Horse racing may be the sport of kings, but soccer is the king of sports. It is by far the most popular sport in the world. People go entirely mad over this game, following teams around in devotion, painting themselves in outrageous colours, screaming songs collectively without rest (the English are amazing at this), celebrating wins by setting fire to vehicles, getting into fights after matches (the English, again), and people have even been known to shoot their television sets in the wake of a losing soccer game.
As to why the game has such a manic hold on people, the answer is easy: it is the simplest game mankind has devised. It is so simple, that even someone new to soccer can have it down pat in about 15 minutes. There are two teams and two goals at opposite ends of the field. Each team tries to get the ball into the other team’s goal without the use of hands. That’s it. You add up the goals after 90 minutes of play, and you’ve got the winner. It’s hard to believe that this is what sends people so crazy, but in a world where every sport requires an explanation manual, soccer is as clear as glass. Even your curvaceous girl friend, coming to her first soccer match, will take one look and say, “Oh, honey, I love this game.”
And you can’t blame her. In soccer, you always know exactly where the ball is, and you can see the play developing before your eyes; there is no confusion. In rugby and American football, for example, the ball is frequently obscured by one or two players, and in the pile up of bodies, and in the rugby scrum, it disappears completely. At regular intervals you have no idea where the ball is or where it is going to emerge. If the NFL and rugby referees, six feet from the action, often don’t know where the ball is, what chances do you and I have 80 feet away in the stands? In soccer, the ball is always in your face; clarity.
In soccer, players interact with the ball largely with their feet (except the Brazilians, who play with their entire bodies) and because the ball is not handled (intentionally, that is) or held close to the body, it is in plain sight and there is never any confusion about how play is proceeding. In the NFL or in rugby, you often have to watch the TV replay to know what happened; sometimes the officials themselves, have to use video-taped replay before they can make decisions, and players are strolling about and chatting with friends on the other team – “So how’s the family doing Billy Joe?” – to pass the time. In the lull, spectators fiddle and wait, the cheerleaders shake it up, music plays over the p.a. system, and the ladies go to the powder room; in a soccer game in that same amount of time some exciting plays have been made, maybe even a goal scored, and your bimbo girl-friend is jumping all over you.
In so many sports (American football; rugby; lacrosse) spectators often are not sure about what is happening until the officials make a decision. In soccer, you always know. In American football, players tumble over the goal-line, the ball is in there somewhere, but you don’t know what happened until an official puts his arms in the air like somebody at a soca fete. In cricket, Lord help us if it rains and something called Duckworth-Lewis comes into play.
As you probably know, that is a calculation, used when playing time is lost, that reduces the amount of runs a team needs to win. This formula, used in a major outdoor sport where it often rains, is, believe it or not, a complete mystery to most people – the formula is probably locked in a vault at Lord’s and known only to two English guys with umbrellas – so the entire game comes to a halt while the experts do the math. In the meantime, the players lounge on the grass, the umpires fold their arms and stroll, and the TV commentators tell stories to pass the time. Sometimes, as happened recently at Providence, even the managers of the professional teams get confused doing the calculation and mayhem reigns. Mind you, if you’re watching at home, the positive side of this is that you can go to the kitchen, organize something to eat and drink, put the cat out, and come back to your TV not having missed a thing; indeed, they may still be calculating.
Such a situation is incomprehensible in soccer. Where a light sprinkle can curtail cricket or tennis or golf, soccer players battle on in pouring rain. In my youth at Saints, I recall seeing a rainy soccer game at Thomas Lands where the ball was actually floating on the right wing – you had to wade through three inches of water to get to it; the game went on until Bunny Fernandes waded into the other goal mouth and splashed the ball over.
Also, the rules in soccer are child’s play. Apart from the judgement-influenced offside rule, soccer has no complicated playing or scoring system (consider tennis with its wacky 15, 30, 40 points for 1, 2, 3) and the game doesn’t stop every 30 seconds while officials sort out where things stand, as in American football.
You have to be an expert in physics and the laws of motion and gravity to be able to explain cricket to the initiate. The leg-before rule, for example, is even proving troublesome for today’s video technology that is used to try and predict the path of the ball, and countries have come to the point of war on the criteria that determine whether a bowler is “chucking” or not. In soccer, you kick or head the ball, the referee blows the final whistle, and everybody has a beer.
Finally, one of the factors behind soccer’s ability to generate frenzy in normally calm individuals is probably the degree of tension that builds during penalty shoot-outs. It is arguably the most dramatic moment in sport, and again it is so for its simplicity. One man standing in a goal; the ball is set a few yards away, and another man tries to kick it past the guy in the goal. Two men and one kick, in one moment. That is as simple as it can get, and the result is in your face; immediate; obvious; unquestioned. The consequence of a miss is therefore enormous, and the expectation of it is gripping. Grown men, devoted followers of the game, are sometimes unable to watch it; the girl friend is going bananas.
That’s king soccer; so it go.
