Soccer: Great Sport or Greatest Sport?
Sports are an important part of the human experiment. Games have been around for as long as humans, and probably started out as a means to teach children how to survive in the world. Even baby animals learn to play in order to learn to hunt or avoid hunters. It’s easy to see that the practice is ingrained in us and as highly intelligent beings; we’ve taken the concept to great heights. No longer a method to learn survival, our sports have become an enhancement to our happiness. True to our complex nature, we humans have come up with a myriad of sports, but one seems to rise above the rest: Soccer.
Why do some consider soccer aka football the greatest sport? Here are just a couple pretty good reasons:
Soccer is Universal
Everyone plays it! Maybe not literally everyone, but I’d bet everyone knows someone who loves soccer. It is truly the one sport that’s enjoyed in every country across the world. According to FIFA, there are about 265 million players actively involved with soccer, and almost half the planet, three billion strong, is a fan! In fact, 203 nations attempted World Cup qualification this last go-around. No other sport can boast that kind of global participation.
Soccer is Simple
Other sports, though no less entertaining, require an intimate familiarity to be appreciated, i.e. American football, with it’s complicated scoring structure, play calling, and position specialties. One could argue that the complexity makes it appealing, but it also makes it far less accessible. Soccer, on the other hand, is about getting the ball to the goal, period. Once you take the 30 seconds to understand ‘off sides,’ the rest is straightforward. Soccer’s popularity also owes something to the consistency of its few rules; besides the ‘pass-back’ rule change of 1992, the game has stayed largely unchanged through the decades.
Soccer is Tough
Anyone who has ever played even fifteen minutes of a match can attest to this. The endurance and power necessary to play a full game, especially in the sport’s upper echelons, is remarkable. More so than other types of competition, soccer demands a rounded set of disciplines. A decent footballer must be fast, flexible, and lithe while at the same time being powerful and possessing a hearty reserve of mental and corporeal stamina, evidenced by the soccer player’s exemplary physique. Some of baseball’s greatest players are chunky, but you never see a fat professional soccer player.
Soccer is Historical
Soccer’s roots run deep. There is evidence of people playing some form of kick-around-a-ball game for millennia. The ancient Greeks, Egyptians and Chinese may not have called it football, but they knew how to play. It was even outlawed at times as a public nuisance in Great Britain in the 14th and 15th centuries. The sport’s foundations were laid in 1869 when handling of the ball became prohibited, and FIFA was established in 1904. There was once even a Christmas Day ceasefire in 1914, during WWI, when British and German troops left their trenches to shake hands, sing Christmas carols, and play soccer.
Soccer is the Great Equalizer
Unlike other sports, one doesn’t need to be a behemoth to play the sport. In fact, the world’s current top rated player, Lionel Messi, stands at only 5’7”. You don’t need to be rich, either! Cleats are nice, but all you really need is a ball, meaning that anyone can play regardless of their economic stature, since there isn’t a bunch of expensive gear to buy. This characteristic of the game translates to the world stage, as well, nicely illustrated during the 2010 World Cup when Ghana knocked out USA, a country that absolutely dwarfs it in GDP and population.
Truly, soccer is the sport for everyone, and more and more, everyone is for soccer.
