Soccer's Boring. There, We Said it.

OK, we're going to say it. We're going to be 'that' guy, we're going to be the American dinosaur about the game. Despite all the gushing over the 2014 World Cup, we're going to say the thing which most Americans are thinking, and they're thinking it because they're right.

Soccer's boring.

Sorry, world sports community, but 0-0 and 1-1 games simply lack real excitement. A lead of two goals with twenty, heck, thirty minutes left is generally insurmountable, and even soccer fans know that. The game is dull: they need to widen the net or take a few players off the field or something.

There's a reason so many Yanks haven't taken to the game. We like to see sports where teams are actually in the game for the whole length of it. A 4-0 baseball contest can still be overcome in the late innings, and American football and basketball stop the clock so often that it almost guarantees no one is out until the fat lady sings (an issue of sportsmanship and fair play in itself, but one which provides at least manufactured excitement). You know why Portugal lost 4-0 the other day? Because even they knew, after the second German goal, that they were toast.

And then, when they finally decide to actually allow a team to win a close game, and when that winner isn't produced in a hundred and twenty minutes, two whole (real) hours of play, they end it with a shootout, where either the lucky shooter or lucky goalie secures the win. That's like winning a World Series on a home run contest or a Super Bowl on a field goal (oh, they do that, don't they?). At the least NHL lets hockey players win a Stanley Cup on the ice and not after a series of one on ones.

We're not saying that the game is unathletic or the players without skill and stamina. It's just dull. That tells us more about the rest of the world than it does about the US, quite frankly.

Brazil and the World Cup in 2014

Brazil, it seems, in being plagued. By soccer, no less, or what the rest of world calls football. The World Cup is only days away and facilities aren't ready while protesters have been everywhere, questioning whether the Brazilian government should pay what it is for a sporting event while ostensibly not being about to offer basic public services. Now a hacker organization is threatening cyber attacks against the event's sponsors as part of that protest.

We could debate the minutiae all day long, but we surely can agree that no government ought to pay towards the support of sporting events. This we argue is simple principle: sports, being for private enjoyment, are no province of a government. Further, and we do realize that this point is even more debatable, there are questions as to what types and what degree of public services should be supplied by government. If either issue were addressed rightly, they would be a lot more cash to see to human needs generally.

Be all that as it may, we cannot condone hacking into corporate sites. Whatever monies they put up they put up of their own choice, and there is no causal connection between between Coke and Budweiser and Brazilian poverty. As to the general welfare of the Brazilian people, well, that's ultimately for Brazil to address. But huge sporting events are notoriously poor deals for nations, as any study of the Olympics will attest. So the real problem here is the mixing of ideals in ways which don't actually help anyone. Except, perhaps, the already well off.

Corporate welfare, and world wide soccer surely qualifies as such, is as wrong as corporate welfare in the United States. The haves should not receive government privilege, especially on the questionable grounds of helping the have nots. It only creates greater jealousies. Such will not ameliorate the poverty issues. Nor, in the long run, the well off.