We don't care about soccer.
Let's get one thing straight...I don't hate soccer. In fact, I have been trying to like it for years. And I have some experience in this arena...
When I was a kid, I hated olives. But it seemed as if everyone else liked them. So each year, I vowed to try them again in the hope that I would eventually come around. And each year I opened the jar, held my breath through the stench of briny, pickled fruit, and popped an olive in my mouth. Invariably, overpowered by salt and better judgment, I would spit it out.
But one year, I didn't spit it out. What's more, I actually swallowed it (lucky for me, it was pitted). And without warning, like a rally-killing 5-4-3 triple play in the bottom of the 9th...I liked olives. Correction: I loved olives, and love them to this day. I had forced myself to eat an universally accepted food despite my (unabashedly plebeian) disdain for it, and I actually succeeded in changing my taste.
Such is my relationship with soccer.
Every four years, the people of Earth wrap themselves around a common sporting event: the World Cup. Lives literally hang in the balance during this global phenomenon (just ask the family of former Colombian soccer player Andres Escobar). Billions watch, cheer, mourn and exalt as their nation first plays to qualify, then possibly makes the final tournament, then strives toward world supremacy (soccer-wise). So as everyone on the blue planet is engrossed...I find myself thinking about the olive, and wondering, "why not me?"
Many soccer lovers claim that if the USA were any good at soccer, Americans would enjoy the sport. The rest of the world assigns an extreme front-runner mentality to fans in the US, and assumes that only success leads to loyalty. (Anyone who believes that should go see a game at Wrigley Field...and they will quickly learn that winning is not the only thing that puts asses in the seats.)
This may be true for some, but I can only speak for myself...and for me, American success (or lack thereof) has nothing to do with my feelings about soccer. (Case in point...the USA is absolute crap at curling, as we so ham-fistedly showed at the most recent Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver. Yet, I am borderline obsessed with the game...maybe because curlers are the only Olympic athletes that I can out-bench...but no matter. I am a huge curling guy.) So while I could honestly say that American soccer failure was not the reason, I was never able to put my ambivalence concerning the game into intelligent terms. That is, until now:
Soccer is un-American.
I have learned this during my most recent attempt to digest oliv...er...soccer at this year's World Cup. This was my first real introduction FIFA, the sport's international governing body, and how it operates. And oh boy, was it an eye-opener.
World Cup officials (and all soccer referees, of course) make difficult split-second in-game decisions and sometimes get it wrong--but that is not the problem. In every sport, officials get it wrong. And that is certainly not what makes soccer un-American (since Americans have their own storied history of getting some things wrong--lest we forget and are condemned to repeat it, as the saying goes...).
No, it's not that they sometimes get it wrong that makes soccer un-American. It's that FIFA--in its infinite, shockingly blind hubris--champions the fact that they get it wrong. You read that correctly...FIFA wants it that way.
Don't believe me? No need to take my word for it. Back in 2005, then-FIFA General Secretary Urs Linsi had this to say about blatantly bad calls in soccer:
“Players, coaches and referees all make mistakes. It’s part of the game. It’s what I would call the “first match”. What you see after the fact on video simply doesn’t come into it; that’s the “second match”, if you like. Video evidence is useful for disciplinary sanctions, but that’s all. As we’ve always emphasised at FIFA, football’s human element must be retained. It mirrors life itself and we have to protect it.”
Go ahead, read those last two sentences again. FIFA actually had the balls to tell the world, "life isn't fair, so soccer shouldn't be fair. Even if we can limit awful officiating, we won't. How do you like them pommes?"
Well, my friends, that is un-American. Because although life may not be perfect, a good goal should be a good goal. Offside is offside. And crumpling to the ground in a bullshit heap after an opposing player looks at you the wrong way, then getting dramatically carted off on a stretcher while being attended to by 5 team doctors...only to pop up and sprint to the side judge to be let back into the game after a totally unwarranted penalty has been imposed on the other team's player and, of course, a sufficient amount of time has been wasted (granted you are winning at the time of your performance) is always wrong and should be punished. Always.
The crazy part is, since soccer is so popular on a global level, literally billions of people watching the game see that a call was blown. Everybody knows what really happened--everybody except for the one idiot that matters: the referee. But does FIFA care? Not in the slightest. In fact, what was FIFA's recent response to criticism of poor officiating? No more replays!!!
Can you believe that? It boggles the mind. According to FIFA, the mistake is not the horrible call itself. The mistake is showing people how truly bad the call really was. The mistake, amazingly, is holding officials accountable.
What?!?
FIFA's outright negation of any criticism regarding the tournament's officiating, its rigidity in defending soccer's outdated and painfully inadequate refereeing regulations and its refusal to be open with the media, coaches, players and fans alike is unacceptable. Never before have I witnessed such shameful displays of ineptitude and bull-headedness in sport. It is absolutely shocking to me how FIFA can continue to piss into the wind on such a global stage. It's a bit embarrassing, really.
And it's this complete aversion to accountability and fair play that makes soccer un-American. And it's what makes soccer exactly what it has been in America for years: a joke.
Soccer, in my view, has a litany of other issues as well (time wasting, flopping, the rewarding of acting ability with favorable calls, brutally long stretches of absolute inactivity, ending games in a tie--"you play to tie the game!!"--no standardized ball, advertisements on game jerseys, that weird "double-high-five-turned-hand-clasp-turned-awkward-hug" that seems to be ubiquitous between exiting players and substitutes as they come on, etc, etc). But I can get to those later.
Or not, considering the World Cup will be over soon...and once again soccer will cease to exist for me.
But who knows, maybe in another four years during the next World Cup I will try to eat that olive again, and maybe I'll swallow it. I kind of hope so, since I view the World Cup as a great opportunity for positive development in the global political sphere (on par with the Olympics).
But there are crucial issues to be addressed in international soccer...and until that happens...
I'll just have to spit it out again.
