England 2-0 USA

Fortunate Son1 wrote:

Wonderful...but the rest of the friggin world, couldn't give a shit about your MLB or NFL. Now get your Ameri-centric head outta your ass and join us when you have something productive to say mkay?

In the meantime, I'm sure there's a NASCAR thread going on somewhere.

Sometimes wrote:

LOL, don't let the Scotsman hear you say that!!!

OK the UK consists of England, Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland - all seperate countries.

thunderDAN wrote:

This is a excerpt from Klosterman's Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs. It gives some insight as to why soccer will never catch on in America.



George Will vs. Nick Hornby

Like many U.S. citizens, I spend much of my free time thinking about the future of sports and the future of our children. This is because I care deeply about sports.

In the spirit of both, I've spent the last fifteen years of my life railing against the game of soccer, and exercise that has been lauded as "the sport of the future" since 1977. Thankfully, the future dystopia has never come. But people continue to tell me that soccer will soon become part of the fabric of this country, and that eventually be as popular as football, basketball, karate, pinball, smoking, glue sniffing, menstruation, animal cruelty, photocopying, and everything else that fuels the eroticized, hyper kinetic zeitgeist of Americana. After America placed eighth in the 2002 World Cup tournament, team forward Clint Mathis said, "If we can turn one more person who wasn't a soccer fan into a soccer fan, we've accomplished something." Apparently, that's all that matters to these idiots. They won't be satisfied until we are all systematically brainwashed into thinking soccer is cool and that placing eighth is somehow noble. However, I know this will never happen. Not really. Dumb bunnies like Clint Mathis will be wrong forever, and that might be the only thing saving us from ourselves.

My personal war against the so-called "soccer menace" probably reached it's peak in 1993, when I was nearly fired from a college newspaper for suggesting that soccer was the reason thousands of Brazilians are annually killed at Quiet Riot concerts in Rio de Janeiro, a statement that is-admittedly-half true. A few weeks after the publication of said piece, a petition to have me removed as the newspapers' sports editor was circulated by a ridiculously vocal campus organization called the Hispanic American Council, prompting an "academic hearing" where I was accused (with absolute seriousness) of libeling Pele. If memory serves, I think my criticism of soccer and Quiet Riot was somehow taken as racist., although-admittedly- I'm not completely positive, as I was intoxicated for most of the monthlong episode. But the bottom line is I'm still willing to die a painful public death, assuming my execution destroys the game of soccer (or--at the very least--convinces people to shut the hell up about it).

According to the Soccer Industry Council of America, soccer is the No. 1 youth participation sport in the U.S. There are more than 3.6 million players under the age of 19 registered to play, and that number has been expanding 8% every year since 1990. There has also been a substantial increase in the number of kids who play past the age of 12, a statistic that soccer proponents are especially thrilled about. "These are the players that will go on to be fans, referees, coaches, and players in the future," observed Virgil Lewis, chairman of the United States Youth Soccer Association.

Certainly, I can't argue with Virgil's math: I have no doubt that battalions of Gatorade-stained children are running around the green wastelands of suburbia, randomly kicking a black and white ball in the general direction of tuna netting. However, Lewis's larger logic is profoundly flawed. There continues to be this blindly optimistic belief that all of the brats playing soccer in 2003 are going to be crazed MLS fans in 2023, just as it was assumed that 11 year old players in 1983 would be watching Bob Costas provide play-by-play for soccer games right now. That will never happen. We will never care about soccer in this country. And it's not just because soccer is inherently un-American, which is what most soccer haters tend to insinuate. It's mostly because soccer is geared towards Outcast Culture.

On the surface, one might assume that would actually play to soccer's advantage, as America has plenty of outcasts. Some American outcasts are very popular, such as OutKast. But Outcast culture does not meld with Intimidation Culture, and the latter aesthetic has always been the cornerstone of team sports. An outcast can be intimidating in an individual event-Mike Tyson and John McEnroe are proof-but they rarely thrive in the social environment of a team organism (e.g. Albert Belle, Pete Maravich). Unless your Barry Bonds, being an outcast is antithetical to the group concept. But soccer is the one sport that is the one exception to that reality: Soccer contentiously rewards the outcast, which is was so many adults are fooled into thinking kids love it. The truth is that most kids do not love soccer, they simply hate the alternatives more. For 60% of adolescents in any 4th grade classroom, sports are a humiliation waiting to happen. These are the kids who play baseball and strike out 4 times a game. These are the kids who are afraid to get fouled in basketball, because it only means they're now required to shoot two free throws, which equates to two air-balls. Basketball games actually stops to recognize their failure. And football is nothing more than a ironical death sentence; somehow, outcasts find themselves in a situation where the people normally penalized for teasing them are suddenly urged to annihilate them.

This is why soccer seems like such a respite from all that mortification; it's the one aerobic activity where nothingness is expected. Even at the highest levels, every soccer match seems to end 1-0 or 2-1. A normal 11 year old can play an entire season without placing a toe to a ball and nobody would even notice, assuming he or she does a proper job of running about and avoiding major collisions. Soccer feels "fun" because it's not terrifying- its the only sport where you can't fuck up. An outcast can succeed simply by not failing, and public failure is every outcast's deepest fear. For society's prepubescent pariahs, soccer represents safety.

However, the demand for such an oasis disappears once an outcast escapes from the imposed slavery of youth athletics; by the time they reach the 9th grade, it's perfectly acceptable to quit the team and shop at Hot Topic. Most youth soccer players end up joining the debate team before they turn 15. Meanwhile, the kind of person who truly loves the notion of sports (and perhaps, sadly, unconsciously needs to have sports in their life) doesn't want to watch or play a game designed for losers. They're never going to care about a sport where announcers inexplicably celebrate the beauty of missed shots and the strategic glory or repetitive stalemate. We want to see domination. We want to see athletes who don't look like us, and who we could never be. We want to see people who could destroy us, and we want to feel like that desire is normal. But those people don't exist in soccer; their game is dominated by mono-monikered clones obsessed with falling to their knees and ripping off their clothes.

Soccer fanatics love to tell you that soccer is the most popular game on earth and that it's played by 500 million people every day, as if that somehow proves it's value. Actually, the opposite is true. Why should I care that every single citizen of Chile and Iran and Gibraltar thoughtlessly adore "futball"? Do people making this argument also assume Coca-Cola is ambrosia? Real sports arn't for everyone. And don't accuse me of being the ugly American for degrading soccer. That has nothing to do with it. It's not xenophobic to hate soccer, it's socially reprehensible to support it. To say you love soccer is to say you believe in enforced equality more than you believe in the value of competition and the capacity of human spirit. It should surprise no one that Benito Mussolini loved being photographed with Italian soccer stars during the 1930's; they were undoubtedly kindred spirits. I would sooner have my kid deal crystal meth than play soccer.

That said, I don't think my thoughts on soccer are radical. If push come to shove, I would be more than willing to compromise: It's not necessary to wholly outlaw soccer as a living entity. I concede that it has the right to exist. All I ask is that I never have to see it on T.V., that it's not played in public, and that nobody-and I mean nobody-ever utters the phrase "soccer is the sport of the future"

Sometimes wrote:

Whats the interest in the MLS been like since the arrival of our very own David Becks? has the sport been covered by the media a bit more? or has the novelty worn off? From the brief stuff i have seen of the MLS there always seems to be good attendences at the games at least.

a_scratching_voice wrote:

Your only bitter because none of your national sports were american inventions. Baseball...UK origin, American Football....UK origin, Basketball...invented by a Canadian in America (using a soccer ball!).

hoopinman wrote:

it might have helped if Beckham had PLAYED more than 1 or 2 games last year...he came over hurt...and stayed hurt and only scored one goal