World Cup

I made an effort, perhaps for the first time in my life, to watch a World Cup match end-to-end. I've never been much of a soccer fan, but I figured, as I've been compelled to do by various pro-soccer advocates, to give it a chance. I did....and the same gripes that I've had about the game since I was a kid (too slow, not enough scoring chances, etc.) all came back to me. But I also came another conclusion about soccer: the utter lack of sportsmanship exhibited amongst the players. Let me explain....

Having grown up watching mostly baseball and hockey, there is a certain etiquette that goes along with winning. There's also a certain behavior that should be observed when it comes to injuries, both minor and major. Soccer has none of them. For example, whilst watching the Portugal/England match, I noticed that almost every player that went down due to a legal or illegal trip writhed in agony as if having been shot. I consequently found myself screaming at the television, "Get the f**k up, you f**king p**y!!!" after a while. (My latent crudities come to the surface whilst watching sports; I otherwise attempt to keep them in check.) In hockey, this is called "diving", and it is looked down upon with contempt. Before the wave of Europeans invaded North American hockey, this type of behavior was rare, and a "diver" was an object of derision throughout the league, even on his own team. European players, perhaps schooled in the soccer ethos predicated on making the most minor of collisions appear as abject acts of evil (with excrutiating physical agony the end result), brought this ethos into the sport. Thirty years after Swedish defenseman Borje Salming entered into the NHL as the first European player in North American professional hockey, the NHL has instituted a two-minute minor penalty for diving. This would've never had to have been implemented during the Rocket Richard/Gordie Howe era, but there you go. I can't say that all European players are guilty of this type of behavior, as there are some genuinely tough ones that follow the North American hockey ethos of playing 'til you need to go to the hospital, but unfortunately there are too many Europeans that cry over minimal contact. In soccer, that's not only not penalized, it's rewarded. Ugh.