Women's Soccer

Today the US women's soccer team were part of a shocking and disappointing end to the Women's World Cup. After taking a 1-0 lead in the 2nd half they allowed the Japanese to tie the game with little time remaining. In "extra time" team USA took the lead back on a beautiful header by Abby Wambach.  Then deja vu kicked in and the Japanese tied the game at two. So the incredible back and forth championship game went into a shootout. As I am sure everyone is aware of the Japanese won the shootout, easily.

This game was a real eye opener for me. Not in the sense of becoming a women's soccer fan. This game allowed me to realize everything that is wrong with women's soccer, at least from an American perspective. The problem is simply that you have put the words "womens" and "soccer" together and expect fans to watch. I have no problem with soccer, I love watching the men's world cup. I do not have any interest in watching women's sports though. Each area of these sporting worlds have obvious flaws that need to be dealt with for either soccer or women's sports to become appreciated in America.

The problems for soccer have to deal with the game itself. My biggest issues are with the game clock and officiating.  First off how do you have a 90 minute game that does not end at the 90 minute mark? It is absurd, it takes half the excitement out of the end of the game. Players do not know whether they need to score in the next two minutes or if they have five minutes. The clock should stop when a player is injured, you should not let the clock run and just add a random amount of time after the 90 minutes. You lose every casual fans interest and understanding of the game when you do that. The officiating of these games is impossible to understand. There is no cut and dry ruling for what a yellow or red card is. Also how does any sport offer a warning? If flow of play must be stopped because a player got stepped on or tripped that should be a penalty. The reason soccer is not and never will be popular in America is because the game is completely based on the subjectivity of the officials, nothing is objective. My biggest gripe about today's game is that it was the championship game of the biggest women's soccer tournament in the world and the championship was decided in a shootout! Imagine if the Super Bowl was decided by a field goal kicking competition. That is exactly what happened today. I guess I should be satisfied they didn't let them game end in a tie and saw the trophy in half.

The fact that it is a women's sport does not help the cause either. America has a very deep rooted lack of interest in women's sports of all kinds. One of the problems being that most American's that watch sports on television are males between the age of 15 and 50, so most of these fans see female athletes as little more than objects of sexual desire. Which if you disagree with that sentiment you are blind. Look at the last 2 weeks, which athletes name has been brought up more than any other athlete in the world? Hope Solo, because she is arguably the most attractive woman on the soccer team. Most of the talk was not about how great of a goalie she is, and she is a great goalie, but it was about how beautiful she is. The same goes for all female athletes if they are attractive, like Danica Patrick or Maria Sharapova, they are famous. However, if they are just great athletes you do not hear about them. The other reason that women's sports are disregarded is a little less obvious. In Europe women's sports are very popular, that is because they appreciate them as something completely separate from men's sports. When we watch a women's basketball game we say they do not shoot, run, or dunk like the men. We seem to be incapable of appreciating the women's game separately from the men's. If American sports fans could begin to get over these two issues there might be a place in the American sports world for them.

I do not believe soccer will ever be popular in this country, without serious changes to the game. I also think that women's sports will continue to go on unappreciated and unnoticed. With the flash of excitement over US women's soccer there is a lot of talk of a professional women's soccer league flourishing in America. No such thing will happen. You may see a push for it, but it will fizzle out quickly. The same thing happened after the team won the World Cup in 1999. Then we went a whole decade without even thinking about them. I am proud that our team played so well in this World Cup and that they did their best bring a championship to the United States. Hopefully we'll get excited for them again four years from now.