Soccer is for Panzies

Why they call it a beautiful sport is beyond me. The javelin is beautiful. Track events are beautiful. “Le foot” is just another team game. I realize that the fact that few Americans enjoy it is used a reason to engage in lecturesome nagging – it also ignores the fact that the same people would feign outrage at displacing the native interests of any other culture on earth except that of the United States.

Should Canadians engage in symbolic displays of shame because the zombie-like interest in Hockey or even Curling? Just to worship at the empty, generic, gel-coated fiberglass alter of “football”? Should Britons have to apologize or enjoying Cricket? No.

So the next time you get the canned tirade about “Americans and their sports”, just tell them to go fuck themselves. The statement is commensurate with the motives of the usual recorded rant.

The Other McCain says it all when it comes to American who fixate on Metric Football:

But affluent elite American soccer fandom of the type celebrated by the Nation/NPR piece has roughly the same relationship to merely liking soccer that knowing show-tune lyrics has to sodomy — which is to say, none at all.

Put in context, it’s for non-fans of any sport who yearn to seem ‘butch’ once every couple of years. Slather on top a big helping of yearning to be liked by people who hate you (and are willing to indulge in irrelevancies over it) and you have the perfect, unsophisticated “cosmopolitan” – who is in fact nothing more than a dim-wit who vacations here and there and can parrot a few phrases about things they idealize.

conservatives don’t hate soccer because we hate brown people. We hate soccer because we hate liberals.

American liberals love soccer not merely because it allows them to engage in displays of their imagined superiority — “Look at me! I’m a sophisticated cosmopolitan!” — but also because it’s usually the only sport they’ve ever actually played.

“Mom Wouldn’t Let Me Play Football” is a convenient shorthand that I’ve used to describe a category of person typified by, inter alia, David Brooks.