Corey's Thoughts on Soccer
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by user Coreyisarealboy
Comedy isn't supposed to make you think. It's supposed to make you laugh. But lost in all of those silly Zinedine Zidane animations was an underlying truth if one really were inclined to look beyond MC Hammer.
Having viewed the replay over and over just by simply clicking on that article has made it clear that, even with the Headbutt of Doom applied to him, Marco Materazzi flopped.
Clearly, I can understand being stunned a little, maybe being sent back a few steps, but there is no way even the Greatest Widow's Peak on Earth could send a man plummeting toward the ground like Rocky Balboa realistically would do if he were to box a man 40 years his junior.
I'm not saying that the ejection wasn't justified, or that what Zidane did was right. All I'm saying is that these guys need to stop demasculinizing themselves. When I was younger, I got kicked in the shins by girls all the time and took it more like a man than these guys. It's only strategic if you don't look like a complete fool.
I can understand a little bit. I mean, the NHL sells its flowers, NASCAR has Jeff Gordon, and Major League Baseball has Derek Jeter. But soccer already has this guy:
There's no room for more girly men. And here's where I digress and hit on a tangent.
Some people claim that the incessant flopping is the reason soccer isn't big in the United States. Come on now. There are youth soccer leagues all over the place. There are like four in my town and it has only 8,000 people in it.
No, the reason soccer isn't big in the U.S. is because we suck. If you don't believe me, take a look back at when all the articles claiming all the reasons why soccer will never be big in the U.S. were published. It wasn't after the first flop of the World Cup. It wasn't after the first game. It was after we got utterly humiliated!
Back in 1994 when the World Cup was in the United States. I was 10 years old and still playing soccer. Well, I didn't play much longer after that. Who looks up to a loser? Who goes out on the field everyday and says, "I want to be embarrassed today just like the United States!"?
So, in the same light that we ask "What came first: the chicken or the egg?" or when John Cusack posed the question, "Do I listen to pop music because I'm miserable or am I miserable because I listen to pop music?" in High Fidelity, I pose this question: Do we suck because we don't care or do we not care because we suck?
When thousands upon thousands of young children in their soccer leagues have the United States soccer team to look up to, I'm voting the latter. And as for the flopping, suck it up, as we saw in this World Cup, it's probably better if the ref's hand stays out of his shirt pocket.
Date
Fri 07/14/06, 11:35 am EST
