Soccer is foreign to us, and that's a good thing

By KAREN HELLER
PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
Are you ready for some futebol? Oh, yes, indeedy, I most certainly have been every morning and afternoon for the last month and Sunday, alas, it all sadly, cruelly ended.
Everywhere else in the world, soccer is an everyman's sport, loved by rogues and thugs, playboys and elected officials with a gift for sleaze.
Here, it has become the pastime of children and the field of dreams of aging geeks, replacing baseball as an occasion for armchair athletes to overwrite.
A new generation of scriveners, many of them veterans of grade school travel teams and intramural college scrimmages, approaches soccer as though it were destiny, something that explains all human behavior (as opposed to that of beer-swilling, soccer-loving thugs), the laws of thermodynamics, geopolitics and, well, the world.
There's actually a rather good book by Franklin Foer modestly titled "How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization." There's another called "Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism." The staff of the New Republic (which Foer edits) has blogged so passionately and almost incessantly on "Goal Post," with such postings as "Neocons Against Soccer," that it's a miracle the magazine came out. Frankly, I'm surprised Foreign Affairs didn't weigh in on the game. (Actually, it did, four years ago.)
Fittest men on the planet
Anyway, you get the idea. What we have here are unrepentant wonks, rampant dweebism, opining about the fittest men on the planet.
Which is sort of where I came in. Our football, the American game, involves freakishly large men, helmeted and padded within an inch of their lives, trying to kill each other. Their football involves obscenely gorgeous men in shorts and good hair endlessly chasing a ball while doing nifty tricks with their heads and feet, plus divalike Camille turns with every fall. I mean, Meryl Streep has garnered Oscar nods for less.
Why hadn't anyone told me that soccer is one of the few sports, along with tennis, that give spectators an unobstructed view of the athletes, who, as an extra bonus, doff their shirts at match's end? Or that in soccer, the refs aren't fat and are sometimes as magnificent as its stars?
It's been a rush to watch the pure athleticism, the stamina, and the outpouring of other nations' pride. That, plus comfort in knowing that Brazilians or Swedes can don getups as jaw-droppingly dumb as anything that haunts the upper levels of any NFL stadium.
Most of the time, I can't understand what's going on in either football, theirs or ours, because the rules are as complex as the federal tax code and equally subject to change. This is a good thing. The less you know about arcane governance, the more you enjoy the sheer glory of the endeavor.
Preordained ignorance
The advantage of soccer is that most Americans don't understand, forfeiting the presumption of global dominance on the field, in the stands and in the armchair. This is preordained ignorance, which we could use more of, a humbling sort of get-out-of-jail-free card for not knowing all. Sometimes it's best to enjoy the blessed foreignness, like how much better people appreciate their surroundings getting lost in a place they've never been.
For the last four weeks, it's been a pleasure to follow the world's best players, the artistry of the sport, the wondrous foreignness, the global exhilaration and, yes, the male beauty of it all. Let me tell you, going back to baseball is going to be some letdown.
Karen Heller is a columnist for Philadelphia Inquirer. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune.