Thursday, January 17, 2008

Soccer is gay? Whatsay?



Big thanks to mister3d for coming up with this great piece by Steven Wells at the Guardian Unlimited Football site.

Easily my favorite excerpts are these:

"Soccer's slow strangulation of real sports like football needed to be stopped," rages a reader of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. "High school football programs around the country have nearly succumbed to the foreign-sports terrorism known as soccer ... Young minds and bodies are being wasted by continuing the slide into the soccer abyss."

"As the 'global elitists' attempt to tear all parts of our 'Western European culture' away from us, such as Christmas, the Ten Commandments, the family unit, why should sports be any different? If you can replace an American game with one that is not, you have come one step closer to the fragmentation of our society."

And what have all the theories got in common? They're all bollocks.

America's soccerphobes no longer speak for America. They are a frightened, ignorant, embattled and increasingly bitter minority - an ugly coalition of young fogies, laddish homophobes, snarling misogynists, neo-con nogoodniks and gobbledygook-spewing, tin-foil-hat-wearing, knuckle-gnawing nutjobs. And let's not forget the ever-present and always unfunny comedy-of-conformity-spewing sports hacks.


And finally, my absolute favorite:

"There is nothing more American than kicking a foreigner in the shins, delivering an elbow to the jaw, knocking him on his backside and beating him at his own game. You just don't get that sort of opportunity in most American sports," wrote one reader.


It just brings to mind a great Jib Jab video that can be found here.

2 comments:

The Manly Ferry said...

I kept wondering what happened to you guys...then I noticed I never added you to my Bloglines set-up. Situation normal now.

I don't think I've yet read anything from the soccer-bashing community so manifestly paranoid and insane as what showed in that Pittsburgh...um, item. I usually screen that out, but am happy to have read that one. It's priceless.

Martin Hajovsky said...

It is indeed. Very weird and very fun.

Thanks for reading us.

Of course, now I'm going to be scanning the Jib Jab site constantly!