maradona

Take the Acting Out of the World Cup

Submitted by wojo on Sun, 2006-06-18 23:05.

An animated Arena was waving his arms, yelling and complaining during the match, even being asked to calm down by a Fifa official on the sidelines as he protested what he considered to be Italian players faking injuries.

Italian manager Marcelo Lippi took exception to the complaint but kept his thoughts to himself after the match.

"I have no comment about what Mr Arena says about us," Lippi said. "I have things to say about his people, but I’m not doing it."

Yeah, you better keep your mouth shut. There's no FAKING on the US side, but it is par for the course with the Italians. Oh, except for Mcbride, he was totally faking...

Scientists have worked for years trying to figure out why Americans just don't care about soccer....football. The obvious answer is that we sucked and didn't make the World Cup from 1950-90. 40 years of losing will do that to you. However, we have the world's largest youth soccer program. That doesn't always translate into kids sticking with it. I was one of those genius who wanted to play American Football with the cool kids, "I'll grow up to be about 5'10, 150; football is the way to go!"

While there are several factors, the one that turns me off the sport is players constantly taking dives. The Italians are notorious, it's a normal part of the game in South America. Of course, half the times a player dives in the box trying to get the call, he could have actually scored if he just stayed on his feet. We are not watching soccer because there aren't enough red and yellow cards for hard fouls, but because there aren't enough for diving. FIFA aimed to clean up the game by focusing on dangerous tackles from behind, but despite some talk, they've ignored the cheating which often makes the game unbearable for us fair minded Yanks.

It's hard enough for us to get the arbitrary nature of the clock, or ball placement for a free kick, but when plain and simple cheating, like the "Hand of God" goal become celebrated legend, something is wrong with the sport. If you doubt this characteristic of the American sports watcher, just witness the anger leveled at Barry Bonds and baseball's steroid boys. Take the melodrama out of soccer...football, and you might find a lot more American's calling in sick in 2010.