Ignorance I Shall Call Thee “Soccer Bashing” – Part Deux

This is the second in a two-part guest post from Matt Robertiello.  If you haven’t had a chance to, definitely check out Part I of the series here.
 

Hey everybody, thanks to everyone who read part 1, now it’s time for the exciting conclusion! Let’s get back to finding out how many lead paint chips Mr. Webb ate as a child…

In this article, Webb posits four points against the “evils” of Soccer in the United States but not without ignorantly adding that these four points “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.”

Check your grammar there cap’n, points is plural, and in ‘Merica, which you’re so fervently “protecting” from the evils of the “socialist” game of soccer, we use “are”. Coming from someone who played goalkeeper for the majority of their competitive days, I’ve scored more than four goals since my “pee-wee” days. This is just another example simply hating on something out of fear of the new and unknown.

Point #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 his feet?

He continues…

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.”

First off, every game strives to create an egalitarian playing field so that competition can take hold and the better team can emerge victorious. How is this a “disability”? The people who play this sport weren’t picked in a sporting “lottery” and told that they were going to be assigned to be soccer players and therefore be forced to use their feet to play a game. These are people who found that they had skill using their feet, arguably a more difficult skill to master as feet don’t have the same dexterity, or “divinity” as Mr. Webb so eloquently described them, of hands. This would lead one to believe that the spectacles created by some “animals” who play this game of feet were undistinguished, unremarkable, or simple tasks.
 
See for yourself:

• Roberto Carlos’ Ridiculous Freekick– Yea, let’s see someone do that with their hands, from that distance.
• Leo Messi ‘s 70-yard slalom run and sublime finish – Yep, sure looks like using his feet is a disability for Messi.
• Ronaldinho does England DIRTY – 9 out of 10 NFL QBs couldn’t have thrown a better placed ball than that.
• Rooney’s Stunning Bicycle Kick– Power, precision, speed, and grace. All in one moment.

Point #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.”

Let me jump in here really quick…baseball…demanding?? Are we talking about the same sport where no more than three players are typically expected to be part of the action upon every pitch? A sport where performing below an average level (3 hits out of every 10 at bats makes you All-Star caliber player ladies and gentleman!) is rewarded? This is also the same sport that allows a team to substitute a player who is really good at one thing, hitting, for a player who is really good at another thing, running, simply because the first player is incapable of completing both tasks himself satisfactorily?

“Thus, you had to face the fear of disfigurement as well as the statistical probability of striking out… 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.”

Fear of disfigurement?? Baseballs are not thrown AT you, they are attempted to be thrown PAST you. Should you get hit, that’s part of the game, not something thrown into a sport to make it more “manly”, or character building. Wanna see disfigurement??

• Yep, that’s pretty much broken
• That’s gonna sting for a while
• And again…
• Out COLD before he even hits the ground

And yes, Mr. Webb, I remember the chatter throughout the field, it gave us something to do while we were waiting for the pitcher to throw the next fastball, the batter to HOPEFULLY hit the thing so we could spring into action, or for the inning to be over so we could at least run….to the dugout to sit down, and watch the day fade away before our eyes.

Point #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.”

The better you get the less you score? How does this apply in soccer, a game where the team scoring the most goals wins the match? It surely applies in golf, a sport he previously described as superior to soccer purely on a sartorial basis. Now you’ve forgotten the actual rules of the game…less strokes means a better player. Or is golf excused from this point as well?

“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.”

The argument about the penalty shootout is completely valid. Having played in, and watched my favorite clubs suffer through them, I know that they’re a cruel, antiquated, and hardly a fair way to settle a game. The problem is, after 120 minutes of (nonstop) running, field-long sprints, and aerial clashes – would you really ask players to play ANOTHER half of soccer? It’s enough that these guys are still able to muster up enough energy to even step up and take their spot-kick with any sort of power or accuracy.

You want an anticlimactic way to end a game, let’s talk about NFL overtime where, as suggested in his article, the winner of the coin toss usually wins (for all intents and purposes). Win the coin toss, march down the field a few yards, kick a field goal, and you win. Only recently have changes been proposed, and thankfully passed, to change this unsurprisingly predictable system. And baseball, don’t even get me started. The ingenious creators didn’t even think that far ahead when making the game! This is what I imagine their discussion was like

Genius #1: “What happens if two teams are tied at the end of 9 thrilling innings?”
Genius #2: “That would never happen, good sir! Our game is so fast-paced and high scoring, that it would be statistically impossible for two teams to be tied!”
Genius #3: “Fine bros, there’s an hour that promises to be quite cheery at the pub, beginning right now!”
Genius #2: “That would be quite satisfying to my tastes, as the day draws to an end.”
Genius #1: “Let’s go enjoy this happiest of hours!”

Annnnd that’s how the “Happy Hour” was invented.

Point #4

“And then there is the question of sex. 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.”

First, soccer penalizes actions like pushing, because it celebrates the ability to do things with power and control simultaneously. Not solely with brute, dumb force.  And as for gloating, ask the Man Utd. squad from last year’s Champions League Final (heck ask anyone who even watched the game) and I’m sure each and every one of them knows that Barcelona bullied Man Utd. around the pitch as they saw fit. Final score? 3-1, not a mathematical landslide, but in form it well and truly was. The Barca squad knows the next time they lineup against Man Utd. they’ll have a mental edge along with those bragging rights placed firmly in their back pocket.

Mr. Webb concludes his argument in fine fashion:

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.

I keep asking myself how intimidating could be an adjective used in describing baseball, and then it hit me. Baseball is intimidating in that it’s nerve-rattling to think about how long you have to sit/stand around having people look at you while you’re wearing man leggings. Now I see, and fully agree.

I’d agree and say football is brutal, but it’s the war-chief and soldier mentality that’s made it unsavory. Google Sean Payton and/or the New Orleans Saints and read the first few articles that pop up. Come back and tell me that doesn’t leave a bitter taste in your mouth.

As for basketball, how many kids have gone from high school, or through one year of college, and then straight into the pros? Ohhh, I forgot, a LOT.

“Soccer is the perfect antidote to television and video games. It forces kids to run and run and run, and everyone can play their role no matter how minor or irrelevant to the game. Soccer and television are the peanut butter and jelly of parenting.”

Come on, you’re gonna hate on a sport that brings this kind of unbridled joy to legends and the general population as a whole?

• John Barnes celebrates like an overexcited infant
• USA v. Algeria reactions

That goal Donovan scored against Algeria still gives me goosebumps. Let’s see this article for what it is, a fearful cry for the maintenance of the status quo. I’m not sure what world Mr. Webb’s been watching, but all sorts of things are a’changin’, it’s time to get with it, or get left behind, including our beloved sporting landscape.