No World Cup for You!

Oh, my God.

What a horrific day for soccer in the USA, and not for why you think it stinks either.  As you may possibly know, but might not have cared enough to have remembered, on Tuesday the USA soccer team lost to the team from the soccer powerhouse of Trinidad and Tobago.  By losing, their record in their group of six countries' teams dropped to where they are now eliminated from qualifying for the 2018 World Cup of Soccer, somewhere in Russia, I think.

Those are the facts.  Here come the opinions.

I have written multiple times about soccer here, none of which have been particularly complimentary.  Soccer, you see, has the problem of being lots of fun to play, but agonizingly dull to watch.  If I watch my Keurig machine making coffee, at least I know that in a minute or two there will be coffee.  Hooray.  If I turn on, God forbid, a soccer "match", I don't even know if there will be a winner -- I'm not even sure there will be any score.

It is an American thing, and probably a human thing, that if you have a reason to root for a team or a performer, and they are participating, you can tolerate more dullness in a sport.  I like watching golf on TV, I suppose, but I certainly watch it more intently if either (A) Phil Mickelson or Tiger Woods is in contention; (B) it is a Ryder Cup or President's Cup where the USA is a team against foreigners; or (C) it is one of the four major tournaments a year, where the result is historic in the same way that a Super Bowl winner is, even if it is Seattle playing Kansas City.

That is why people in this country ever watch soccer, that is, in the every-four-years World Cup when we can root for the USA team against the world.  The other three years and eleven months or so, we don't care and don't watch.  That's important.

Now what I have written here previously has to do not so much with how dull soccer is to watch, but how the left is so intent on making us watch, or at least making us think we are supposed to watch.  I've written about how ESPN, a leftist outlet if ever there was one, runs the scores of soccer matches in Mexico, the UK and perhaps Mars (who knows or cares) on the bottom of the screen.

The left is a globalist entity, and soccer is a global sport.  We don't care who wins in "Bundesliga Deutschland"?  Shame on us for not caring, not on the game for being dull.  No, we will shove scores at you until you start watching, and we will continue to do so forever.  Maybe that will get you to hate America like you're supposed to.

But now, oh, Lordy, they have a problem.  You see, every four years we have to watch soccer, because the USA is in the World Cup and we root for our team and our flag (ironic, right?).  And every four years, there is all this talk about how our temporary fandom will translate into lots and lots of kids taking up soccer.

But it never translates into actually watching the game on TV or being interested in watching it, because as I said, it's fun to play but anesthetic to watch.  So now with no USA team in the World Cup, that means that the left loses us for eight years instead of four, and that is just terrible.

It is ironically terrible for Fox Sports, which paid a ton of cash for the right to broadcast a World Cup that no one will be watching without a USA team. [OK, at this point it probably makes sense to point out that all the above is about the men's team; the women will likely be back in it, but they haven't exactly endeared themselves to America by being flaming leftists themselves, and women's teams mostly don't draw the same.  And the first one of them who takes a knee for our anthem will kill it completely].

But the real loser, along with the USA men's team, is the left.  No USA World Cup team, no World Cup viewers, so no interest in soccer, so eight years of "who cares" for the sport here.  We Americans will stick with our sports, the ones that interest us, although the NFL is sliding down that list a bit.  In fact, it's got to be tough for the left.  Do they try to boost the NFL, because its players are actually doing that kneeling crap, despite the whole violence-and-concussions thing, while Americans are voting with their remotes and not watching?  Whose side do they come down on?  Oh, the torture.

Bummer for them.

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There's a new post from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com at 10am Eastern time, every weekday, giving new meaning to "prolific essayist."  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.