Before the vitriol gets thrown at me for saying that I want you to understand this: I played this sport for 20 years and was very good at it. I got a scholarship to a division 1 college because I was very good at it. I might be a 190 lb 6 foot white American, but it might surprise you about how dominant I was in this sport when i was truly dedicated to it.
I was REALLY good at it and got offers for 7 different colleges and it was up to me to decide which one i was going to play for.
We were terrible the 2 years I played for them and I am not going to point the finger at anyone in particular but it can't really be pointed at me because I was only give about 3 minutes of field time despite being a heavily recruited freshman.
I like to believe that i was part of a rebuilding phase that lead to excellence because the TarHells won the national championship in 2001, which was just a few years after my departure. While i feel as though Coach Elmer and Coach Giordano will likely claim this for themselves, it was honestly my doing that turned the NC team into something that could beat every other team in the nation a mere 3 years after my departure.
I am being silly here. I got kicked off the team 1.5 years into my tenure with the team and it was a mix of us being terrible, me getting no field time, and me really enjoying women, drinking and drugs a lot more than I did soccer.
However, this leads me to the point of this entire post, which is meant to get under your skin
I never played hockey because where i grew up didn't have ice except for a month of the year or so but this pic above is very relatable. In USA soccer, you don't encounter the "football theater" that decides a lot of matches in not just NCAA matches, but every league in the world. I encountered it for the first time in college where we were actually coached on how to instigate and then later fake reactions to fouls that didn't actually take place.
If you love football / soccer and you think this is a part of the game that should be part of it then sorry, but you are a bitch and you only feel this way because your team happens to have a great faker on your team.
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the best ever?
There are a lot of people that will come out and immediately dismiss your opinion about the sport because you are American but look here pal, I was probably better than you ever were. I never took dives.... EVER.
But this isn't the only reason why i hate watching this sport. I hate watching it because it is boring to me. It was boring to me when i was on the team but not on the field. There isn't something very exciting about which team keeps possession the longest, particularly when said possession doesn't result in a goal for either team.
So while I am tooting my horn a little bit here because I was very good at this sport I can not and will not ever get behind a game where one of the biggest parts of the game is who can pretend to be hurt when they aren't the most.
That's a bitch game, and this is probably a big part of the reason why USA tends to not be good at the sport in a World Cup way. When was the last time you saw a USA guy dive over and over and over? It doesn't happen.
I invite your criticism. I've been to the mountain top guys. I do not like this sport because too much of it is determined by who can pretend their leg is hurt the most.
I am prepared for anyone's attacks on me but it's my opinion based on a lifetime of participating in this sport. I just can't get on board with a sport that is like this even though I was (I'm not now) better at it than most of the people in the world.