Photo: babasteve.
Okay, so my motives for soccer-watching aren’t exactly pure. My motives? Benny Feilhaber. Oguchi Onyewu. Carlos Bocanegra. Maurice Edu. And that’s just the Americans . . . Why is it that soccer players are so much hotter than normal people? Is it something in the Gatorade? Would we all be that attractive if we were that in shape? Or do I just have some kind of fetish for guys in shorts and knee socks? (Don’t answer that.)
My other friends have less base reasons for following the World Cup. My boyfriend lived in Germany for a while and picked up his football-watching habit there. Carson used to be a high school soccer star–I once asked him how good he was, and he said that he couldn’t tell me because he doesn’t brag–and is, to this day, the only American I know who watches soccer on a near-daily basis. And Josie–well, Josie just really likes screaming “GOOOOOOOOOOOAL!” at the top of her lungs.
July 11th will bring the third World Cup final I watch–I have, thanks to my knee-socks-and-shorts fetish, always attracted friends who are soccer fans and plan elaborate final parties–and it always bums me out that Americans are less than thrilled by soccer. That claim that soccer is boring? Patently false. Soccer is boring if you watch it the way we watch baseball or football: passively, paying more attention to your smack talk and Bud Light than to the game, focusing solely on the team’s opportunity to score. Americans don’t like soccer because it requires attention from us. You have watch soccer as if you were a player. You have to look ahead to scan the field for an open player, a gap in coverage, a defender rushing in. You have to predict. You have to engage.
Which isn’t to say that soccer is a sport free of flaws. I can still sympathize with a few particularly . . . American . . . complaints. The refereeing, even in an event as epic as the World Cup, is not up to our standards–we demand fairness in officiating beyond the point of reason, something that the World Cup refs are not prepared to offer. Even then, as the Armando Galarraga saga showed us earlier this month, we’re willing to forgive if the refs admit their culpability–but FIFA won’t even offer us that much, as the U.S.-Slovenia game made clear. Worse than bad calls, there’s that particularly nasty strain of racial tension among several of the European teams and their fans. And on a lighter note, the flopping–oh god, the flopping. What can get more un-American than the whiny, dive-filled finish of the Brazil/Cote d’Ivoire game? Man up, boys.
But for every terrible thing about the World Cup, there are at least two wonderful things:
- Vuvuzelas!
- It will teach you this difference between Algeria and Nigeria.
- You can actually cheer for the American team this year without being embarrassed.
- No commercials for a full 45 minutes! When will that ever again happen in the history of American television?
- Yellow cards. Red cards! Genius. We’ve started giving them out at the bar when people are behaving badly.
- It gives you another excuse to drink beer. Every day. In the morning, if you want.
- Did I mention that soccer players are hot?
After reading this post, I wish I paid more attention to sports and actually watched the world cup. I’m the type of person who never ever watches sports on TV (although I have been persuaded to in the past by former boyfriends, but I watched begrudgingly). I’m Canadian and people are really into hockey here…and I get very bored watching hockey on TV although I find live games very entertaining. Some people think that’s weird, but at live games, you can really feel the energy and its easier to get into the game and cheer for your team (even if you don’t actually care that much if they win or lose). Anyway, it sounds like you had a great time, and hot soccer players sound tempting, so maybe I should start watching more often?
I definitely love live games more than televised ones, too. Football was big at my college, and I paid so much more attention to the team when I had season tickets than I do now.
And the World Cup final is coming up on Sunday! My new favorite hot men are on the Spanish team, so I’m kind of pulling for it to be them against the Netherlands, haha.