…soccer still sucks.
I tried, folks. This summer, I gave communist football an honest chance. Multiple chances. And as I watched, I found myself disliking it more and more.
Don’t misunderstand. If you love soccer, that doesn’t mean that I dislike you. In an odd way, I even understand how you feel. I grew up playing baseball, watching baseball, and loving baseball. But to those unfamiliar with the game and watching it for the first time, I totally get how they’re bored out of their skull. Baseball is just as much cultural as it is anything else, and if you didn’t grow up in a society immersed in it, it’s hard to jump on that particular wagon later in life.
So you’ll understand how I find soccer just as boring as you find baseball. But there’s something else about soccer I just can’t put my finger on. There is a lameness about it. Watching it is not just tedious; it’s downright annoying. I gave it some thought these past couple of weeks — more thought than it warranted — and I came up with a few reasons.
First and foremost, soccer is too slow. Yeah, yeah, I know, they run a lot, and that’s considered “fast.” The Tour de France bicyclists are also fast, and yet, watching a couple hundred lycra-clad doofuses pedal ever so daintily in a straight line for miles on end feels like watching sap drip down a pine tree in northern Siberia in mid-January. “Mind-numbingly dull” doesn’t begin to describe it. Soccer is “slow” because there’s simply not enough going on.
American sports are fast. The ball moves fast, the puck moves fast, the camera moves fast. There are a lot of moving parts. There is strategy. They use their hands. There is shoving, tackling, and elbowing. Teeth are lost, bones are broken. The players need literal shields around their faces to protect themselves.
And we don’t have “matches.” We have games.
And our games don’t end with a score of 1-0 after two hours of play.
Another reason I can’t like soccer is its sissified nature. I was at a trampoline park for a kid’s birthday party the other day, and I happened to watch the last quarter of the Norway vs. Brazil match. The referees were going absolutely berserk with calling fouls for every gentle brush of the hand, every chip of the toenail polish, every sneeze and cough within a 100-foot radius of another player. And these “penalties” were clearly accidents, not intentional.
But the drama! My Lord, the drama was positively Oscar-worthy. Every player who received anything tougher than a light bump from another player would fall to the ground in feigned agony and lie there like a child, eyes wide and mouth ajar at the sheer injustice of being barely shoved.
Again, maybe it’s just the American in me, but any athlete who reacts like that to physical contact that most baby mice would brush off as non-threatening is not worth my attention, admiration, or loyalty. In America, if there is a flagrant foul, both benches clear, and we beat the snot out of each other. Then we return to our benches and resume the game.
And what’s with all the crying? I remember Tom Hanks haranguing some poor player on his female baseball team for crying in A League of Their Own, and that was a period piece that took place in the 1940’s. “There’s no crying in baseball!” he thundered at her. Yet here we are, nearly a century later, and apparently there IS crying in soccer. Quite a bit of it. Everybody cries when they lose. The players cry, the fans in the stadiums cry, no doubt everyone back home in the socialist republics cries as well. They behave like Democrats when they lose elections.
At this point, someone is yelling at their computer screen, Hey, A.J. Christopher, any one of those soccer players could, like, totally kick your butt. Conceded. Any one of those soccer players could, like, totally kick my butt. What’s your point? And after they, like, totally kick my butt, would they break down and cry about it?
My criticism isn’t at the players, but at the enabling culture of the game. Think about it like this. Elon Musk is smarter than I am. Much, much smarter. And he would like totally kick my butt if we took IQ tests side by side. But if I saw Elon Musk working as a cleanup crewman, carrying a shovel and garbage bag and following behind the elephants at the circus, I would rip him for it. I would ask why someone as smart as him wasn’t building electric cars or space rockets. I wouldn’t be criticizing the man’s abilities; I would be criticizing the limitations he imposed upon himself. Likewise, I can criticize soccer players for not engaging in a sport that had a bit more suck-it-up mentality and a lot less safe space group therapy.
And lastly, soccer will always have that globalist, cosmopolitan feel that I just can’t shake. It’s an international sport, you see, and we backwards Americans need to get on board. And so we did, but not in the way they wanted. They wanted to build a soccer fan base here for third-world immigrants and the coastal elite. It was never meant for us rough-and-tumble middle and working-class Americans with our Wal-Marts and free refills and pickup trucks. So I’m glad we rained on that particular pride parade, and I don’t begrudge my fellow Americans for taking a liking to the sport. I myself just can’t do it.
Again, it’s the American in me. If some sniffy Davos bureaucrat tells me to draw a circle, I’m drawing a square. And if some inflecting-voice leftist lectures me that baseball is for brutes, I’m turning the volume up on the game to drown him out. So no, I’m not going to be more international and cosmopolitan and global.
And it’s either one or the other. You can say that Americans have no culture. Or you can say that American culture is too unique and that we should strive to be carbon copies of everyone else. But you can’t say both.
Regardless, I’m glad this whole World Cup stuff will be wrapping up soon. I’m elated that the ordeal turned into the most successful PR stunt in history for the United States, but other than that, it’s been little more than a distraction. If I had to care, I guess I’m rooting for Norway to win the whole shebang, as nothing would put an arrogant, condescending grin on my ugly mug more than the global South getting trounced by the northernmost, pastiest, most blond-haired, blue-eyed descendants of conquering colonizers.
Gimme a heads up if that happens. Until then, let me get back to rooting for the Cardinals and waiting for football season to start. The real football.
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