The FIFA World Cup Soccer Tournament finally winds up on Sunday with a championship game between Spain and The Netherlands. I know soccer is the most popular sport on the planet but I’ve never had the slightest interest in it. I’ll admit I’ve been impressed with the athleticism of some of the players they’ve shown on the World Cup highlights, especially the goals scored on “headers”. Soccer to me is the best sport to start out youngsters in, due to its’ simplicity and the fact that all you need to play is a ball. All over the world the sport is played by kids whether they’re rich or poor, and in fact it is probably recognized as the one thing kids can enjoy in poverty-stricken nations. But here in the U.S., in my opinion, it is a bit of an elitist sport. When I think of soccer in the U.S., I think of this incident – once my son was playing in a baseball game on a complex that had other fields around the baseball diamond, and a foul ball was hit into a soccer field in the complex where a kids’ soccer game was going on. The ball rolled up to the feet of a father of one of the soccer kids, a rosy-cheeked snooty looking guy dressed in khaki pants, a golf shirt and a cardigan neatly tied around his shoulders. He picked up the ball and as players from the baseball field called to him to throw it, he twirled around and flung the ball into a nearby woods. It was unfortunate that those kids playing the soccer game had to hear the obscenities that the baseball players, mostly in their late teens and early twenties, heaped on this guy. But that pompous ass, to me, pretty much sums up soccer in the U.S. With all due respect to the Rwandan team that shares my website’s name, the Rayon Sports Football Club, I’m afraid this is one sports fan who will never warm up to the sport of soccer.
FIFA World Cup Finale
09
Jul