The Side Line

What is it with America and soccer? The rest of the world gets it, but for some reason, there is a wall between the world’s game and the leader of the free world.

I have heard the excuses, the complaints, and even the dislike for the game coming from an American point-of-view. Most cite lack of scoring as the reason they “can’t get into it”.

Folks, I am about to say something that might sound crazy, but hear me out. Scoring, I mean lots of scoring, is bad for sports. Period. When football teams stop playing defense and offenses put up video game numbers, a little piece of the game dies.

Sports should be struggles for superiority, where each moment could change the outcome of the game. When a soccer team dominates its opponent, really controls the game, you can see it in every controlled pass, every exhausted face on the other team’s players, and the goals come as a result. 4-0 is a blowout.

I played soccer for 12 years and it has always been my favorite sport to play by far. The feeling of scoring just one goal in a soccer game is like rushing for three touchdowns in football. It’s a freakin’ accomplishment.

Also, soccer is the epitome of a team sport. If a basketball team has a dominant center or point guard, they’ll win a bunch of games. In soccer, you better be solid at every position or a team that is will find the weakness and exploit it.

So, sports fans of America, what is the deal? I’ve heard things as ridiculous as “soccer’s a Communist sport so I’d never play it” and “it’s not a sport if you don’t use your hands”.

If this is the simple-minded attitude Americans have toward the game, maybe there is no hope for soccer’s success here. Maybe we will never win a World Cup, when we seem to dominate everything else on the world stage.

For some reason, thousands and thousands of young Americans grow up playing recreational soccer, and many of them could be great players, even capable of making soccer important to their country. But we tell them it’s just for fun, there’s not really a future in it, go be a lawyer.

And the game goes on, as great as ever, without us.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Oct 10 2008. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry