Posted on 03/11/2009 8:56:05 AM PDT by AreaMan
How Soccer is Ruining America: A Jeremiad
Soccer is running America into the ground, and there is very little anyone can do about it. Social critics have long observed that we live in a therapeutic society that treats young people as if they can do no wrong. Every kid is a winner, and nobody is ever left behind, no matter how many times they watch the ball going the other way. Whether the dumbing down of America or soccer came first is hard to say, but soccer is clearly an important means by which American energy, drive, and competitiveness is being undermined to the point of no return.
What other game, to put it bluntly, is so boring to watch? (Bowling and golf come to mind, but the sound of crashing pins and the sight of the well-attired strolling on perfectly kept greens are at least inherently pleasurable activities.) The linear, two-dimensional action of soccer is like the rocking of a boat but without any storm and while the boat has not even left the dock. Think of two posses pursuing their prey in opposite directions without any bullets in their guns. Soccer is the fluoridation of the American sporting scene.
For those who think I jest, let me put forth four points, which is more points than most fans will see in a week of games—and more points than most soccer players have scored since their pee-wee days.
1) Any sport that limits you to using your feet, with the occasional bang of the head, has something very wrong with it. Indeed, soccer is a liberal’s dream of tragedy: It creates an egalitarian playing field by rigorously enforcing a uniform disability. Anthropologists commonly define man according to his use of hands. We have the thumb, an opposable digit that God gave us to distinguish us from animals that walk on all fours. The thumb lets us do things like throw baseballs and fold our hands in prayer. We can even talk with our hands. Have you ever seen a deaf person trying to talk with their feet? When you are really angry and acting like an animal, you kick out with your feet. Only fools punch a wall with their hands. The Iraqi who threw his shoes at President Bush was following his primordial instincts. Showing someone your feet, or sticking your shoes in someone’s face, is the ultimate sign of disrespect. Do kids ever say, “Trick or Treat, smell my hands”? Did Jesus wash his disciples’ hands at the Last Supper? No, hands are divine (they are one of the body parts most frequently attributed to God), while feet are in need of redemption. In all the portraits of God’s wrath, never once is he pictured as wanting to step on us or kick us; he does not stoop that low.
2) Sporting should be about breaking kids down before you start building them up. Take baseball, for example. When I was a kid, baseball was the most popular sport precisely because it was so demanding. Even its language was intimidating, with bases, bats, strikes, and outs. Striding up to the plate gave each of us a chance to act like we were starring in a Western movie, and tapping the bat to the plate gave us our first experience with inventing self-indulgent personal rituals. The boy chosen to be the pitcher was inevitably the first kid on the team to reach puberty, and he threw a hard ball right at you.
Thus, you had to face the fear of disfigurement as well as the statistical probability of striking out. The spectacle of your failure was so public that it was like having all of your friends invited to your home to watch your dad forcing you to eat your vegetables. We also spent a lot of time in the outfield chanting, “Hey batter batter!” as if we were Buddhist monks on steroids. Our chanting was compensatory behavior, a way of making the time go by, which is surely why at soccer games today it is the parents who do all of the yelling.
3) Everyone knows that soccer is a foreign invasion, but few people know exactly what is wrong with that. More than having to do with its origin, soccer is a European sport because it is all about death and despair. Americans would never invent a sport where the better you get the less you score. Even the way most games end, in sudden death, suggests something of an old-fashioned duel. How could anyone enjoy a game where so much energy results in so little advantage, and which typically ends with a penalty kick out, as if it is the audience that needs to be put out of its misery. Shootouts are such an anticlimax to the game and are so unpredictable that the teams might as well flip a coin to see who wins—indeed, they might as well flip the coin before the game, and not play at all.
4) And then there is the question of gender. I know my daughter will kick me when she reads this, but soccer is a game for girls. Girls are too smart to waste an entire day playing baseball, and they do not have the bloodlust for football. Soccer penalizes shoving and burns countless calories, and the margins of victory are almost always too narrow to afford any gloating. As a display of nearly death-defying stamina, soccer mimics the paradigmatic feminine experience of childbirth more than the masculine business of destroying your opponent with insurmountable power.
Let me conclude on a note of despair appropriate to my topic. There is no way to run away from soccer, if only because it is a sport all about running. It is as relentless as it is easy, and it is as tiring to play as it is tedious to watch. The real tragedy is that soccer is a foreign invasion, but it is not a plot to overthrow America. For those inclined toward paranoia, it would be easy to blame soccer’s success on the political left, which, after all, worked for years to bring European decadence and despair to America. The left tried to make existentialism, Marxism, post-structuralism, and deconstructionism fashionable in order to weaken the clarity, pragmatism, and drive of American culture. What the left could not accomplish through these intellectual fads, one might suspect, they are trying to accomplish through sport.
Yet this suspicion would be mistaken. Soccer is of foreign origin, that is certainly true, but its promotion and implementation are thoroughly domestic. Soccer is a self-inflicted wound. Americans have nobody to blame but themselves. Conservative suburban families, the backbone of America, have turned to soccer in droves. Baseball is too intimidating, football too brutal, and basketball takes too much time to develop the required skills. American parents in the past several decades are overworked and exhausted, but their children are overweight and neglected. Soccer is the perfect antidote to television and video games. It forces kids to run and run, and everyone can play their role, no matter how minor or irrelevant to the game. Soccer and relevision are the peanut butter and jelly of parenting.
I should know. I am an overworked teacher, with books to read and books to write, and before I put in a video for the kids to watch while I work in the evenings, they need to have spent some of their energy. Otherwise, they want to play with me! Last year all three of my kids were on three different soccer teams at the same time. My daughter is on a traveling team, and she is quite good. I had to sign a form that said, among other things, I would not do anything embarrassing to her or the team during the game. I told the coach I could not sign it. She was perplexed and worried. “Why not,” she asked? “Are you one of those parents who yells at their kids? “Not at all,” I replied, “I read books on the sidelines during the game, and this embarrasses my daughter to no end.” That is my one way of protesting the rise of this pitiful sport. Nonetheless, I must say that my kids and I come home from a soccer game a very happy family.
Stephen H. Webb is a professor of religion and philosophy at Wabash College. His recent books include American Providence and Taking Religion to School.
I’m in the SF Bay Area, and lacrosse is indeed becoming very popular.
Here’s what I think so far about sports for boys (I have 3, age 12, 10, 6, none of them particularly athletic).
First, I don’t watch them practice, and only rarely watch them play. I consider it their business, not mine. (I’m no helicopter parent, that’s for sure.)
Basketball: too hard. Have to be super athletic.
Soccer: too boring. Season is too long (6 months).
Baseball: the best team sport. Good for nerds.
Golf and tennis: the best overall. Useful for life.
Horseback riding: very nice skill to have.
Ice skating: another good skill to have.
Track/cross country: I like it. Fitness, comradarie.
Karate: great for boys, but not places w/ contracts.
I like Little League; CYO basketball is too tough. I’ll never encourage my boys to do soccer unless they beg me.
Roight! I’ll admit, in the past, I’ve referred to soccer as football for, ah, cigarettes.
I loath soccer...
“btw....why am I not surprised you like soccer....I bet you like bicycle shorts too?
tell the truth GD.”
The only soccer I REALLY like is when my son is playing because he enjoys it. He also played baseball and basketball but it became evident he wasn’t cut out for either, although he was OK in baseball. He also runs cross country and track. And as the CC team says, “Our sport is your sport’s punishment.”
All I know is that my son is involved in a healthy activity he enjoys. He’s not hanging out and getting in trouble. And the kids on the track and soccer teams are among the best. I hope that’s all right with you.
I don’t ride a bicycle so I have no opinion on bicycle shorts. All the pros wear them, so there must be a reason.
And if you don't have objects, use the 8 worst kids. Just make them stand still.........
“’American Football’ is a bit-like Rugby, except that the players wear body armor. It’s the gayest game ever, beating even that lane-swimming event called Basketball.”
I killed a fellow player (a friend) in high school football, he collapsed on the field and died either immediately or shortly after.
Four years earlier during a scrimmage in which I was on the offense another friend of mine on the defensive side suffered an injury that he died of within a day or two.
I don’t know what the death rate is in soccer but without the pads football would be unplayable, as we learned generations ago.
LOL.
Soccer: The game played by those who dont want to get hit (football), and those that CANT HIT the curveball!
There are reasons for the way the rules are, actually the current offside rule is weaker then what is used to be in the beginning of the 20th century I think. Goals in soccer matter in a huge way, that’s what many people love about the game. With 10-8 game.. you could go to a fridge and miss a couple and not care, thats just not soccer.
Soccer is all about balance of offense and defense. It also very defendant on the league. What you describe is common in leagues that tend to favor possession based game, EPL is very different in that sense for example. Lots of it is also dependent on the climate of the country. You really can not play EPL style in Mexican league, nobody has the stamine to run like that with the temperature that you see there. Same issue in MLS, MLS plays in summer.. some games are just brutal in terms of the heat and humidity. Most European leagues play in winter when it is much easier to be fast for the whole 90
Many years ago when Jim Brown was at Syracuse, my college (Union) played Syracuse in lacrosse and soccer. Jim Brown was such an all-around athlete that he played the 1st-half of the lacrosse match, giving Syracuse an unsurmountable lead, and then suited up for track and won the 220.
Speaking of which, Man United is playing Internationale today at 3:45 pm EDT. It'll only be available by streaming video or pay per view. I used to go to a pub in Pasadena to watch the European matches on the weekends. Most of the English games start at 8 on Sunday morning. The pub was located on the main drag used by locals on their way to church, and they'd drive by all dressed in their finery, sneering at what they thought was a "bunch of drunks who were waiting for the bar to open". We'd yell back at them, "hey, it's just a different kind of church".
It's interesting that almost every one of these 'hate soccer' diatribes is written by someone who has never taken the time to learn and understand the game.
That didn't start with soccer, it started with Little League Baseball back when I played in the 70s.
1) You are not allowed to use your hands. This author never played soccer, or else he would know that hands are used quite a bit- and not just by the keeper. They are used to shove the other player as you fight for the ball. See, unlike baseball, soccer is a contact sport.
But, if we must get rid of soccer because players can’t touch the ball, then I guess we must do away with track.
2) Breaking kids down. Those of us who have stood on the 18 yard line, the ball planted 12 yards from the goal line, and facing the icy glare of the keeper know what athletic pressure is. You don’t have three strikes. There are no walks, and it seems the whole world is staring. Three years ago the whole world was staring.
3) A foreign invasion? How about golf? Tennis? Boxing?
4) If the reasons cited make soccer a girl’s sport, then basketball is a girl’s sport too. Baseball is a game of taking turns, which sounds like it preschool lesson. “Your tunr is over, now it’s my turn to try an score some runs”. In soccer, you don’t wait your turn for the ball, you chase down the man who has it, knock him down, take the ball and put it and the keeper in the back of the net.
You'll be eating those words next year. Remember it was only back in 2002, that we made it to the final eight, and for the most part, outplayed Germany (they even admitted it), even though they won 1-0.
Thank God for Fox Soccer Net. Now I have a reason to get up early Saturdays. Go United!
Brown was an astounding athlete.
Vast majority of death are heart attacks, some heat stroke cases probably. It is nowhere near the mortality rate in American Football though.
The game at top level is incredibly fitness demanding, you get guys who are in an incredible shape just collapsing on the field from their heart not being able to take it anymore.
“The thing which would perk up soccer for me is eliminating or at least greatly reducing the offside rule. A long kick to a teammate streaking to the goal to bring the score to 10-8 would be much more interesting than yet another 1-0 match.”
Eliminating it would necessarily result in people streaking to the goal (which happens now anyway). Instead, you’d see people assigned to the exciting task of camping in front of the goal and defenders to camp with them. Yawn. That’s why basketball also has the three-second rule.
That didn't start with soccer, it started with Little League Baseball back when I played in the 70s.
The soccer push by feminists and leftists started in the late 60s and it was hailed as more equalizing than the violent, masculine, win at all costs football that so seemed to represent all that was American.
Good point. I think that’s also a reason why the USA team does much better in the World Cup, when it’s held outside of Europe. The European teams don’t have as much of an advantage. The last two WCs held outside of Europe (94 and 02) the US made it to the knockout stages. And I predict that the US will do very well next year in South Africa.
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