Two of my four children played soccer as kids — I even helped coach one season and remember lining fields at least one dewy early morning. Five of my grandchildren play on one or more teams a year currently. I’ve watched my best friend Donna’s son play for more than ten years — high school, club, Olympic Development Team, state cup champions — we went to San Francisco one year, Honolulu another. He still plays and coaches. I’ve seen the national junior college champions play, a woman’s NCAA championship match, and semi-pro teams. I’ve attended an MLS game. A few years ago I saw the American women defeat the Mexican national women’s team.
I’ve even had a referee threaten to have me ejected from the fields.
So I don’t need anyone to preach to me what a great game association football is. Or that the World Cup is awesome. Indeed, the World Cup is one of the great athletic events — and the next four days with four live games each day are among the most dramatic in the sports world. (Several teams, the U.S. most likely among them, need to win or go home.)
But international soccer is seriously flawed in a way that turns off much of the American audience and I am tired of the soccer scolds and their quadrennial “if only Americans were more sophisticated.”
Bullshit.
I read something today that helped me figure this out:
There are many stupid things about soccer, but the lack of scoring remains the stupidest.
A 1-0 deficit, and your side is playing with the burden of 11 elephants on their backs.
A 2-0 deficit and you are now just out there getting some exercise.
A 3-0 defeat and the newspapers back home will call you an “embarassment.”This level of scoring just doesn’t make sense.
It is so hard to score in soccer, it would be like basketball played on 30 foot rims.
Soccer eliminates the most fundamentally exciting thing about sports: the comeback.
I think he’s right. To illustrate, if the U.S. had come back from a 2-0 deficit to defeat Slovenia the other day — due to an inexplicable foul call, the go-ahead goal was disallowed, and the match ended in a 2-2 draw — it would have been the FIRST TIME IN 80 YEARS of World Cup play that a team came from behind 2-0 at half to win. It’s never happened.
And I think the comeback is the great attraction in sports, particularly when the viewing audience has no particular attachment to the teams. Why else are quarterbacks remembered for great fourth quarter drives, relief pitchers for stopping 9th inning rallies, walk-off home runs, the Red Sox coming from 0-3 in games to defeat the Yankees, the Lakers coming from behind to defeat the Celtics Thursday night?
The skills exhibited in soccer are often magnificent. The stakes are among the most important in sports. But the games are not memorable for most of us.
That’s a good analysis. I will be slightly less ashamed now to admit I find soccer boring.
I love to play, love to watch some of it, but a sport where the clock counts up…
Well, thanks for that extra minute, God. How is that for DRAMA! USA! USA! USA!
Indeed, I think this game helps make my point. This game is memorable because of the drama.
And then again, as Charles Pierce puts it:
Of course, as he says, that’s his “Evil Me” talking. He’s otherwise as excited as any of us.
And, to clarify, to myself if no one else, I didn’t write above that soccer was boring, though like any sport it can be at times. I said I agreed that the matches were often not dramatic because of the lack of comebacks. That stands. Just ask Slovenia.
Watching soccer is like being a firefighter, I imagine. Really, really, really boring and then for a short time UNBELIEVABLY EXCITING.
Yeah, or heart surgeons and airline pilots.