Soccer: You Either Get It, Or You Don’t

By: Laurie | July 5th, 2007

Reader “Awesome” sent a link yesterday to this article by ESPN writer Gene Wojciechowski. It’s ostensibly about the arrival of Beckham, but it’s more a way for the writer to turn up his nose at soccer and share his views that it is a) boring and b) not worthy of all the hoopla.

It’s not that I’m anti-soccer, I’m just anti-dull. To me, soccer is hockey on a Valium overdose, but with no glove dropping or board checking.

The Beckhams — David and Victoria — are polarizing figures in England. And elsewhere.
Yes, I’m aware it’s called “The Beautiful Game” — and I’m sure it is, much in the same way folding your laundry is “The Beautiful Chore.” And, yes, I know all about Beckham’s much-anticipated official introduction to the MLS on July 13 in Los Angeles. I’ve also heard of the World Cup, the boffo CONCACAF Gold Cup TV ratings, and the fact that every available suburban sports field will be infested with soccer kids this weekend.

But I can’t name you a half dozen active soccer players — and I’m not alone. I’m not sure I can name you six soccer players, dead or alive. Let’s see: Pele, Freddy Adu, that French dude who headbutted that Italian dude, Mia Hamm, Sylvester Stallone and Keira Knightley?

Well, at least he got the French headbutting dude. That’s something.

Compare that excerpt to the following one, which I consider one of the most magnificent paragraphs ever written about soccer. It’s from the piece on Brazil entitled “Ballet with Ball” by John Lanchester, which was part of last year’s marvelous book The Thinking Fan’s Guide to the World Cup. The first time I read this, I found myself saying, out loud, “Yes! That’s it exactly!!”

(And yes, my family does sometimes doubt my sanity where soccer is concerned.)

A team kicking the ball to each other, passing into empty space that is suddenly filled by a player who wasn’t there two seconds ago and who is running at full pelt and who without looking or breaking stride knocks the ball back to a third player who he surely can’t have seen, who, also at full pelt and without breaking stride, then passes the ball, at say 60 miles an hour, to land on the head of a fourth player who has run 75 yards to get there and who, again all in stride, jumps and heads the ball with, once you realize how hard this is, unbelievable power and accuracy toward a corner of the goal just exactly where the goalkeeper, executing some complex physics entirely without conscious thought and through muscle-memory, has expected it to be, so that all this grace and speed and muscle and athleticism and attention to detail and power and precision will never appear on a score sheet and will be forgotten by everybody a day later—this is the strange fragility, the evanescence of soccer.

Two writers. Same topic. The difference? One gets it, and one doesn’t. For one, the fragility and evanescence are impediments to the enjoyment of the game. For the other, they are the game.

I’m guessing you can tell which camp I fall into.

(And Awesome? Thanks for offering this up to me for comment. It’s not every day I can use words like “ostensibly” and “evanescence” in actual sentences.)