Why soccer is stupid

Soccer. Football. Call it what you will. Loathe it, despise it or just plain detest it, it is truly a game only an insane world could love.

And here are some reasons why:


1. It is boring.

Paralysed by a total lack of scores, stultified by the tedious monotony of endless ball passing, soccer's moribundity is matched only by the boredom of the spectators, who must relieve their own agony by brutally bashing each other, setting stadiums alight, assassinating referees and testing the human limits of alcohol consumption. The only sport where you know what the final score will before the beginning of the game, soccer is testimony to the powers of human endurance, a monument to imbecility almost greater than the Iraq War. The fatal flaw, supreme above all its other faults, will always be the scorelessness. It is the Achilles Heel, the sad dreadful reality underlying all the highlights and desperate, sagging commercials. And it leads inescapably to the next reason why soccer is awful.

2. It lacks reliability.

Because of the low (read neglible) scores, soccer lacks the statistical validity to actually qualify as a sport. In a pastime where the underdogs upset the champions so regularly, it is impossible to quantify which team is better on a given day. With a score (if you are lucky) of 1-0, a replay of the game is almost as likely, statistically, to result in victory for the other team. The better team cannot actually be determined from the game. This alone should be argument enough for the abolition of the sport.

The lack of reliability in soccer compares fatally with sports such as cricket, where over 5 days the better team will, pretty generally, come out on top. Of course, soccer players do display some skills, which makes them all the more pitiful (if that were possible) when their skills are not recognised by their sport.

3. It lacks validity

A soccer game is rarely a true measure of the playing skills of both sides. As well as there being very few points scored, those 'goals' that do occur usually come from penalty shots, corners etc. These opportunities rarely result from skill and are usually the outcome of luck or, even more frustratingly, from deliberate attempts to cheat the system through diving, forcing a penalty etc. Even worse, as so many games end with no score at all, we are left with the ludicrous practice of a 'penalty shootout', each incidence of which must surely stir thought 0f rebellion in even the most thuggish and unthinking soccer fan, who must be aware, on some level, that their very humanity, the essence of their soul, is compromised by the assertion of their mouths that this is a valid way to finish a competitive sporting activity.

4. It's degrading

As if penalty shootouts were not ignobling enough, soccer players have invented the dive. Scared babies crying for their mommies after they fall over. Over powdered dolly-boys crying wolf after every real or imagined offence. This loathsome, slimy practice would, in a civilized world, be punishable by whipping. Its continual practice in soccer reflects more tellingly upon its culture than anything else. How is it possible for a real human being, an individual with any developed sense of justice or humanity, to still respect themselves after having been witness to it? The very thought of it is degrading to everthing that is human within us. This sad, diseased and pathetic habit reflects so poorly on its practicioners and the spectators who submit to it that the sum value of global culture is reduced substantially; it compares so disfavourably to real sports which value endurance or the tolerance of pain such as rugby or cricket that the mere existence of soccer brings shame upon the world. How could such a sport exist on the same globe as Ricky Ponting playing on after being cut open by a Pommy bouncer, or Jonah Lomu running onto the field missing both kidneys, hundreds of bones, and a leg?

5. It enables Australia to disempower less privileged countries.

As if being the greatest sporting nation in the world were not already enough, and among the top few nations, despite our small size, in cricket, rugby, rugby league, swimming and hockey, there is a determined push to make Australia a soccer world power. Thank God, this push has not as yet been successful. If it were, Australia's success would be at the expense of such worthy cultural and economic rivals as Uruguay or Iraq. Personally, I think Iraq has enough to worry about without losing a World Cup spot because Australia suddenly got satellite TV and realised that the rest of the world was kicking a white ball and pretending to fall over, and decided that if the rest of the world could do that, Australia had to as well. Talk about cultural cringe! All the other sports not enough, dearie? Still doesn't make up for not having any Nobel Prize in Literature winners apart from a dense and unreadable Patrick White? It all comes back to being convicts and the Poms never forgetting doesn't it? So we have to beat them at their own game now that they have given up on the cricket. Too bad it has to be at the expense of countries like Uraguay, who don't have rugby or swimming or rising house prices to succour them, who fight malnutrition and rabies and dictatorships and hordes of flesh-eating zombies- Hey! Why not take away the only thing they're good at as well!

6. It's UnAustralian

Yes this is a big one to put out there but there is no doubt about it. Australian values are irrepairably undermined by soccer culture. Valued Australian traits such as honesty and fairness, destroyed by the dive. The understatement and reserve so typical of our character, exploded by the ostentatious and demeaning displays of triumph when the ball finally goes in- where is your modesty, young man? Our national character traditionally had a healthy distaste for excessive display- true worth did not need to be advertised.
Ethnic and national rivalries brought into a country that prides itself on its tolerance- riot anybody?

7. It's dehumanising

Soccer prides itself on avoiding the use of human abilities. Hands- the quintessential human appendage- are actually prohibited from use. (Soccer fans claim this is why it's called football, which raises the question: what sport is the goalkeeper playing?). With no hands comes no hand-eye-coordination and no opposable thumbs. Very little human activity at all in fact. Added to this is the notable lack of the higher human mental qualities- nobility, sportsmanship and honesty; you are left with a brutal, animalistic, and illogical sport whose only redeeming feature and the source of its popularity is that it costs nothing and requires no equipment to play.



I believe I have conclusively shown soccer for what it is. A tedious, grim sport which measures neither the skill of it players nor of its teams. A brutal, nefarious and dishonest pastime whose continued existence not only degrades humanity as a whole but in paticular demeans Australia.

I await your response