The occasional Two Centser who disparages the sport of soccer as played only in communist countries and is hated by Americans is suffering from a limited knowledge of the world and sports. He/she must be a fan of American-style football. People, I can enlighten him/her.
Soccer is the most popular sport in the world, played by all but a very few countries. Very few of those countries are communist. American-style football is only played in a handful of countries. There are about 40 professional football teams worldwide, but there are hundreds of professional soccer teams. More fans attend soccer games worldwide in one day than attend American-style football in a year.
If Americans hate soccer, why do millions of young people in this country play it? Compare the games; football is a 60-minute game that takes more than three hours to play. Soccer is a 90-minute games that is played in less than two hours. No football player plays 30 minutes in a game and many much less, with the possible exception of the quarterback. Eight of the 11 players on soccer team must play the entire 90 minutes. Even when the clock is running during a football game, nothing is happening. In soccer, play is continuous with no timeouts and play is only stopped if a player is injured, and then those minutes are added back to the 90, the clock never stops.
Anyone can play soccer; you don’t have to be a freak of nature to play. The best soccer player in the world is only five feet, 7 inches tall. There are almost no professional soccer players who weight as much as 200 pounds. A football behemouth at more than 300 pounds would last about five minutes on a soccer field.
I know it is not required that you know what you are talking about to submit a comment to My Two Cents, but those comments would sound less ignorant if you did.
WAYNE R. ESAROVE
Hampton
Post a Comment