The Problem with Soccer

Let me start by saying that I really like soccer, and I think it has all the makings of a popular American sport: speed, skilled athletes, explosive goal scoring, dramatic penalty kicks. Hordes of kids in this country play soccer, and once you play it you can't help but appreciate it. Heck, in places like England they riot over soccer games! Sure, there's the occasional zero-zero tie, but you can no more complain about that kind of game than you can complain about a pitchers' duel in baseball. And in international play, like the recent Euro Championships, you get shootouts at the end of tie games, which are thrilling in a very American, winner-take-all kind of way.

No, the problem with soccer, I believe, is that the structure of championships makes no sense to our American way of thinking. In baseball, the season culminates in the playoffs and the World Series. Basketball ends with playoffs and the Finals as well. Many people, myself included, think the season in these sports goes on for a ridiculous length -- baseball, that summer game, these days often begins and ends in snow -- but at least there's a simple logic to the arc of a season. In soccer, there really is no discernable season at all.

I'll explain. I follow D.C. United, a team within the U.S.'s top soccer league, Major League Soccer. We're at the mid-point in MLS' season right now, and just as I'm getting really interested and my team is sporting a four game win streak, the league takes a month long break. And for what? To play a tournament called "Superliga" that has nothing at all to do with MLS, in which the top four American teams play the top four Mexican teams. Huh? And if that isn't bad enough, many of MLS' best players are constantly being pulled from their teams to play for the United States in qualifying games for the World Cup, which by the way doesn't even start until two years from now, in a sub-World Cup tournament called "Concacaf". Huh again? Oh, and there's also something called the Lamar Hunt Cup, in which MLS teams compete with non-MLS American teams for some kind of amateur American non-MLS championship. Say it with me: Huh?

The whole thing is too darn confusing. Tournaments layered over each other, some of which are related to each other and some which stand alone. It's just too much for this American sports brain to follow. What's that you say, D.C. United won a Superliga match? They must be champs now, right? Oh wait, they're only in second place in the MLS Eastern Division. And they've got a Lamar Hunt match against some amateur club team from Pittsburgh next weekend. The whole thing is mystifying. By the time they play for the MLS championship, they've already won or lost in three other tournaments. Where do they stand?

So here's my proposal: MLS should play one continuous, short season, no breaks, with a championship at the end. At least we'd be able to follow it, and it would have some meaning: champs of their league. Then they could go on to Superliga or Lamar Hunt or Concacaf or whatever, and we American soccer fans could happily ignore it all.

And one other thing: I think soccer should reclaim the name "Football" from that other sport that currently uses the name. I mean, come on people: in soccer, the players use their feet. In American football, they mostly throw or carry the ball, all with their hands. It would be like calling baseball "Double Play Ball," or calling basketball "Bounce Pass Ball." Sure it happens, but is kicking really the focus of American football? It's just plain silly. Plus, if soccer adopted the name football, maybe some Americans would watch it by mistake. I bet if they gave it a chance, they'd like it.