. It’s like I never tried watching hockey until Chicago started their playoff run. I started watching some games and gradually began to understand the rules. Finally, I went to a game last Sunday and just had a blast watching the Blackhawks beat up the Flyers in game 5 of the finals. I never thought I would like hockey and never thought I would understand the rules, but I just had to give it a chance. And it’s probably the same way with soccer.
Did I mention that the U19 Girls/Womens World Cup is taking place in Germany right after the Men’s World Cup?
The US Girls will play one game in my home town and I plan on attending and taking pictures and posting and liveblogging. At least in Soccer the girls dont have to wear skimpy outfits like in Volleyball and the standard of female soccer has risen SO much in the last ten years. It’s REALLY entertaining to watch them and the Women’s World Cup will be in Germany next year. It’s going to be great :-)
Oh and I SO envy you for getting tickets to that game. I was in Texas in 2003 and payd 1500 bucks for four fith row tickets for my brother and me and even though it was a regular season game between Dallas and Anaheim it was SO awesome but still can’t compare to a Stanley Cup Finals Game. I so hate I mean ENVY you. Man. Such a great series of games. Got Pay TV 5 Weeks ago and with it all Stanley Cup Games. I watched so much Icehockey the last couple of weeks it’s insane (btw we call it Ice Hockey over here because our field hockey men’s team tend to win olympic championchips so we have to distinguish the two. We don’t have Lacrosse though, that silly game with the butterfly nets ^^;)
Ah this is fun. I hate you Ruby :-)
:-D In that case, I will rub it in even more and tell you that my brother paid for the tickets. I was so thrilled that it was a high-scoring game (7-4). If it had been a 1-0 game, I think my opinion of hockey might not be what it is now, and I would be commenting on Julia’s post as follows: “Julia, soccer is such a boring, low-scoring game – it’s like hockey minus the fighting!” I have been spoiled by basketball.
Up until now germany is the only team who scored more than 3 goals. We won 4-0 against Australia. Our team is playing so great at the moment, keeping the ball on the ground, short passes – you know, skillful compared to the typical german “destroyer” football in the past. It rocks :-)
If you guys can you should definitely try to catch the games of the german team. We are really really good right now and it’s such a joy watching. And we have some good looking guys two (Mario Gomez for intsance). And it’s so great that we have so many players with foreigh roots – from Poland, Turkey, Brazil. It’s so great to cheer on a team that’s so “multi-kulti”. Since the 2006 Word Cup in germany we’re finally able to cheer our team on like we mean it. With flags on many cars on the streets and people gathering in public places in the thousands. It’s a real event even though the tournament takes places on the other side of the world :-)
Yeah I know. Still no hockey ^^;
Seems their awesome looks didn’t save the spaniards :-)
This is what makes a 1:0 great. Constant attacks by Spain for nearly 95 minutes, 70% possession of the ball and yet they lose by a goal. What made this match interesting is the defense of the helvetic team, how they managed to find an answer to the “centennial offense”, the current european champion. Great game. Go Swiss! (especially because we lost the title to Spain and because the Swiss coach is from germany :-) )