MORE ON BALLS

An e-mail on that post about the outbreak of soccerphobia among American conservatives:

There's an odd combination of defensiveness and aggression that seems  to characterise much of the American Right's response to soccer as 
well as an ugly nativist streak that, frankly, borders on the xenophobic (and I write this as someone who has defended or tried to  contextualise many of the myths told about American conservatives on, say, the BBC).  Why they can't simply say, "Well, I can see why lots  of people love the game, but it's not for me" and leave it at that is beyond me. (Though the line about overtime and the EU was quite funny).

Then again, sweeping generalisations about an entire continent are 
scarcely confined to one side of the Atlantic.

Atlantic Review's Joerg Wolf has put together a very good round-up, including this piece from The American Thinker:

My theory is that Americans have neither the belief system nor the temperament for such a Sisyphean sport as soccer. We are a society of doers, achievers, and builders. Our country is dynamic, constantly growing, and becoming ever bigger,  richer, and stronger... We do not labour for the sake of labouring. And we like our sports teams to score. ..

That soccer may be "the most popular sport in the world" speaks volumes—but not about America’s lack of sporting knowledge or sophistication, as soccer aficionados like to argue. Rather, I think it reflects the static, crimped, and defeatest attitudes held by so many of the other peoples on earth.

I'm clinging to the hope that it's a spoof. If so, it's pretty convincing. Thankfully, some conservatives do understand what the game means.... One of the comments that disappeared along with yesterday's posts included a link to Jeff Gedmin's column in Die Welt. There's a copy over at Medienkritik:

I've got it and I've got it bad. There is simply no feeling like being able to watch two, or even three games a day. I'm not sure how I ever lived without this. On days when there have been no games I feel listless, anxious, without purpose. On Saturday, I watched England vs. Portugal and France vs. Brazil at a party and found myself annoyed because a couple people were talking during the games. I don't mean like, "Eckball, this could be tough,"or "Hey, that yellow card was a joke." These guys were running a conversation about politics without as much as an eye on the screen. I should have thrown these losers out.

Jeff will be in London soon for a conference, so I hope to swap World Cup stories with him then.

Comments

[Fausta]

I'll take the Swiss, thank you.

[Jay]

Clive

I found the BBC World Cup end sequence on You Tube:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Xw5dNq24RQM&search=bbc%20%2B%20world%20cup

Jay

[Mike Doughty]

I think everyone on both sides of this "debate" should quit hyerventilating. It's a GAME, for crying out loud. Some people like it, some don't.

[Juan Golblado]

I grew up primarily in the US and watched and played baseball and ("American") football. I could write a lot about my take on soccer and compare it to basketball and the others.

But the main thing I want to say is that I'm surprised, Clive, that you don't get the American Thinker's view of exceptionalism and the two sports. You could make the same point with an anti-U.S. slant equally well and with equal truth.

btw, thanks for turning me on to Pink Martini!

[RWB]

People tend to want to demean that which they don't understand, when they see other people enjoying it. Soccer isn't a big sport in America for reasons having nothing to do with its nature, but rather for the obvious reason that other sports take up people's attention, in my humble mid-atlantic view (raised mostly in Ireland, living in America now). The idea that the lack of scoring makes the sport "un-American" is absurd -- many baseball fans and "purists" prefer the 1-0 pitchers' duel to the 12-10 home run derby. It just comes down spending the time necessary to appreciate the subtleties of the game. Not enough Americans have done that to make the sport a big TV commercial enterprise. And that's OK too! It's OK that Americans are not so into soccer. In addition to the fact that certain American commentators shouldn't make fun of the sport, European commentators should worry a lot less about whether Americans like it or not.

I guess it was all said by a previous commenter: "It's a game, for crying out loud."

[Fausta]

Actually, in baseball, a no-score game is a perfect game,
"A no-hitter in which no opposing player reaches first base, either by a base hit, base on balls, hit batter, or fielding error; i.e., the pitcher or pitchers retire all twenty-seven (27) opposing batters in order."

[Aussie Pete]

Roll on the Rugby World Cup! At least one gets a result and the legal on field violence precludes on field hissy fits.... Mostly except in scrums and rucks where the odd bit of biffo is occasionally reported! ;-)

[Clive]

But then we'll be plunged into a three-way argument about the ideological virtues of rugby, American football and that bizarre game they call Australian Rules!

[Paula]

I'm not sure if the American aversion to soccer is just a conservative one. However, I do know that soccer is not a game for wimps. It's far more active than it looks on TV and takes a good deal of strenght and endurance. It's challenging and active. What's not American about that?

[alcibiades]

Piffle.

Some American conservatives love soccer and wrote long columns in praise of it.

Some even took hiatus from French bashing to root on the French team, since they clearly played the superior game, both versus Brazil and Italy.

And some even found the typical French bashing of conservatives after l'affaire Zidane really, really annoying.

As if soccer and politics were the same arena!

[mike]

Aussie Pete, has MMA caught on up there?