Soccer is destroying America.

I think this is just hilarious
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123680101041299201.html

Soccer is running America into the ground, and there is very little anyone can do about it. Social critics have long observed that we live in a therapeutic society that treats young people as if they can do no wrong. Every kid is a winner, and nobody is ever left behind, no matter how many times they watch the ball going the other way. Whether the dumbing down of America or soccer came first is hard to say, but soccer is clearly an important means by which American energy, drive and competitiveness are being undermined to the point of no return.

What other game, to put it bluntly, is so boring to watch? (Bowling and golf come to mind, but the sound of crashing pins and the sight of the well-attired strolling on perfectly kept greens are at least inherently pleasurable activities.) The linear, two-dimensional action of soccer is like the rocking of a boat but without any storm and while the boat has not even left the dock. Think of two posses pursuing their prey in opposite directions without any bullets in their guns. Soccer is the fluoridation of the American sporting scene.

For those who think I jest, let me put forth four points, which is more points than most fans will see in a week of games—and more points than most soccer players have scored since their pee-wee days.

1) Any sport that limits you to using your feet, with the occasional bang of the head, has something very wrong with it. Indeed, soccer is a liberal's dream of tragedy: It creates an egalitarian playing field by rigorously enforcing a uniform disability. Anthropologists commonly define man according to his use of hands. We have the thumb, an opposable digit that God gave us to distinguish us from animals that walk on all fours. The thumb lets us do things like throw baseballs and fold our hands in prayer. We can even talk with our hands. Have you ever seen a deaf person trying to talk with his feet? When you are really angry and acting like an animal, you kick out with your feet. Only fools punch a wall with their hands. The Iraqi who threw his shoes at President Bush was following his primordial instincts. Showing someone your feet, or sticking your shoes in someone's face, is the ultimate sign of disrespect. Do kids ever say, "Trick or Treat, smell my hands"? Did Jesus wash his disciples' hands at the Last Supper? No, hands are divine (they are one of the body parts most frequently attributed to God), while feet are in need of redemption. In all the portraits of God's wrath, never once is he pictured as wanting to step on us or kick us; he does not stoop that low.

2) Sporting should be about breaking kids down before you start building them up. Take baseball, for example. When I was a kid, baseball was the most popular sport precisely because it was so demanding. Even its language was intimidating, with bases, bats, strikes and outs. Striding up to the plate gave each of us a chance to act like we were starring in a Western movie, and tapping the bat to the plate gave us our first experience with inventing self-indulgent personal rituals. The boy chosen to be the pitcher was inevitably the first kid on the team to reach puberty, and he threw a hard ball right at you.

Thus, you had to face the fear of disfigurement as well as the statistical probability of striking out. The spectacle of your failure was so public that it was like having all of your friends invited to your home to watch your dad forcing you to eat your vegetables. We also spent a lot of time in the outfield chanting, "Hey batter batter!" as if we were Buddhist monks on steroids. Our chanting was compensatory behavior, a way of making the time go by, which is surely why at soccer games today it is the parents who do all of the yelling.

3) Everyone knows that soccer is a foreign invasion, but few people know exactly what is wrong with that. More than having to do with its origin, soccer is a European sport because it is all about death and despair. Americans would never invent a sport where the better you get the less you score. Even the way most games end, in sudden death, suggests something of an old-fashioned duel. How could anyone enjoy a game where so much energy results in so little advantage, and which typically ends with a penalty kick out, as if it is the audience that needs to be put out of its misery? Shootouts are such an anticlimax to the game and are so unpredictable that the teams might as well flip a coin to see who wins—indeed, they might as well flip the coin before the game, and not play at all.

4) And then there is the question of sex. I know my daughter will kick me when she reads this, but soccer is a game for girls. Girls are too smart to waste an entire day playing baseball, and they do not have the bloodlust for football. Soccer penalizes shoving and burns countless calories, and the margins of victory are almost always too narrow to afford any gloating. As a display of nearly death-defying stamina, soccer mimics the paradigmatic feminine experience of childbirth more than the masculine business of destroying your opponent with insurmountable power.

Let me conclude on a note of despair appropriate to my topic. There is no way to run away from soccer, if only because it is a sport all about running. It is as relentless as it is easy, and it is as tiring to play as it is tedious to watch. The real tragedy is that soccer is a foreign invasion, but it is not a plot to overthrow America. For those inclined toward paranoia, it would be easy to blame soccer's success on the political left, which, after all, worked for years to bring European decadence and despair to America. The left tried to make existentialism, Marxism, poststructuralism, and deconstructionism fashionable in order to weaken the clarity, pragmatism and drive of American culture. What the left could not accomplish through these intellectual fads, one might suspect, they are trying to accomplish through sport.

Yet this suspicion would be mistaken. Soccer is of foreign origin, that is certainly true, but its promotion and implementation are thoroughly domestic. Soccer is a self-inflicted wound. Americans have nobody to blame but themselves. Conservative suburban families, the backbone of America, have turned to soccer in droves. Baseball is too intimidating, football too brutal, and basketball takes too much time to develop the required skills. American parents in the past several decades are overworked and exhausted, but their children are overweight and neglected. Soccer is the perfect antidote to television and video games. It forces kids to run and run, and everyone can play their role, no matter how minor or irrelevant to the game. Soccer and television are the peanut butter and jelly of parenting.

I should know. I am an overworked teacher, with books to read and books to write, and before I put in a video for the kids to watch while I work in the evenings, they need to have spent some of their energy. Otherwise, they want to play with me! Last year all three of my kids were on three different soccer teams at the same time. My daughter is on a traveling team, and she is quite good. I had to sign a form that said, among other things, I would not do anything embarrassing to her or the team during the game. I told the coach I could not sign it. She was perplexed and worried. "Why not," she asked? "Are you one of those parents who yells at their kids? "Not at all," I replied, "I read books on the sidelines during the game, and this embarrasses my daughter to no end." That is my one way of protesting the rise of this pitiful sport. Nonetheless, I must say that my kids and I come home from a soccer game a very happy family.

 

1. Soccer isn't only limited to your feet. You can use any part of your legs, your chest, head, or shoulder. Other sports are limited just as much. In basketball you can't use your feet to kick the ball. That would help me any time the ball gets low to the ground to be able to kick it out of the guys hands.

2. Soccer is a much tougher sport than baseball. Think of the amount of physical training that you do in baseball compared to soccer. With the amount of running being done at practices, it is amazing that anyone is able to finish it. What you said about chanting in baseball to pass time is completely true. You need something to do in a sport that half the team is waiting on the bench doing nothing while the other half is standing in the field doing nothing. In soccer you are always covering someone and moving up or down the field.

3. Penalty kicks take a lot of skill to get into the exact spot so the goalie can't reach it. It requires strategy to guess the direction that they will kick so the goalie can get a head start as they kick the ball.

4. Soccer may not be a direct contact sport, but there is plenty of contact in it. There are slide tackles where one player completely commits themselves by sliding at the ball and usually knocking over the other player. There is also a lot of should to shoulder pushing which will not be penalized. The only reason that you find the sport tedious to watch is because you probably know nothing about the rules and don't care what the outcome of the game is. Imagine if you were watching a baseball game and you didn't care at all what happened in the game. You wouldn't be able to watch 1 inning before leaving.

I feel bad for your students that they have such a stubborn and arrogant teacher to deal with. What's even worse is that you don't support your daughter playing soccer. If she is good, then you should watch her play and give advice on how she can get better.

 

is this what you think or did you get this from another source?

this is some funny trolling

 

The first thing he says is "I think this is just hilarious"

This is absolutely retarded... Honestly, I cant even begin to explain.

 

no its a legit article no trolling lol, ill post the link

 

Yeah... I didn't even bother reading past the first paragraph. Americans are destroying America. Soccer doesn't have to do with shit.

I'd love to see where you got the article from though.

 

Soccer is too mixed with another sport: Diving

I have never been able to enjoy it.

 

the only thing ruining america is people like you
nuff said

 

Lol...well i thought the bold "I think this is hilarious" would show that it wasnt me, my bad though! Here you guys go, Courtesy of Wall street journal.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123680101041299201.html

 

Pure idiocy, rofl. Love the meant-to-be rhethorical question "What other game, to put it bluntly, is so boring to watch?". Hell, if such people can be journalists then so can I.

 

Interesting that something of this nature was published in a journalistic source of the caliber of the WSJ.

 

You might wanna add the [,quote] [,/quote] tags around the article to make it a bit more apparent that it's an article (remove the commas).

 

Although you are sort of close to the truth, this is completely ridiculous. America is destroying itself, and the promise that everyone is a winner is one of the reasons why. The simple cold hard truth is that everyone isn't a winner, and by teaching kids that we are just setting them up for a lifetime of sadness and misery.

However soccer has nothing to do with this. It is just one of the many sports played by America's youth, and your idea of its complexity would not be effecting people in any way, shape or form.

 

What a dumbass.

I would love to see this asshole try and play soccer. It's one of the hardest sports out there in my opinion and the physical endurance it requires is higher than anything else. It's definitely not something you can pick up right away either. It seems to be one of those sports that anyone who is really good started at a young age. I always regretted not getting into soccer. I was considering on trying to start my last couple of years of high school, but figured it was too late by then.

 

I'm baffled by this guy

Soccer is the most watched AND played sport in the world.

Can't argue with the facts. Soccer uses the whole body and take no breaks besides half time. Football? Yeah run for 30 seconds then rest for 5. Basketball?, run for a few minutes back and forth then take a quarter break.

I love when the people who say soccer sucks are always from the... how do I say it... place where their national team sucks?

Soccer will only CONTINUE to GROW in the U.S so get used to seeing it more, have fun

 

Disagree with article completely, the argument is absurd and not relevant to 'destroying america'

 

Soccer is one of the best sports made:

Football is less of a sport, you run for 8 seconds and then fall on the ground and lay there as if you just ran a marathon. In soccer your constantly moving for 90 minutes, most concussions come from soccer, seeing as though you head the ball. It works every part of your body, arms from running and from throw ins, also from trying to keep another player off of you. It is not a girls sport it is a mans sport, 90% of knee injuries are from soccer. What do we do when we get hit? We get the hell back into the game, in football what do you do? You lay there as if a train just hit you. Don't get me wrong I enjoy watching football, but don't go around saying that soccer isn't a sport, or is a " pussy " sport, because it is one of the hard sports on your body.

 

You're facts are incorrect sir. I personally love soccer but in soccer when people get hit they stay down unlike it football. It's just drawing the foul

 

I'm from the UK and 'Soccer' should not be called 'Soccer'.

It should be called Football, because there is no hand interaction (except for throw ins).

American 'football' should have been called Soccer. Makes no sense that it's called Football when you hold it in you hands.

Soccer or Handegg would do fine.

 

I hate when people get so much pride when others call it soccer. The American term is Soccer, get over it. It's not Football out here. In America, Football (Hand Egg) is a much bigger sport than Soccer. The only reason Soccer is a highly watched sport is because its a national association. The NFL is only in America. You have the NFL, CFL, EFLI, GFL, BAFL, GA, BFL, CEFL, IAFL, IFL, BAFA, LNFA, AFW and many many more.

In America its Soccer, in other Nations its Football, GET OVER IT!

EDIT - I've played Football (Hand Egg) for 11 years now, I'm 17. I've played Soccer for 7 years, Track for 4, Basketball for 3 and Baseball for 2, Wrestled for 2.

I can personally say that Soccer is a hard sport, but Football is much harder. I know I know (But you played soccer for less than you played football) That's because Soccer is mostly running. My coaches even said "Soccer requires most of your body." It really doesn't. It's mainly just leg strength and how you maneuver the ball. Football requires a lot more leg strength and upper body strength. Yes plays may last 5 -30 seconds, but that 5 - 30 seconds is the most intense amount of time you'll ever do. You're supposed to go full speed, full strength, full power every play. In soccer, there is a lot of down time due to playing on such big fields. Soccer requires some finesse and a lot of tactical decisions in my opinion. Football is incredibly explosive and finesse. Things have to be done perfectly or else you can let up a big play or lose a big play. Soccer does require skill, I will admit that, but Football is much more effective on your body than Soccer is. Most Soccer injuries aren't intentional. In Football, most injuries are intentional. I know mainly because I've played both sides of the ball.

I don't understand why people say Soccer requires your entire body when it truly, truly doesn't. They actually have a handicapped soccer league out here mainly for people who are missing limbs (Arms most of the time) and they play perfectly well. As a goalie, yes you need to have great coordination and be very quick on your feet and make decisions within seconds. As a quarterback you don't know what's going to happen until after you read the entire defense (11 players) within a second.

Soccer is and will remain the second most physically challenging sport right under Hockey and Rugby being tied. I didn't count MMA into this because its an entirely different sport.

Its just facts people.