Monday, June 12, 2006

The Flop

Is this why Americans hate soccer?

The second and greatest, by far, obstacle to the popularity of the World Cup, and of professional soccer in general, is the element of flopping.

Flopping is essentially a combination of acting, lying, begging, and cheating, and these four behaviors make for an unappealing mix. The sheer theatricality of flopping is distasteful, as is the slow-motion way the chicanery unfolds. First there will be some incidental contact, and then there will be a long moment—enough to allow you to go and wash the car and return—after the contact and before the flopper decides to flop. When you've returned from washing the car and around the time you're making yourself a mini-bagel grilled cheese, the flopper will be leaping forward, his mouth Munch-wide and oval, bracing himself for contact with the earth beneath him. But this is just the beginning. Go and do the grocery shopping and perhaps open a new money-market account at the bank, and when you return, our flopper will still be on the ground, holding his shin, his head thrown back in mock-agony. It's disgusting, all of it, particularly because, just as all of this fakery takes a good deal of time and melodrama to put over, the next step is so fast that special cameras are needed to capture it. Once the referees have decided either to issue a penalty or not to our Fakey McChumpland, he will jump up, suddenly and spectacularly uninjured—excelsior!—and will kick the ball over to his teammate and move on.


I don't know if that's the biggest problem Americans have with soccer* (the issue of boring-ness strikes me as more insidious and harder to defeat) but it is a problem. I love soccer* and even I detest the flopping that is part and parcel of the game. In MLS it's not quite the theatrical event that it is in leagues overseas, but it's still a regular part of the game. I'll go beyond Eggers here to say that the problem is not simply one of the lack of sportsmanship that flopping implies, but the fact that it's...well, sissy. Except for flopping in basketball (which really doesn't happen that much) American athletes are expected to get up except after all but the most debilitating of injuries. And if they can't actually get up, they're expected to try. Can you see a QB in the NFL, feeling a slight tap on his shoulder pad from a pursuing linebacker, flopping to the grass in an effort to draw a roughing the passer call? Not in a million years, because that would NOT be the macho thing to do. Same with soccer*.

Nobody says that we have to accept soccer* here in America the way the rest of the world plays it. What is more American than taking something foreign, and making it our own? For that reason I say drop the flop. To all you American strikers out there...the next time you feel the defender brush you as you try to blow past him en route to goal...keep going. You may not get the goal, but you'll get the respect. And respect for you, is respect for soccer.





*By which I mean, football.

2 comments:

Nat-Wu said...

Well, it's one reason I hate watching international matches. Of course, I can believe some sissy Englishman might snap his leg like a chicken wing at the slightest puff of air, but I certainly cannot and will not believe that of an American athlete. That's why I get so irked in MLS matches when some corn-fed boy who looks like he could kick a hole in a stable wall falls over like that.

You hear that MLS? TWM says, "No flopping in the USA!"

Bravo 2-1 said...

Flopping stinks, yes. But there is similar bunk in American sports. Players insist they did check their swings. They trap the baseball or football on the ground and pretend it's a catch. ARod slaps (in a rather unmasculine manner) Bronson Arroyo's arm to dislodge a baseball and avoid being called out -- was anyway. :-)

I hate this nonsense, but M must tolerate it from my favorite teams. I think if we had a good World Cup team, we'd have soccer fever. Notice American sports teams in the basement of their standings: not a fan in site. We're fickle and shallow, that has much more to do with our lack of interest in this sport.

Then there is Tiger Woods. Or Michael Jordan. Babe Ruth. We often require a superstar to boost a sport. Football and Nascar are examples where this is not the case, though arguments may be made that several have carried the superstar mantle.