But new crops of bashers seem to emerge with regularity about every four years, sort of like a 7 year locust plague, only with a 3 year shorter interval. That's right, the arrival of the World Cup seems to draw out some of these Cro Magnons to offer their "wit and wisdom" about the world's game. Certainly the bulk of the mainstream sports media is much better than it was in 1990 or even 1994. For that we have the success of the US national team in qualifying for their third consecutive World Cup, as well as the pro soccer presence that the MLS, A-League and USISL have established.
One such basher crawled out of the muck the other day to opine on the world's biggest sporting spectacle and I simply had to respond.
The following is my response to the basher, with selected quotations from Mr. Guest in block quotation form:
What exactly is your problem here? Do you trash soccer because you don't understand it? Do you secretly feel inadequate because peoples from different cultures, religions, levels of wealth and income, etc. all derive a great deal of enjoyment out of this game and you just don't get it? Aside from a professional match you attended at least 20 years ago, when was the last time you saw the sport played at its highest level?
If you and a few other of the diminishing number of isolationist, xenophobic, insular, narrow-minded cretins are going to trot out crap like this every four years when the World Cup rolls around, you should at least try to be original and -- at a minimum -- get your facts straight.
Among the factual errors and unsupported allegations in your column are:
"The object of World Cup, as far as I can tell, is to determine which country's fans win the right to overrun the local police and burn the town."To what specific instances are you referring? You mean, why can't soccer fans be like good ol' American sports fans and overrun the local police and burn their OWN town after their team wins the "World" Series, Super Bowl, or NBA Championship?
"The only trump card given to host cities is, they don't have to tell visitors which section of the grandstand is rigged to collapse at a key moment during the match."And how often does this take place? Can you specifically state where and when this event allegedly happened?
"Futbol itself is an OK sport, particularly for children whose lone athletic skill is the ability to run"If it's such an easy sport to play, why don't you go out and try to play in a local adult league among players your own age? When you scrape your tongue off the grass after about 10 minutes of running, share your experiences with your readers in your next column.
"and for fathers who feel the need to wear funny garb with ``COACH'' stitched up the sides of their socks, shorts, sweatbands, shirts, caps and megaphones."Sounds like you're describing Little League or Pop Warner coaches. What's the difference between them and soccer coaches? One significant difference is that soccer is a PLAYERS' game not a coaches' game. Unlike micro-managed sports like baseball, football and basketball where strutting martinet coaches call every play/pitch, soccer players decide for themselves how to play when the game is under way. Thought of that way, soccer is a much more "democratic" sport than the more "dictatorial" American sports.
"Goalies, I have decided, have kept the sport from becoming big in this country. They are the reason so many games end up 0-0."Less than 2% of all competitive soccer matches worldwide have a 0:0 result. The average number of goals per game in soccer is between 3.0 and 3.5
"If baseball scores were as boringly low as futbol's, pitchers with a bloated ERA of 0.43 would be banished in shame to the minors."I guess you didn't like seeing Bob Gibson pitch for the St. Louis Cardinals in the 60s and 70s?
"I once attempted to write a live column off of a futbol game back when the old Tampa Bay Rowdies hosted the New York Cosmos and intergalactic star Pele, who was, as I recall, 87 or 88 at the time."Pele was 17 in 1958, making him no older than 57 NOW!
"It was a 1-0 game, and I was in the men's room during the 1. If I had described the only ``action'' I saw at the time of that goal, I would have been summarily fired the next day."You must have a weak bladder, since each half lasts only 45 minutes. As for failing to describe the "action", this simply says what you should have said at the top of the column, namely you don't understand the sport and so you are trying to belittle what you don't understand. My, this is an enlightened position. If you offer to write about something, you either need to learn something about it so you can do it competently or not write about it at all. If this is your attitude towards all of your writing,
If you don't like the sport, that's your choice, but why not spend your time more productively writing about something you DO like, or better still sit down during the World Cup and open your mind a little bit and enjoy the show.
"If they did away with the goalie, futbol would be a much more entertaining game for spectators and might even keep American TV viewers awake beyond the first two commercials."There are no time-outs in soccer, and therefore no commercials to interrupt play. Commercial advertising is done by a combination of: signboards at the stadium, advertisers' logos with the time and score in the corner of the TV screen, and via commercial shirt sponsorship (a more restrained and tasteful version of the NASCAR human billboard approach).
"The United States scrapes up a team for each World Cup and has shown some admirable improvement over the years.However, the U.S. still shows up for the tournament wielding all of the intimidation of Coppin State reporting for March Madness. Our Heroes take on futbol superpower Germany in their firstWorld Cup assignment. If there were such a thing as a 42-point favorite infutbol, Germany would get the nod."I thought you were singing the praises of the US in touting the "superior sensibilities" of US fans in ignoring the sport of soccer? So, why do you disrespect the efforts of the US national team which in the past 5 years has defeated such world soccer powers as England, Colombia, Argentina, Brazil, Nigeria and Mexico? The ball is round. And in a sport that averages less than 4 goals per game, upsets are not only possible in a tournament like the World Cup, but likely.
"I'll try to pass along the outcome if you're interested, but something tells me I might overlook it. Much like tennis and curling, it has become fashionably acceptable at long last in this country to admit openly that you don't really follow futbol."If this is the point of your column, why not conserve newsprint and say it as concisely as this?
Seriously, what's your problem with the sport of soccer?