attics of my life

Much to my wife's dismay some days, I have really fallen in love with football(soccer). And now that I have, I can't really understand why it has never really taken off in America. Soccer fans are like crazy passionate, compared to other sports, except maybe college football rivalries.

But a new MLS season is upon us. So far, I've never really gotten to into our brand of football. Here's a list of my excuses:

1. We call it the wrong thing - The people, British, who came up with the word don't even use it
2. It's always so much slower - Seriously, watch a game on FSC (Fox Soccer Channel) or GolTV then watch MLS
3. Commercials in the middle of my game - football doesn't have timeouts, or breaks in play for 45 minutes or so at a shot, which really goofs up American TV (it's blasphemous to not have a commercial every 5 minutes)
4. ESPN, ABC and the rest of these networks need to go hire a couple of European broadcasters to call the games, once again the people calling it know very little about it
5. Get rid of the stupid mascot names, it should be the Colorado United or Colorado Football Club
6. MLS structure - The way other countries do it makes so much more sense, football has a governing body / association), any team can join the association usually and you play to move up and down in the leagues

Having come to the beautiful game during last years Prem season and becoming a Liverpool fan, I decided to learn more about the history of the sport. And one of the books that continued to come up while I was researching was How Soccer Explains The World.

Having read Thomas Friedman's, The World Is Flat and Nick Hornsby's, Fever Pitch. This review on the hooked me.

It's as if Nick Hornsby, author of the brilliant soccer book Fever Pitch, commandeered Tom Friedman's laptop.

There's a really good chapter on why soccer/football has never taken off in the US. It's as good an explanation as any other that I have found.

The Prem starts Saturday. Go Reds.

I don't have to watch reruns of old games or MLS.