World Series v World Cup: Or enough already with the low-scoring whinging

I know this is true, because I saw it all over Facebook tonight: The San Francisco Giants have won the final game of the 2014 World Series by a score of 3-2.

Yes, American sports fans, a measly 3 runs to 2, stretched out over nine whole innings. Yawn.

I don't ever want to hear another complaint from a fellow citizen about how tedious it is watching low-scoring soccer matches.

An image from MLB.com shows the final 3-2 score of game seven.

Speaking of complaints against the sport I've played for 83 percent of my life (that's almost 40 years, folks), I'm reminded of one of the first essays I submitted when my former newspaper colleagues and I formed a writing group back in early 2009. 

Despite having played soccer since childhood, including competitively in high school and at the college level, I had rarely, if ever, written about the experience. The following was an early effort to correct that discrepancy, inspired by the 2010 men's World Cup.

It’s not the goals, it’s the game

By Monique Beeler

There’s a secret the rest of the world has divined that still eludes Americans: It’s not the final score that solely matters, it’s how the game is played. The game in question is soccer, but the lessons apply more broadly.

During a recent night out with friends in a swanky, low-lit restaurant with artfully stained concrete floors and woven placemats that conveniently mimicked the proportions of a soccer field, I endeavored to refute a pal’s assertion that “Soccer needs more scoring.”

His ill-informed comment reflects the greedy, give-me-more American sportsman’s mindset that more is more; that the means don’t matter, only the ending score. And the numbers better be big or what’s the point? Ah, my friend, let me recite the ways that the playing of the game matters beyond the ultimate points tally. There is a reason South Americans dubbed the sport la Joga Bonita, “the beautiful game.” (Can anyone imagine such adjectives of beauty applied to inelegant American football?)

His comment, uttered at the halfway mark in the month long sports soap opera called the World Cup, came at a moment when it couldn’t have struck my soccer-attuned soul as more ludicrous. Soccer needs more scoring? He had to be kidding, or from another planet. Oh, wait, he’s from the U.S. When it comes to soccer and being in spiritual alignment with the rest of Earth’s inhabitants, many Americans might as well be extraterrestrials.

For perspective, consider that in the opening week of play, tournament favorite Spain fell in its first match 1-0 to Switzerland, a solid but historically unremarkable side known for conservative, defensive tactics. It was a potentially confidence- and dream-shattering upset for la Furia Roja. The red-clad Spanish had never captured the title in the world’s most sought-after competition, and this squad represented the country’s best hope in generations. With two more games left in the first round of group play –– in which each of 32 teams assigned to eight groups must emerge with enough points to rank first or second in their group to continue on in the tournament –– Spain needed to place a few well-struck balls in the net in upcoming matches. In other words, every shot on goal could be a potential fate-decider. It’s a clear example of the maxim: when we have less, we value what we have more.

By comparison, if every basket scored in an NBA match –– where the average final score is about 99 to 98 –– carried such weight, the collective cardiac arrest that would result in the basketball fan base would overwhelm emergency rooms and heart surgeons across the nation. Speaking as an enthusiastic supporter of the U.S. squad during its nail biting appearances in the 2010 World Cup, my nervous system barely sustained the defibrillator-intense charge released with every shot directed at our opponents’ goal. When the opposing side blasted a ball toward Team USA’s goal box, the adrenaline burst felt even more unendurable. After a relatively high-scoring game against Slovenia, in which the U.S. came from behind to secure a 2-2 tie, I felt as emotionally wrung as if I’d scaled a mountain and sprinted back to base camp after reaching the summit. The U.S.’s third match against Algeria proved no less exhilarating or exhausting. Following the only goal of the game –– the U.S. found the net in the 91st-minute of play with fewer than two minutes till the final whistle –– I yelled so loud in my empty house, it left my throat raw and raspy. It was a fortunate goal, for the sake of national pride and my health.  

Fine, goal scoring though rare can be joyful and climatic, soccer neophytes may concede. But what are they to do for the remaining 88.5 minutes of the game?

Just as there’s no need to be a connoisseur to dive in and begin learning about and appreciating fine wine, it doesn’t take lifelong soccer experience to enjoy watching what we call off-the-ball play.

In lieu of double-digit scoring, the viewer leisurely sips in a refined blend of aesthetics and athleticism displayed by each player. From a standstill or running at top speed, a professional must be able to receive a short or long pass –– whether rolling lazily at the pace of a putted golf ball or careening crazily toward his head –– and drop the spinning orb to his feet, silencing its motion with one, at most two, deft touches of the ball, using foot, thigh, chest or forehead. Any part of the body, save the arm or hand, is fair.

Much of the point of the game becomes focusing on the athletic skill, movement and muscularity along with grace and improvisation on display as 11 people sight one another between the clustering horde of the opposing team, stringing together seemingly impossible series of passes, collaborating as a whole that amounts to far more than its individual parts, reading teammates’ body language and anticipating their actions and reactions and adjusting one’s own position on the field accordingly. If my right forward receives the ball at half field, I know she will accelerate up the wing before looking to pass it to our center striker at the 18-yard line, where he’s prone to flick the ball to our center midfielder who’s been trailing the offense up the field. After a final, controlled pass to his feet, the mid fielder rushes into the penalty box for a close-range shot on goal. Put me on the field with a different line-up of players and, despite decades of soccer experience, I will likely be at a loss about where to run or who to pass to and when. The success of the individual is that connected to familiarity with his comrades’ mentality and style of play. Soccer may be the ultimate team sport.

Those 90 minutes of official game time, plus the obligatory two to three minutes of injury time, represents the earthbound equivalent of synchronized swimming, without the monotony of synchronization. If orchestra musicians ditched their cellos, flutes and timpani, strapped on cleat-studded shoes and took to composing movements with a ball instead of musical notes, it might resemble an elite soccer match.

Played at its best, soccer mimics a lush orchestral suite in which long, fluid passes glide from teammate to teammate, who in apparent feats of mind reading instinctually know into which open space to sprint to receive a gorgeously-timed pass, when to flick the ball nonchalantly off a heel backward to a teammate who connects with the spinning orb in flight. If the offensive player strikes the ball at the right spot, with the right force, he may blast it just beyond the goal keeper’s reach sending it between the goal posts, where it thuds against the nylon net leaving it quivering in the air, humming out an inaudible tune as the spinning ball comes to rest.