Soccer Is Unjust and Un-American

W ith just 19 minutes left in the United States’ opening World Cup match against Wales, fading international superstar Gareth Bale accepted a pass in front of the goal, was clipped by U.S. defender Walker Zimmerman, and dropped to the ground. A penalty was called, giving Bale, an aging world-class player, a penalty kick that he couldn’t possibly miss.

Bale’s penalty kick leveled the game at 1–1 after the U.S. spent 81 minutes playing physical, free-flowing soccer. As English soccer announcers are wont to say, the U.S. was asking all the questions. And they pulled ahead 36 minutes into the game when Christian Pulisic threaded a beautiful pass in to Tim Weah, who artfully dodged the Welsh goalie and put the U.S. ahead.

But while the U.S. dominated the first half and much of the second, its dominance was no match for one foul committed too close to the goal. It was an unjust result and illustrated why Americans continue to resist soccer as a major national sport. It is simply un-American.

Sure, soccer has picked up in popularity in America over the past decade — past-their-prime stars such as Bale now come to Major League Soccer to end their careers playing in full stadiums in a handful of American cities.

But soccer fans in America are still very much a niche demographic, like people who listen to music on vinyl, drivers who back into parking spots, and women who chew tobacco. As NR’s Dominic Pino noted earlier this week, one recent poll found that only 7 percent of Americans cared about soccer. (Ask any average American to name more than three MLS teams, and they will likely look at you as if you just tried to put your finger in their nose.)

Myriad reasons are given for America’s lack of interest in the most popular game in the world. The lack of scoring makes for a boring game. The U.S. men’s team isn’t very good at it, and Americans only want to watch sports in which we dominate. FIFA, the international soccer governing body, is a snake pit of corruption. (It is.)

Ann Coulter wrote a notable column leading up to the 2014 World Cup in which she said increased interest in soccer is “a sign of the nation’s moral decay.” According to Coulter, among the reasons Americans should never watch soccer are the fact that “individual achievement is not a big factor in soccer” and that young boys can play with young girls.

And, of course, she derided the lack of scoring, pointing her ire at games that end in scoreless ties. “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,” she wrote.

But more than anything, soccer offends Americans’ sense of fairness. Soccer is unjust.

In few other sports can a team completely dominate a game for 88 percent of the game and still go home a loser. Because of the paucity of scoring, a team that outplays its opposition (like the U.S., which possessed the ball for nearly 60 percent of the game against Wales) is always in danger of having nothing to show for it.

And this injustice is further intensified when a game hinges on an overly punitive penalty call based on where a player is standing on the field. Had Bale been standing ten yards closer to midfield, the only penalty the U.S. would have had to pay is to have a Welsh player kick the ball back into live play. But because Bale was too close to the goal, he was granted an automatic score equalizer. (About 78 percent of penalty kicks are made — for a superstar like Bale, it is almost automatic.)

In American sports terms, this would be like granting 10 points to a team if one of its wide receivers is held by the defense within 20 yards of the end zone. Or giving a basketball team the chance to shoot a 10-point free throw if a player is fouled in the lane.

This injustice is further intensified by the role that diving plays in soccer. In American sports, one’s toughness is determined by how big of a hit a player can take and remain on his or her feet. In soccer, a team’s most valuable player may be one who can react to being tapped on the ankle by dropping to the ground as if he had been hit by a sniper on the stadium roof. (In fairness, Bale was legitimately fouled.)

Soccer fans acquit the sport of the charge of being boring, noting that the lack of scoring doesn’t mean there is a lack of excitement. The fact that goals are so hard to come by makes each shot, counterattack, and corner kick even more important. For hard-core fans, soccer is the jazz of athletics — like the notes that aren’t played, it’s the goals that aren’t scored that provide the true drama.

But the lack of scoring does drive the inequity of outcomes. In soccer, one foul in the penalty box equates to 80 minutes of dominance on the pitch. In American sports, teams almost always have the chance to make up for a bad call — when football teams score 30 points and basketball teams score over 100, the team that dominates always wins. Prolonged excellence leads to large leads, which leads to victories.

Not so in soccer, where a 2-0 win is basically a blowout.

This does not conform to the American value of equal opportunity. We even make our schoolchildren pledge allegiance to the flag because it stands for “justice for all.”

In America, we promise that if you work hard and play by the rules, you will come out ahead. Losing a soccer game because a guy fell to the ground is like having to close the business you spent your life building because a guy pretended to slip and fall on an ice patch outside your hardware store. Both perpetrators are deserving of equal enmity.

The foul against Bale, coupled with the U.S. draw with England on Friday (another game where the U.S. team thoroughly outplayed its opponent but came away without a win), means the Americans must beat Iran on Tuesday to move to the next round.

In America, we decide who wins by who emerges victorious on the field, not by awarding points for ties. It is incumbent on all Americans to reject a system in which superior play is not rewarded by international glory. (Unless America moves on, in which case everyone is ordered to forget this column ever existed.)