Are World Cup Football/Soccer/Kickball Players All a Bunch of Snowflakes?

Some say Football, some say Soccer, I say Kickball.

My son Tony & I are following the World Cup; though to be honest I am watching much more of it than him.  I have also been listening to American Conservative commentators who have been mocking the World Cup.  I wince as they do so because I, as I said in a previous entry, I have been watching the WC since 1974.  There are some good things to be said about the game of Kickball, like how it takes less than two hours to play a normal match and how, unlike Ice Hockey, most of the goals do have a build up to them.  But the cricitisms of Kickball that the conservative commentators have made, about its lack of scoring, the power of its referees to influence games by awarding or not awarding penalty kicks, and the annoying habit of the players to act melodramtically after collisions, are valid.

The latter criticism is particularly valid because the melodramatics ruin the flow of a Kickball game in the manner that constant commercials ruin the flow of NFL games.  But at least in the NFL where players are being hit directly with greater force, you never ever see or even begin to suspect that an injured NFL player is faking it.  In fact, the players in the NFL who suffer concussions never flop around after doing so.  An NFL player will also get up after a collision and get in position for the next play without the need to do the funky chicken.  [NFL players usually only flop around after their score touchdowns.] Kickball players need only to be tapped by an opponent and they begin to become very aggrieved.  It is enough to make one think that most Kickball players are snowflakes, and that Americans of the progressive political persuasion see Kickball players as their kind of people.

So it is out of habit and an unfailing Charlie-Brown-and-Lucy-with-the-football optimism, I watch the World Cup.  Often I find, like during that Brazil-Italy WC final played in Pasadena, myself cheering for someone -- it doesn't matter from which team -- to score a goal because I want the game and the tournament to be better than it actually is.

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