I got much email from rabid soccer fans in regards to my criminal act of linking an article that dissed soccer. First off, to address some points that angry people made. Yes, the Weekly Standard is a neocon rag, however, the article was about soccer, not foreign policy. The Weekly Standard often has good articles on cultural aspects, and in fact, our own Paul Cantor - libertarian and Austrian economist - often writes cultural commentary for them.

Two people, oddly enough, tried to infer that I was anti-free market! because I made fun of the new, "high-tech" Adidas soccer ball that is supposed to "change the face of the game." Not sure how they inferred anything negative or anti-free market in regards to the words "Adidas" and "ploy." I hoped my point would be obvious: that is, the sport's ambassadors and Adidas try to convince us that this new ball will "change the game" and make it more exciting, when in fact, every World Cup has brought forth a new ball, and the game doesn't change a bit. So the distinction is made: the ball is meant to increase revenues for Adidas - nothing wrong with that, of course. But it is not "technology" that will change this boring game and make it exciting.Other sports try to change their balls, pucks, or whatever, to either curtail or add to scoring punch or the speed of the game. And that can be effective, and has been. Soccer, however, has the very specific problem in that it is rare for anyone to ever get close enough to the goal area to take advantage of a "high-tech" ball. So it doesn't matter what kind of ball they're using!

This is why arena soccer was developed: to project the athleticism of soccer in a way that is thought to be more interesting. Though I'm sure the purists shun indoor soccer, just as I don't care for arena football.

Someone writes to say,

Incredibly, several American co-workers in my vicinity have denounced foreign soccer fans (co-workers) for not supporting the U.S. team! As if these people should be so grateful for America’s glorious wars that they root for their home soccer team to lose to the Americans.

Why do Americans think they have a God-given right to dominate all sports the way they do geopolitics? An American co-worker revealingly commented during a recent match against the superior Italian team that the outcome would be different if the players were allowed to use guns. Think about that.

On the negative side, I still have two very serious problems. First, the equation of a sports team with a country. There ought to be a separation between sport and state, don’t you agree? Teams should be determined by private contract, not by nationality. And second, every time a soccer player falls down in the World Cup, a stretcher is used to take the sissy off the field. Two minutes later, he is back sprinting down the field again. How absurd.

First, indeed, I often root against the American team, and despise that others think that is akin to treason. It's all so hyper-nationalistic, with teams playing for the State, with their State logos and colors, flags plastered all over, country against country, in a fever pitch that imitates the pitch of war. And then afterwards the fans war against each other in rabid nihilism. So yes, teams represent the State rather than more decentralized locations. As a hockey and Olympics fan, I find myself often rooting for Finland, Sweden, or even Canada - depending on which team I find interesting at the time.

I grew up being told over and over that soccer was going to become America's new national sport - just you wait and see. Another LRC writer writes me to tell me that he was told the same thing back in the 40s. So here we are, 60 years later, and we're still waiting. But why are we so desperate to push some "national" sport anyways? Sports imperialism? How statist.

As to the other item the reader mentioned, yes! Soccer is the sport of diving. These guys spend the whole game doing these dual-360 spins wherein they crash to the green as if a Mack truck had just caught their backside. Take a dive here, take a dive there - hoping to get a call that goes their way. Can you imagine Ray Lewis taking ballet dives all day in order to get a penalty called? How ridiculous it is.

What struck me as being odd was that, actually, my post was all in good fun - I like when people make fun of soccer. Just like folks who, on the LRC blog, recently made fun of the NBA, college basketball, etc. So what? But these responses I have been getting from the pro-soccer people all have the same underlying angry, rabid, fever-pitched hooligan-type attitudes that makes this sport so feverishly nationalistic and crazed among the fans from so many countries. The nastiness over a one-paragraph blog comment and a link to an article has been quite a confirmation, to me, of the hooligan soccer mentality that indeed exists.

Coming from one who loves the life of sport, I ask: how is it that people sell their souls to a national sport and/or become so emotionally wrapped up in a *game*, that they completely lose it if you dare to convey your own subjective opinion therein?