Dirty TackleMore soccer stereotypes this World Cup weekend
"Bored" Germany fans "waiting for something to happen."
Another day of World Cup action, another fresh batch of soccer stereotyping straight out of the sports media oven.
Piling on LA Times' columnist Chris Erskine's unbeatable entry this past week, Tom Dunmore over at pitchinvasion.net has rounded up some of the best of the worst on both sides of the pond. His list includes some greatness from Glenn Beck, including this:
I hate [soccer] so much, probably because the rest of the world likes it so much, and they riot over it, and they continually try to jam it down our throat.
Beck masterfully covers the "global consipiracy to make Americans like soccer" cliche and throws the old "soccer riot" canard in for good measure, but we're a little disappointed he didn't make more references to diving. So only two points there.
The "winner" this weekend though has to be Mike Florio's one-off anti-soccer post on NBC-affiliated profootballtalk.com (spotted by MatchFitUSA.com's Jason Davis). At first it seems like your run-of-the-mill "hate footie" piece with the usual elements:
With this force-feeding of futbol by the Worldwide Leader in Hype, we're all supposed to conclude that the rest of the world can't be wrong, and that we should embrace a game that, through the first few days, has featured scintillating outcomes like 1-1, 0-0, 1-0, 1-1, 1-0, and 1-0.
Thus, in one sentence we have the "forced to watch soccer" cliche, coupled with the "low-scoring" argument (Florio posted this before Germany's destruction of Australia this afternoon, which at 4-0 was ironically kind of boring). But Florio's rant gets good at the end:
Maybe that's why they blow those damn horns for every moment of every game. It gives the fans something to do while waiting ... and waiting ... and waiting for something to actually happen on the field of play.
So now we even better understand the NFL's desire to export true football to other countries. Once they realize that we've whipped together a condiment that tastes a hell of a lot better than mustard, our football -- American football -- will rule the world.
Speaking of waiting, NFL fan Florio seems to have forgotten the long nacho-filled bouts of patience involved in American football's 11 minutes for every three hours of play ratio. And if we're going to go along with the weird condiment metaphor, it should be said Europe has often enjoyed a bit of NFL ketchup alongside their soccer mustard. And there's nothing wrong with that.
Why can't people enjoy two condiments on one hot-dog already!?
Photo Credit: Getty Images
