Good thing he doesn't read this blog
In a group e-mail from my uncle, amid the usual stuff about new houses, jobs and the kids going to homecoming and getting driver's licenses, came this bit of info: "Someone asked if they [my cousins] played soccer, well I have a theory that soccer is an un-American sport brought to this country by a conspiring European underground movement to weaken the U.S. spirit and to diminish the U.S. dominance of real sports like baseball, football, hockey and basketball, but I maybe overthink that issue just a tad....Don't get me going, lets just leave it as a European plot to break the will of the American Youth."
hmm, the U.S. hasn't won a gold medal in hockey since 1980; we finished 6th in the 2002 basketball world championships and 3rd in the 2004 Olympics; and baseball is now 25% Latino and there's no guarantee of the U.S. winning the World Baseball Classic next year when teams like Japan, Puerto Rico, Mexico and the Dominican Republic will all field strong teams. throw in the homoerotic undertones of football (which, perhaps not coincidentally, has been bringing games to Japan and now Mexico in recent years) and the steadily climbing US soccer ranking and you can see that he's clearly on to something. hell, we're even getting out butts handed to us by skinny Japanese guys and tiny Asian-American women when it comes to the all-American sport of Gluttony (of course we learned that one from the Romans sort of). then again, MLS attendance is still pretty dismal, so there may still be some hope yet.
Comments
Have the NFL not noticed that despite millions of dollars spent on publicity, overseas pre-season and now in season games, massive TV coverage of the league, and even the fabled World League nobody outside the western hemisphere wants to play the game at a professional level?
I like it when people have a crack at soccer, especially that Jim Rome ponce. It gives me a new target each time for my "I'm Stuart Pearce tackling X" dreams I have occasionally.
"a European plot to break the will of the American Youth"- I thought that was masturbation, not soccer. Although while the standard of play is damn good in the MLS, I really think the insta-nicknames of the teams are "an American plot to break the will of football loving Global Youth." I have to watch it with the sound off, lest I hear talk of "The Galaxy" or "The Flaming Neuticles" and hear the commentator use the dreaded "assist" word. Then again, I'm a crusty English footie supporter who still bemoans the introduction of seats to stadiums, so who am I to judge?
Posted by: WisdomWeasel | October 26, 2005 09:40 AM
Soccer does suck FOOTBALL RULZ! with its ethnocentric homoerotic glory!
Posted by: chris larry | October 26, 2005 05:07 PM
I was alright with this until Chris 'the knowledge' Larry stuck his head over the parapet. America, leave footy alone, it will bring you misery. Pure, simple fucking misery. When your world consists of shit and crap and gloom and misery and your team are all of the above then maybe, just maybe you might be ready to get footy.
Posted by: Mondale | October 30, 2005 03:58 PM