Laguna Beach Bikini

For the past month, the whole world has been watching the FIFA World Cup football tournament in South Africa. And apparently many Americans were also tuned in and cheering. For the first time in my life, I have actually followed this “soccer” tournament from start to finish.

Before this year’s FIFA World Cup, soccer, to me, was something you drove your middle school kids to play on Saturday morning. Reference all the “soccer moms” in America.

At first, I just followed the highlights on the news and the results. The local weekly newspaper printed a centerfold where you could pencil in all the scores and see who progressed up from the various Groups to the Round of 16, Round of 8, Semifinals and finals.

Check out the 2010 FIFA World Cup action.

OK, that is just a the video game. (But it’s pretty amazing. I might have to get that game!) I could not find any FIFA clips on youtube. I guess FIFA polices that pretty closely and makes youtube remove them immediately.

Controvery and Conflict Stir Interest
This year, there was great controversy, especially concerning the officials. For instance, there was the uncounted goal that England scored over Germany that would have tied the game going into the second half. But the referee was looking the other way and missed it.

So I started watching some games. The first game I watched was U.S. versus Ghana, which Ghana won fairly knocking out the U.S. A few days ago I saw Spain defeat Germany. Last night I watched as Germany prevailed over Uruguay 3:2 to capture 3rd place.

I am eagerly awaiting tonight’s final match between Netherlands and Spain to see which will be the World Champions.

There was also excellent coverage on CNN and BBC World News with a lot of good back stories about the teams and about South Africa. For instance, there was one interesting series about the North Korean football team. Very secretive and there weren’t many North Korean fans that made it to Africa to attend the games.

There were also lots of good reports about South Africa itself. Reporters armed with video cameras went everywhere and sent back all kinds of compelling stories. It was like watching a travel show and I learned a lot about South Africa. Did you know there are Penguins that live at the southern tip of Africa?

What Will It Take For Soccer To Become A Major Sport in America?
But until now soccer never really caught on in the U.S.A. It has always been way behind NBA Basketball, NFL Football, Major League Baseball, NHL Hockey and WWWF Wrestling. So here are just a few suggestions to make FIFA soccer-fotbal more interesting to American sports fans.

1. Say No to Vuvuzela
First of all, they have to ban that stadium horn called the vuvuzela. For one thing, it is not an original idea. I remember back on the 1960s vendors sold them at Shea stadium where the New York Mets played. That was probably around 1965. I wanted one, my mother wouldn’t let me have one. Mothers are smart. They must have been banned the horns in New York after that, because I never saw or heard one again until South Africa this year.

On television, 10,000 vuvuzelas sounds like a continuous buzzing of a swarm of bees. Not pleasant at all. The noise would send a full grown grizzly bear running for the hills.  I would rather watch the Food channel and hear Rachel Ray go on and on about tuna casserole. While I was watching the World Cup matches, I found it a relief when a commercial came on during the break!

2. Cheerleaders
FIFA needs cheerleaders. Take a lesson from the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. Nobody watched football until the Dallas Cowboys added their famous cheerleading squad in 1970. OK, maybe a few diehard fans followed football before the cheerleaders. But having pretty girls in cute outfits on the sidelines jumping and kicking can never hurt.

There was one story this year about a group of Dutch girls in orange miniskirts that attended a FIFA match. The orange mini skirts had tiny labels that read Bavaria, for the Bavaria Brewing Company. The dresses were available for free with a pack of beer at gas stations in Holland. The FIFA officials had the women escorted from the stadium and even a couple were arrested for something called “ambush marketing” or something equally nonsensical. That was a mistake. You want more girls in short skirts, not less.

3. Goal Detection Technology
There has been debate over the use of instant replay and review like in American football. One argument against it is that it would be constantly be interrupting the flow of the game. That is probably true. Also, I believe that human error on the part of the officials is part of every game. We don’t want the machines taking over everything. [Reference Skynet.] It would not improve the game for every offside call to be reviewed. Accept it that sometimes mistakes will be made, and in the long run it balances out.

But one area I think technology should be uses is to detect goals. Missing just one goal can be very big a deal in a game like soccer when so few goals are scored. They should be able to do something with lasers and computers that can see when the ball crosses the goal line.

4. More Goals
There needs to be more goals scored. Some matches end in a 0:0 tie after 90 minutes of play. Many times there is but one goal during a half, which is 45 minutes long. Games like that can get pretty boring, especially for Americans who are used to watching basketball with a goal every 30 seconds.

I think it would be more interesting if, on average, there were about two goals per team during each half. The way to achieve this would be to make the goal area larger.

Right now the goal is 8 feet high and 24 feet wide. Anyone that is 6 feet tall can reach up to 8 feet without jumping. So make the goal 10 feet high so that the goal-keeper has to jump to block high shots. Then widen the goal enough so that more balls get past the goal-keeper. Like I said, about 2 goals per side, on average each half.

With these few changes, I think that soccer has a fighting chance of becoming one of the big pro sports in America. It may never supplant basketball or baseball, but I think it can easily overtake ice hockey because you don’t need an ice rink and all the expensive hockey equipment to play soccer. And if America gets enough new immigrants, soccer might even overtake American-style football in popularity.

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