Soccer...err.. Football..ummm..GOOOAAALLL!!!
The rest of the world knows things that we do not.
Its just that simple. Soccer - or, out of deference to the rest of the world, "Football," is a universal language on the globe, which apparently, the US either doesn't or is just learning to, speak.
The thing is - we Americans don't like to lose. Olympics are one thing - there are plenty of sports we content ourselves with the fact that we don't care about. But, if we're playing a sport, we like to win at it. And honestly, we just get the stuffing kicked out of us at football. We don't get the colors, the teams, the lingo... and we don't like that feeling.
On a recent trip to Europe, there were no less than 5 channels, at any given time, discussing recent scandals, prospecting teams, etc. Its amazing to watch.
It would seem that with the FIFA ranking of the US as #5, they were throwing us a bone, to see if the US could get behind some serious soccer. We did an admirable job, considering the circumstances, of learning that you can't use your hands, that there are some sort of penalty structures at play, and instead of elimination, there's a round robin format. But, I think its fair to say that we lack the body-painting, car-flag waiving, crying in the stands kind of devotion that we usually only reserve for men wearing cheese hats and bare, painted chests in the middle of winter in Wisconsin.
We are mere babes in the football/soccer woods. We'll see whether we hold on to this sport, or cast it aside and ignore the world's largest shared sporting experience.
Its just that simple. Soccer - or, out of deference to the rest of the world, "Football," is a universal language on the globe, which apparently, the US either doesn't or is just learning to, speak.
The thing is - we Americans don't like to lose. Olympics are one thing - there are plenty of sports we content ourselves with the fact that we don't care about. But, if we're playing a sport, we like to win at it. And honestly, we just get the stuffing kicked out of us at football. We don't get the colors, the teams, the lingo... and we don't like that feeling.
On a recent trip to Europe, there were no less than 5 channels, at any given time, discussing recent scandals, prospecting teams, etc. Its amazing to watch.
It would seem that with the FIFA ranking of the US as #5, they were throwing us a bone, to see if the US could get behind some serious soccer. We did an admirable job, considering the circumstances, of learning that you can't use your hands, that there are some sort of penalty structures at play, and instead of elimination, there's a round robin format. But, I think its fair to say that we lack the body-painting, car-flag waiving, crying in the stands kind of devotion that we usually only reserve for men wearing cheese hats and bare, painted chests in the middle of winter in Wisconsin.
We are mere babes in the football/soccer woods. We'll see whether we hold on to this sport, or cast it aside and ignore the world's largest shared sporting experience.
posted by Mitch at 10:19 AM
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