In Defence of Football*

JB’s Germanatrix
Brings Us a Taste of the World Cup
I didn’t realize that soccer need a defender until my pal JB brought to my attention a certain essay (tirade, more like) written by Chuck Klosterman:

(Soccer) is nothing more than an ironical death sentence; somehow, outcasts find themselves in a situation where the people normally penalized for teasing them are suddenly urged to annihilate them. That is why soccer seems like such a respite from all that mortification; it's the one aerobic activity where nothingness is expected... A normal eleven-year-old can play an entire season without placing toe to sphere and nobody would even notice, assuming he or she does a proper job of running about and avoiding major collisions.

How, may I ask, is there anything wrong with that? What would become of our great nation if we didn’t have our characteristic competitive streak? Or our fundamental idea that, in a battle between brawn and brains, brawn will always win? We wouldn’t be the top super-power of the world, that’s for sure. We’d probably be more like Sweden, which has a respectable education system, a creative definition of music and food no one else would take money to eat. America would probably be great at a few sports, but we wouldn’t necessarily bring the pain the way we do at the Olympics, the X-Games, the World Series, and pretty much every major sporting competition outside of the World Cup because soccer’s for sissies so we don’t care if we win.

That’s what I’m guessing is behind soccer’s lack of popularity with the viewing public of America. (And I suppose that it’s at this juncture that I should clarify that when I say “viewing public,” I obviously do not mean the ten trillion Latinos who are so totally into the World Cup. And God bless my people for it.) Maybe it’s that Americans can only give their hearts to one sport—by which I mean football. Could it be that loving more than one sport is un-American?

Obviously, in Mr. Klosterman’s case, soccer was a bad scene and, not to hate, but looking at his picture, one can see why. In a word: dork. And dorks have no place on a soccer field. Actually, there is no room for brains on any field of sport, anywhere. You can liken soccer to chess, or a game of cat-and-mouse, or something else cerebral. In actuality, it is a game where a bunch of men with huge thighs run up and down a field. They occasionally kick a ball they call “a pill” into a net, but this happens only rarely—unless, again, you’re from America, and then everyone’s kicking their balls into your net. So to speak.

There is artistry and grace in soccer (in spades if you’re from Brazil) but it involves very little thought. This is not a thinking person’s sport, which might be why the Chuck Klostermans of the world are so against it. The problem that thinking people have with sports in general, and soccer specifically, is precisely that there isn’t thinking: moves can be devised on the bench, but if they go haywire mid-play, you can’t stop, sit down on the field, chew a blade of grass and think it through. The ball will be stolen, the other team will score and you will look stupid. Soccer is all about instincts, about things moving so quickly you’re not allowed to think because you simply have to do. Some might throw their hands up at this “ironical death sentence.” I, who cannot multi-task to save her life much less act on pure instinct, admire that.

I really didn’t want this to be a treatise on instinct vs. whatever the opposite of instinct is. I just like soccer, and feel like everyone should give it a chance because it is, as opposed to baseball, fun to watch. If you’re used to basketball and enjoy points being scored every three seconds, it is, perhaps, insanely maddening. But if you’re at all into watching (hopefully) good defence, fun headers, and hat tricks (and if you’re watching a game where Cristiano Ronaldo is playing, a lot of freaking diving) then soccer’s your game.

The World Cup is the perfect time to get into soccer, since it’s one of the few sporting events involving the entire world. It’s exciting stuff, and who doesn’t appreciate the chance to insult entire nations with impunity?

*Which will, from this point forward, be called "soccer."