What I Dig About Soccer

Passion, baby.
I powered up the television device while I enjoyed my Genoa salami, mild provolone and horseradish mustard on Canadian white bread sandwich today and randomly caught part of a first round match between Greece and the Czech republic.
These guys are hooligans and I mean that in the best sense of the word. A few guys with shoulder length hair, quite a few unshaven, projecting an animalistic aura, wild eyed, fist pumping, hand gesticulating passion. Yelling at each other, heads bumping, bodies flying, balancing violence with precision.
The fans are the same way. Screaming intensely in support of their teams. Bug eyed, drunk and lost in the supreme feeling of cheer leading abandon.
I don't know if American players are like this, I don't know if American fans are like this. I will have to do some research. But I doubt it.
Europeans are much more passionate than we are, more open with their feelings.
Yeah there are long periods of seeming nothingness during soccer games but I think boredom might result from lack of knowledge about the game. There are sometimes long stretches of boredom during NASCAR races to uneducated fans, but if you understand the sport you know what to look for and you understand that it is much less boring than the uneducated opine.
I don't get golf. I don't get tennis. The fans, not the sports. I dig tennis. I played tennis a lot as a kid and was damn good at it. I should have pursued a professional career but I decided that a career in accounting would be much more exciting.
I can dig golf. Amazingly precise. Exciting at times in it's own unique way.
But the fans having to be quiet blows me away. Fans need to scream, they need to cheer. It is a genetic requirement. Silence results in health problems. High blood pressure, strokes, exploding eyeballs. It is quite dangerous. It is unnatural.
With soccer you have passionate players and passionate fans. There are times during soccer matches where the passion flows around the stadium, from the field to the stands and back again, like shock waves from a nuclear explosion.
I dig it, baby. Wild abandon.
Try it out. Sit in front of your TV, pick a team to root for, pretend you're in the stands and scream your lungs out.
When your wife tells you to calm down, tell her she should shut up and grab you another beer.
And be ready to duck.