I really have never gotten the American obsession for coming up with reasons why we supposedly don’t like soccer (even though a lot of people do, but they're Latino immigrants and hoity-toity liberal hipster eleeeeeeeeeets or something, so they don't count). It’s always been rather simple to my mind: we have baseball and football, and they take up the space that soccer does in other countries. A country can only care about so many sports and teams! Crazy theory, huh? Or maybe it has a lot to do with the very savvy marketing and promotion the sports associations for football, baseball, and basketball have done for several decades now. No soccer association has had the same kind of money or genius to do the same for their sport. Throw a couple billion dollars of marketing over the course of a number of years, and I'm sure the sport would take off.
But instead of anyone pointing out such logical, nuanced theories, it becomes some cockamamie thing about National Character and how Europeans are just a bunch of fruity wine-drinkers who sit around in berets in a socialism-fueled fog of ennui, and it's popular with those damn browns who are taking our jerbs, or some such bullshit.
On the American side, I wish people would get it through their thick skulls that you can just not like something without having to sneer at the rest of the world for doing so! Just because the French like something (though, actually, aren’t they more into rugby?) doesn’t make it bad!
Can't we all just agree to disagree? You don't have to watch the World Cup if you don't want to! Or you can go crazy and shout "Ole, ole, ole!" all the time! Just, everyone, stop whining and complaining and fighting about something that, you know, is supposed to be fun and entertaining.
Anyway, good luck to all the teams!
4 comments:
A really good friend of mine got me turned onto soccer a few years ago. Due to grad school and craziness, I don't get to watch it as much as I'd like, but when I catch I match, I enjoy it. Soccer has interesting play, hot guys with even hotter legs, and the most interesting and enthusiastic play-by-play I have ever heard. The excitement when they yell "Gooooaaaallll" always makes me smile.
Soccer boys... yummmmmm...
I'll be watching tonight (4:30am AEST) when Oz plays Germany. Hopefully we'll at least get a draw, like in the US-England match.
it's just kind of boring compared to more action packed games like basketball or american football, so i think in the end you think to much about it and the lines of play are always twisted so while there is more risks to each team scoring, there is less clear cut winners and losers. All in all while there is nothing wrong with soccer, unless you have a stake in the teams it's hard to be drawn into for most americans.
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