Soccer? Just great! Pass me the remote

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© St. Petersburg Times
published May 30, 2002

There is an easy way to get me to watch the World Cup.

Put my kid in it.

Do that, just that, and I'll watch. Pick a kid, any kid, from my house and place them on a team, any team. Ireland, maybe. Or Cameroon. The 6-year-old would even play for the United States; she loves the flags.

Do that, just that, and I'll tape the games and discuss the pitch and debate the keepers. Do that, and I'll drive the team and buy the Sno-Cones and donate toward the trophies.

Do that, just that, and I'm with you.

Otherwise, soccer, you're on your own.

The World Cup begins Friday, and let's be honest, it isn't keeping us awake nights. Judging from the disinterest, this might as well be an Iditarod for yaks or, worse, a Rays game.

A confession here. I'm a closet soccer guy. Really. It's a grand game, full of passion and pomp and the mentality of a small border war. I admire the blend of skills required. (I'd write about it more often, but I also admire being read.)

But I also believe this: It's your right not to give a flying fig about the World Cup.

There are those, and they should be required to wear identification, who disagree. Those are the people who would suggest in that eat-your-vegetables kind of voice that, by gum, you should be required to love the World Cup, because it's the most popular sport in the world, and if they love it in a seedy bar in Paraguay or an auto parts store in Borneo, you should love it, too.

Oh.

This is the most disagreeable part of the World Cup, the high-minded soccer aficionado who wants to shame you into watching. You know the type. They sniff at you that the only reason you don't love soccer the way Peter Parker loved Mary Jane Watson, is because ... you ... just ... don't ... get ... it.

(For the record, fans of every sport that isn't a major, be it track or triathlon or nude skydiving, believe the same.)

Come on. This isn't Mulholland Drive. This is soccer. What's to get? A bunch of guys you've never heard of play against another bunch of guys you've never heard of, and the government of the losing side crumbles. Somewhere along the line a lot of English fans will be arrested.

Frankly, America gets soccer well enough to know, as a major sport, America doesn't want it. And that's fine. It's the reason they invented the remote control. Hey, if Roy Keane can talk his way out of the World Cup, why can't the sports fans of this country?

Still, there is something about the World Cup that turns some soccer fans into missionaries. Any day, I expect to answer the doorbell and have two clean-cut people with fixed smiles hand me a pamphlet ... about Raul. It's as if those fans spend four years listening to how they're in the minority, and they just can't wait to let you know -- aha! -- they're in the majority.

America knows, okay?

Deep down it knows that from igloo to palace, from desert to downtown, the rest of the world is absolutely nutzo over soccer. It knows, at this precise moment, the leaders of other nations are discussing the merits of Zinedine Zidane vs. those of Zlatko Zahovic. (Little known fact: When discussing soccer, world leaders always begin at the end of the alphabet and work backward.) It knows people all over this planet, and possibly other ones, cannot wait to see the competition.

It also knows this:

So what?

America cannot be made to love this sport. That should be clear by now. If we want to see a game where people have lost all sight of perspective, where the politicians get involved, where the money has gotten absurd, we'll just watch SEC football, thank you very much.

By now, of course, Americans were supposed to be eaten up with soccer. For most of our lives we have heard about the millions of American kids who played soccer, and how they were going to grow up and make this country, like all the others, a soccer hotbed.

Well, the first wave of those kids is approaching hip-replacement age. A World Cup has come to this country. And still, this nation has somehow managed to resist soccer. As long as the game has been played in this country, its most significant contribution is the direction from which NFL placekickers approach the ball.

Why? Maybe because it isn't the best television sport. Maybe it's because we haven't grown up in a country framed by four other countries that we really, really despise. Maybe it's because our founding fathers had bad insteps.

Or, maybe, it's because we stink at it.

Admit it. If you really thought the United States could win the World Cup, you'd watch, wouldn't you? If you really thought we had the Michael Jordan of the sport, and the Jerry Rice and the Barry Bonds and the Muhammad Ali, you would rush out and buy a lot of blank tapes. Because nothing is more fun than watching your team win.

When you compare it to the rest of the world, however, this country is playing with Chuck Wepner and Keith McCants and Ryan Leaf and Kevin Stocker. Why should we bother to look?

The truth is this. There are a lot of soccer fans in this country. There are people who will watch, and people who will care. However, there will never be the sheer number of fans soccer lovers want. The nation has spoken. What it has said is, "Why don't you see if weightlifting is on?"

Right or wrong, to most of America, the World Cup is simply the big competition in a small sport. Nothing more.

On the other hand, have you ever paid close attention to a triathlon?

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