Bad enough we’d all barely gotten over the mind-numbingly dull Winter Olympics only to receive the news that from now on the Gulf of Mexico is off-limits to fish, fowl and humans, now we are forced to pay attention to something called The World Cup. Soccer blows and Americans never felt obligated to pretend otherwise. Why the hoopla now? Can’t we just ignore the silly thing like we used to?
Are we so traumatized living in these perilous times that we crave a spectacle and will grasp at any distraction that presents itself, no matter how asinine? Thanks to Cable TV, we are now subject to endless promotion of the most boring sport this side of curling, every tedious match televised, every news talking head and sportscaster pretending to give a crap about soccer.
Curiously, none of them mention the fact that the British, our former masters and long-time “ally,” are not only the people responsible for the disastrous Gulf oil spill, but the ones who invented soccer to give the illusion that British people could compete in a sport that doesn’t involve conquering and oppressing Third World nations. Some friends.
Right-thinking Americans live in fear of America ever winning the damned World Cup and making the game popular here, a distinct possibility if anyone ever gets the brainstorm to employ skilled athletes instead of soccer players.
The World Cup is the quadrennial world championship of soccer, called football by the rest of the world since only two guys on the field are nimble enough to be allowed to use their hands while the other 20 guys just lamely flail at the ball with their legs (erroneously called “kicking”) or slam it with their heads and faces without a helmet.
They do this while running aimlessly back and forth a huge field for 90 minutes with only one break while doing their best not to let the ball go into either of the gigantic goals on both ends or they will be forced to endure a maniacal announcer shrieking “gooooooaaaaaalllll!!!” at them in a painfully screechy voice for ten minutes straight.
This so unnerves the team who let the ball escape that they usually don’t make that mistake again and for the rest of the game the ball doesn’t get anywhere near the forbidden goal areas. After all this willy-nilly running around and flailing and face-slamming, the score of a soccer game is usually 1-0 or 1-1, with the occasional 2 or 3-1 score, which sends soccer crowds into a frenzy. Talk about your low expectations. Imagine their delirium if they were watching a sport involving actual athletes where something really happened?
Somehow this nonsense got to be the most popular sport on the planet, not all that impressive when you consider that the most popular organized human activity of all is war. Unfortunately, unlike in war, all the participants in a soccer match survive to flounder about another day, and it looks like they’ll be back to annoy the crap out of us every four years. This is a menace and a disgrace, and the government does nothing about it!