Didn’t the United States lose to third-world Ghana when the games were in second-world South Africa in 2010?
Sorry, folks, I can’t take this sport seriously when a squad from a country best known for internet scamming beats the U.S. in some second-rate country.
Now they are playing in Brazil — a country so ill prepared to finish their venues that they are leaving design elements off. And let’s not even talk about the corruption that brought the 2022 games to Qatar — a country the size of frigging Connecticut.
Yes, and in the preceding world cup in 2006, as well!
I used to share your attitude about soccer. Most of us like the games we grew up with, and I grew up with basketball, football, and baseball, in that order.
Now that I'm a grumpy old man, I am disgusted at how basketball and football have degraded themselves to chase television dollars. Basketball, the greatest game ever invented, is now almost unwatchable at the NBA and major college level. Football is also a pale shadow of what it used to be. Too many thugs, too many kids with dizzying amounts of money behaving badly, and the integrity of the game undermined by rules changes. I don't remember the last time I tried to watch a football game. I remember flipping the tv on, but I lost interest after the first 30 or 40 commercials. I think they slipped a down or two of football in there somewhere.
Soccer, at least, hasn't sold out to tv.
Then I had two daughters grow up playing youth soccer and I actually watched enough to develop some understanding and liking for the game. Soccer has its problems, as any sport does, but it's healthier than the NBA or NFL. U.S. women's soccer (I have two daughters who play, so we follow the women's national team) is among the best in the world. U.S. men's soccer is a respectable middle tier team, which for us is progress. The top male athletes will still gravitate towards the big money sports, and that will hold U.S. men's soccer back until players are much better paid. But looking at the poisonous effect of tv money on other U.S. sports, I'm not particularly eager for that to happen. If American tv ever gets its hands on soccer, we'll have commercial breaks on every throw in.
That’s the beauty of the game. You don’t have to be a huge, sports-minded powerhouse country to field a good soccer team.