WRONG-SHAPED BALLS

World Cup withdrawal symptoms were so severe last night that the boys and I ended up watching an ancient BBC video, discovered at a fete last week,  of classic goals from the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties.  Including Mick Walsh's 1975 thunderbolt for Blackpool and a suspiciously large number of shots conceded by my team, West Ham. A very odd feeling to see those lumpy pitches, lumpy hairstyles and bustling, all-British line-ups. (Clyde Best was about the only foreign face.)

Now, having admitted all that, I don't have a problem with people who aren't interested in football. But why some American conservatives feel they have to be oafish about it is beyond me:

Penalty kicks? What's wrong with playing overtime until someone scores a real goal? I realize soccer is already a tediously long game in which almost nothing ever happens, and overtime could go on for a very, very long time. But they only play this World Cup every four years, right? Even the French and Italians ought to be able to work this out by, say, 2009, no? I mean, do all forms of overtime violate EU labor laws? Soccer ... something else Europe can keep.

OK, he's trying to be witty. I'll try to forgive him.  John Podhoretz, meanwhile, thinks there's still life in the old joke about the French surrendering at the first opportunity. Sigh. Still, it's funnier than his earlier crack about the Zidane fracas: "I gather that the incident began when the Italian player said, "You know what? I like Jews." Another big sigh...

As for the notion that football talk is more prone to hyperbole than American sports chat, well, it's true that Bernard-Henri Lévy is in a league of his own when it comes to purple prose, but all credit to Podhoretz's fellow-Cornerite, Jonah Goldberg for quoting from this reader's e-mail:

Over the top praise for every aspect of a sport?  Americans talking about American sport do that as easily as we breathe. A practiced windbag like Bernard-Henri Lévy alluding to the Greek pantheon is one thing, but how is he that much worse that the excesses of, say George Will, who writes about baseball as though the Declaration of Indepence were written on the back of Topps cards.

Comments

[Jay]

I love America, but some of these conservative American commentators are ridiculous when it comes to football. Sorry to say this, but I think they fear what the don't understand. The beautiful game ,played and loved and adored by billions, on every continent, by every race and religion, in every shanty town, ghetto, favela and across every class, uniting the world in the joy it brings them.

I think it leaves them feeling confused and resentful about what they don't understand, and fear it. After all, American sports are virtually irrelevant minority pastimes outside the USA, and it must be perplexing for them to see the unifying beauty of this game and its occasions.

Having said that, I know a few Americans, and they love football. So it seems to be a concern for only a small section of parochial conservatives. And in a way, it is amusing too.

And yes, I have World Cup withdrawal symptoms too.

[dupontedward]

Football, in fact, is hugely popular in the United States -- as a participatory sport. Witness the fact that the women's national team has done exceptionally well: there is a huge pool of talent to draw upon. Football is not, however, a huge spectator sport in America. I can't help but assume that, were the tables turned (that is, if the Europeans played football en masse but were bored by watching it, while Americans were fanatical fans), then European commentators would assert that Americans had commercialized what is otherwise a perfectly healthy athletic activity. And certainly if the Americans' passion for watching football had spread widely around the world, it would be further evidence of American cultural hegemony. Let's not even consider what the Europeans would make of American football hooligans.

At a time when the vast majority of European journalists and artists feel justified in condemning every facet of American culture, Clive and others fixate on the few conservative "wits" who dare to insult Europe. Why?

[Peter Jakes]

What amazes me about non-North Americans (speaking as a Canadian) is the strange desire to have football be taken as seriously there as in the rest of the world. If the USA put as much effort into football as it did basketball they would be fielding teams more dominant than Brazil has been able too.

How would the world like to see the USA win the World Cup every eight years or so and be one of the favorites every World Cup?

How would Manchester United, Juventes or Real Madrid like to be forced to bid for talent against teams in NYC, Chicago or LA backed up by huge American TV dollars?

I do not think football fans outside the USA would like it one bit. They should be thankful that football is more of a minor league than a major league team sport in the USA.

Another complaint I have when World Cup roles around is that many of its fans proclaim it to be THE ONLY major team sport. But in fact in many countries, football is not the only major team sport and it is often well behind others in terms of popularity. Here in Canada it is well behind ice hockey (which is a major sport as well in the Northern USA and many parts of Northern Europe) and in terms of fan interest it is well behind baseball, basketball and Canadian football as well.

Many of the so called American sports are not just major in the USA. Baseball for example, has got quite a following in North America, Central America, the Carribean, Venezuela, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. This, of course, may not be well known among parochial European football fanatics.

[mike]

I enjoyed the world cup. I skipped work for the Italy vs. U.S. match and had fun watching the game. (Even though they took a red card for a nothing penalty. From what I have read in an international match if one side gets a red card the ref will always even it up. Why take the red card for kicking someone in the foot? It seems like it would be better to take the best player from the opposition with you, maybe an elbow would get the job done)

Overall I would rate the World Cup an 8 for fun and a 6 for sport.

[Michael Allen]

Great blog.
As a Brit in DC, I've had similar comments from colleagues. One or two of the political sophisticates started to "get it' after reading Kissinger's World Cup preview in Time (or was it Newsweek?). For the would-be intellectuals, I tried explaining that football's a form of athletic speed-chess, and that worked for some.
See Jeff Gedmin's article in Die Welt for an American's conversion

I've Got It
Column in "Die Welt",
05.07.2006 By Jeffrey Gedmin

I wanted to watch Spain play a couple weeks ago and ended up at a tapas bar at Hackischer Markt here in Berlin. The place was packed, the atmosphere great. Then something a little crazy happens. There are two guys behind me in the corner, with two empty seats next to them. The waitress asks if the seats are free. She has two pretty girls in tow, a drink in hand, a smile on their faces. They just want to squeeze in and watch some football. The guys say no. That's right, they say adamantly no. These guys got there early, it seems, to capture this little area of the bar and, well, football is football and they'd tolerate no distraction. I thought they were out of their minds. That was, until now.

As this column goes to press, Germany is gearing up for Italy. Every time I hear someone say, "hey, it's only a game," I cannot believe that such foolishness can exist. As you might already guess, 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.

By the time this paper hits the streets, destiny will have been decided. For now: sorry to my Italian friends! You have the better food, but this day belongs to Germany. I'm a Klinsmann fan, and not just because he lives in California, has an American wife, and has adopted apparently some American methods (sorry, had to work that in). Ever time I hear some wise commentator harp about Germany's technical deficiencies, I can barely control my temper. Since when did greatness in any sport ever come done to the technical aspect alone? To be a champion you need talent, you need training, but you also need heart and you need luck. As for luck, that's "when preparedness meets opportunity." That's how I heard luck defined once by Fred Langhammer, the former chairman and CEO of Estee Lauder, the global cosmetics company based in New York. Langhammer would know. He left Germany for Canada with only a few bucks in his pocket. Langhammer washed dishes for a while and then "lucked" his was into the United States and up the ladder in stunning, successful fashion.

Heart is what the German team showed against Argentina. When they were down 1-0 against what many said was a superior team, they could have just disappeared. Terry Bradshaw, a legendary figure in American football (Bradshaw played quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers), used to say they was nothing better than being behind in a game, with two minutes left, you have the ball and all the smart guys are betting against you. Bradshaw was the ultimate comeback kid. My favourite team growing up was the Washington Redskins. My first time at a game was when the Redskins played their arch rival, the Dallas Cowboys. Washington was badly beaten that day and my father insisted we leave the stadium to get a head start on the traffic. As we walked thru the parking lot toward our car, we heard the crowd roar. The skins came back. It turned that day to be a historic comeback. I would never let my father forget this. Ever since, my slogan has been, "it's never over till it's over-and it's never over." There's a great movie line, where the American actor Walter Matthau says impatiently to his side-kick Jack Lemon, "it's never too late- that's why they invented death."

Some says this is all rubbish. A friend of mine says it's about a "commercialized sport with undertones of nationalism." Naja, I call it falling in love. Waiting the next four years will really hurt.

[James Hamilton]

Oafishness? I'd forgive it, if only to compensate for the rather larger amount of oafishness that's been offered US soccer by British journalists over the course of the World Cup. If I read the word "soccerball" on the Guardian website once..

It would be asking far too much for them to balance their Yanks-don't-get-it obsession with something similar about the likes of India. Were they to do that, it would reveal that this whole "joke", all along, hasn't been about football culture at all, but the kind of discriminatory dislike of a country that under normal circumstances any kind of liberal sensibility would find ignorant and abhorrent.

Of course, the States had an unexpectedly rotten World Cup, after good showings in '94 and 2002, and it remains to be seen where next.

[Gareth Mitchell]

Astonishing how football really has become a faultline amongst some in America and the rest of the world, breeding an astonishing amount of fear and contempt.

It is amusing. Anyway, the beautiful game roles on, and American sport is irrelevant to all but a parochial and irrelevant minority in the rest of the world.

[mike]

"Astonishing how football really has become a faultline amongst some in America and the rest of the world, breeding an astonishing amount of fear and contempt."

meh. You don't have a clue.

[Michael A]

Great blog.
As a Brit in DC, I've had similar comments from colleagues. One or two of the political sophisticates started to "get it' after reading Kissinger's World Cup preview in Time (or was it Newsweek?). For the would-be intellectuals, I tried explaining that football's a form of athletic speed-chess, and that worked for some.
See Jeff Gedmin's article in Die Welt for an American's conversion

I've Got It
Column in "Die Welt",
05.07.2006 By Jeffrey Gedmin

I wanted to watch Spain play a couple weeks ago and ended up at a tapas bar at Hackischer Markt here in Berlin. The place was packed, the atmosphere great. Then something a little crazy happens. There are two guys behind me in the corner, with two empty seats next to them. The waitress asks if the seats are free. She has two pretty girls in tow, a drink in hand, a smile on their faces. They just want to squeeze in and watch some football. The guys say no. That's right, they say adamantly no. These guys got there early, it seems, to capture this little area of the bar and, well, football is football and they'd tolerate no distraction. I thought they were out of their minds. That was, until now.

As this column goes to press, Germany is gearing up for Italy. Every time I hear someone say, "hey, it's only a game," I cannot believe that such foolishness can exist. As you might already guess, 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.

By the time this paper hits the streets, destiny will have been decided. For now: sorry to my Italian friends! You have the better food, but this day belongs to Germany. I'm a Klinsmann fan, and not just because he lives in California, has an American wife, and has adopted apparently some American methods (sorry, had to work that in). Ever time I hear some wise commentator harp about Germany's technical deficiencies, I can barely control my temper. Since when did greatness in any sport ever come done to the technical aspect alone? To be a champion you need talent, you need training, but you also need heart and you need luck. As for luck, that's "when preparedness meets opportunity." That's how I heard luck defined once by Fred Langhammer, the former chairman and CEO of Estee Lauder, the global cosmetics company based in New York. Langhammer would know. He left Germany for Canada with only a few bucks in his pocket. Langhammer washed dishes for a while and then &q uot;lucked" his was into the United States and up the ladder in stunning, successful fashion.

Heart is what the German team showed against Argentina. When they were down 1-0 against what many said was a superior team, they could have just disappeared. Terry Bradshaw, a legendary figure in American football (Bradshaw played quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers), used to say they was nothing better than being behind in a game, with two minutes left, you have the ball and all the smart guys are betting against you. Bradshaw was the ultimate comeback kid. My favourite team growing up was the Washington Redskins. My first time at a game was when the Redskins played their arch rival, the Dallas Cowboys. Washington was badly beaten that day and my father insisted we leave the stadium to get a head start on the traffic. As we walked thru the parking lot toward our car, we heard the crowd roar. The skins came back. It turned that day to be a historic comeback. I would never let my father forget this. Ever since, my slogan has been, "it's never over till it's over-an d it's never over." There's a great movie line, where the American actor Walter Matthau says impatiently to his side-kick Jack Lemon, "it's never too late- that's why they invented death."

Some says this is all rubbish. A friend of mine says it's about a "commercialized sport with undertones of nationalism." Naja, I call it falling in love. Waiting the next four years will really hurt.