1 Soccer and Americans, the two things that don’t get along Felipe Henao Llaña Goldey Beacom College ENG 175 ONL 01- Critical Writing Michael J. Symons February 19th, 2023 2 Soccer, the sport that many, consider the most important in the history of humanity, is an activity that can make people gather around for a game, and join from different areas just to support a team, the best example of brotherhood and sisterhood. This great sport is now being attacked by one common enemy, American news media. Today we will be analyzing together an article written by Kyle Smith for the “National Review” webpage in 2018, where he criticized in a tough and unfair way the beautiful game, soccer. The history of modern soccer starts in the United Kindom in the second half of the XIX century, it was, at first, a sport mainly practiced by the powerful ones, only lords, dukes, and wealthy people practiced it, and competed in the FA cup, the oldest soccer tournament in the world. From that time onwards, soccer has been expanding all over the world, making people from every inch of the world able to practice it, in deed, soccer is so popular, that the last world cup final was viewed by, according to FIFA, 1.5 billion viewers all around the world, that is about ⅛ of the population of the world. After all that history and approval worldwide, it may seem impossible for a group of people to dislike this sport. Well, we are wrong, as Kyle Smith lets us know, “we Americans will happily continue watching the sports that are worth watching” (2018), letting the general public understand that Americans aren’t interested in sports such as soccer. But why you may ask? Well, throughout the article Kyle gives us a series of arguments, which are the basis of his accusations and reasons to not like football, we will explore every sense, then look up if cases 3 similar have happened in other sports, to finally identify is the arguments given by the author are entirely valid, or if they can relate to other sports apart from soccer. Soccer is impoverished by a socialist-style fondness: This argument is based on the offside rule, which, according to the author, makes the sport less interesting, and takes away the joy of scoring. But soccer isn’t the only sport that has rules like the offside rule, for example, in handball, if the player steps more times than he can, then the game is stopped due to a fault, and getting into a more American sport, in basketball, if you are going to jump inside the small area near the basket, and you take more than 3 steps, or you take 2 but you don’t jump, you may score, but the points don’t count due to a penalization because of a fault committed, so this kind of rules apply in many sports besides soccer. Now, according to K.C Mink: “Not only is European soccer played at the highest levels as capitalistic, but American professional sports, and in particular the Holy Grail of all that is truly American, the National Football league is in fact… socialism” (2009) The explanation for this last statement is easy to comprehend when you read about salaries and price caps in football and soccer. In the NFL the teams have a salary cap and a price cap, this means that no team, by any means, can go over that cap, or it will be sanctioned in a monetary or sport-influent way, in soccer, the teams can spend loads and loads of money with only one restriction, the money has to come from the actual team, what does this mean? It means that if a soccer team is bought by a multimillionaire, the money used for wages and transfers is money that the team gets by tickets sold for their games, shirts, sponsors, etc. The money can’t be given by the owner, but it has to be well-earned by the team. Aside from that last statement, if a team can, and wants to spend billions of dollars a year without breaking this rule, then they can, making 4 soccer the most capitalist sport ever, which, is not a bad thing, or a good thing, is the way things are. I highly critique the way Mr. Smith and others have used the over the course of the years the word socialism to be related as something that is bad or goes against some basic principles, this only helps people get confused and get them to be ignorant. The second argument and one of his strongest ones is, the stoppage time rule. The stoppage time in soccer is used to compensate in a way for the time that is lost throughout the game with the trow-ins, corner kicks, goal kicks, fouls, changes, and more, the reason for this to happen is that, in soccer, the time clock never stops, so the referee takes into account how much time has been lost during the match, and then uses a board to announce how many minutes will be added and played in the match according to the minutes lost during that half, but this is not always fair, sometimes the referees' ad more or less time than they should, making this rule open to different perspectives and decisions. The author of the article gives a huge critique against soccer, saying: “He then adds that amount of time to the clock, but he’s not even obliged to abide by his own decision; he can blow the end-of-game whistle whenever he feels ready” (Smith, 2018). He clearly questions the authority of referees in soccer matches, but he doesn’t take into account, for example, what happens in an NFL game when a team is barely winning and they have to burn time as quickly as possible, in this cases they waste all of they’re time outs, and they false-start 3 of their 4 opportunities, by doing this they burn about a minute and a half in which neither of the teams play, they just wait until this strategy is over. In these cases, the stoppage time rule would be very effective, because it would prevent teams from having bad sports conduct. 5 We can finally realize that the hate given by some Americans to soccer is not well deserved. During decades the sport has been the inspiration of many to move on with their lifes, nowadays many of the legends of soccer and actual soccer players come from poverty, and now are philanthropist thanks to their effort, no sport is perfect, nothing is perfect, and perfection something everything and everyone seeks. But being hateful is far from making you perfect. References Dalla, N. (2021, March 8). How Socialism Made the NFL America’s National Pastime. Nolan Dalla. https://www.nolandalla.com/how-socialism-made-the-nfl-americas-nationalpastime/ 6 Football | History, Rules, & Significant Players. (2023, February 6). Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/sports/football-soccer/Professionalism Mynk, K. C. (2017, September 30). European Soccer: The Last Bastion of Free-Market Capitalism? Bleacher Report. https://bleacherreport.com/articles/153183-the-lastsi.com. (n.d.). https://www.si.com/fannation/soccer/futbol/news/how-fifa-world-cup- final-beat-super-bowl-lvi-in-tv-ratings Smith, K. (2018, June 16). Let the World Have Soccer. National Review. https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/soccer-corrupt-hyper-regulated-low-scoringboring/
