To all soccer snobs....

Dog's right; we shouldn't have unwieldy debates on message boards.

 

Yes we should.

 

Oh, for Christ's sakes, you know that's not what I said.

I just read through that entire thing and noticed that at one time or another, almost everyone on each side agreed, albeit not word for word, with the arguments of the other side. Go back and look.

And trust me, if anyone ever argues that unwieldy debates shouldn't happen on message boards, it'll not be me. Jesus, half my posts here serve to further an unwieldy debate.

 

"What was on the menu tonight?"

"Um, steak or fish."

"Now I remember. I had the lasagna."

 

Um, sarcasm font.

 

Oh, I believe both the bunny AND the pancake would understand the message in that.

 

Um, post pad (for me). I meant to use the sarcasm font as well.

 

"Soccer snobs" are like "welfare queens"

They really don't exist.

The snobbery is people who dismiss soccer immediately or refuse to even attempt to understand it. Hell, baseball is BY FAR my first love. Soccer is the sixth or seventh sport I'd choose to watch. But I respect it for how difficult it is, in terms of skill and conditioning. I appreciate its highlights, the spontaneity, the improvisation that would make Coltrane blush. And when it comes to the World Cup, I appreciate the passion.

Too many people make a POINT of hating it. That's snobbery, imho.

On a completely unrelated note, why is nationalism more acceptable than racism?

 

OK ... I'll tell you one of the reasons why I'm not a soccer fan, even though I played it in high school ...

<pulling up a therapist's couch>

Our team, which was the first ever soccer team at my school, was bad. Very bad. The only player on the team with ANY soccer experience whatsoever, was a female. She was also our best player. We lost every game we played that season, going 0-20. We didn't score a goal the entire season.

I was a one-half goalie, typically playing the first half, and in one game, I got scored on seven times. SEVEN TIMES!

OK ... therapy session over.
My main beef with soccer, as a fan, is that it takes too long (for my taste) for plays to develop. But if you like soccer, for whatever reason, good on ya'. I just don't see why I have to justify why I don't like soccer to the people on this board who say, "1 billion people worldwide can't be wrong."

 

What I don't understand about your beef with soccer, AA, is that it so contradicts what makes the sport great in contrast with prototypical American sports.
Takes too long for plays to develop?
What takes longer and wastes more time than a baseball at-bat?
Consider all the time football players waste in huddles.

 

I spent my life, going to baseball and football games, not soccer guys. In the 1970s, in Texas, it's not like soccer could be found on every corner, and few high schools were even playing the game.

Now, you wonder about the pace of baseball and football as compared to soccer. With baseball, there's so much time between pitches, between plays, you can do lots of things and not miss much of the action. Look at girls, keep score, drink beer, etc.

With football, the time between plays actually goes very quickly and, again, there's time to look away.

With hockey, the plays take time to develop, but because everything's moving so quickly and because there's so much hitting, it's easy to get engaged.

But with soccer, there's just no connection. And it's not like I dismissed it out of hand. I actually forced myself to watch some of the World Cup and there just was no interest. A team I cared about wasn't playing (how excited could I get about Ukraine and Saudi Arabia, except to hope the Saudis lost 100-0?), the action, while slow to develop, doesn't exactly lend itself to spending a lot of time looking away. And if I'm sitting down to watch a game at home, I'm NOT going to look away. I don't with baseball and I don't with football.

That's all there is to it. It's just a game that I and a majority of other non-fans just can't connect with. It's not like it's a deficiency. Some people don't like milk, and I just can't understand that. But I don't bemoan that fact on message boards, nor make claims like "Millions of people like milk. Maybe it's you."

Maybe I'm soccer-intolerant. If so, I'm fine with that.