Одна американская очень консервативная тетка пишет, что футбол (тот, который по-ихнему соккер) разлагает.

The prospect of either personal humiliation or major injury is required to count as a sport. Most sports are sublimated warfare. As Lady Thatcher reportedly said after Germany had beaten England in some major soccer game: Don't worry. After all, twice in this century we beat them at their national game.
Baseball and basketball present a constant threat of personal disgrace. In hockey, there are three or four fights a game — and it's not a stroll on beach to be on ice with a puck flying around at 100 miles per hour. After a football game, ambulances carry off the wounded. After a soccer game, every player gets a ribbon and a juice box.

You can't use your hands in soccer. (Thus eliminating the danger of having to catch a fly ball.) What sets man apart from the lesser beasts, besides a soul, is that we have opposable thumbs. Our hands can hold things. Here's a great idea: Let's create a game where you're not allowed to use them!

[...]Soccer is like the metric system, which liberals also adore because it's European. Naturally, the metric system emerged from the French Revolution, during the brief intervals when they weren't committing mass murder by guillotine.

[...]I promise you: No American whose great-grandfather was born here is watching soccer. One can only hope that, in addition to learning English, these new Americans will drop their soccer fetish with time.

Потом другие газеты на нее за это набросились, и она накатала вторую статью на ту же тему!

Further proof that soccer is a game for girls: Since my column came out, a guy from the Paraguay team (Uruguay? Who cares?) was caught biting an opponent in a match. Not punching. Not a cross-body block. BITING! How long can it be until we see hair-pulling in soccer?
I was in Paris the night Algeria played Russia, prompting hordes of drunken Algerians to riot on the Champs Elysees, hanging out of cars, yelling and honking all night. V-Day was not celebrated with as much enthusiasm.
This was for a game that ended in a tie. Yes, a TIE -- an exhilarating 1-1 final score. I don't speak Arabic, but I assume they were shouting something like, "WE TIED! WE TIED! WE TIED!"
So in a 100-minute game, something happened two times and nothing happened 98 times.
As with Algeria's glorious 1-1 tie game against Russia, Team USA tied Portugal and lost to Germany -- and then advanced. How did the U.S. fail to win in two straight games, but advance in this apparently interminable tournament? I believe we are witnessing the implementation of that favorite rule of soccer moms: "Everybody's a winner!!!