Dear non-soccer-fan friends…it’s a soccer post. Feel free to glaze right on over.
Final observations after watching, by conservative estimation, a boatload of soccer:
64 matches = approximately 96 hours of soccer, not including extra time
30 hours of pre-game/post-game analysis
Countless hours re-watching the good games at night when I couldn’t sleep. I know.
So, here’s the skinny on how I feel about this weird ass game:
1) I get it. I really get it. The game is passionate enough (though I think soccer fans indulge themselves in this idea to the point of looking a wee bit silly). I’m old enough to remember when my dad, father-in-law, and the generation before them lived and breathed baseball and its icons. It was their national past time, their escape from reality as they returned home from real wars and, for many of them, the one place that provided role models that could out-match any of the Ronaldo or Messi wannabes. And they didn’t have cable and YouTube – they had to actually GO to the games they were obsessed with (or at least settle for shuffling and trading stacks of baseball cards). They were no less patriotic and no less passionate about their sport than the throngs of Brazilians watching their team take one to the crotch a few nights ago.
2) I actually know what a set play is! I can finally see offsides when it happens! I have even gotten over my propensity to hurl when announcers start that flowery, we-are-going-off-to-combat-with-swords-raised bullshit that they are so quick to adopt when talking about…well, frankly, anything on the field.
3) And speaking of the pitch…I have learned that true soccer fans on this side of the pond don’t feel the need to use words like pitch and kits and cross. If you hear an American using these words, rest assured, they are a snob. That’s not strong enough. Pompous. Pompous ass. There ya go.
4) I love the Men in Blazers. LOVE.
5) Not all nil-nil games are exciting. That’s just what soccer fans want you to believe. Some are downright watching-paint-dry awful. Ah, but some…some are incredibly fraught with tension and turmoil, and those boring ones are worth enduring to catch the latter ones. Trust me on this.
6) Soccer is not war. Stop calling it that. You know better. We all know better. These are not warriors. They are grown ass men PLAYING a game for a living for pete’s sake, and in most countries, making a boatload doing it. They are not heading into combat; they are going to kick a ball around on a field for 90 minutes. Just stop it. Really.
7) On the topic of grown men crying because…boo hoo…their country lost a game. Soccer is indeed a beautiful game and perhaps even a universal sport, but it not the language of all countries. Poverty is. War is. Torture is. Soccer is a game, albeit a passionate one. A sport that stops time every four years, most definitely (and I will be the one clearing my calendar in 2018 when the Cup rolls around again.) But, it is not everything. I was bolstered by the protests in Brazil in the lead-up to these ridiculously expensive games. It proves that when a country’s citizens are hungry (as in food hunger), and their infrastructure is crumbling and crime is at an all time high, then things come jarringly into perspective. No, soccer, even to these folks in a country which lives and breathes the sport, isn’t everything. And they were willing to make a nuisance of themselves to let the world know that, even while they support their national past time, they wanted on record to say that starving a nation to feed its obsession just wasn’t gonna fly anymore. Qatar in 2022 – what say you?
8) Soccer has silly award names. Golden ball. Golden boot. Golden glove. Golden nose. Okay, I made the last one up. But seriously, don’t they know gold is out and titanium is in?
9) U.S. soccer fans, present company included – we need to stop patting ourselves on the back with all this talk of soccer having finally reached popularity here stateside. Yes, viewership numbers are up, incredibly so. But let’s get real here…the games were broadcast in a time zone that roughly translated to happy hour here on the east coast. I’ll believe soccer is on the rise in the U.S. when those numbers hold out for the 7 a.m. live broadcast games out of Russia n 2018.
10) I take back my earlier observation that no one in soccer gets hurt. Jesus, man, a dude got bit! And concussions were ubiquitous during the games. FIFA is surely going to do something about how they evaluate head knocks, right? Allowing the injured player’s team to assess his injury is like allowing MLB teams to assess and punish their own team members for drug use. Oh. Yeah. That IS how it works in the world of baseball, isn’t it?
12) And finally, I watched Demsey’s first game back in the MLS last night – Seattle v. Portland. Lord, that was no World Cup kinda game. I made it to 20′ before I switched over to the golf channel. Kidding. Sort of. I will stick to Premier League matches. I hear United (as in Manchester) is due here in DC in a few weeks and I’m angling for an early birthday present.
Christine Anne Scott 