Why you should care about soccer

Reportedly your Grandma Campbell was watching the old British soccer program "Match of the Day" when she first started to have the contractions that meant I was on my way, so I have been around soccer from the start. But it was a much more recent event - the 1994 World Cup - that actually made me love soccer. That, in a nutshell, is why I'm putting in a little of my time to write this blog. The World Cup is the greatest sporting event on the planet, and I'm hoping to show/tell you enough about it that you can love it when it comes. The way that I am going to do this is pretty simple. First, I'm going to give some background on soccer and the world cup. Then I'm going to talk about teams and players that you should know about. At all times I will make liberal use of Youtube to show you great footage that you should know about.

First, a little bit of background, since soccer is not like other sports (I am qualified to discuss this, being one of the few people who got an "A" in my very enjoyable "History of Soccer" class at WSU, taught by Pullman 1st ward's own Bill L. Smith. The name makes it sound easy, which is why so many frat boys of dubious academic lineage took the class. Sadly for them, it had real work involved and was mostly about the ways that soccer influences politics and culture. I think Bill learned his lesson, namely that he should come up with a better title for the class next time). Soccer is, by far, the most popular sport in the world. When the British army and upper classes went on conquests (such as to India), they took cricket along with them. Later on, when Britain wanted to expand their commercial empire, their engineers carried soccer with them to places like continental Europe, Brazil, etc. Cricket is a bizarre sport with obscure rules, which takes 2 days to play a real game and typically involves lots of trips to the bar in between (although Uncle Scott does have a great story about striking out the best player in our gradeschool at cricket - ask him about this next time you see him). I think we can all agree that it's a good thing it didn't catch on outside of the Raj. Soccer did catch on, and since countries need something to pour their national pride into when they're not at war (and sometimes even if they are at war), we have the World Cup every 4 years.

Another thing that you should understand: soccer outside of the USA is not like the other professional sports that you're used to watching. In the USA we have sports "franchises", which means that a league is formed, creates teams, and that the teams are then put in cities. Under this model, the teams are part of the league first, and the city second, which is why any old dirtbag owner (like that dude from Oklahoma City who bought the Sonics) can buy and move a franchise - all he needs is approval from the league. This sort of model is completely foreign in places like England or Brazil, where their teams started out as local teams, then later joined together in leagues - in other words they belong to the town first, and the league second. The teams can't really change cities because they are the city's own team, not a franchise of the league. The British team Arsenal was named that because it was started by workers at the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich; Sheffield Wednesday is named that because that's the day that the workers in Sheffield had off from work to play their games. You can't really take a team away when it IS the city's team (there was one recent episode a few years ago where somebody in England did move a team. Fans were so outraged that their games are still boycotted, and their name still doesn't appear in some fan magazines).

One last thing that I wanted to talk about is the tremendous passion of soccer fans. There are a lot of reasons for this (some are discussed in the previous paragraph, other reasons are because in places where people are either very poor or politically repressed (or both) it's their only outlet, and there are many other reasons that we won't discuss). There are endless stories about how soccer is more than just a game, so I will write down a just one of them (you can tell me later if you want more):

-Uncle Stuart and the Mumford's Uncle Brett both served their missions in the Basque region of Spain. The fascist dictator of Spain, Generalissimo Franco, had outlawed the Basque language and done numerous other things to make life miserable for the Basques. In retaliation, the Basques assassinated Franco's 2nd in command, Admiral Carrero Blanco by blowing up his car. They used so much explosive that the car went up over the monastery it was driving past and landed on a second-story balcony on the other side. The Basque's knew they could be arrested if they talked about this individually, so instead they sang about it while watching their soccer team, Athletic Bilbao, with a song that started out, "He flew! He flew!"

When you start dealing with national teams, the passion goes up by about 500%. England and Argentina hate each other ever since the Falkland's war, and have also managed to meet in 3 world cups since that time. These games are always punctuated by yelling, ruthless beatings, and wild celebrations when good things happen - and that's just what happens on the field. Whenever Germany plays England, the English start singing, "Two world wars and one world cup, do-da, do-da, Two world wars and one world cup, oh do-da-day" to the tune of Camptown Race (the Brits beat the Germans in the controversial 1966 World Cup final, as well as both world wars as you probably know).

So, with that lengthy and somewhat wordy introduction I have officially launched the Campbell soccer boot-camp which will have you ready and super-excited to watch and follow the World Cup in June. Will it work? Only time will tell - it may be that only Jared is reading this in the end. Still, it's worth a try.

Below is the first video I wanted to post. It's from the 1998 World Cup, during a quarter-final game between Holland and Argentina. It was very late in the game, and it was tied at 1-1. Not only is this a spectacular goal, but I love watching Dennis Bergkamp after he scored it. Here's a man who had played endless big games for his English club team, as well as his country, yet when he scores this goal that will win a world cup game he is so excited that not even he can believe it - he covers his face with his hands (you can see this especially at the end of the clip). That's all for here. Next week I'll abandon the history lessons and start talking about this year's world cup itself.