Maradonna Summer posted:

wrong thread re: the second one

"Terrible Sportswriter Dave Zirin posted:

I am often asked, given my love of soccer and my criticisms of how the World Cup is organized, whether it is possible in the twenty-first century to have the spectacle of top-notch organized sports and have it done ethically? Or, can it at least be done more ethically than the neoliberal carnival of debt, displacement and militarization we normally see?

Well yesterday, I witnessed a better, more humane version of the mass spectacle of soccer, and feel remarkably rejuvenated for the experience. No, I'm not talking about the World Cup final between Argentina and Germany. I'm not talking about an event that is supposed to be the apex of "the people's game" that the people cannot afford to attend. I'm not talking about an event surrounded by a one kilometer exclusion zone and guarded by a small army for the pleasure of a den of thieves including Vladamir Putin, Angela Merkel, Dilma Rousseff, and their pied piper of graft, FIFA chief Sepp Blatter.

I'm not talking about a final game that took place while protesters who had been promised by their government that they could assemble peaceably were tear gassed and shot with rubber bullets at the supposed fan-fest put on by FIFA for tourist consumption.

I'm not talking about an event that displaced thousands of people for the almighty purpose of producing billions in profits for Brazil's construction, real estate, and surveillance industries. I'm not talking about an event that put a fortune in the hands of Israeli armament companies and counterinsurgency "advisers" who market themselves as bringing the hands-on experience they have had turning Gaza into an open air prison, and then sell that experience to countries hosting the Olympics in the World Cup. I'm talking about another game entirely.

I'm talking about the game yesterday between the Seattle Sounders and the Portland Timbers here in the Emerald City. It was just me and 65,000 of my closest friends chanting, screaming, yelling and of course standing for the full ninety minutes as the Sounders beat the Timbers 2-0, led by the inimitable Clint Dempsey, scoring Seattle's opening goal and then hitting the cross bar at the end on a shot that would've been highlight material for the next year. Having recently returned from Brazil where I attended World Cup matches, it was not difficult to count off the ways that this experience was not only different but also "ethical" in the way a FIFA-run tournament could never be.

Let's start with the ticket prices. We were right there just a few rows up from the field for $24 bucks a pop. $24 would pay for about two minutes of World Cup action, especially if you bought your tickets through FIFA's don't ask, don't tell network of ticket brokers.

Speaking of the stadium, there was also not a one kilometer exclusion zone surrounding it and people could actually—even without tickets!—get near the facility that their tax dollars purchased. It is also worth adding that the Sounders play in the home of the Seattle Seahawks. As of now anyway there are no demands to build a new publicly funded stadium just for them.

I loved everything about the Sounders-Timbers game. I loved the singing of Woody Guthrie songs. I loved the signs. I loved the colors. I loved the group-cussing (to each their own.) I loved the chants and cheers that made it seem like everyone in the crowd had been rehearsing for hours before the start of game time. I loved that it seemed to be a combination of sports and Queen at Live-Aid.

I loved the fact that the six-year-old I was with had the time of his life and didn't sit down for ninety minutes. And I loved the play. Maybe it wasn't World Cup semifinals quality but it was passionate and powerful. Its very existence stands as a threat to FIFA: a living embodiment of the idea that there is an alternative to their wretched stench.

The Sounders-Timbers game, coming just hours after a desultory World Cup Final, entirety convinced me like little else that sports truly is like a fire and you can use a fire to cook a meal or burn down your house. In the hands of FIFA, the house of international soccer is burning down while they play a chorus of discordant violins. But this doesn't have to be the case. If we want ethical soccer on a local, national or global scale, then along with the out-of-control flames of greed, corruption displacement and match fixing, FIFA itself will need to be extinguished.

Troy Queef posted:

TelekineticBear! posted:

its a bit worthy but not really that bad tbh

Brony Car posted:

Troy Queef posted:

The Sounders-Timbers game, coming just hours after a desultory World Cup Final, entirety convinced me like little else that sports truly is like a fire and you can use a fire to cook a meal or burn down your house. In the hands of FIFA, the house of international soccer is burning down while they play a chorus of discordant violins.

elanciano posted:

Oh my god this guy zirin is retarded. Do their parents know that their retarded child is on the internet unsupervised?

FullLeatherJacket posted:

One day I am going to travel to America, where I will find every American who didn't enjoy the World Cup Final because it didn't have eight goals in and kick them in the shins

I'd also like to see the Grand Canyon

trem_two posted:

Ewar Woowar posted:

ephex posted:

quote:

The World Cup has always functioned as a kind of test of the power of the Brazilian phallus, or the illusion of such, outsourced to the 11 players on the field, who work their hardest to create the trompe-l'œil that will make us witness the spectacle and experience the frisson of a collective orgasm that says, "Yes, we all bow down to the same insuperable god."

quote:

Instead of looking for culprits to blame for this humiliation, we would do well to welcome it as an opportunity to seek something other than the fiction of heteromasculinity's astonishing force with which to orient our lives. Let us look for the richness and pleasures of loss and accept the very idea of loss as an essential part of being alive and human. If soccer has worked in Brazil as a great defense mechanism against that truth -- that we are born to lose from day one (cells, hair, teeth, loved ones, time) -- we should bury the myth of an invincible Brazilian manliness, which comes alive every four years to flex its muscles and keep everything in place, as Brazilian soccer becomes something between a museum piece and a joke. Perhaps now we can unburden our children of the weight that a soccer jersey imposes (be a man, be infallible) and allow them the freedom to wear the costume ("fantasia" in Portuguese) that they see fit -- or none at all. Let us stop using soccer as the only language that Brazilian men are allowed to (and demanded to) speak. Let us reject soccer as the all-important marker of gender difference and arbiter of whether a boy is properly Brazilian or a disposable "bicha." Let us not measure the value of who we are through an institution built on the bullying of losers with homophobic insults, from the less-obvious "chupa" ("suck it") to entire stadiums chanting that a certain player is a human being.

Heskie posted:

not not luvd posted:

Von Linus posted:

I think I love this.

quote:

Luckily, you have me, your Russian Premier League–watching, tactics board–chalking, Opta Stats–devouring Gandalf,

straight up brolic posted:

gently caress


this is bad

http://grantland.com/features/world-cup-soccer/

euroboy posted:

I went shopping there it was pretty nice but lmao that name made me think of this thread and I did a lol

Godzilla07 posted:

Puseklepp posted:

Recommending people to watch their local league if they wanna watch football sounds pretty reasonable?

Godzilla07 posted:

If the piece is supposed to get people into football, saying their best option is Calvinball league with a negligible TV footprint doesn't seem like a very good idea. Meanwhile you can watch every Premier League game on U.S. TV, and NBC actually cares about the production values there.

Seltzer posted:

It's really easy to watch the MLS. I rarely do but you're being an idiot about it. Also the gap between the production values is negligible.

Seltzer posted:

It's really easy to watch the MLS. I rarely do but you're being an idiot about it. Also the gap between the production values is negligible.

Seltzer posted:

It's really easy to watch the MLS. I rarely do but you're being an idiot about it. Also the gap between the production values is negligible.

Ciprian Maricon posted:

I know you dudes go into a tizzy whenever anyone says anything bad about MLS but there is no comparing MLS, with its bad pay streams, blackouts, and lovely local channels and poo poo to the excellent availability of the EPL on NBC.