July 6, 2006

WHY ARE SOCCER FANS SO DAMN SENSITIVE ABOUT THEIR SPORT?

      I have been writing about sports for years, and in all those years I have taken shots at dozens of individuals and pretty much every sport.  I have had tons of issues with the way baseball is run and with the individuals involved (players, management etc), with the way hockey is run (both with the NHL and internationally), with the CFL, the NFL, international sports, the Olympics, tennis (Oh boy have I had issues with tennis), boxing, horse racing… I could go on…but I never receive the kind of responses I get when I start taking shots at soccer.  There isn’t a sport out there where the fans are so thin-skinned and care so much about what everybody thinks of their precious game.  My suggestion…get over yourselves.

       Last week’s column was a simple analysis about why the sport will never be popular in North America.  It wasn’t in any way an attack on the sport and at no point in the analysis did I throw in things like dull, boring, rather watch cooking show reruns etc.  But I received many responses back from insecure soccer fans in full attack mode because I had deigned to insult their game.  And they kept throwing out the same reasoning—the game is popular in Europe, and it reeks with strategy (though it’s not what I think reeks about the sport). 

       I bet these same people wouldn’t feel so affronted if I insulted their wives, their girlfriends, or their mothers.  For some reason any attack on their beloved sport is a sign of war—maybe that’s why there have been so many conflicts in the old world.  Okay, you want a fight…here goes. 

       Soccer is ancient.  It’s a sport developed by prehistoric men who couldn’t find anything else to do except shot put stones, throw spears, and kick a rock around.  As mankind progressed into the industrial age for some reason many well to-do countries decided that, with regard to sport, standing still was far better than moving forward.  The game you are watching today is likely the same game watched by fans when it was invented, outside of the fact that games aren’t interrupted by dinosaur stampedes anymore.  Players think it is better to feign an injury and possibly get an opposition player carded than it is to make a creative offensive play.  Coaches think that it is strategy to line a bunch a guys up and call it defense, or kick the ball forward and run and chase it and call it offense.

       Fortunately, on this side of the pond, we only have to endure this old, slow moving sport where two goals is an offensive explosion once every four years and for only one month.  Do I hate soccer?  Of course not.  I simply don’t give it any thought.  For those who love it…good for you.  Does it bother me when you write to me and berate baseball?  Not at all.  I really don’t care what you think about baseball.  Just like I don’t think you should care what I think about soccer. 

       But you do and you always will.