Football: rise of the smug
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Date Posted:
June-10-2010 07:47
54
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Rabid soccer fans are bad enough at the best of times. And we’re not just talking about the ones who celebrate a win by hurling flares onto the field, or who deal with a loss by stomping the heads of opposition fans into the pavement…
No, we simply refer to your average upturned-nose soccer fan – the kind who’ll chide you for not calling it “football”, and who feels a need to constantly remind you that the “world game” is far superior in all respects to more plebeian codes of footy like NRL and AFL.
This type of soccer fan (and yes, we’ll be referring to it as “soccer” throughout this article for the sake of distinguishing it from the other codes) doesn’t need an excuse to remind you how substandard these “unskilful” and “dumb brute-populated” codes are; but every four years, for four weeks, they think they have one.
When the Soccer World Cup rolls around, those who favour the round ball game become reinvigorated with an adrenaline shot-like boost of smugness, using the world’s biggest sporting event as a platform from which to hail the supremacy of their sport.
Here in Australia, we’re constantly beaten over the head with reminders that soccer is a “global game”, one that’s played all over the world, like we should feel stupid for taking pleasure in the forms of footy we grew up with - the ones introduced to us by our dads; the ones which we formed lifelong friendships playing and which taught us valuable life lessons about discipline and fair play.
Don't get us wrong, we're big fans of soccer, too. (Go the Socceroos!) But it's the smug sense of soccer fan superiority that we object to.
Sport, like religion, should be a live and let live kind of deal. If only soccer fans could learn to accept that there are other legitimate codes of footy out there, and let the NRL, AFL and rugby fans live in peace, then maybe there'd be a chance for Israel and Palestine after all.
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