World Cup Madness (Not the Good Kind)

Well, folks, things are well underway in the international soccer spectacle known as the World Cup. Now I know there are a lot of people who couldn't care less about soccer, never have, never will. I understand; I have given soccer plenty of chances in my life as well. I tried playing youth soccer as a kid, never figured out the game. At least when I played Little League baseball, I knew I stunk, because I understood WHY I stunk. Then, a few years later, one of my childhood friends from my old neighborhood broke his leg playing soccer. In high school, I tried rooting for my friends on the girls' soccer team, and unfortunately, I proved to be nothing more than a bad luck charm for a good team, so that didn't last long. Then, there was the '94 World Cup. The United States' finest hour, and I actually watched some of the games. And I was bored stiff.

Don't get me wrong, there are some good things about soccer. I like the guy who yells "GOOOOOOOOOOAL!!!" Let's see, what else... okay, I guess that's it, the guy who yells "GOOOOOOOOOOAL!!!" I have several problems with the game itself, like the fact that there is little to no scoring. Sure, it's like that a lot in hockey, but at least in hockey, there's usually 20-30 shots on goal per game for each side, as opposed to about 10 in soccer, and in hockey, there's checking into the boards and hitting and fights. In soccer, if you do anything like that, you get a CARD. A FREAKING CARD!!! The ref takes a card out of his pocket, writes your name down, and that's it. Now, I know they can add up to suspensions and red cards mean you're out of the game, but seriously, A CARD?!?

Also, I can't really take a sport seriously where you don't have any clue when the game is going to end. In theory, you have two 45 minute halves, but then after the clock gets to 45:00, it's not over, there's "injury time". "Injury time" is supposed to make up for all the time used to get injured players off the field or any other stoppages. The only people who know how much "injury time" there is are the referees, so only they know when the game is over. How can you watch a game where you see that time has theoretically run out, but the game is not over and you have no idea when it's going to be over, and your team could still lose the game during this unknown quantity of time?

And then there's the "other stuff", the kind that causes rioting and looting and death and chaos. This is all attributed, I think, to the fact that soccer is WAY too emotional a sport. I mean look at what happens when somebody scores; you'd think the guy just found out he won the lottery. He runs around like an idiot, rips off his jersey, dances with his teammates, all manner of overreaction. Imagine what would happen if the people who run the NFL ever got a hold of this sport. You think there's "excessive celebration" in football? And check that, I should say "American football", as the rest of the world refers to soccer as "football", which of course makes us Americans look stupid.

That seems to be the point of international soccer: Americans are stupid. Nobody takes our team seriously, because WE as a country don't even take our team seriously. Now I know the ratings for World Cup games are breaking records, even at 2:30am on the East Coast, but even if a "staggering" 1.4 million households are watching the U.S. soccer team, that means some 100 million are not. It's the rest of the world's game, and they love being better than us at it. Which may explain why the rest of the world is starting to get bent over the fact that we actually WON a game last week. We beat Portugal, who I guess was a pretty good team, but apparently they're not, seeing as how they lost to US. Next up, we play the host nation of South Korea, and the next thing we know, there are security concerns around our team and anti-American protesters all over the place. What is this? We win one game in the World Cup, and suddenly there are anti-American protests? What's next, the Seattle mob? "America is trying to force the other soccer nations into their corporate slavery and oppression!" Well, no, it's actually due to the fact that we have some 37,000 troops protecting South Korea from its communist neighbors to the north. Real nice that the South Koreans apparently have issues about this, when they should realize that if we weren't there, they'd be singing the communist anthem in about three hours, even if the North didn't have nukes.

What's more, a bunch of South Koreans wore speed-skating helmets and chanted "We want our gold medal". This of course, in reaction to Apollo Ohno winning the gold in short-track speed skating back at Salt Lake City in the Olympics a few months back, after a South Korean was disqualified after he finished first. Do I have to be the one to tell these Koreans that they are the only people left in the world who CARE about this? I really wished someone else could've done it. Protesting a military presence is one thing, even if it's not justified; protesting a Winter Olympics medal four months later, when we've already gone into our four-year cycle of not caring about any of those sports, is quite another. American coach Bruce Arena said it best when his reaction to the protests was as follows: "What was it, snowboarding?"

Of course, as we all know, soccer doesn't just cause people to get mad at America; more often than not, it causes people to take out their frustrations on property, police, and each other. This is why you can imagine my surprise when post-game riots broke out amongst soccer fans in RUSSIA! Not England, not Brazil, RUSSIA! Cars set on fire, many injured, one person even dead. This is the kind of thing that happens in South America or Manchester or, well, anywhere else but Russia!

Speaking of South America, two transplants from Argentina, living in Bangladesh, fell to their deaths while trying to hoist Argentinian flags. Should I even mention that Argentina was later eliminated in the first round for the first time in 40 years? Here's what I worry about in that case: how many Argentinian PLAYERS are going to get killed now? That happens too during the World Cup. If you'll recall, the last time we Americans advanced to the second round, it was partially due to a win over Colombia in which a Colombian player accidentally knocked the ball into his own net. That player was murdered upon his return to his homeland. Should we be worried that some Argentine soccer "hooligan" is going to try to blow up the plane bringing the team home?

This is why I'm glad that the Americans' games are on during overnight hours, because let's face it, even if your team just won, if it's 4:30 in the morning, well first of all, it's 3 hours past last call at your favorite sports bar, and secondly, you're going to want more to go home and sleep rather than take to the streets and set some cars on fire. That being said, I think I should probably go into hiding and stay in my apartment for the rest of the World Cup, because I really don't want to be outside doing whatever when a soccer game ends and the inevitable "emotional release" starts...