A fine sport - just not an American one
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by user Pack Mentality
I've always had a soft spot for the World Cup. It strikes me as an odd yet fascinating blending of the international atmosphere of the Olympic Games with the office-pool anticipation and "bracketology" of the NCAA basketball tournament. Also like the Olympics, it injects a bit of variety into the usual American sporting fare. An occasional change of pace is always worthwhile.
Still, it's one thing to follow the highest level of a sport once every four years, and another thing entirely to follow the sport continuously at its lower levels. This is especially true of soccer, at least in America. We have a league that calls itself Major League Soccer, but even most casual sports fans here in the States are well aware that soccer's real big leagues are on the other side of the Atlantic. Certainly anyone who's seen the top European clubs in action knows this. To analogize with "our" football, going from the World Cup to the top European leagues to MLS is like going from the NFL to NCAA Division I to maybe Division III.
This point was driven home over the final weekend of the World Cup. On Saturday, ESPN televised the third-place match between Portugal and Germany. Shortly afterward, ESPN2 televised an MLS match. I forget the two teams involved, but they're not important. What matters is the obvious and precipitous drop in the level of play. The pace of play in the MLS match seemed downright leisurely compared to what I'd grown accustomed to over the past month during the competition in Germany. The passes weren't nearly as crisp, the playmaking not nearly as graceful, the tackles not nearly as aggressive. The general atmosphere at the MLS match (at least as much as I could gather from merely watching it on TV) also seemed light-years removed from the World Cup, more pastoral than passionate. (Of course, the large numbers of empty seats at the MLS match didn't exactly do wonders for its atmosphere either.)
Yes, I know, comparing MLS to the World Cup isn't a fair comparison. But that's exactly the point. Once you've had a taste of the best, it's hard to settle for anything short of that. "Our" football in particular has a veritable graveyard of leagues whose quality of play couldn't live up to the NFL. Why should soccer have it any differently? The sport itself has its faults, but at its highest levels it's still a fine sport, in its own way. It's what passes as big-time soccer in America that stinks. Elevating MLS to the World Cup level may be too much to ask, but unless, and until, it at least rises to the level of the premier European leagues, the game can't expect to enjoy much of a coattails effect from the World Cup in the saturated U.S. sports marketplace. It's hard to get amped for the hometown soccer team when you know they're not playing where the real action is.
Date
Mon 07/10/06, 7:54 pm EST
