By John w. Lillpop
Judging by the hysterical e-mails received from those who adore soccer (they call it football), the really cool thing about the sport is the fact that it is International. Over and over again, my detractors defended their silly game by reminding me that the damn sport is played nearly everywhere.
It is INTERNATIONAL, mate!
To which my cool, reasoned retort was: So what? Heart disease and cancer are INTERNATIONAL, too, but that hardly makes either malady worthy of mindless worship.
To which my detractors resorted to: “You just don’t understand.”
Now that is an argument I cannot honestly refute, because I really do not understand.
Specifically, I do not understand why in the hell hundreds of thousands of supposedly intelligent people voluntarily sit for 90 minutes in a small, confined seat while their brains are being blown to smithereens by thousands of drunken operators of “vuvuzelas,” those instruments of racism and hate that register higher than a chain saw when it comes to decibels.
How can having your ears turned into silly puddy before your very eyes be considered a cool and entertaining thing to do, even in dreary old South Africa?
Again, give me American baseball and the loud chorus of BOOs! that are heaped on the umpires, but only when a call goes against the home club, and not non-stop for 90 minutes, and not at 127 decibels!
In any event, I thought I would give soccer another chance to amuse, so I tuned into the Ivory Coast versus Portugal match. A real tosser that was. After 75 minutes, the score was still 0-0 with neither side coming close to a goal.
What is the bloody point?
Advocates of soccer claim that the lack of commercial breaks makes soccer more of a real sport.
To which I say: Excuse me? Even the sorriest of American commercials provides more entertainment than a pointless (pun intended) game of World Cup soccer.
In the end, though, I relented and accepted the apologies of all those who, through no fault of their own, do not know better than to spend countless hours surrounded by a non-stop blast of vile horns while a huge non-event is played out before them!
