Soccer: How does it compare with American sports?

Stop…take a deep breath and smell the soccer in the air. Yes, it’s that time of the decade again, and the World Cup is in full swing. After a four month hiatus, the Graham’s are back in the blogosphere. You can thank my good friend Luke Evans for awaking me from my cyber-slumber. Luke posted a delightful little piece which reasons for the inferiority of soccer over against traditional American sports. In what follows, I would like to share some of my thoughts regarding the subject.

1. Pele once called soccer “the most beautiful game.” Soccer is a simple game, and there is beauty in simplicity. Soccer is an easier game to play than football, baseball, hockey, or basketball. All you need is a few blokes and a round ball. You don’t need hoops, helmets, hats, gloves, pads, sticks, goggles, mouthpieces, or even a court. Simply a knobby pitch will do. If you don’t have a goal, you can easily fashion one with a couple of shirts—if you dare to take them off.

2. Soccer is the most popular game in the world. This might be an argument ad populum I admit, but the sheer number of soccer fans is pertinent to the discussion. Currently, an argument could be made that soccer has become the most popular game in the United States, since for the last 10 years more children in America have played soccer than any other sport. One might even argue that soccer is now more American than baseball!

3. Soccer requires creativity. Much like basketball, or hockey, soccer is a game that requires quick thinking and spontaneous coordination. Aside from free kicks, there are no set plays. In addition, soccer is a fluid game that has no time outs, no play stoppage whatsoever. No water breaks, no sixty second intervals between plays, no dugouts where you sit for 50% of the game. You play the whole game from start to finish with only one break at half-time—talk about mental toughness!

4. Without soccer there would be no football. Football (which is probably my favorite sport, Go Vols!) was invented from rugby, and rugby was invented from soccer.

5. Soccer requires much more skill than most American team sports. The top soccer players in the world can do things with a soccer ball that would make the Harlem Globetrotters envious. Likewise, it is much more difficult to score a goal in soccer than to hit a major league fastball, score a basket in the NBA, or even score a touchdown in the NFL. If you don’t believe me, then simply check out how many times these things typically occur in the above mentioned sports, and then compare this number to amount of goals scored in soccer matches. The evidence speaks for itself.

6. Soccer has the most fanatical fans in the world. I thought American fans were crazy. But American fans fall woefully short of international soccer fanaticism. One example being in the aftermath of Brazil losing the ’66 World Cup, 7 Brazilian fans committed suicide! Or, when in the ’94 World Cup a Columbian defender was brutally shot to death after he accidentally scored a goal on his own team. Or take the heated rivalry between Celtic FC, and Rangers FC, in the city of Glasgow, Scotland. This rivalry, Catholic/Protestant, is so bad that you can be arrested for simply walking on the wrong side of town on game day if you are wearing the wrong colored jersey.

7. The World Cup of Soccer is the most widely watched event in the world. More people watch the World Cup than the Olympics, the World Series, or the Super Bowl. If soccer is so boring to watch, then why does this event have the highest television rating in the history of mankind?

8. To be sure, the type of athleticism needed in soccer doesn’t necessarily transfer to American sports--although, the two-time NBA MVP Steve Nash is a former star soccer player. Also, Kobe Bryant, and Dirk Nowitzki (arguably the two other best NBA players) grew up playing soccer. I guess they picked up basketball because they found it less challenging. But despite the fact that the NBA’s most dominant players are soccer players, we must be careful how we measure athleticism. Athleticism is not necessarily measured by how fast you run the 40, or how high your vertical jump is. Measuring athletic ability by these criteria is too narrowly centered on fast twitch muscles, and doesn’t account for endurance, stamina, flexibility, lateral speed, agility, etc. In these areas, soccer players are clearly superior.

Cheers!