O O Ø O O O O
Not Hockey
In case you don’t own a television, the world is currently playing its favourite sport—soccer—and there’s a bit of a flap on over the calibre of refereeing in the tournament.
Now, this might have something to do with the 16 yellow-, 4 red-card performance of a certain Russian referee in the Portugal-Netherlands game the other day, and yes, that number does seem a bit excessive, but before you go a-blaming the man in, er, yellow (I think—can’t those guys agree on a uniform—say, stripes?), think about the nature of the sport: cheating.
If you’ve ever seen Soccer before, you know how the sport works: kick the ball around for a bit, and then when an opposing player gets within 6 inches of your leg, fall down and act as every muscle in your calf suddenly exploded. Wait around for a bit to see if you get a whistle, and if not (and so long as the camera has moved on to another player) hop up and keep playing.
It’s a frustrating sport to watch, really. On one hand, you have extreme sportsmanship. If you’re a player, and you see a member of the opposing team down on the field with some kind of (fake) injury, you automatically out the ball. When the player then magically springs back to health, the other team kicks the ball back into your end, and you pick up where things left off.
And then you realize that the play that caused this shining example of sportsmanship was a total sham. Sure, sometimes it takes two or three camera angles to determine conclusively whether the one player is a dirty cheaty bastard for diving, or whether the other player is a dirty cheaty bastard for taking the cleats to the first guy, but any way you slice it, someone was being a dirty bastard, and all you’re doing is marvelling about the sportsmanship of outing the ball, and blaming the ref for being unable to distinguish between two types of cheating.
There’s other problems with the sport, of course. Goals are often a little too hard to come by, (apart from penalty kicks, which just seem ridiculously easy), and there’s just a little too much rubbing of the back of the other mens’ heads for my liking. (Seriously. Look for it.)
This all said, I really love the game of Soccer. I love to play it, and I usually enjoy watching it. I do, of course, feel the typical North American shame over my territorial inability to call it “football” (that name being reserved for sports largely concerned with throwing and catching balls using your hands), or maintain any kind of regional, professional league (just because every other country can do it…), but I do love it nonetheless.
So why am I not a raving soccer hooligan?
Because it’s not Hockey.
It’s not a sport where you can take a blow to the face, drop three teeth on the playing surface, and still come back to finish the game. It’s not a sport where you be down two goals with two minutes to go and have any chance of getting back in the game. It’s not a sport where your Jedi Master from Viking, Alberta can mind-trick his colleagues into trading Kristian Huselius for Steve Montador, and then Alex Tanguay for Jordan Leopold.
And most importantly, it’s not a sport where the ref even has a chance.
If you want to fix soccer, forget about the refs. Fix the players. The problem is the dirty cheating bastards, not the guy who has to distinguish between them.
Kjell Wooding
June 27, 2006
OOØOOOODCCLX
June 28th, 2006 at 7:14 pm
Tanguay for Leopold. A steal.
The NW just got a whole lot more interesting. Is Kevin Lowe awake?
June 29th, 2006 at 8:32 am
Given the Pronger/Peca/Samsonov situation, how could Kevin Lowe sleep?
It’s the start of the offseason, the World Cup is raging, and I can’t stop thinking about hockey.
Who cares! Alex Tanguay!