Last night Bill Maher took up soccer and the World Cup, but that was an excuse to extol America—an exercise that seems to be a big sin these days.
He begins by dissing the sport because there is too little scoring, but that remark misses the point of the “beautiful game”, which is skill and tactics. After that he goes all pr0-U.S.A.,, admitting our problems but still proud to be an Americas. The connection with soccer is that many foreigners who come here to watch the World Cup wind up admiring things we take for granted (I love the Japanese guy tasting Texas BBQ for the first time). Unfortunately, most of the stuff Maher uses as evidence for America’s greatness is just that, stuff—consumer goods, air-conditioning, and food. But Maher points out that we have more immigrants than the next four countries combined, and that says something. I would tout the freedoms which we still enjoy, though some of them may have been temporarily interrupted.
Maher’s love of America won’t endear him to “progressives” who really hate the country, but I’m still glad I was born here compared to all the places where I could have been born. And, as usual, Maher is funny.
The guests this week included Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock (Georgia) and comedian and writer Larry Wilmore.
I would’ve thought Canada had as many immigrants as the US
The US population (342 million) is almost 9 times larger than the Canadian population (41.6 million). The stock of foreign-born people is about 22% in Canada and about 14% in the US. Simply because the US population is so much larger than Canada’s population, the number of foreign-born people in the US is larger than in Canada, irrespective of Canada having a significantly higher share of foreign-born people than the US.
Makes sense. Of course I meant proportionately. Thanks!
Typical USA: ”we invented the light bulb”; no, Joseph Swan in Britain did. Just one of many firsts falsely claimed by the USA.
Thomas Edison deserves credit for turning it into a viable product.
I’ve heard other people say they dislike soccer because there is no “action”–i.e., little scoring. But, as you write, they totally miss the point. Some of the same people consider a no-hitter in baseball very exciting, so why don’t they make the connection? I’m not a sports fan, but do watch parts of the Olympics and the World Cup and have been so happy that some of the teams from tiny countries like Curacao and Cape Verde have made an imprint on soccer even when they get few points or none.
I’m a soccer fan and former amateur player, but I could see some modifications that would make scoring easier and add a little more excitement. Perhaps doing away with the off sides rule and instead have a 3-second limit for offensive players in the penalty area, similar to basketball.
And I wish there were a way to get rid of the fake injury histrionics, and the overly enthusiastic goal celebrations that take 5 minutes. Fortunately with the current low scores, those are infrequent.
Eliminating offsides has been experimented with many times, and it doesn’t result in more goals scored. Even modifications like the old NASL’s “blue line” in the 70s (i.e. no player could be offside unless they had crossed a line 35 yards away from goal) didn’t increase scoring…attackers just crowded around that line drawing man-markers to cancel them out.
A “3-second limit for offensive players in the penalty area, similar to basketball” would not work at all, for many reasons. For example, when a team is in possession in the opponents’ final third, are you actually suggesting that the attacking players can only spend 3 seconds in the box…but then how will they set up for crosses? If I beat a defender and dribble into the box, does the referee have to monitor how long all of my teammates have been there? Do the defenders get to stay in the box, or do they need to shuffle in and out of the box as well? Also, you should remember from your playing days how much larger the penalty area is than the paint in basketball! Very strange idea.
What might help is increasing the size, especially the height, of the goals. 8 feet tall/24 feet wide have been the dimensions for 150 years…but modern goalkeepers are so much taller and athletic now. 10 feet tall and maybe 26 feet wide will encourage more long-range shooting, which is becoming a dying art, and would help counter these low blocks that many inferior teams are using to clog the penalty area and stifle more dynamic teams.
An even more radical change, suggested by the likes of the late Socrates (the footballer, not the philosopher) and also the legendary manager Arsene Wenger, is to go from 11 v 11 to 9 v 9. Again, 11 players per side is what was set down in the mid-19th century, but today’s players are so much fitter and faster, effectively shrinking the field and making attacking moves more difficult. Less players would open up the field and encourage more dribbling and effective passing combinations, which should at a minimum result in more scoring chances.
Also…the injury histrionics have been way down…referees are letting all but the most obvious fouls go and this has really reduced the amount of diving. I will give FIFA credit for this…the refs have clearly been given instructions to “play on”, there is no evidence of increased injury so far, and the players are reacting positively.
Actually, Socrates the footballer and Socrates the philosopher are the same person. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfduUFF_i1A
One minor item might be getting rid of the goalies’ huge and sticky gloves.
Excitement doesn’t scale with number of scores. Adding more scores will just mean that each individual score generates less excitement (on average over many games).
Football is fine, it doesn’t need to change and we certainly don’t need to take the advice of Americans, who mostly do not understand it or do not care about it. It’s bad enough that we let them turn it into a game of four quarters so they can put more adverts in.
You’ve posted four times on this thread. Please read the frequency-of-posting rules.
By all means, in the spirit of “American Exceptionalism,” let the virtues and values of the United States be extolled across the Fruited Plain. Let us be proud. If we are anything, we are proud. Or so one hears over and over to no end.
That said, for every 100 (or 1000) times “God Bless the USA” resounds -“I’m PROUD (as opposed to “glad” or “grateful”?) to be an American . . . across the plains of Texas, from sea to shining sea”) – may one hope to hear that elusive verse (from my observations over many years apparently a sin to sing) from Katherine Lee Bates’s “America the Beautiful” sung, broaching the inconvenient (and to not a few Americans’ ears offensive) idea of self-examination and humility, epistemic or otherwise?
“America! America!
God mend thine every flaw!
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!”
It is good that the U.S. is sending humanitarian aid to Venezuela in the aftermath of the earthquakes. That action stands on its own merits. No doubt, (I trust that) there are no strings attached. Beyond that, it will make for “good optics” for the U.S. before the world. By hook or crook – or at least by coincidence – perhaps the families of those killed in the operation seizing Maduro (especially the family of the 80 year-old woman killed in her sleep during that operation) – for which AFAIK the U.S. has not expressed one whit of regret – will receive a few crumbs of that beneficent aid.
Somehow I doubt that Ilhan Omar feels humility when expressing how proud she is to be Somali, or Rashid Tlaib when expressing how proud she is to be Palestinian. They also express pride in being Muslims. But if they really do feel such pride in their lands of origin, perhaps they should go back to those places, where people are executed for being gay or Jewish, for apostasy, etc. Why live among the infidels in the Great Satan?
It occurs to me that those who most loudly reject the idea of bearing any guilt for the sins of their ancestors are often those who most loudly proclaim their pride at their ancestors’ virtues and accomplishments.
“By all means, in the spirit of “American Exceptionalism,” let the virtues and values of the United States be extolled across the Fruited Plain.”
DOGE got rid of that, I’m afraid. Some would say “good riddance” but I feel more than any action in the last 2 years of Trump’s derangement syndrome, the actions of DOGE destroyed any vaunted virtues and values America had across the Fruited Plain and indeed, across the world. One day there will be a reckoning, at least by statistics, and it will be a damning indictment of this Administration’s greed, apathy, corruption and depravity.
A bunch of foreigners have infested my city and I love it. Some Swiss fans bought me a beer the other day which I choked down as I’m not a beer guy.
The World Cup should be American forever: Nobody does it better. Nobody does it half as good. 🙂
Maybe we’re the best?
D.A.
NYC
No you are not. Plenty of countries have done the World Cup as well or better than America. Admittedly, recent tournaments (Russia, Qatar) and the next one (Saudi Arabia) are problematic in various ways.
Love my country. Love it. But when it goes in the ditch, you don’t praise the car, you acknowledge the problem, and gather people to help push it back on the road.
Well yes because it’s a different country and things are novel to those people who go there. This applies to almost every foreign country.
We have all those things in Europe. We also have other things that I like a lot. We have healthcare that won’t bankrupt us. We have cities that you can walk through. We have almost zero gun crime. I can cross the road where I like without getting arrested. Nor do people of the wrong colour fear being arrested and deported to Ecuador, even if they are here legally.
People from Europe and probably East Asia do not envy America. Even though they like going there because it is new and different, they tend to view it as some sort of commercialised dystopia.