World Cup Mania

Parade is Friday!

 

I think it is far more than "urban sophisticates" who are losing their minds over it.

Out here is Suburbia the Womens World Cup was huge. I don't know the appeal to the hipster crowd but for the suburban crowd I can probably throw out a theory.

My daughters play soccer. I love having an elite sport that I can watch with them and give them something to aspire to athletically. Additionally being around other soccer parents and coaches makes the WWC a community event. I think too that some of the orange slice eaters who played in the 80s and 90s have kids of their own so love, or at least like of soccer is become generational.

I realize that you're trolling with your crack about least sophisticated of the major sports but still a dumb thing to say.

 

It's not a dumb thing to say. It's true, and it's not an insult. Compare it to baseball, basketball, and, especially, football. It's not in their league, tactically.

 

I'm with you, both in the "soccer is the dumbest fucking sport ever" idea and the "cultural phenomenon." My brother has hipsterish tendencies, and a common theme is to shit on anything traditionally "American" -- our movies, pop culture, ideals, music, actually living in America, whatever. That includes traditional "American" sports. I think soccer appeals to him because it ISN'T "American" or traditionally America-dominated. In a desire to appear as "worldly" or "European" as possible, soccer appeals. That's why the "pitch," "kit," "equalizer," and "USA are..." nonsense is so big. Hell, people like acting British. Ask Madonna.

 

Paul Begala famously said that Washington is Hollywood for ugly people.

Soccer is sports for people who aren't into sports, Washington and New York media among them.

 

How fitting World Cup soccer (played outside of the Arabian Desert, anyway) takes place in the summer. I appreciate how world soccer's appeal gives us a vacation from from the absurdity found in the major sports. So much of what often find in the sports pages these days is, pardon the pun, a sausage factory.

It's easy to like the finished product when it comes to the NFL, college football/hoops, the NBA, MLB, etc. But when it comes to their ingredients, I just need a break from the nonstop TV timeouts, useless jock rock/jock jams/ arena noise. blackouts that limit my viewing to "out-of-market" games, selfish owners, the NCAA , fights between drunk Niner and tweaker Raider fans, out-of-touch players and kickoff times that don't get announced until mere days before the actual game. International soccer -- where national anthems replace stadium anthems and centuries' old national colors stand as alternatives to Oregon football's latest costume -- is my repellent against all kinds of absurdities:

• Not once when I'm watching soccer do I ask myself that Roger Goodell's stupid, stupid face is up to.
• I've never seriously wondered who on the United States men's or women's roster is responsible for enforcing soccer's code of "unwritten rules." Did Lauren Holiday worry that blowing a kiss to her team's bench after scoring a goal Sunday would incite an expletive-laced tirade or retribution from Japan? Of course not, because such absurdities are limited to baseball, or at least Brian McCann.
• I don't know if Carly Lloyd's dad has ever met Cecil Newton, but I'm more certain he never shopped her around the Big East before settling on Rutgers.
• I'm even more certain there weren't any brawls in the stands Sunday in Vancouver. If by chance an altercation did occur, it was over trash...as in fans from Japan and the Pacific Northwest fighting to pick it up first.

 

Did you wonder why the goalie was allowed to play?

Or how many bribes changed hands among FIFA officials during the game?

 

Didn't some idiot bite someone at the last men's World Cup?

Was that a real post? Soccer helps him forget the "absurdity" of other sports?

 

Sally Kohn pretends to like soccer -- women's soccer.

Does anyone think she follows any sport, let alone soccer? But, she pretends to like soccer.

It's like some weird peer pressure thing.

 

You do have a point, but I think many soccer fans are like me. We see the passion, patriotism, skill and tradition in soccer. We're patriotic: Dude, I love America. I know I'm overstating it, but I link our soccer team's ability to defy the odds and come within inches of the '02 World Cup semifinals alongside the Moon Landing and Transcontinental Fucking Railroad.

It's not about being a elitist or snobby. It's about being a rabid sports fan with a desire to watch a game and not be subjected to the following dipshits and ass-hattery:

 

And this, of course, is what is so fascinating to me.

I hate soccer, for all the reasons that soccer evangelists don't want to hear about any more. But it is a sport, not unlike any of the other sports, really, that those people love to hate. The object of the game is the same as the object in basketball, hockey, and lacrosse. And American football, really.

So what differentiates it for the so-called elite? And for the hipster set? The beating heart of baseball long resided in Brooklyn. Now soccer does.

I don't understand.

 

Check out Slate some time. Soccer pieces outnumber pieces on other sports 3-1.