Soccer is fun to watch – at recess.  

You get 40 kids running 37 different directions, screeching, waving arms, kicking when there’s no ball anywhere near them, jumping, tumbling, then maybe some of them wandering off to chase a butterfly. Other than a lack of scoring, what they’re doing out there  has very little in common with a soccer match, but it is entertaining.  

Once you get beyond fourth-grade, watching a game can be a little tedious for some of us. Don’t judge us. This is natural. A sport is just as much an acquired taste as a food – and what’s served for dinner might not suit everybody.  

Other things I wouldn’t order off the world menu include sumo wrestling, the Tour de France and cricket, and the world is okay with that. But when it comes to soccer, not wanting to watch it is seen by much of that world as a character flaw. 

It’s almost like we who are indifferent need to explain ourselves. The problem is that I can’t answer the question “what’s wrong with it?” 

There are certain incomprehensible elements that can be off-putting and seem silly, like when they hold up a yellow card when a player does something that doesn’t look any worse than what other players were doing. But is that any sillier than throwing a handkerchief at an offensive lineman who “flinches”?  

Obviously it is not necessary to understand everything about a sport. I’ve been around baseball for 70 years and don’t really know what a balk is. Basketball referees call fouls nobody else can see but don’t seem to notice a player taking five steps without dribbling. Pass interference is a matter of opinion, and I couldn’t tell you what a Nickel Defense is if you put a gun to my head – or even threatened to throw a handkerchief at me.  

It’s not the lack of scoring or lack of action, either. A scoreless no-hitter in baseball is tense and exciting, even though seven out of the ten players on the field are just standing there. Soccer players run 9 or 10 miles in a game, and while much of it seems to be aimless, they are always up to something. 

This game has as much going for it as others I care about, so why can’t I stir up any interest? 

Sadly, it is probably because I don’t have anybody to hate. 

A parallel can be found in ice hockey, another low-scoring game that is generally incomprehensible to those who didn’t grow up around it. Most of the unfrozen part of the country could not have cared less about it and were only vaguely aware that we had a team. Then we went all nutso wackadoodle when our boys put down the Evil Empire of the Soviet Union. Do you think all that hoopla and adoration was about good skating? 

No sir. Not any more than a Yankees vs. Dodgers game is about baseball. It is about blood. Getting them back, making them lose this time, making their mothers weep. As for a sport bringing us together for peaceful understanding, how’s that working with the Georgia-Florida football game? 

Give me a rivalry, a sneering opposing coach, fat slob fans of the other team yelling “we are awesome,” a stupid, irritating mascot dissing our mascot, and some heartbreaking losses to avenge. If that happens, I will be all over this soccer thing, right there chanting “USA, USA” through every incomprehensible moment of every second of mysteriously added “extra time,” deeply caring and intensely interested. 

Until then, it might as well be opera.