With the World Cup wrapping up in fantastic fashion, and the start of the EPL season right around the corner, we’ve entered the inevitable stage in The Discourse™ where pundits wax poetic about how this time, surely, soccer has really caught on in America.
If you spent any amount of time watching the World Cup in public this year, you likely heard the familiar canards of American viewers reconnecting with the beautiful game for the first time in four years.
There’s the endless debate about what mysteries of the offside ruling. The common complaint that, paradoxically, nothing in this damn sport ever happens, but that, when something does happen, I wasn’t looking. And, as always, the exasperation over the fact that a 90 minute game ending in a scoreless tie is a perfectly acceptable result in a serious sporting match.
But despite these complaints, one thing truly stands in the way of America ever truly embracing soccer. That, of course, is the great moral crusade against the beautiful game’s cardinal sin: flopping.
For The Love 