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ESPN's decision is revolutionary

JOHN DOYLE

Globe and Mail Update

Latest comment posted at 5:32 AM EST 24/06/08

The new boys of summer are European soccer stars ...Read the full article

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  1. Cat Cat from Burlington, Canada writes: Good article, Mr. Doyle. In trying to understand your intent in the use of the word of 'revolutionary', perhaps it should have been 'counter-revolutionary' as the former refers to an event that already alludes to a parting from Old World attitudes. Maybe somewhat overstated, though, as I do remmeber watching two games of the 1982 World Cup transmitted LIVE by ABC! You may be doing a disservice to ESPN, and even all Amercians in general, by mentioning Jim Rome - the Jerry Springer of US sportscasting - as if he somehow encapsulates the opinions of all US sportswriters. Alas, he might indeed represent that 'red state' faction - much the way Woody Hayes did in attempting to ban the game in the state of Ohio while he was OSU's football coach. But you didn't have to go to the US, as we have our own brand of sports divide here southern Ontario. Just turn on the Fan 590 on your radio and you will hear it loud and clear from Hogan and McCown. You would think that they are Pat Marsden's progeny with the "I just don't understand the game' attitude."
  2. Darryl Youzefowich from Edmonton, Alberta, writes: John Doyle, nicely written sports article. The only thing is that it is obvious if you follow the sport of soccer or football long enough, you realize that poor countries and players are the ones that are excelling at the sport more than the rich countries now. African countries have done well in recent years, now poor Turkey is doing well. Of course Germany, France, Italy, England have traditionally done well, but even France has looked to it's minorities to boost team speed and skill (Wasn't Zedane from Algeria?). Rich kids (middle class and above) are into snow and sand boarding, and other non-traditional sports I think. Soccer may be still popular, but it is only a perception among older white North American males that it is a "metasexual" activity.
  3. boz dobbs from toronto, Canada writes: Wow,you actually managed to incorporate Henry James and David Beckham in the same story.What,s so urbane about corruption(Italy) and racism(Spain).Then again,maybe that is Urbane.
  4. Jeff O from Canada writes: I enjoy a game of soccer, and Euro 2008 has been great.

    It's the attitude of fans like Doyle that I can't stomach.

    Soccer fans are the most pretentious in sport, always forcing their high-minded nonsense on the rest of us.

    It's all here in Doyle's article: soccer is "chess and ballet" and "polished and urbane." It's all "guile and cunning." Non-believers are unenlightened rednecks.

    Get over yourself, Doyle. It's a bunch of guys kicking a ball around. Sometimes it's great. Sometimes it's boring. Like every other sport.

    The soccer snobs at my local - the guys with Brit and Irish accents who trumpet the "beautiful game" - will be disappointed if the game goes mainstream. They would rather see themselves as a select elite with superior taste to the sporting masses.
  5. Jeff O from Canada writes: The world champions managed three shots on goal in two hours of play on Sunday. That must be the "guile and cunning" he's talking about.
  6. Clear Thinker from Canada writes: Soccer draws lower ratings than the NHL. Some breakthrough. And the vaunted super sport draws less than 80,000 in tv viewers here in Canada. Once again the media is trying to portray soccer as popular when the facts tell otherwise.
  7. D M from Canada writes: Having lived on both continents, I find there are sport snobs on both sides. The soccer players looking down on football, and vice versa as well. I don't get it. Play what you like, watch what you like, and leave the others to watch what THEY like. I don't understand cricket, but I'll never criticize the sport, either. Especially if I don't understand it.
  8. Tom h from Edmonton, Canada writes: Good call, Jeff O, I completely agree with you. I enjoy watching soccer from time to time, but can't stand the snotty soccer fans who think their sport is more artful than any other. As you say, soccer is like every other sport, where some games are great (Turkey/Czech) and some are absolute stinkers (Spain/Italy). (However, my biggest complaint with soccer is the institutionalized diving, but that's another story.)
  9. AK S from Calgary, Canada writes: Soccer? I am so sick of all the diving and grimacing. After all, soccer is the reason the Mayflower was so crowded.
  10. Mikey Gault from My Vancouver Condo, Canada writes: Hey AKS,

    The Mayflower sailed in 1620 and soccer/football was not codified in England until 1863. Please get your facts straight.
  11. Ed Tracey from New Hampshire, United States writes: Jim Rome is a very self-absorbed man; taunting former quarterback Jim Everett on screen and getting his tail kicked (link below). Mr. Rome is, needless to say, a man with a lot of issues: a Caesar whose throne is made of sawdust.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HNgqQVHI_8
  12. Bob Fugger from Victoria, BC, Canada writes: Jeff O from Canada writes: I enjoy a game of soccer, and Euro 2008 has been great.

    It's the attitude of fans like Doyle that I can't stomach.

    Soccer fans are the most pretentious in sport, always forcing their high-minded nonsense on the rest of us.

    --------------

    Wow, are you angling to guest-host Jim Rome's show? There's room in this world for wine and cheese, just as much as beer and pizza. I enjoy football, baseball and hockey, but not for their artistry, that's for sure.

    Who's the real snob for dissing something he doesn't understand in the name of the mass-marketed, pseudo-militaristic, phallus-measuring contests that most American sports are?
  13. David F from Canada writes: I was leaving work yesterday, not knowing what the score was between the Spain/Italy match. I pulled up to a red light and saw a vehicle of Italians cheering for their team as if they had won. I still however did not know the score. Went home and watched the game after the fact and after a long 120 minutes Spain actually was the team that moved on!!! Don`t really understand what the Italian fans were cheering about?
  14. Sunil Singh from Toronto, Canada writes: We here in North America are fortunate enough to have many entertaining sports leagues. Note the word entertaining. Soccer is the exact opposite, and will probably never succeed here at the same level as our other sports leagues.
  15. Oswaldo I from Canada writes: Obama appeared on Monday Night Football and played a basketball pick-up game with the Indiana Hoosiers. He is also a White Sox fan who attended the World Series in 2005. He favours the 'traditional' U.S. sports (except bowling). His campaing is irrelevant to the rise of soccer in the U.S.
  16. J K GALBRAITH from Canada writes: I agree with the comment that it is not likely that revolutionary but the changing demographics of the United States is also probably driving the change. The Hispanic population is the largest growing segment of the US population. As we are aware, Mexicans particular, but other Central American countries are huge soccer fans. If ESPN wants to draw in this growing demographic, it needs to understand their interests or risk losing out to Spanish language television networks that are likely showing every game.
  17. Real Name from Toronto, Canada writes: D M from Canada writes: Having lived on both continents, I find there are sport snobs on both sides. The soccer players looking down on football, and vice versa as well. I don't get it. Play what you like, watch what you like, and leave the others to watch what THEY like. I don't understand cricket, but I'll never criticize the sport, either. Especially if I don't understand it.

    Great post, D M.

    I detest sports snobs on all sides (that includes you hockey types - and I love hockey).

    If you don't like it or understand it, don't watch it or criticize it.
  18. C Wagner from Calgary, Canada writes: Mikey Gault - Let me guess...you are a very humourless man, right?
  19. wild colonial manc from tameside, Canada writes: JO writes: "The soccer snobs at my local - the guys with Brit and Irish accents who trumpet the "beautiful game" - will be disappointed if the game goes mainstream. They would rather see themselves as a select elite with superior taste to the sporting masses. "

    With an inferiority complex like that JO we're going to steal your women too...shades of the antebellum south?
  20. He Shoots! He Scores! from Chicago, United States writes: Hockey is the king of sports. Soccer makes for good training in the off-season. That said, I'd watch Euro 08 over a baseball game any day. Great tourny so far. I think the Ruskies are going to take it. The way they play soccer reminds me of the way they play the king of sports.
  21. Captain Ontario from Canada writes: Doyle is wrong

    Sure, it makes for an easy article. Obama "change" and soccer.

    However, as I wrote: it's wrong.

    ESPN is simply looking for content. Nothing less, nothing more.

    Doyle, let's have a Hilary/hockey story next.

    Or a McCain and Randy Couture "age doesn't matter" thingy. LOL!
  22. David Linton from Canada writes: Jeff O from Canada writes: I enjoy a game of soccer, and Euro 2008 has been great.

    It's the attitude of fans like Doyle that I can't stomach.

    Soccer fans are the most pretentious in sport, always forcing their high-minded nonsense on the rest of us.

    It's all here in Doyle's article: soccer is "chess and ballet" and "polished and urbane." It's all "guile and cunning." Non-believers are unenlightened rednecks.

    Get over yourself, Doyle. It's a bunch of guys kicking a ball around. Sometimes it's great. Sometimes it's boring. Like every other sport.

    The soccer snobs at my local - the guys with Brit and Irish accents who trumpet the "beautiful game" - will be disappointed if the game goes mainstream. They would rather see themselves as a select elite with superior taste to the sporting masses.

    Like Canadians are with hockey....
  23. smart guy from Canada writes: Soccer really is one of the greatest games when it is played properly - Germany/Portugal game for example. Although I am a hockey and football fan, I really have trouble watching these two sports once soccer is on. Hockey and Football are really too slow with way too many whistles. A soccer match is 90 minutes and takes about 2 hours to play. A hockey game is 60 minutes and takes 3 hours to play. Crazy.

    As for the diving, can you honestly tell me that Osgood was hurt that much by Ribeiro's stick, or will people finally admit that there is diving in every sport. Look at a punter who gets touched and does a somersault to get a flag.

    I will admit some players and teams are worse than others - yes i am talking about Italy and Portugal - but as a whole, it is no different than any other sport.
  24. J Albert from Toronto, Canada writes: I played organized (i.e. interscholactic) soccer, football and rugby in high school. Soccer is fun to play - and watch sometimes. However, there is usually more in the way of tactics and subtely in one series of downs in football (or one inning of baseball for that matter) than there is in an entire soccer match.

    Euro is fun because of the calibre of the players - but soccer is not about 'guile and cunning'. Scoring plays mainly arise from a combination of a favourable bounce, talent and instinctive reaction. There is rarely time to think.
  25. wild colonial manc from tameside, Canada writes: J Albert: read and react style just like hockey...spontaneity wed to tactics...more like life if you ask me...
  26. Shane Martin from Canada writes: I'm a sportsaholic. I love soccer, I love the CFL, and everything in between. What I particularly enjoy about watching soccer is the complete lack of commercials. Its so refreshing to sit down and watch a sporting event without having to endure mindless commercials every 5 minutes. North American sports seemed to be designed for commercial interuption whereas soccer seems to be about the game. Not that it isn't commercialized, but at least they don't interupt the game to cram them down your throat. By the end of the Stanley Cup Finals I was going to scream if I had to watch the "maniac" sell another KIA!
  27. Captain Ontario from Canada writes: Linton, good post!

    There's nothing worse than people who don't really know soccer, who haven't spent enough time in a soccer mad country, who write glowingly about it like it's an art.

    It's a game. You kick a ball. Boo-YA!
  28. Rick Prophet from Peterborough, Canada writes: Soccer, a second rate game very popular in second rate countries.
  29. Tobin Manley from The Bronx, NYC, United States writes: So, none of these cultural tropes could be extended to Canadians and sport?
    Soccer is not exactly a national obsession in Canada. Is that because of her insularity and arrogance? I think not.
    I'm no fan of Jim Rome, but he's not what you could call a Red State blowhard; he's been bashing Bush's war for years now.
    Soccer is huge in terms of participation, but its draw as a professional sport has not developed, just as it hasn't in Canada. Daisy Miller has nothing to do with it.
    Gleaning some grand sociological lesson from this exceptionalism is specious unless you're willing to allow that Canada's exceptionalism derives from the same national traits. Are you?
  30. Al B from Canada writes: Rick Prophet from Peterborough, Canada writes: 'Soccer, a second rate game very popular in second rate countries.'

    That from a guy from a third rate town, at best.
  31. S. Ives from Ottawa, Canada writes: What I love about the World Cup and Euro whatever is that the Globe and Mail sends John Doyle to cover it.

    He's an entertaining writer in the entertainment world, but his articles from these events are fantastic.

    Now I do like my football, but the European form is a very close second, and I've lost complete interest in the Olympics. You want a case of snoot, there it is.

    I love the idea of American simplicity, especially the Schenecktidy line. It is perfect; even the zip code is '12345'.
  32. Ian Elford from Calgary, Canada writes: This article could have used at least a cursory proofread before being put online, don't you think? As a football fan, I was interested in this article, but I found it rather difficult to read with so many spelling and grammar errors that I gave up.
  33. Midtown Bob from Canada writes: Since when does anyone care what jim rome thinks? Actually I 've never heard of him until I read this article.

    Americans think soccer and F1 are dreadfully boring but baseball and big American family cars driving in circles is truly entertaining. oops gotta go, curling is on...
  34. Midtown Bob from Canada writes: Tobin Manley from The Bronx, NYC, United States blathers:
    ...
    Gleaning some grand sociological lesson from this exceptionalism is specious unless you're willing to allow that Canada's exceptionalism derives from the same national traits.

    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Tobin, keep the Evil Monkey from your closet away from your PC. Takes up valuable bandwidth.

    Back on topic: the Euro 2008 games were much more entertaining than the Cubs/Whitesox games this weekend but don't tell that to anyone to Chicago.
  35. Captain Ontario from Canada writes: Doyle is only being paid to be there because the Globe wants to attract Toronto immigrants to read the paper/website.

    Otherwise Doyle would be covering the Leafs, except he can't understand hockey.
  36. Tobin Manley from The Bronx, NYC, United States writes: midtown bob, the Evil Monkey is in the kitchen flirting with my wife, my closet is too full of shoes, and even my bandwidth knows that a Euro championship is more exciting than an early summer Jays game, but don't tell the people of Toronto.
  37. WorldCup 2010Soccer from Nauru writes: Soccer is the number one sport in the World....Anyone arguing with that is pure stupid and can't count.
  38. Joseph mccormack from Canada writes: Nets as big as houses, final score 0-0

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