Speleothing posted:

Basketball is okay until the last 10 minutes, when it becomes nothing but fouling and timeouts.

Tato posted:

Remember when Freddy Adu saved american soccer

numberoneposter posted:

all the mentions of manchester united and now my phone has decided to update me with their losing scores all the time

mojo1701a posted:

Hey, if your not a manc, your a wank.

numberoneposter posted:

lmao love that scene

Solice Kirsk posted:

I really wanna go see a Premier League or Champions League game if I ever go out to visit England.

abigserve posted:

Soccer rules because it's the only universal and classless (to play) game in the world

A soccer ball is like a global symbol of fun because not only can anyone play but anyone can get extremely good at it with little or no monetary investment regardless of where you live or what your background is

That's cool imo and if aliens ever come to earth I hope they show them a soccer ball as an example of the shared human experience

It can be poo poo boring to watch but at least it's simple and easy to follow imo. If you want to watch or play soccer on hard mode check out Futsal

Solice Kirsk posted:

Soccer may be boring at times and has diving, but at least it's over in a set period of time.

Fabricated posted:

It really owns that the US just can't be made to give a poo poo about the really boring sport the rest of the world is obsessed with

youre dick posted:

venn diagram of Europeans mad that Americans laugh at soccer and Europeans mad that Americans don't use metric system is 100% overlap. Also, let's not forget the Most Enlightened Continent throws bananas at black soccer players

quote:

I've held off on writing about soccer for a decade -- or about the length of the average soccer game -- so as not to offend anyone. But enough is enough. Any growing interest in soccer can only be a sign of the nation's moral decay.

(1) Individual achievement is not a big factor in soccer. In a real sport, players fumble passes, throw bricks and drop fly balls -- all in front of a crowd. When baseball players strike out, they're standing alone at the plate. But there's also individual glory in home runs, touchdowns and slam-dunks.

In soccer, the blame is dispersed and almost no one scores anyway. There are no heroes, no losers, no accountability, and no child's fragile self-esteem is bruised. There's a reason perpetually alarmed women are called "soccer moms," not "football moms."

Do they even have MVPs in soccer? Everyone just runs up and down the field and, every once in a while, a ball accidentally goes in. That's when we're supposed to go wild. I'm already asleep.

(2) Liberal moms like soccer because it's a sport in which athletic talent finds so little expression that girls can play with boys. No serious sport is co-ed, even at the kindergarten level.

(3) No other "sport" ends in as many scoreless ties as soccer. This was an actual marquee sign by the freeway in Long Beach, California, about a World Cup game last week: "2nd period, 11 minutes left, score: 0:0." Two hours later, another World Cup game was on the same screen: "1st period, 8 minutes left, score: 0:0." If Michael Jackson had treated his chronic insomnia with a tape of Argentina vs. Brazil instead of Propofol, he'd still be alive, although bored.

Even in football, by which I mean football, there are very few scoreless ties -- and it's a lot harder to score when a half-dozen 300-pound bruisers are trying to crush you.

(4) The prospect of either personal humiliation or major injury is required to count as a sport. Most sports are sublimated warfare. As Lady Thatcher reportedly said after Germany had beaten England in some major soccer game: Don't worry. After all, twice in this century we beat them at their national game.

Baseball and basketball present a constant threat of personal disgrace. In hockey, there are three or four fights a game -- and it's not a stroll on beach to be on ice with a puck flying around at 100 miles per hour. After a football game, ambulances carry off the wounded. After a soccer game, every player gets a ribbon and a juice box.

(5) You can't use your hands in soccer. (Thus eliminating the danger of having to catch a fly ball.) What sets man apart from the lesser beasts, besides a soul, is that we have opposable thumbs. Our hands can hold things. Here's a great idea: Let's create a game where you're not allowed to use them!

(6) I resent the force-fed aspect of soccer. The same people trying to push soccer on Americans are the ones demanding that we love HBO's "Girls," light-rail, Beyonce and Hillary Clinton. The number of New York Times articles claiming soccer is "catching on" is exceeded only by the ones pretending women's basketball is fascinating.

I note that we don't have to be endlessly told how exciting football is.

(7) It's foreign. In fact, that's the precise reason the Times is constantly hectoring Americans to love soccer. One group of sports fans with whom soccer is not "catching on" at all, is African-Americans. They remain distinctly unimpressed by the fact that the French like it.

(8) Soccer is like the metric system, which liberals also adore because it's European. Naturally, the metric system emerged from the French Revolution, during the brief intervals when they weren't committing mass murder by guillotine.

Despite being subjected to Chinese-style brainwashing in the public schools to use centimeters and Celsius, ask any American for the temperature, and he'll say something like "70 degrees." Ask how far Boston is from New York City, he'll say it's about 200 miles.

Liberals get angry and tell us that the metric system is more "rational" than the measurements everyone understands. This is ridiculous. An inch is the width of a man's thumb, a foot the length of his foot, a yard the length of his belt. That's easy to visualize. How do you visualize 147.2 centimeters?

(9) Soccer is not "catching on." Headlines this week proclaimed "Record U.S. ratings for World Cup," and we had to hear -- again -- about the "growing popularity of soccer in the United States."

The USA-Portugal game was the blockbuster match, garnering 18.2 million viewers on ESPN. This beat the second-most watched soccer game ever: The 1999 Women's World Cup final (USA vs. China) on ABC. (In soccer, the women's games are as thrilling as the men's.)

Run-of-the-mill, regular-season Sunday Night Football games average more than 20 million viewers; NFL playoff games get 30 to 40 million viewers; and this year's Super Bowl had 111.5 million viewers.

Remember when the media tried to foist British soccer star David Beckham and his permanently camera-ready wife on us a few years ago? Their arrival in America was heralded with 24-7 news coverage. That lasted about two days. Ratings tanked. No one cared.

If more "Americans" are watching soccer today, it's only because of the demographic switch effected by Teddy Kennedy's 1965 immigration law. I promise you: No American whose great-grandfather was born here is watching soccer. One can only hope that, in addition to learning English, these new Americans will drop their soccer fetish with time.

quote:

Liberals get angry and tell us that the metric system is more "rational" than the measurements everyone understands. This is ridiculous. An inch is the width of a man's thumb, a foot the length of his foot, a yard the length of his belt. That's easy to visualize. How do you visualize 147.2 centimeters?

Glah posted:

are you perhaps one of the americas most respected thinkers ann coulter?

youre dick posted:

So which are you more mad about? Americans not caring about soccer, or Americans not caring about the metric system? Or would you say that you are pretty much equally mad?

skasion posted:

You’re getting trolled, this is the same guy who suggested abolishing offsides and making the field smaller would improve the game lol

Nooner posted:

HOW ABOUT THEM SHARKS BABY!!!!

Glah posted:

but i thought i'm supposed to be mad at americans for laughing at football, not about them not caring about it? don't care about what units you measure your dick with because i'm not some nerd lmao.

youre dick posted:

If you're the kind of guy that gets mad at a dot jay peg or nooner post about soccer, i figure you're up for being mad at just about everything

sassassin posted:

Being mad about everything is important for enjoying soccer.

The whole thing falls apart if you don't hate most teams, sets of fans, individual players, commentators, pundits and referees

numberoneposter posted:

its pretty impressive how many people are in the stadiums

b-minus1 posted:

How bout them sharks now lmao

Total Meatlove posted:

youre dick posted:

I have no idea what that scale says. If someone can just tell me how to feel about this i'd appreciate it

Demon Of The Fall posted:

soccer is cool and hell, fun to watch on a Saturday morning

Demon Of The Fall posted:

It's expensive as hell in most English stadiums, and some you have to be a member of the supporters club to buy tickets? I could be talking out of my rear end, but I think I've heard that is right. If you want a good gameday atmosphere and not break the bank, you'd want to go to Germany for a Bundesliga game.