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Soccer deserves an honest chance

By Rob Burchianti 5 min read

Most of you don’t want to hear it. Most of you say it’s boring and you hate watching it. But I’m going to talk to you about it anyhow.

That’s right, I’m going to discuss soccer, and why I like the sport.

Now don’t confuse me with a soccer fanatic. I love to watch just about all sports. I was even getting into curling at the Winter Olympics. So I consider myself an all-around sports fan, which is why I gave soccer a chance a long time ago and have enjoyed it ever since.

But as for you, I know most of your stories.

You’ve grown up on only a few sports, perhaps football, baseball and basketball. You look down on soccer. It’s the most popular sport in the world, but it’s the “rest of the world’s” sport to you, it’s not “American.” There is no crack of the bat, there are no long spiral tosses or bone-crushing hits, and there are no 3-pointers or reverse slams.

To you, soccer is just a bunch of wimpy guys running around in shorts, trying to avoid contact at all costs as they play to a 0-0 draw.

World Cup? Bah, you’d rather watch your grass grow.

The main problem is none of you want to even try to understand the game.

The only reason you’re so into those other “American” sports is because you grew up on them, so you know them fairly well. You don’t mind a 1-0 baseball game because you realize you’re seeing a great pitching performance or some outstanding defensive plays.

A 1-0 soccer game? Booorrrrrrrring.

Too bad you feel that way. You’re missing out on a great sporting spectacle in the World Cup.

This is soccer at its finest, with tremendous fans (well, not including the U.S. supporters, of course) who live and die with their country’s representative.

That’s part of the charm of the World Cup. As the game unfolds, there are literally millions of people hanging on every boot of the ball. The support for a single World Cup team completely dwarfs Steeler nation.

Just knowing that keeps me interested in watching.

If you don’t care about the fans, then lets get back to the actual game.

Watch it even a little bit more closely than you have before and you’ll see passing, set plays, tremendous individual moves, great team work, outstanding saves, well organized defenses and, believe it or not, a goal here and there.

That’s what makes these games so riveting to me. You say there’s not enough scoring. I say it’s a magical moment when a great individual effort or a well choreographed offensive play – or a combination of the two – produces a goal.

A basket in basketball is one of maybe 100 that night. A goal in soccer comes maybe once or twice a game and is cherished.

You all want more offense, but one of the highlights to me in soccer is seeing a tremendous save by a goalkeeper.

They are uniquely skilled in their own right, gutsy, athletic, fearless players who at times have to wade through a crowd of players as they try to locate the ball, and at other times have to stand alone on an island as someone lines up for a penalty kick or a shootout attempt.

If you ever watched a well-designed play produce an excellent scoring chance, only to have it foiled by a goalkeeper’s superior effort, you’d have a deeper appreciation for that man who is the last line of defense in soccer.

Another complaint I get is that one goal is an insurmountable lead in soccer. True, the first goal is always important, but France fell behind Spain 1-0 in the quarterfinals and rallied to win 3-1.

Although rare, there are dramatic, astounding comebacks in soccer even from more than one goal down.

Just last year in the UEFA Champions League final broadcast live on ESPN, Liverpool trailed A.C. Milan 3-0 before scoring three goals in a six-minute span in the second half. Liverpool went on to win in a shootout, 4-3. The game was so stunning, ESPN re-broadcast it a day later on ESPN Classic as an “Instant Classic.”

Trust me, if you’re any kind of sports fan at all, that game would’ve been exciting to you.

And by the way, these guys are not wimps. Far from it. Sure, some of them embellish when they’re hit – you’ve never seen a wide receiver do that in football? – but these are well-conditioned athletes.

Watch enough games and you’ll see soccer is just like any other sport. You have a wide variety of players, such as tough, persistent grinders on defense, perhaps a hot goalie, and maybe one or two majestic, charismatic goal scorers.

Yeah, it’s easy to cut on soccer. Maybe you’re afraid to actually watch a game, fearing you might figure it out a little bit, perhaps even like it, and even if you did, you’d never want to admit that to your macho inner circle of friends.

The World Cup third-place game between Germany and Portugal is on ESPN today.

The final between Italy and France is on ABC Sunday.

Be a true sports fan. Check out both of them, or at least the final. A ball will find the net sooner or later, even if it takes a shootout after two 45-minute halves and two 15-minute extra periods.

Swallow your “American sports” pride, sit back and, for once, give the game an honest chance.

That’s all I ask.

Rob Burchianti can be reached at rburchianti@heraldstandard.com

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