Soccer players are tough

If you've ever wondered whether the rub-some-dirt-in-it machismo of the American athlete is indicative of the type of personality that excels at competitive athletic endeavors, or is instead a social construct that should probably be over-analyzed and denounced at our finer institutions of learning, look no further than the foreign soccer player.

He is much easier to find these days, since his exploits have increasingly come to dominate the "most viewed" list on Youtube.

Sometimes these "highlights" are of the soccer goal -- that rarest of happenstance. And sometimes they depict a player writhing on the pitch for no discernible reason. The latter proving once and for all that if the world class athlete is not reared on a steady diet of Kirk Gibson and Willis Reed his psyche is no different from that of a spoilt attention-craving six-year old girl.

This video depicts both the former and the latter. Thereby allowing you to view, in slow motion and real time, the reaction of a soccer player who has suffered the double indignity of allowing the game winning goal and being tapped lightly.

Further proof that we are losing Europe

It's been a while since Europeans have involved themselves in that time honored tradition of procreation. And their attitude towards the nation state has also gone blase, with Belgians reacting to their country's increasing likelihood of extinction not by raging against the dying of the light, but by offering up their nation on Ebay -- like you would any old junk that has outlived its usefulness and is about to break anyway.

Still, whenever I worry Europe might just give it all up and become a continent of stateless, childless, carbon neutral, cave-dwelling bicyclists, I remember Europeans really love soccer. You have to really, really love soccer to actually watch it, right? And it stands to reason soccer is more exciting when played between nations and with younger people.

But what if Europeans stopped loving soccer? What if they took the lead of the Austrians, who are currently circulating a petition to request their national soccer team be removed from the prestigious European Championship. Austria qualified on account of hosting the event, but their team has been lousy lately, and the Austrians are worried the squad will embarrass their nation.

Wait a minute. Since when was soccer just about winning? I thought part of the fun was embarrassing your nation. Usually by jamming into stadiums so crowded and drunk that everyone is forced to pee on each other and directing nasty chants towards foreigners. Doesn't that all work best when your team is losing?

As they did with the birthing of children, are the overly-civilized Europeans losing their will to be proper soccer fans?

Because then I could see the whole thing crumbling. And it's not fair. We had a deal. They called us arrogant and stupid. We called them odorous and sexually questionable. Everybody had a good time.

So come on Europe. Put on your favorite "football" jersey and hit someone over the head with a bottle. It will keep you young and vibrant. If not for yourselves, do it for us.

What would be the point of even having an axis of weasels if it was made up Chile, Indonesia and Kenya?

If you get past the lack of scoring soccer is crazy

Early word out of Yankee camp is Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez -- the two most recognizable faces of America's signature sports franchise -- are not seeing eye-to-eye.

They were once the best of buddies, dining together "four or five times a week," but Rodriquez acknowledged what has long been suspected -- the future Hall of Famers' relationship had gone south long before spring training.

Rodriguez offered this new found candor to the New York press with the ridiculous caveat it would be the last time he publicly discusses his relationship with Jeter. Which is akin to capturing a shark's attention, letting him eat your finger and then declaring fair play would be he not devour the rest of you.

Jeter, for his part, offered a non-denial denial or a denial non-denial and tried to move on.

This will all eventually lead to a trade of Rodriguez. But there is no urgency, especially if the Yankees start the season winning and keep it up. What's the worst that could happen: Sarcastic body language on the left side of the infield? A family member posting an ominous entry on a blog? An angry session with a sports psychiatrist?

Over in England, things are a little bit different. Two starters on Liverpool, one of Europe's most storied soccer franchises, had a falling out last week and the result was, well, a little more intense.

It started, apparently, with Arne Riise refusing to take teammate Craig Bellemy up on his request for Riise to join him on stage for some after-hours Karaoke and ended, apparently, with a spurned Bellemy barging into Riise's hotel room and pummeling the sleeping left mid-fielder with a golf club.

Liverpool is believed to be trying to sell Bellemy to another club. Urgently.

And this didn't even happen in France . . .

In its official report on the 2006 World Cup, FIFA admonished participants for the "deplorable habit that involves players staying down for no apparent reason after minor collisions."

Like most Americans, I've always found the diving and injury faking ingrained in the culture of world class soccer off-putting, and I applaud FIFA for making an effort to get rid of it.

Although, if this video is indicative of a trend, FIFA may have an another sort of problem involving on-the-field deception it needs to address.


Soccer players aren't known for their hand-to-eye coordination but, after the initial contact, the only way the two combatants in this soccer "fight" from Spain could possibly miss so many punches is by a secret deal not to hit each other.

Stateside, Carmelo Anthony caught a lot of flack for his punch-and-run technique, but send him to Spain and his mere ability to make solid contact would make him the gangster he likes to think of himself as.

Ghana 2 USA 1

I knew we were in trouble when Ghana lined up Malcolm-Jamal Warner at striker. He was wearing his post-Theo Huxtable dreadlocks, but he wasn't fooling me.

Star power was what The US team sorely lacked during this World Cup. Landon Donovan and DaMarcus Beasley, who showed so much youth and promise in 2002, were not up to the task four years later. Save one play, Beasley was completely useless. Donovan showed flashes of brilliance, which made his overall lack of impact that much more maddening.

There will be a lot of focus on the penalty kick awarded to Ghana in the 45th minute. Yes, it was about the worst call I've ever seen in any sport. It made the famous Denkinger blown call in the 1985 World Series look like a bang-bang play. If Ghana converting that penalty didn't forever put a stake in the heart of the concept of a "Soccer God" nothing will.

But we needed to win the match, not tie it. Some will argue* it changed the complexion of the game. It may well have. Unfortunately, we never showed enough offense during The Cup to be able to assume we had another goal in us.

Although it does highlight the disproportionate effect the refs have on a soccer match. When there are only three goals scored in a game, and one is gift from the ref, you have a problem -- an all too common problem.

The US team goes home having underachieved. We were never threat to win it all, but we were good enough for the second round and didn't reach it. 2002 was a great success, and 2006 was a moderate failure.

Here's hoping we get some creative, attacking players in 2010 and finally give the world the shock US soccer has been gunning for, for what has become a couple decades.

*Coach Arena and most of the analysts say the penalty kick was the key play in the match, although they also all admit it was the US team and good competition that ultimately did the US team in.

Leaving it all on the court

I've tried repeatedly to be a fan of the World Cup. Since it is of such importance to so many I keep thinking there must be a soccer fan somewhere in the designs of my humanity that I've so far failed to tap into.

The only time I've really been able to get into the World Cup was during America's surprising 2002 run in Asia. I'd be lying if I said I was waking up at four in the morning for any reason other than nationalistic spite.

So is it all about nationalism?

That would be the easy answer, but so much of the World Cup's audience's home nations aren't even involved. Some never are and never will be.

Then it must be admiration for the skill and creativity of the performers. But wouldn't the exoticness of their skill appeal to Americans, who use their feet only to get from one point to the next, as much or more than anyone else?

Watching the Brazil-Croatia match yesterday I think I was able to figure out why I (and maybe all Americans) don't fully get the soccer thing, and probably never will.

The Brazilian striker Ronaldinho immediately jumped out at me. Not just because he looks like a cross between Busta Rhymes and a drag queen, but because he seemed to be moving at a different speed than the other players.

This a phenomena I've noticed before, especially in football; Reggie Bush on the college level and Deion Sanders in the NFL come to mind.

Ronaldinho also displayed clearly superior court vision. Some would say like a great NBA point guard (more on that later,) but what it reminded me of was a great hockey center like Gretzky or Lemieux.

One of the reasons I've never been able to properly appreciate hockey was I could never reconcile how much better the truly great players were than everyone else. In his prime, the instant Gretzky stepped on the ice the game totally changed -- but it was lost on me why the other players couldn't do the things Gretzky could. I always attributed this to hockey drawing from a small population pool for a major (yes, it used to be) sport.

Soccer has no such demographic excuse, yet the way Ronaldinho is able to casually flip pinpoint passes of the wrong side of his foot and keep the ball close to his body as if he had his own gravitational pull was not matched by the other players in the Brazil- Croatia match. Not even close.

Why couldn't the other players do this? Hadn't they practiced enough? Maybe it would be different if I had played more soccer as a kid. Except I didn't play proper American Football and never found myself asking these question while watching a football game.

Which brings me to basketball, the only American sport that can even dream of rivaling soccer's popularity world wide. Basketball players such as Magic Johnson and John Stockton were praised for having extraordinary court vision. But was their court vision really any better than Jamal Tinsely's is? Or even Rick Brunson? On that same point Michael Jordan's air-walking made him an international icon in silhouette, but he was no more athletic or explosive in the air than Vince Carter, or even Darvin Ham.

What made Johnson, Stockton and Jordan great wasn't that they possessed some unreconcilable athletic advantage, but that they took an extreme God-given ability and willed themselves, through practice and on-court competitiveness, to be better than others that possessed the same God-given ability.

When I see a great soccer player I see a supremely gifted prima donna who loafs around and occasionally makes flashy, or even amazing, plays that get the crowd to squeal, but don't seem to be much danger to the other team. Of course that same player just needs to break through once every 90 minutes to seal his reputation and, more often than not, lead his team to victory.

I like to see my superstars sweat. The great ones in soccer sweat the least.

While that doesn't answer the questions of why soccer is popular around the world, it may answer the questions as to why soccer isn't popular in the United States.