Today I take a break from bashing the NBA because I’m basking in the warmth of my Wizards (yes I might be a sports hypocrite) sweeping Drake’s Toronto Raptors. Side note, if I’m an athlete I’m politely asking Drake not to root for my team, that has not ended well this year for any of them. Hopefully he’s in Mayweather’s corner this weekend.
Sorry, back on track now. This week’s article is about the most overrated sport in the world, Soccer. I could probably write a series of novels on this flop fest but in the words of ESPN’s Keith Olbermann, “don’t take this completely seriously, I don’t mean it completely literally” but here are the eight reasons why I hate soccer, and I mean soccer, not “futbol”.
It’s European: I did not fight for this country’s independence in 1776 to watch my great nation embrace soccer. I know what you might be thinking, “there is no way you fought in the Revolutionary War,” to that I say, “you don’t know my life.” My fictional war background aside, we are American, we play American sports (or at least the non-American sports we’re good at) and we don’t bow down the whims of the rest of the world. General Patton would not and neither will I. Soccer players are soft and even an NFL punter would demolish them on the gridiron.
Flopping: Speaking of being soft, holy hell, flopping is the absolute worst. Nothing like some skinny bitch with the physic of a 15 year old falling down for no god damn reason other than he’s trying to draw a foul. Seriously, fuck those guys, and you know what’s worse, with the influx of European players into America that shit has started to spread to manly sports like Hockey and the NBA. I swear to Odin if I see an NFL player flopping this season I’ll burn Europe to the fucking ground, the whole god damn continent. Fuck you Soccer, you’re ruining sports I care about.
FIFA: My general consensus of organizing bodies of sports are that they are evil, even the ones I love like the NFL, MLB, and NHL (the NFL being more evil than the other two combined and don’t get me started on the Mafia known as the NBA), but holy shit in my hatred of soccer I had no idea just how evil FIFA was. The NFL might put up with a lot, like drugs or hitting women but I don’t think there has been a build up to a Super Bowl that was on pace to kill 4000 people.
Qatar was awarded the 2022 World Cup, who the fuck knows why since temps can reach 122 degrees there, but as of writing this post more than 1200 workers have died building the stadiums in that country, with reports that these workers are more or less slaves who cannot leave the country. Other reports are claiming that Qatar and FIFA are on pace to oversee the deaths of over 4000 workers before the games are played. This is on top of accusations that Qatar (like many nations before it) paid out millions in bribes to get the games.
Seriously Soccer fans, I get your passion, you love this game (god knows why) but you can’t be blind to this shit. FIFA is more corrupt than a politician from the carpet bagger days in the South. Don’t turn a blind eye to the suffering and deaths of thousands to look at a pretty state of the art stadium that will only be used for one month. Shit, Jerry World down in Dallas only had two workers that died and that’s because they fell not due to exhaustion from 122 degree heat strokes, and that stadium will be used for at least 20 years.
The World Cup: God I hate hearing about the World Cup every four years. For those of you who don’t know or who’s read comprehension sucks (since I brought this up in the above paragraph) The World Cup is the international Soccer Tournament held every four years by FIFA in a country that paid them way more in bribes than it will earn for the “honor” of holding the games.
I don’t even understand why this exists (other than for an organization to extort money from countries) since the Olympics have had soccer in them since 1900 and the World Cup started 30 years later (in which the USA finished third that year, holy fucking shit!), soccer do you have that large of an inferiority complex that the Olympics weren’t good enough for you, you had to start your own world tournament? At least with Olympic Soccer there are other sports, sports America is actually good at to distract from the noise of the Soccer elitist. Plus USA basketball is way more fun to watch. But no, soccer fans know this and they need to be heard, loudly, so they started their own four year tournament like some petulant child who needs to be heard.
American Fans: Outside of Browns or Cub fans I have never seen a fan base get so excited over a team that you know with all of your heart is going to disappoint you in the end. This past World Cup I heard so many obnoxious soccer fans tell me “this is the best Men’s team we’ve ever had.” To which I say, “the fuck they are, the 1930 team finished third, granted there were only 13 teams in that first tournament, but fuck it, we got 3rd Y’ALL!
Since then our best finish has been 8th. But there is more to hate America Soccer Fans than just their over exaggerating of our country’s pathetic-ness on the world stage. It’s their constant inferiority complex. They’re loud obnoxious and just want to put down every other sport to try and raise theirs up. Soccer was late to the party here in the States where we have had several established team sports with rabid fan bases, is there room for Soccer? Sadly yes, but just remember, you’re not the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, shit, you’re not even NASCAR, just go enjoy your little niche sport in America and shut the fuck up and stop trying to force it down the rest of the country’s collective throats.
An Elitist Sport: I don’t know what it is about Soccer fans but they have this holier than though air about them. They feel because they’re a fan to this unwatchable sport that they’re somehow better than the rest of the sport watching world. They constantly point what they think are faults in other sports while blindly ignoring the many their sport has to offer. They like to point out these things like, football doesn’t have enough action, like the mind numbingly number of passes at mid field in soccer, how many times do we actually get to see a shot? Baseball, they’ll say is boring, sorry, but baseball is the chess of sports, every pitch, every at bat is a battle of wits, hockey, “I can’t see the puck,” well to that I say, “open your fucking eyes!” Soccer fans might have complaints about basketball but I’ll be damned if I know what they are, by now I’ve already tuned them out and started practicing reciting the alphabet backwards incase I’m stopped on the way home from the bar.
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The 90 minute clock means nothing: In modern sports managing the clock is key to victory. In football if a team has the lead late they’ll run the ball in order to keep the clock moving instead of risking an incomplete pass which stops the clock (vice versa losing teams will pass more and try to run out of bounds to preserve time), both hockey and basketball only stop the clock when play is stopped and winning teams late will use as much clock in their possessions as possible, conversely the losing team tries to conserve as much time as possible, and all of this is possible because they know exactly how much time is left. This, for some fucking reason, doesn’t happen in soccer.
Ball goes out of bounds the clock keeps ticking, player gets hurt, clock keeps ticking, red card, you guessed it, clock keeps ticking, and on the rarest of occasion, an actual fucking point is scored, the clock continues. All of this would be fine if play ceased at the 90 minute mark. At the 85 minute mark the losing team, you would think would have five minutes left to tie it up, but no not fucking soccer, they could have five minutes, they could have ten, they could have fifteen, no one fucking knows. You’re just sitting there watching as the game goes past 90 minutes and the announcers are doing their best to fucking guess how much time is left. Seriously, how fucking hard is it to stop the clock when play stops? We have such precise watches now that we can time world records to the millionth of a second, but soccer can stop the fucking clock for an injury (or in all likelihood a flop)?
Nil to Nil score: Seriously, how can a sport be taken seriously if it ends in a tie, let alone a 0-0 tie (which they like to call “nil” fuck you for that by the way). The whole point of a competition is to see who is better and in a tie no one is better, in fact we’re all worse for wasting our time watching a tie. The NHL got rid of ties (thank god) by adding in the shoot-out at the end of sudden death overtime. The NFL, sadly still has ties but that almost never happens, and I’m sure the only reason why they still have them in the rules is so that the one o’clock games end before the 4 PM games start and the 4 PM games end before Sunday night football begins because god help the NFL if they’re stealing viewers from themselves. And the NBA and MLB have never had ties, they play until a winner emerges or one team dies from exhaustion.
Even golf does playoff holes until one player cracks and hooks an easy par 3 shot two hundred yards into the woods. But the bigger problem here isn’t the tie, it’s the low scoring affair because the field of play is so large and the players are so fragile. In America we have indoor soccer, which is basically hockey but with a soccer ball and no skates. They play in a carpeted hockey rink with boards and all and they score goals, a lot of them, plus they can check people into the boards and do cool ricochet shots. It’s actually fun to watch and I could get behind that shit if that was the World Cup. But like every great innovation in sports (like the DH, Replay, Minority players) the “purist” shun it and hate it.
So that’s it, that’s why I hate soccer, you can disagree with me but I want you to know you’re wrong and I hate you, but if you’d like to know more about me, and why wouldn’t you, you can follow me on the Twitter @jomac006 or learn about my awesome writing career here https://www.facebook.com/fjoshuamccain?ref=hl , or if you’re a fine lady you should swipe right on Tinder.
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