7.11.00
The People's Game

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RU Ready?

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Mel Gibson, Conservative

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Cut the Gas Tax? Not So Fast

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A Death in Texas

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All Tuckered Out

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Dissent II

6.16.00
We Should Worry About Police Violence

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The American Diet II

6.13.00
We've Got Inflation Now

6.08.00
Rip It Apart

7/11/00 10:00 a.m.
The People's Game
Why John Derbyshire shouldn't kick around the game of soccer.

By Ben Domenech, NRO contributing editor

ohn Derbyshire's article in the latest issue of NR, entitled "The Longest, Awfulest Game," trains its sights on what he terms "the most boring game ever devised": soccer.  It's a witty, humorous piece, designed to skewer the sport that Derbyshire views as a favorite activity of bourgeois liberals.

His point is well-made, with the sort of eloquence that we've come to expect from Derbyshire — it's also dead wrong.

First off, let's get one thing straight: it's true that many liberals and/or elitists have chosen soccer as a pastime to enjoy, and innumerable suburban baby boomers have sent their children off to soccer camps. But many of those children have also spent their summers building up chlorine addictions with the local swim team, or playing softball on Saturday afternoons — and surely Derbyshire wouldn't condemn Little League games as an elitist pursuit simply because there are liberals in the bleachers?

That aside, Derbyshire claims that bourgeois liberals have been drawn to the game of soccer due to the game's "association with things 'civilized' and European," rather than the neanderthalic competitiveness of football or basketball: 

The very inconclusiveness of soccer is, I suspect, what has made it the pet sport of the repulsive bobos — David Brooks's 'bourgeois bohemians.'  The game is, in their eyes, relatively untainted by that knuckle-dragging, masculine competitiveness that disfigures the more prominent American sports.  It lacks the grunting brutalities of football, the chawing and spitting and thrust-jaw confrontations of baseball, or the in-your-face trash talk of basketball.  It is, they seem to think, just a more aerobic version of croquet.

He conjures up an image of the American soccer fan as effete leftist, interested in the sport only for its strategic conundrums. These snobbish soccer fans, he tells us, associate the game with "French wines and Danish pastries," which is only a step away from "universal health care and prohibition of handguns."

My familiarity with soccer, it seems, comes from a very different source than Derbyshire's.  For me, soccer is a rough, violent, populist game, with none of the traits that liberal elites might find attractive. On Puerto Rico, my isla hermosa, the game is played in the heat of the humid afternoon, by thin, shirtless kids in dusty street alleys. Goalposts are trashcans, and the soccer ball is scuffed and dirty. The spectators are usually old men, hurling juicy San Juan vowels or playing dominoes on the steps — a far cry from the arrogant suburbanites that inhabit Derbyshire's world. The games are fast, intense, rough-and-tumble contests of speed, skill, and bravado waged on cracked asphalt.

However, Derbyshire isn't just content to miscategorize soccer as a purely elitist European pursuit. Brazil, a country obsessed with the sport, isn't even mentioned in the article. Derbyshire tries to have it both ways. While Americans view soccer as a refined, nonviolent game, he claims, his reason for the game to be "banned . . . by constitutional amendment" is the hooliganism of many fans across the Atlantic. He points to the numerous riots in Germany and Belgium, and claims that the 1969 war between El Salvador and Honduras was actually ignited by a soccer game.  It's all a bit confusing — should we get rid of soccer because its fans are lazy snobs, or because they're riotous drunks?

The reason for the popularity of the game in Puerto Rico and throughout South America is rather clear. Most American team sports require a degree of skill that is beyond the reach of the common man. Baseball requires a bundle of disparate skills: hitting a ball thrown at 90 m.p.h., catching a ball flying at the speed of a bullet, and throwing long distances with great accuracy. Football and basketball have a multitude of requirements, for size, strength, and speed, that prevent most physically average people from excelling at the sport. Soccer, meanwhile, is similar to hockey — all the players must possess the same type of skills, especially in modern soccer, where offensive and defensive players are one and the same. The only required equipment is a pair of shoes, and there's no limit on the number of players that can play a casual game. Soccer, more than any other modern sport, is a game for the masses.

There's only one true hero in the game of soccer, where teams are usually more important than individuals — Edson Arantes do Nascimento, better known as Pelé.  Born in the poor mountain town of Tres Coracoes, in Brazil, Pelé is one of the few soccer players to ever reach mythic status. He scored an average of one goal in every international game he played. As Henry Kissinger (a leading fan of the sport) has pointed out, that's the equivalent of a baseball player hitting a home run in every World Series game for over 15 years. This is no lazy strategist, content to relax in dull non-competition. Pelé's emotional exuberance was one of his greatest strengths as a player; he possessed the ability to inspire his fans, intimidate opponents, and move with amazing speed.

  And once, he stopped a war.  In 1967, the Nigerian civil war stalled for 48 hours, while both sides went to watch Pelé play an exhibition match in Lagos. Not exactly suburban leftists, those Nigerians.

Now tell me-who's the real elitist here?

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