[Tiste Simeon]

I don't unders... I just can't grasp how... It's just...

Oh, Americans...

[MTS]

Gotta love internet comment boards.

Keith said:

Get over yourselves Englanistan. The sun has long since set on your irrelevant, evil, empire. By the way, 1950!

Keith said:

Every four years the World Cup comes around, and with it a swarm of soccer sissy's and queens reminding us how backward and provincial we are for not appreciating soccer.

And every four years, it's the same litany: It's the most popular sport in the world! What other sport tries to force you into liking it by telling you how left out you're going to be if you don't jump on the bandwagon? Do rice manufacturers try to bludgeon you into not ordering potatoes because "Rice is the most popular food in the world"? Are you ready to give up hard rock or hip-hop because Cold Play is more popular? Well, next time somebody pushes soccer in your face, remind them that soccer is to sports what rice is to food and Cold Play to music: bland and monotonous. Tom Cruise is the most popular movie star in the world! Think of soccer as eating rice and listening to Cold Play while watching a Tom Cruise movie.

Soccer bully's are programmed to say things like "More people play soccer than any other sport" and "Soccer is the most popular woman's sport in the U.S." Never mind that soccer is played by hundreds of thousands of American kids without the slightest enthusiasm—kids who can't wait to bolt and get home to their skateboards, Basketball and Baseball games.

What the soccer bully's want in their heart of hearts is to eliminate baseball, football, and basketball—or, really, any sport that utilizes arms and hands and thus about half the athletic talents the human body is capable of. And with good reason: They are the ones who couldn't play those sports growing up, the ones who got chosen last or not at all in the pickup games. To them, soccer is "democratic" because it eliminates the swiftest and the most powerful and takes for its physical standard the average European male. In other words, the average soccer queens own height and weight.

While they're at it, they want to eliminate any sport that has statistics. Statistics enable any fan anywhere to pick up a newspaper or turn on a TV and know virtually as much about any sport as the experts. Eliminate statistics, and all interpretation must come from a handful of gurus whose commentary is so laced with quasi-mysticism that it defies analysis.

Of course, what is meant by "world" in discussions of soccer is Europe and South America. Soccer is barely popular in the world's most populous country, China, and in the second most populated country, India, it still lags behind cricket. Soccer is popular in some African countries, semi-popular in others. Canada, Scandinavia, and much of Russia favor hockey. In Taiwan, Japan, and the Caribbean, soccer takes a backseat to baseball.

Only THREE nations outside Europe have ever won the World Cup, so the proper response to "Why do so many Americans insist on calling soccer a foreign sport?" is "It isn't a foreign sport, it's a European sport, and a Western European sport at that." Well, OK, a Western European and South American sport. And why is this? Because, let's face it, soccer is the only sport in which these countries could possibly challenge the rest of the world. Soccer is the only possible sport you could have a legitimate world tournament in because the rules are so absurdly slanted in favor of defense that the smallest country can't appear to be that much weaker than the biggest world powers.

The staples of all other great sports are absent from soccer. Perfection is reached in a World Cup match that ends in a 0-0 tie, settled by penalty kicks. Imagine the NFL changing its rules so that the Super Bowl would be likely to end in a 0-0 tie. BORING! But it lets the gay Euro-soccer queens riot and indoctrinate youth into their homosexual folly!

Sean said:

Keith, excellent comment. I would simply add that soccer represents England's last, sad gasp to bully the rest of the planet. After failing militarily and diplomatically at Suez the English realized that sport was their only hope to spread the cancer of Limey culture to the rest of the world. And it infuriates them, absolutely infuriates them, that Americans don't view soccer the way they do. In fact it's the English who are inbred and xenophobic when it comes to sport. They only play sports they invented (and quite poorly at that). They refuse to play basketball, which is popular throughout the world and more specifically Europe. I don't think they've ever had a team in FIBA European championships. Which is probably good, since it would be one more sport they would fail miserably at.

All the England/Britain raging is rather hilarious too.

This post has been edited by MTS: 15 June 2010 - 01:53 PM

[Gothos]

Hillarious shit from that Keith guy. Amazing!



As a side note, what bad could come from eliminating baseball from the world? All gain!

[Shinrei]

Frankly, I think it is a complete embarassment for the US to be participating in such an poor excuse for a "sport".

Those Americans participating, whom I cannot in good conscience call "athletes", are a disgrace to their country.

[Salt-Man Z]

One of the folks I follow on Twitter said it best:

@aarongleeman said:

Just remember, fellow temporary American soccer fans. If we win, awesome. If we lose, we didn't care anyway. #WorldCup

[Ulrik]

A troll! Kill it with fire!

[Slow Ben]

To be fair, soccer does suck.

[Shinrei]

Meh... I tried to be honest. I watched the first half of Japan and Cameroon, and turned off the TV feeling the same way I felt the last time I tried to watch a soccer game.



Bored.



I'm just one of the thousands of Americans who played soccer as a child and enjoyed it immensely, but find it just tedious to watch as an adult. Watching the highlights the next day makes more sense to me, since they'll put all the exciting shots and (if there happened to be any) goals into an 2 minute segment, cutting out the other boring 90+minutes where the ball was batted about and people were given cards based on the acting abilities of the opposition.

My Aussie co-worker put it this way: "I'm ashamed that Australia is in the world cup, when Australia excels at real sports such as rugby and cricket."

[Satan]

I pray and hope that football never becomes popular in the USA. Bad enough with the commercialism in the Premier League - I imagine if the USA were to really join in we'd have commercial breaks every 15 minutes. Calling this sport of gods for "soccer" however, I can do without.

[Cougar]

I have to say I was talking to one of the other PhDs who is from the states and he was under the impression this was a deliberately satirical reference to an old headline, playing on the fact that the US felt it was a good result. I'm sure that reference to 'the Brits' (rather than England) is a gag too, nobody could actually be that stupid, could they?

[champ]

Shinrei, on 15 June 2010 - 02:47 PM, said:

Meh... I tried to be honest. I watched the first half of Japan and Cameroon, and turned off the TV feeling the same way I felt the last time I tried to watch a soccer game.

Bored

same with all sports, you get good games and bad, and even people who live and breathe football found that game to be dire!

[Gothos]

Shinrei, on 15 June 2010 - 02:47 PM, said:

I'm just one of the thousands of Americans who played soccer as a child and enjoyed it immensely, but find it just tedious to watch as an adult. Watching the highlights the next day makes more sense to me, since they'll put all the exciting shots and (if there happened to be any) goals into an 2 minute segment, cutting out the other boring 90+minutes where the ball was batted about and people were given cards based on the acting abilities of the opposition.

As opposed to the "10 seconds of action every 10 minutes of commercials and people standing around" football, or, also called, handegg?
Baseball kinda fits the description too... Basketball and Hockey are really the only sports in the US that hold some quality.

[Aptorian]

Gentlemen, Gentleladies, now now, can't we all just agree that Football and Handegg are two equally boring sports that we only watch as an excuse for guzzling large amounts of alcohol?

[Slow Ben]

Gothos, on 15 June 2010 - 03:45 PM, said:

Shinrei, on 15 June 2010 - 02:47 PM, said:

I'm just one of the thousands of Americans who played soccer as a child and enjoyed it immensely, but find it just tedious to watch as an adult. Watching the highlights the next day makes more sense to me, since they'll put all the exciting shots and (if there happened to be any) goals into an 2 minute segment, cutting out the other boring 90+minutes where the ball was batted about and people were given cards based on the acting abilities of the opposition.

As opposed to the "10 seconds of action every 10 minutes of commercials and people standing around" football, or, also called, handegg?

Exactly! They told us you wouldnt understand. But I told'em "Dont underestimate Gothos!"

[MTS]

If you are not actually interested in the sport, every game lends itself to watching the highlights. I hear it said about cricket, basketball, handegg, tennis, rugby, AFL...so using that as an argument to debase a sport is really rather silly. Admittedly though, in all those other games you don't get the entirety of the exciting action in the highlights, whereas in soccer you might be able to squeeze it in to two minutes. Don't get me wrong, I like soccer, but it isn't the most action-packed of sports.

Anyway, this type of discussion is pointless. Clearly AFL is superior to everything.

[Slow Ben]

I wish I coud argue that MTS, but they used to have that on ESPN late at night back in the day.



And that shit...was awesome.

[Gothos]

MTS, on 15 June 2010 - 03:53 PM, said:

but it isn't the most action-packed of sports.

that's why it's such a social game: you can idly argue with your buddies getting steadily drunker, all the while you're only interrupted on several occasions when the action kicks in. win-win.

[MTS]

Gothos, on 15 June 2010 - 04:19 PM, said:

MTS, on 15 June 2010 - 03:53 PM, said:

but it isn't the most action-packed of sports.

that's why it's such a social game: you can idly argue with your buddies getting steadily drunker, all the while you're only interrupted on several occasions when the action kicks in. win-win.

True, but then you could say that for NFL as well.

@SB, the good thing about AFL is that it has a bit of everything, and even in total drubbings it's still entertaining. But this isn't a thread about AFL so I'll just leave it at that.

[D'rek]

Cougar, on 15 June 2010 - 03:24 PM, said:

I have to say I was talking to one of the other PhDs who is from the states and he was under the impression this was a deliberately satirical reference to an old headline, playing on the fact that the US felt it was a good result. I'm sure that reference to 'the Brits' (rather than England) is a gag too, nobody could actually be that stupid, could they?

Yeah, its a reference to an old college football (that'd be handegg football, not soccer football) game. Yale had a perfect season so far and it was the last game of the year, and the other team was not all that great. Yale was winning but the other team tied it in the last few minutes or so, and hence the underdog team's newspaper declared that they had beat Yale 40 to 40 (or whatever the numbers were) since they ruined the winning streak.


And trampoline basketball is never boring.

[MTS]

D, on 15 June 2010 - 04:38 PM, said:

And trampoline basketball is never boring.

You mean Slamball? You're right there, although I don't see much of it - a game every few months or so.