SoccerBall: Why "European Rules Football" Will Never Make It In 'Merica

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So I watched my first ever World Cup Soccer Game (...err...Futbul Match.?.) last night as the USA trounced Ghana 2-1. (How exactly you "trounce" another team 2-1 is beyond me.)

OK...so it wasn't so bad that I tried to gouge my eyes out with a spoon; but after reflection I think that it is safe to say that this game (I'm sorry...this is NOT a sport) will probably never catch on in good ole 'Merica.

First of all, the rules are confusing. How can my team be off-side, if their player is behind mine? Why does time count up instead of down, why do the ref's get to arbitrarily assign extra time, etc, etc, ad nauseam. If explaining a rule requires an entire website, it's too confusing.

And speaking of Extra Time; the second item, in a single word: Math. In soccer the clock doesn’t stop moving. It also counts up instead of down. This makes it very anticlimactic. Viewers have to do math, particularly subtraction, in order to know how much time is left. This requires borrowing numbers and doing it in your head. Not cool. There is also a lot of wasted time. (see #3) So, in order to make up for this wasted time the referees arbitrarily decide how much “extra time” will be added after the 90 minutes of play is up. Games never end with a furious attack on the net. They usually end the way the majority of the game was played: some guy kicking the ball around in the middle of the field.

Third, and perhaps the most egregious of all, is all of the whining. Soccer is very much like hockey: uhhh...except much more boring and feminine. Soccer is seen in the eyes of most Americans as a women's sport. i.e. "Soccer Mom".

So what I'm saying is: Suck it up and act like a man!

Lastly, it is simply boring. All of the American sports have some element of action to keep you interested. In soccer, a guy stands alone in one portion of a huge field until some other loner comes over and harasses him a bit. He then kicks the ball to another guy standing alone and he kicks it by himself for a while. Soccer is like flying a plane. 85 minutes of excruciating boredom interrupted by 5 minutes of sheer terror.

Paint Drying > Soccer.

 So, I will probably watch the next World Cup game, until America loses anyway, out of dumb patriotism and a maniacal fascination with sports and all things Red, White, and Blue. But I wouldn't count on MLS selling out stadiums anytime soon. Hey, every four years I become a fan of track and field and then forget about it until the next time an American suits up for gold. That doesn't mean that the decathlon will be America's next top rated sport. Expect soccer to continue to be an every-four-year-fascination for Americans.


 'Merica! Heck, yeah!.

American SoccerBall

My son loves soccer, and he's pretty good at it, too. I love football, and while I played High School ball, I'm more adept at coaching than playing. I'm quite certain that if, IF, I were the head ballcoach at UGA, we would never lose a game. Every touchdown is a direct result of a play that I would have called, and every fumble is caused by an idiot I would have never allowed on my team in the first place. Every assistant coach would be a world class instructor and work for the same under-valued-salary that most pastors earn. It would be one heck of a show!



So I am confident in my worldview of football. But admittedly a little lost in my son's world of soccerball. I am also know for my vast array of trivial knowledge. My ability to talk small is staggering. I can usually answer facts on dates, history, and especially etymology. One elusive bit of trivia that I did not know; however, was the etymological roots of the word soccer. Why do we call it soccer here, and the rest of the world screw it up and call it football there? Everybody knows that football is played with both hands and feet! Well, I recently read an article about the origins of why soccer is incorrectly called football by every other tribe, nation, or tongue.



According to Clive Toye, the man who started American Soccer and brought Pele to the US, the word Soccer has British roots.




“Soccer is a synonym for football,” said Toye, who helped launch the North American Soccer League in the late 1960s. “And it has been used as such for more years than I can count. When I was a kid in England and grabbed a ball to go out and play … I would just as easily have said: ‘Let’s have a game of soccer’ as I would use the word ‘football’ instead. And I didn’t start it.”


To trace the origin of “soccer” we must go all the way back to 1863, and a meeting of gentlemen at a London pub, who congregated with the purpose of standardizing the rules of “football,” which was in its infant years as an organized sport but was growing rapidly in popularity.


Those assembled became the founding members of the Football Association (which still oversees the game in England to this day). And they decided to call their code Association Football, to differentiate it from Rugby Football.


A quirk of British culture is the permanent need to familiarize names by shortening them. “My friend Brian Johnston was Johnners,” said Toye. “They took the third, fourth and fifth letters of Association and called it SOCcer. So there you are.”



So there you are indeed. Good show, old boy. I know a little more about soccer. Even if it's not what causes an off-side penalty in soccer. I mean, how can your guy... be standing near MY goal...and I'm the one off sides!? Geesh!



*******sigh********** Maybe I'll just stick with football