As you have no doubt noticed, I really enjoy The Guardian’s football coverage. Anyway, Marina Hyde bravely went to Kaiserslautern to get a better understanding of the phenomenon that is USA football. Pretty amusing read; here’s a sample:
One doesn’t wish to be uncharitable about our closest allies, particularly given the result, but if it takes a nation with the odd irksome football fan to know one, it seems reasonable to state there was a certain jarring tone about some of the US supporters who had travelled to watch their national team hold Italy to a feverish 1-1 draw.
“We’d like to be more like the English fans,” one American visitor to Kaiserslauten’s Fan Fest event explained on Saturday. “More crazy, you know?” Still, it’s early days for the US game, with even the many college students parading down the town’s main drag wearing Uncle Sam costumes having to concede it is currently either the sixth or seventh most popular sport in the US (debate centred on whether it is on the point of edging out hockey, and this correspondent’s refusal to count Nascar as a sport).
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debate centred on whether it is on the point of edging out hockey, and this correspondent’s refusal to count Nascar as a sport
If you can’t play it in little league, it’s not a sport.
As you have no doubt noticed, I really enjoy The Guardian’s football coverage.
So you surely also enjoy this piece in Gary Younge’s series “Who to cheer for when the football doesn’t matter”:
Sixth or Seventh most popular? I kind of wonder what the other five would be. Baseball, Basketball, and Football are given, but what else is there that’s actually popular? Golf and poker maybe, but neither is actually a real sport. Tennis? Lacrosse?
Isn’t soccer the most popular little-league sport? I played it for eight years in Orange County, including time spent on the high school team.
I even became a referee, officiating K-league games (that would be kindergarten league, not the Korea-league).
“South Korea is in Iraq; Togo is in a mess. Last year security forces and militia there murdered hundreds and injured thousands in the run-up to the sham presidential election. The choice between a rich nation that goes abroad to kill foreigners and a poor one that blah blah blah…” Good lord, how clueless can you get? The S.K. troops haven’t killed anyone (well, one Iraqi, but that was apparently an accident), they’re holed up in their bunks playing Starcraft, I mean, they’re on a humanitarian mission, doing humanitarian stuff, and stuff.
The Guardian, Stalin’s favorite broadsheet.
When you start calling soccer “football”, it’s time to turn in your US Citizenship.