THE WEEKLY SCREED, 18 November 2007

So, what is it with soccer?
by David Benjamin

GREAT NECK, N.Y. — One of my permanent peeves is soccer. I am perpetually at a loss to understand how a sport this tedious and effeminate could become the raging passion of the world’s unwashed masses. I can only surmise that these people chose soccer before they knew there were other choices.

Soccer’s only exciting facet, right now, is that it kills people — but not on the field. The latest dead fan turned up recently in Rome. No sport incites homicide more reliably than soccer. In the more violent sports — rugby, American football, hurling, boxing, sumo, ultimate fighting — the fans get to live. In soccer, they drop like flies, usually with skull fractures. This is an incongruity that boggles the mind, because it’s hard to think of an adult sport more sissified than soccer. Even cricket is more macho.

In a typical soccer moment, a lot of terpsichorean dribbling and pitty-pat passing, ends up with a player getting “tackled” — or, in English, “nudged” — which causes him to collapse in a heap. He writhes on the grass, whimpering, begging for a penalty. A referee in Bermudas shorts arrives presently, bearing hall-passes in two designer colors (“sunflower” and “fuschia”). He assigns the tackler to detention. Pathetic.

Contrast this crybaby vignette on the field to the tramplings in the stands, riots outside the stadium and mayhem in nearby pubs. Mobs roam the streets, smashing shops, attacking women and trading gunfire with police. Soccer is the only sport that has its own proprietary gang subculture — thousands of sociopaths and ex-convicts lyrically referred to as “hooligans.” Rhymes with “mulligans” and “Gilligans,” tra-la.

Sociologists have blamed hooliganism on the plight of soccer’s underclass fans — poor, disenfranchised, filled with rage and desperate for vicarious validation. They also suggest that soccer incites a primitive nationalism. Soccer fans see themselves at war, between countries, regions, cities, towns and neighborhoods.

But hey! Poor people watch rugby, too, and the NFL, and pro wrestling. They don’t riot afterwards. They don’t need fences erected in the grandstands to keep them from garroting other fans. They don’t watch games through barbed-wire mesh. They don’t have special tactical police units tracking their movements and tapping their phones.

So, what is it with soccer?

The simple answer is this: Nobody ever scores in this stupid game!

Soccer, which requires that the ball be centered from the wings, threaded through 10 defenders and a mutant goalie, and finally through an goalmouth not much taller and wider than the chassis of a Cadillac hearse, was hard enough before coaches realized that goal-scoring was a fool-proof recipe for defeat, humiliation and personal unemployment.

Read the scores on Sunday. The three commonest outcomes are 0-0, 1-0, and 1-1. This offensive anemia has prevailed for decades because your big-time coach survives by tying as many games as possible or — if he must lose— losing by just a goal. Every soccer coach on earth, at every level, understands that his safest meal ticket is to pack in the defense, take no chances and strangle goal-scoring down to the occasional miracle.

In any major sport, a scoring famine this chronic, and the resulting fan unrest, sends up red flags and prompts a summit conference. Not soccer. The ruling old farts of soccer, FIFA — unlike sane sports authorities — regard any change in the game as sacrilege.

The unintended consequence of this stubborn status quo is millions of frenzied fans who are permanently — murderously — unsatisfied. You can measure this frustration in bars. In any American sports bar during an NFL game, almost every play — twice a minute — results in an outcry. Half the time, these are shouts of joy, half are groans of dismay. But each first-down is a release and every touchdown a catharsis.

Not soccer. A British pub during a soccer match sounds vastly different. The outcries are further apart — because the field is huge, the ball small, and obstacles myriad. When, finally, action occurs, the crescendo of anticipation ends not with a bang, but a “Bloody hell!” In a 0-0 classic — spanning more than two hours including “extra time” — every promising thrust delivers dashed hopes. Nil for us, nil for them. “How about another pint, mate?” “Who you callin’ mate, you bleedin’ Arsenal faggot!”

Cue the riot.

I’ve thought about how FIFA could juice the scoring a little and launch an era of brotherly love in the pubs of Europe and Asia. Why not shrink the field, or widen the goal? Or just make the goal one foot higher. Reduce the number of players. Or get rid of that lunatic offsides rule. All brilliant ideas, but you know what would really fix soccer?

Punish ties.

Right now, in the soccer standings, everywhere, you get two points for a win, one for a tie, zero for losing. How about, instead, you get a point for winning, nothing if you lose, and minus-one for a tie. Recognize kissing your sister — officially — as incest!

Better yet, ban ties. Make teams play ‘til somebody wins. Cruel and unusual? Nonsense. Sportswriters tout soccer players as the world’s finest, best-conditioned athletes. Good! Let ‘em prove it… like they do in other sports. The two longest basketball games, ever, went into six overtimes. Six! The longest baseball game in Major League history was 25 innings — eight hours and six minutes. Twice since 2001, the Arkansas Razorbacks have played — and won — a six-overtime football game. Six!

Eliminating the genteel draw would revolutionize coaching. Without the face-saving option of a tie, or a goalie-in-a-barrel shooting contest, coaches would have to re-discover offense. Risks would be obligatory and — if undertaken with the sort of flair once associated with Pele — forgiven. Scores would balloon, ties would disappear…

…and Alice would come back through the looking-glass, with Elvis.

Who am I kidding here?