What’s This “Second-Last Opponent” BS? (Why soccer isn’t the most popular sport in the U.S.)

So you think soccer deserves its spot as the most popular sport in the world? Maybe you’re right. But the world can’t even agree on the name of the game. So to aim for such a claim seems a bit of a scaim scam. [Author’s note: Generally, I’ll use “soccer” for the sport with red and yellow cards, reserving “football” for the manly sport where each play begins with one dude’s hand against another dude’s perineum.]

So, yeah, soccer is the most popular sport in the world with around 4 Billion fans. I’m not arguing against that fact. As an early tangent, allow me to supply 3 answers that surely jumped into your head just now: cricket (2.5 B), tennis (1 B), and golf (45 M). The questions being, respectively, “What’s 2^nd?”; “How ‘bout individual sport?”; “What if I got nobody to play with?”

As of this writing, there are around 7.8 billion humans on the planet. Take a look around. Hopefully you don’t see many people; we’re still in a pandemic, after all. But once we can get out of the house again, half of the people you see, on average, will be soccer fans. Admittedly, it’s well below 50% if you’re in the United States. As they say on the Men In Blazers podcast,

“Soccer is America’s Sport of the Future. As it has been since 1972.”

The real question is whether soccer deserves to gain prevalence in the States.

Football was invented at Ivy League Universities here in the States. As Americans we won’t stand for some foreign game coming to our shores, trying to steal the name of a truly American sport. Sure, our football is a distant offshoot of the same family tree as their football. And, sure, their football was, technically, invented before our football. But they don’t deserve the name just because it so well describes the gist of their game. I mean, does the name “cricket” give you any clue about what’s going on in that sport? Seriously, does it? I don’t understand it one iota.

Nor do I understand soccer players writhing around on the ground after a slide tackle. They scream as they grab for their knee in midflight, rolling over more times than Tiger Woods’ car before coming to a stop holding the opposite knee. If a football player reacts like that, they’re likely too hurt to return to the game. A hockey player that doesn’t skate off the ice under his own volition probably just suffered a season-ending injury. But that soccer player will be up and sprinting in 60 seconds. Stop being a bunch of little bitches and get on with it.

Explains why male soccer players wear women’s undergarments beneath their jerseys. How emasculating! They say the sports bras are “athletic vests” that hold sensors to gather health and performance data. Football players don’t need this garbage. They go all out every single play. Critics may argue that since there’s a break between plays in football, they aren’t the endurance athletes that soccer players are. High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) is a fabulous way to get fit, though. Footballers were practicing this decades before HIIT was anything more than a misspelling off what every defensive player aims to do to the ball-carrier.

And what’s with these yellow and red cards? You have to be fearless to play football. Basically the only way to get ejected from football is for targeting—which risks paralysis or death. In soccer, you can celebrate an opening minute goal by taking off your shirt— presumably forgetting about that bra—and get a yellow card. Minutes later you take a dive in the box trying to draw a penalty kick, earning yourself a 2^nd yellow card for simulation. Two trivial yellow cards equal one red card and, easy as that, you’re out of the game for acting like a diva. Even worse, your team now has to play down a man for the rest of the match. A few minutes of a power-play, sure, but playing a man down for the rest of the game in any sport ruins the fun of the game.

As does not understanding offside.

“. . . Any part of the head, body or feet is nearer to the opponents’ goal line than both the ball and the second-last opponent. . . .”

WTF!? We don’t want any rules that are tougher to comprehend than football’s “Tuck Rule.” And we certainly won’t support a sport that calls their rules “Laws.” How formal and uppity of you, soccer.

Ultimately, American fans just need too many things that soccer simply doesn’t provide. Further examples include, but sure as hell aren’t limited to:

1. Statistics: The more the better. How else will we objectively know who had a good game?
2. Clocks counting down: Who wants to do math to figure out how much time’s left?
3. A winner: Play 90 minutes and end in a tie? Hell no! We’ll complain about a sore ass through 20 innings of baseball just so we can determine a victor. Shootouts in hockey for that 2^nd point. Ties are like kissing your sister . . . during COVID . . . while unvaccinated.
4. Playoffs: We like to play for 6 months to eliminate the worst teams. Then we play to determine which team is best over the next 6 weeks.
5. Timeouts: We need a few minutes to get off the couch and grab another beer. Who can nurse a single ice-cold cruiser for 45 minutes?
6. Intermissions: No timeouts and only 1 halftime break! Hockey has 2, football’s got 3, seemingly infinite in baseball. When do we go to the bathroom? All that beer has to go somewhere.
7. High scoring: You don’t want to look down at your phone for 10 seconds and miss the only scoring play of the game. Plus, we need that back and forth excitement constant scoring provides.
8. Set positions: The pitcher on the mound throws to the catcher behind the plate. Who will play near first base, and What on second. Other than the goalkeeper, soccer players often move all over the field: left fullback up near the forwards; center forward dropping back into the midfield. The positions tell you nothing.
9. Manly men: Soccer players worry about their perfect hair, sculpted beards, and neck tattoos. Hockey men loathe a full set of teeth. Prior to each pitch, baseball players rearrange their junk and spit tobacco juice . . . like real men.
10. U.S. domination: U.S. women dominate the global soccer landscape, but our men . . . not so much. If we’re not the best, we’re not interested.

So, you still think soccer deserves its lofty spot as the world’s most popular sport? I played soccer from my first decade of life, up through undergrad, so it will always be my favorite sport. If Americans can set aside some of what’s mentioned in #1-10 above, they may discover why soccer is referred to as the “Beautiful Game.” Matthew McConaughey once tweeted:

“God bless ‘the soccer ball: the greatest invitation in the world.’”

A ball unites strangers with differing languages and religions together to speak and worship a commonality—the sport of soccer. If that sentimentality doesn’t do it for you, we’ll just have to rely on Coach Lasso to show Americans what they’ve been missing. So, I guess, yeah, come to think of it . . . You’re Probably Right.

[033] February 24, 2021