Soccer*

As most of you know, I am in The Netherlands. The Netherlands happens to be in Europe. Europe likes soccer* a lot. As in, it seems to be the only thing they are truly passionate about. The World Cup, in a surprising coincidence, is currently ongoing. So everyone in The Netherlands is basically eating, sleeping and watching soccer. They go to the bathroom at half time. Since it has been on so often, I have accidentally watched quite a bit of it. Obviously I would never have allowed this to happen purposefully, but there are some things to take away from the often gruesome experience.

In 90 minutes, you are lucky to get five moments worth mentioning. That’s pathetic. More stuff happens in 3 minutes on a basketball court than in an entire soccer match.

When things do happen, they are usually pretty impressive. It takes an extraordinary amount of luck to even get into the position where you might score, but once there, it takes an extraordinary amount of skill just to have a chance to actually finish it off. And it doesn’t take as long to be able to sense who is good and who isn’t as you might think. Watch Brazil for 90 minutes and you’ll see an average of 2-3 HOLY !@#$#$% moments. Watch the U.S. for 90 minutes, and more than likely you’ll just see England screw up.

The noise is awful. I mean, you cannot exaggerate how terrible the vuvuzelas (or however you spell it) are. You cannot.

The lack of commercials would be great, except that the actual match is so horrendously boring that at times you are begging for a carbon copy beer commercial with tanned models laughing and drinking Heineken as they not so subtly-imply that alcohol will make you buff, happy and able to perform incredible stunts. And not just any alcohol. Only their brand. The other brands make you lame.

The camera angle sucks. Everyone appears to be moving in slow motion. Seriously, Usain Bolt could be running from one side of the field to other, and the super-zoomed-out camera would make it seem like he was lightly jogging. You don’t need to see the entire field at once, all the time. Zoom in, for crying out loud. Are World Cup Camera operators so bad that they can’t be trusted to follow the action at all, to the point where they are given orders to simply pull back until you see nearly everything from one goalie to the other?

Bad refs can absolutely destroy the game. Destroy it. As much as we complain about officiating in United States’ sports—and believe me, there is plenty to complain about—when an NBA referee messes up a call, it might swing the game 2 points. That is 98 less points than the team is likely to score. When an umpire misses a strike call, the count is 1-0 instead of 0-1. When a soccer referee makes a bad call, it costs a team a berth in the elimination round of the tournament that only comes every four years. That is indefensible. That is awful. That makes it hard to stomach such a sport.

So how to make soccer more interesting? Well, it is quite obvious. Take some men off the freaking field!!! With only, say, seven guys on a team, there would be so much more open space, so much more attacking, so much more room for sensational plays. There would be more scoring, more amazing moves, and even more amazing defense, as people would have to actually go for the ball as opposed to conglomerating into an eleven-man amoeba that blocks out the sun and makes scoring utterly impossible. Additionally, with so many more scoring chances, a single referee mistake will not cast quite as long of a shadow.

Why does soccer have so many players? Seriously, what is the point. Where in history did someone decide that muddying up the field with as many people as possible was the way to go about it? Did that hypothetical stupid person also have the following idea for tennis: “Forget singles and doubles. Let’s play with ten people on a team! That will be even more fun!”?

I want people to explain to me why there are so many freaking people on a soccer field. If I don’t get a good explanation, I shall continue to mock the sport mercilessly. If I do get a good explanation, I will continue to mock England’s porous defense mercilessly.

~The Sports Maunderer~

*I would like to call it football, because, seriously, it makes a lot more sense. But if an American says football, Europeans assume he means American football. So I have to say soccer simply because that is expected. Although, if the U.S. ever wins the World Cup someday, I am completely behind Jon Stewart’s idea that the whole world must then call it “soccer”.