Amazingly paranoid article about why "soccer is a socialist sport".

[ed miliband]

http://blog.american.com/?p=16158


In the Washington Post this morning, sports columnist Sally Jenkins complains (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/29/AR2010062901438.html) about the lack of popular outrage over America’s elimination in the World Cup: “Why is it that Americans expect to win in every sport we compete in except for soccer? How is it that a nation so obsessed with games seems abnormally lacking in ambition when it comes to the most popular one on the globe?” Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703615104575329002167594086.html) that the National Soccer Hall of Fame in Oneonta, New York, is shutting its doors. According to the Journal, the place never had more than 17,000 visitors a year, and “the hall’s passing seems to have gone almost unnoticed. The local newspaper barely covered its demise.” The world is crazy for soccer, but most Americans don’t give a hoot about the sport. Why? Many years ago, my former White House colleague Bill McGurn pointed out to me the real reason soccer hasn’t caught on in the good old U.S.A. It’s simple, really: Soccer is a socialist sport.
Think about it. Soccer is the only sport in the world where you cannot use the one tool that distinguishes man from beast: opposable thumbs. “No hands” is a rule only a European statist could love. (In fact, with the web of high taxes and regulations that tie the hands of European entrepreneurs, “no hands” kind of describes their economic theories as well.)
Soccer is also the only sport in the world that has “hooligans”—proletarian mobs that trash private property whenever their team loses.
Soccer is collectivist. At this year’s World Cup, the French national team actually went on strike (http://abcnews.go.com/International/french-soccer-players-refuse-practice/story?id=10970042) in the middle of the tournament on the eve of an elimination match. (Yes, capitalist sports have experienced labor disputes, but can you imagine a Major League Baseball team going on strike in the middle of the World Series?)
At the youth level, soccer teams don’t even keep score and everyone gets a participation trophy. Can you say, “From each according to his ability…”? (The fact that they do keep score later on is the only thing that prevents soccer from being a Communist sport.)
Capitalist sports are exciting—people often hit each other, sometimes even score. Soccer fans are excited by an egalitarian 0-0 tie. When soccer powerhouses Brazil and Portugal met recently at the World Cup, they played for 90 minutes—and combined got just eight shots on net (and zero goals). Contrast this with the most exciting sports moment last week, which came not at the World Cup, but at Wimbledon, when American John Isner won in a fifth-set victory that went 70-68. Yes, even tennis is more exciting than soccer. Like an overcast day in East Berlin, soccer is … boring.
And finally, have you seen the World Cup trophy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIFA_World_Cup_Trophy)? It looks like an Emmy Award (and everyone knows that Hollywood is socialist).
There are many more reasons soccer and socialism go hand in hand. You can read some of them here (http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/06/soccer_the_perfect_socialist_s.html). Perhaps in the age of President Obama, soccer will finally catch on in America. But I suspect that socializing Americans’ taste in sports may be a tougher task than socializing our healthcare system.


:laugh:


Someone should show him this:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnsQw5gG3Nk

[Palestine]

First of all its called FOOTBALL, not soccer not anything else.

Secondly, football tries to keep high morals, like no smoking, no bad language, no racism,,, etc.
But at some point it did turn capitalist, with all these ads, and the high price for broadcasting the matches.

[Adi Shankara]

Soccer is also the only sport in the world that has “hooligans”—proletarian mobs that trash private property whenever their team loses.I'd beg to differ:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ws7ktcz0_sM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMbi0pJYB0A

Also, love the author's bigoted association of "proletarian" with "mob". stupid fucks should just shut up sometimes, and not even write if they have nothing positive to say.

[F9]

First of all, the article is soooo stupid, cause the one wrote it, or the one was making those comments, has no clue what s/he is talking about.Also, its football, not soccer.
The one makings those points is clearly an idiot, i could say, who could "discover" socialism under everything."Its socialism because they dont use hands" wtf:blink:
Idiotic article.
Football though is the game of the poor, its the game that you only need one ball, and everything else can be found easily, its the game that most people play in the poor areas around the world, when their parents dont have money to send them to something more "high class", or the state spend lots of money creating basketball courts all over the place, etc etc, they just get a ball, and play with it in empty lands, with few rocks for goals...
In any way, the article makes it clear that the one talking is an obama "socialist" so there is no point talking about the "socialism" he talks about.

Fuserg9:star:

[Adi Shankara]

In any way, the article makes it clear that the one talking is an obama "socialist" so there is no point talking about the "socialism" he talks about

even so, I don't see how a simple sport of kicking a ball around can have any political connotations what so ever to begin with.

[Ligeia]

even so, I don't see how a simple sport of kicking a ball around can have any political connotations what so ever to begin with.
Cesar Luis Menotti (former coach of 1978, Argentina) liked to talk about a connection between society,culture and politics in football. Going so far to distinguish between "left-wing" and "right-wing" football.
Good football would be about dreams,fantasy,revolutionary, whereas rightist football was based on systems (or something like that).
Also Kliensmann (former coach of Germany), talked about how football (and hence teams) had to be trained and made like a succesful firm to attract more customers and win and stuff like that.

[I.Drink.Your.Milkshake]

yeah useless, in human terms, "commodities" exchanging hands for 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 75 million pounds and earning more in a week than nurses earn in 5 years are the very foundations of our movement.

[I.Drink.Your.Milkshake]

Say there was some kind of system whereby the previous seasons worst team got to pick the new players first and the previous seasons best team got last pick of the new players, all in the interests of equality... something like, oh i dont know:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NFL_Draft

Dont know, but that sounds like



SOCIALISM




to me. :marx:

[F9]

even so, I don't see how a simple sport of kicking a ball around can have any political connotations what so ever to begin with.

Its not the sport per se(beside the fact that it attracts the poor masses, and its really cheap to play) but the culture evolved around it.An anti-authoritarian culture, you will find that 99% of fans are against the police, and how the state treats football, you will find that fans are against modernizing of the football, see companies, expensive tickets, advertisements, ideas you find in leftism, but those in football are supported even from right wingers.You have the political alliances of football fans, lots of football fan groups gather together for political reasons, we have ALERTA for leftist teams in europe, and there are some for fascists too.Also a lot of fan groups connect with other groups globally based on their political choices.
If you havent felt the every day culture of football, stand in a stadium with others, feel how they feel etc, there is no way you can understand it, but it dont means it doesnt exist.

Fuserg9:star:

[RadioRaheem84]

...and this is another example of the weird hatred for FOOTBALL in the US.

It's socialist? They act like that is a bad thing! Why is it that Americans just assume that socialism = bad.

When did libertarianism seep so hard into the American mainstream that words like statism, collectivism, and whatnot have entered into the collective vocab?

[The Fighting_Crusnik]

The idiot is probably calling it socialist because it is the only sport in which a large drug pandemic hasn't broken out among the players. Therefore, the players are all on equal footing compared to baseball, a sport in which half of the players are on some kind of steroid... ugh... there are times when I feel embarrassed to being an American... and this is one of those moments...

[ZeroNowhere]

That sounds like a parody. Anyhow, everybody knows that, when it comes to socialist sports, cricket is definitely far left (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54msx9j7J5Y).

That was awful.

[BAM]

That sounds like a parody. Anyhow, everybody knows that, when it comes to socialist sports, cricket is definitely far left (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54msx9j7J5Y).

That was awful.

I thought you were going to link to this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_a_Boundary).

[FreeFocus]

Football is a socialist sport because it is internationalist and brings everyone together. Everyone enjoys the sport, from small villages in Mexico to small villages in China.

[ZeroNowhere]

I thought you were going to link to this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_a_Boundary).
I had considered it, but then I figured that this thread was based on something that was probably a fairly low-quality parody, and as such a bad pun would be more appropriate. Also, making a somewhat serious claim along those lines would probably end problematically given the rise of the IPL.

[Vanguard1917]

"Football is a socialist sport ... Financially, some may receive more rewards than others but, from a footballing perspective, for 90 minutes, regardless of whether you are Lionel Messi or the substitute right-back for Argentina, you are all working to the same end.

"The teams which embrace the socialist ideology rather than having superstars, are the teams that are successful. Or if there are superstars they don't perceive themselves to be that. That's why I use Messi as an example. As much as he's a superstar he respects his team-mates and their collective efforts."

- John Barnes

"The socialism I believe in is not really politics. It is a way of living. It is humanity. I believe the only way to live and to be truly successful is by collective effort, with everyone working for each other, everyone helping each other, and everyone having a share of the rewards at the end of the day. That might be asking a lot, but it's the way I see football and the way I see life"

- Bill Shankly

Sometimes i feel bad about hating Liverpool FC.

[Ligeia]

"The teams which embrace the socialist ideology rather than having superstars, are the teams that are successful. Or if there are superstars they don't perceive themselves to be that. That's why I use Messi as an example. As much as he's a superstar he respects his team-mates and their collective efforts."

- John Barnes


Reminds me of the Argentinian's team-library for this world cup:
A book about Guevara by a former companion(Ferrer who signed it with "a guevarist embrace, Hasta la victoria siempre."), all books by Eduardo Galeano, a book about Atahualpa Yupanqui, about Argentinian caudillos of 1800s...and others.

Doesn't really tell much about this topic, but I think it's intresting they had a little library with such books which aren't really right-wing. Well, they lost against a team whose manager is a member of a neoliberal think-tank group.

[Sir Comradical]

"Capitalist sports are exciting—people often hit each other"

Quoted for truth!!

[Guerrilla22]

Football has far more racism involved than just about any other sport I can think of. As racist as the US is, you will never here fans in the stands of baseball, basketball or American football games making monkey noises, throwing bananas on the field and giving Roman salutes over and over. So there are some negatives about the sport as well.

[skinny]

Most Americans think it sucks because there's minimal scoring, 'no contact' (coincidentally, none of the haters have ever broken their collarbone playing, or had someone do a sliding kick into their ankle.)

Though I think it's because you can't interrupt soccer every six minutes for Ford and Craftsman ads so that everyone can rest and get some gatorade, like football.

[Pretty Flaco]

Are you guys positive that article wasn't just a joke? Even the tone sounded sort of jocular... :blink:

[Nolan]

Everyone bookmark this. If arguing with libertarian retards ever gets you down and lessens your faith in the reasoning ability of humanity, just look at this article.

[Blackscare]

Interestingly enough:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/06/footballs-debt-socialism-world-cup



According to football legend John Barnes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Barnes_%28footballer%29), England will never win a World Cup until our footballers embrace their inner socialist (http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/cultural-capital/2010/06/socialist-england-win-football). "Players from other nations when they play for their country are once again a socialist entity, all pulling in the same direction,"

[chebol]

SSY: Is "Soccer" Socialist? (http://ssy.org.uk/2010/07/is-soccer-socialist/)

A National Health Service. A welfare state. Letting 18 year olds get legally bevvied. Not bombing countries that haven’t attacked you. There’s a lot of things which are quite popular around the world which the United States hasn’t quite got into yet. But the biggest international phenomenon to go straight over the heads of Americans right now is the World Cup. It’s not exactly surprising given that Americans don’t even call football by it’s right name; they call it “Soccer” cos they already nicked the word football for their own version, which has nothing to do with actual football, kind of like how their Republican Party has fuck all to do with actual Republicanism.

Still each to their own, it’s not like many/any other countries are interested in American Football is it? Surely we can just leave it at that, and enjoy the relaxing and unending serenade of the vuvuzuela while Americans try to make sense of their own insane, overhyped, Michael Bay-directed, body-armour version of football? Unfortunately, some US nutters -- as previously featured in Leftfield (http://ssy.org.uk/2010/04/5-great-mad-bastards/) -- go beyond leaving it at a simple sporting disagreement. They’ve seen the true nature of “Soccer” -- another part of the World Socialist Conspiracy to dominate and undermine traditional American sporting events. Check this

Read more: http://ssy.org.uk/2010/07/is-soccer-socialist/ (http://ssy.org.uk/2010/07/is-soccer-socialist/)

[ed miliband]

Interestingly enough:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/06/footballs-debt-socialism-world-cup

There seems to be some ridiculous suggested that 'Old' Labour are socialist within that article. Trust The Guardian...