# Politics and News > SOCIETY & humanities >  Ann Coulter: Soccer's Increased Popularity Destroys Moral Fabric of United States

## the_diplomat2.0

I've held off on writing about soccer for a decade — or about the length of the average soccer game — so as not to offend anyone. But enough is enough. Any growing interest in soccer can only be a sign of the nation's moral decay.
• Individual achievement is not a big factor in soccer. In a real sport, players fumble passes, throw bricks and drop fly balls — all in front of a crowd. When baseball players strike out, they're standing alone at the plate. But there's also individual glory in home runs, touchdowns and slam-dunks.
In soccer, the blame is dispersed and almost no one scores anyway. There are no heroes, no losers, no accountability, and no child's fragile self-esteem is bruised. There's a reason perpetually alarmed women are called "soccer moms," not "football moms."
Do they even have MVPs in soccer? Everyone just runs up and down the field and, every once in a while, a ball accidentally goes in. That's when we're supposed to go wild. I'm already asleep.
• Liberal moms like soccer because it's a sport in which athletic talent finds so little expression that girls can play with boys. No serious sport is co-ed, even at the kindergarten level.
• No other "sport" ends in as many scoreless ties as soccer. This was an actual marquee sign by the freeway in Long Beach, California, about a World Cup game last week: "2nd period, 11 minutes left, score: 0:0." Two hours later, another World Cup game was on the same screen: "1st period, 8 minutes left, score: 0:0." If Michael Jackson had treated his chronic insomnia with a tape of Argentina vs. Brazil instead of Propofol, he'd still be alive, although bored.
Even in football, by which I mean football, there are very few scoreless ties — and it's a lot harder to score when a half-dozen 300-pound bruisers are trying to crush you.
• The prospect of either personal humiliation or major injury is required to count as a sport. Most sports are sublimated warfare. As Lady Thatcher reportedly said after Germany had beaten England in some major soccer game: Don't worry. After all, twice in this century we beat them at their national game.
Baseball and basketball present a constant threat of personal disgrace. In hockey, there are three or four fights a game — and it's not a stroll on beach to be on ice with a puck flying around at 100 miles per hour. After a football game, ambulances carry off the wounded. After a soccer game, every player gets a ribbon and a juice box.
• You can't use your hands in soccer. (Thus eliminating the danger of having to catch a fly ball.) What sets man apart from the lesser beasts, besides a soul, is that we have opposable thumbs. Our hands can hold things. Here's a great idea: Let's create a game where you're not allowed to use them!
• I resent the force-fed aspect of soccer. The same people trying to push soccer on Americans are the ones demanding that we love HBO's "Girls," light-rail, Beyonce and Hillary Clinton. The number of New York Times articles claiming soccer is "catching on" is exceeded only by the ones pretending women's basketball is fascinating.
I note that we don't have to be endlessly told how exciting football is.
• It's foreign. In fact, that's the precise reason the Times is constantly hectoring Americans to love soccer. One group of sports fans with whom soccer is not "catching on" at all, is African-Americans. They remain distinctly unimpressed by the fact that the French like it.
• Soccer is like the metric system, which liberals also adore because it's European. Naturally, the metric system emerged from the French Revolution, during the brief intervals when they weren't committing mass murder by guillotine.
Despite being subjected to Chinese-style brainwashing in the public schools to use centimeters and Celsius, ask any American for the temperature, and he'll say something like "70 degrees." Ask how far Boston is from New York City, he'll say it's about 200 miles.
Liberals get angry and tell us that the metric system is more "rational" than the measurements everyone understands. This is ridiculous. An inch is the width of a man's thumb, a foot the length of his foot, a yard the length of his belt. That's easy to visualize. How do you visualize 147.2 centimeters?
• Soccer is not "catching on." Headlines this week proclaimed "Record U.S. ratings for World Cup," and we had to hear — again about the "growing popularity of soccer in the United States."
The USA-Portugal game was the blockbuster match, garnering 18.2 million viewers on ESPN. This beat the second-most watched soccer game ever: The 1999 Women's World Cup final (USA vs. China) on ABC. (In soccer, the women's games are as thrilling as the men's.)
Run-of-the-mill, regular-season Sunday Night Football games average more than 20 million viewers; NFL playoff games get 30 to 40 million viewers; and this year's Super Bowl had 111.5 million viewers.
Remember when the media tried to foist British soccer star David Beckham and his permanently camera-ready wife on us a few years ago? Their arrival in America was heralded with 24-7 news coverage. That lasted about two days. Ratings tanked. No one cared.
If more "Americans" are watching soccer today, it's only because of the demographic switch effected by Teddy Kennedy's 1965 immigration law. I promise you: No American whose great-grandfather was born here is watching soccer. One can only hope that, in addition to learning English, these new Americans will drop their soccer fetish with time.

http://www.clarionledger.com/story/o...ecay/11372137/



In my opinion, Ann Coulter is illegitimately denigrating a sport that exemplifies the melting pot of the greatest country in the world. That melting pot, by the way, is what brought this magnificent sport to the United States, something my great-grandfather, an American, helped to make a reality. Coulter should stick to discussing issues that she can really argue about, like abortion or women's empowerment.

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sooda (02-08-2018)

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## JustPassinThru

What, she can't have an opinion, on the politically-approved Eurotrash spectator-sport that's been, not chosen, but HANDED DOWN to the plebes and proles?

I have little use for Anorexic Annie...she's a RINO cheerleader, and at her age those short skirts don't do it.  But she's right on this one; soccer is, if not the cause of social problems, an indication of them.  And where it becomes popular is where the culture is becoming Eurotrashed.

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Louise (10-19-2019),Quark (10-19-2019),Viewpoint (06-27-2014)

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## Calypso Jones

Soccer is for pussies.

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East of the Beast (06-29-2014),fyrenza (06-26-2014),Jim Scott (06-27-2014),Louise (10-19-2019),Old Ridge Runner (06-27-2014),Physics Hunter (10-18-2019),Quark (10-19-2019),Rickity Plumber (02-08-2018),Viewpoint (06-27-2014)

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## the_diplomat2.0

> What, she can't have an opinion, on the politically-approved Eurotrash spectator-sport that's been, not chosen, but HANDED DOWN to the plebes and proles?
> 
> I have little use for Anorexic Annie...she's a RINO cheerleader, and at her age those short skirts don't do it.  But she's right on this one; soccer is, if not the cause of social problems, an indication of them.  And where it becomes popular is where the culture is becoming Eurotrashed.


Coulter is allowed to have opinions. I am also allowed to vehemently disagree with her opinion. I do not consider soccer to be a "politically-approved Eurotrash spectator-sport", nor is it an indication of social problems, but an indication of the greatness of the United States as a melting pot of cultures which forms the basis of our culture.

Part of my opinion stems from my family's history with the sport. Besides the fact that I played soccer competitively when I was a child, and have watched Major League Soccer for as long as I can remember, my great-grandfather, an English-born American of Russian Ashkenazi Jewish descent, came to the United States and helped establish, with other Americans of diverse backgrounds, the United States Football Association in 1913. For my family, soccer is as quintessential to the United States as apple pie.

Second, if the United States' culture is truly a melting pot (which it is), then we should recognize that the rise in popularity in soccer is genuine, and stems from the interaction between European cultural influences from the likes of my great-grandfather in the first half of the 20th Century, and American cultural influences in the second half of the 20th century, leading to a growing sport that reflects the melting pot of our great country.

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sooda (02-08-2018)

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## Ghost of Lunchboxxy

> http://www.clarionledger.com/story/o...ecay/11372137/
> [/COLOR]
> In my opinion, Ann Coulter is illegitimately denigrating a sport that exemplifies the melting pot of the greatest country in the world. That melting pot, by the way, is what brought this magnificent sport to the United States, something my great-grandfather, an American, helped to make a reality. Coulter should stick to discussing issues that she can really argue about, like abortion or women's empowerment.[/COLOR]


I agree, it was a monumentally silly essay.

Soccer can be as exciting as any other sport.

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sooda (02-08-2018)

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## Ghost of Lunchboxxy

Although my taste for professional sports has almost evaporated, I still watch my favourite spectator sport, baseball, once in a while, especially this year when the Blue Jays are playing so magnificently.

But I realize that, next to cricket, baseball might be the silliest game there is.

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## LongTermGuy

> Soccer is for pussies.


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Quark (10-19-2019)

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## QuaseMarco

I happen to enjoy watching soccer more than Basketball which bores the tears out of me. Some soccer games are boring but some are quite exciting.
I think that the USA has room for additional sports. That is the great thing about the USA. We are not a 1 trick pony. We have choice in this country.

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sooda (02-08-2018)

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## QuaseMarco

> Soccer is for pussies.


Not so..... these guys get hurt and have to be tough. Granted, some play into the theatrics of the spills but endurance, tenacity, agility is truly mandatory. These guys are far from pussies.

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## hoytmonger

Soccer is popular? In the US?

Propaganda.

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## Rickity Plumber

> Anyone who mocks soccer has never played


 @NORAD , I love ya and all that but I have always said that when soccer became part of the school curriculum, that was the beginning of the end of life as we know it. It spread from school recess to community programs and when trophies were handed out for bench warmers, then it was all over for us Patriots. 

The OP article by Ann Coulter is spot on. In one paragraph Coulter writes, "There are no heroes, no losers, no accountability, and no child's fragile self-esteem is bruised. There's a reason perpetually alarmed women are called "soccer moms," not "football moms."

Participation trophies are for Losers.

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NORAD (10-22-2019)

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## Midgardian/Piru

Some soccer player in Los Angeles makes $7 million dollars a year - for kicking a ball around a field and once a game into a net.

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## Midgardian/Piru

Germany failed to advance out of the group stage at the 1938 World Cup. Did that make the Germans mad and lead to September 1, 1939?

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## NORAD

> @NORAD , I love ya and all that but I have always said that when soccer became part of the school curriculum, that was the beginning of the end of life as we know it.



 :Smile: 





> It spread from school recess to community programs and when trophies were handed out for bench warmers, then it was all over for us Patriots.


Soccer starts with community programs.

Where I live I've never seen soccer as a school sport.

I have seen soccer as a way for athletes to attain scholarships while they work their way through college.

The best soccer player I know was Captain for his four years of college and also All American 

College soccer - Wikipedia

Unfortunately some of wiki's current terms are old.

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Rickity Plumber (10-22-2019)

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