Soccer (sorry, football!)

Germany 1; USA 0.

Hooray -- success for the USA!  Huh?

Yes, I realize that the United States today backed into the next round of the World Cup by relying on Portugal's win over Ghana, and on Portugal's less impressive history of goal scoring during these play-offs.  Still, the somewhat puzzling question of how today's loss can be celebrated as a victory symbolizes in a sense my overall confusion concerning the world's most popular sport.

I really like the World Cup games.  I like the fact that, unlike Olympic team sports such as hockey and basketball, almost every country has a shot at doing well.  A former champion, like Spain, can lose in the first round four years later.  It isn't exactly "parity," but World Cup teams are closer to parity than are sports such as, say, Olympic basketball (USA) and ice hockey (Canada).

I like the pageantry.  I like the good-natured nationalism.   I like the enthusiasm.  I like following the scores in the newspapers. 

I wish I could like watching the games.  A new generation of Americans has come of age, whose members played soccer as kids and who follow the fortunes of favorite European teams like Arsenal FC, Barcelona, Bayern Munich.  They know the great international players, and they know the tactics of each team.  Soccer literacy has come to them as easily as baseball statistics did to earlier generations of American kids.

I, of course, understand the general rules of the game.  What I don't understand are the tactics and strategies of the teams.  Basketball is my least favorite American team sport, and perhaps for the same reasons as I'm left baffled by soccer.  Basketball players run up and down the court, shooting baskets, and the most baskets win.  But I've never played the game or followed it closely enough to understand with any depth how the players are interacting as a team (when they do!) so as to generate those baskets. 

Basketball at least produces a lot of baskets and showy slam dunks.  A soccer game, like today's match with Germany, consists of watching players running up and down the field for 90 minutes, kicking at the ball and trying to get it under control.  Almost randomly, it seems, an occasional ball goes through the goal.  And just that one goal can be decisive, as it was today.

I tried today to focus on the play and to appreciate the literate, British accented commentary.  My mind wandered and, eventually, so did my feet.  I did happen to be watching when Germany scored its one goal.  It was exciting, I guess, but why did it happen?  Why didn't the USA do the same?  Beats me.

I never scoff at -- in fact, I am totally sympathetic with -- Europeans who can't grasp the excitement of American football.  (Although football, to me, has the great advantage of giving you time between plays to let your mind regroup, and prepare for what needs to be done next.)  But I suspect you need to have grown up playing touch football in a neighborhood empty lot, and watching your classmates play in high school and college, to really appreciate the game. 

Soccer today already is booming in the United States at the school level, and is becoming increasingly popular with the general population --  nowhere more so than here in the Northwest Corner where the Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver fans are highly vocal and at each other's throats throughout the season.  Soccer will soon become a major sport throughout America at the professional level, and our teams will eventually become World Cup contenders.

I hope to be around when that happens.  And  I hope, by that time, to have a better intuitive grasp of the game!