Football aka Soccer

I love professional sports.  Or I should say, I love parties based around professional sports with a mild interest about what is happening on the T.V.  Pizza, spicy wings, cheerleaders, one dollar pride bets, cheerleaders.  The only way sports could be any better is if they were something I was actually interested in following, like the Governator (when he was in his youth) fighting Mongals and the Zerg in the Colosseum, which I would totally pay to see.  There are competitions I would love to watch: sword fighting, parkor, video games, and stand-up comedy are great fun for me to watch, except for there are neither cheerleaders nor hot wings.  Statistics of a study I just made up say that men interested in those activities are 1/3 less likely to win the girl at the end of the romantic comedy than their helmet wearing, quarter-back tackling peers.  So when I was asked if I would like to attend a Futbol (yeah, they actually spell it that way) match I was conflicted.  In the end I remembered what Rotary had taught me to accept any offer to meet new people, so I headed off with my host brother to watch San Sebastian's team play some other team.  I was assured by all of the Basque people that the other team was totally lame.  We went to a bar, ordered red bulls for some reason, and sat down to enjoy a fierce human competition of... what is, sure to... be, ugh, I'm already bored.  I sat through the full ninety minutes of game plus the half time review of whatever was happening in the game then the next morning everyone was talking about the game, but I can't even remember who won, the only fact that sticks in my mind was that there were no hot wings.  In fact there was no food at all, there weren't even cheerleaders to help direct blood away from our cramped stomachs. 
Oh well, that was just one evening, I figure I should give Futbol a second chance to prove itself, after all it's the national sport of Everywhere that's Not the United States.  I did in fact attend a second soccer game, this time in person.  I went to see my host brother and some friends play in a high school match.  Since we were in person I was hoping for some Spanish sports food to be passed around the stands, like cheese nachos.  Instead I had a conversation with the people around me about how Americans are so fat they're always eating something at sports matches.  I could see their point, one can get distracted from the match when they're trying to not drop ketchup on their pants, the Spanish don't have this problem, smoking cigarettes assures zero percent spillage onto clothing, they're light years ahead of us.  During the game I learned some of the fundamentals of soccer and why it will fall into the category in which I hold most other sports, meh.

Here are some key facts I understand:  You want to put the ball in the goal, if you put the ball in the goal enough you earn millions of dollars and get to date supermodels, and intelligence/speaking skills not required.  I used to enjoy playing rec league soccer, rec meaning recreation, which means everyone wins.  I enjoyed this set up, we could still be competitive if we wanted to, but there was no need to beat the shit out of anyone over a win or a loss.  Unless you were a parent, because your neighbor's bastard kid was ruining your childstar's chances at reaching the Olympics and forever redeeming your wasted life.  With enough reinforcement kids start to believe that they are indeed superior to their peers and then they can scream and curse all by themselves (they grow up so fast).  For example I would not say that a sports match is a reason for killing another human being.  There are some people who would politely disagree with me, right before shanking me in the stomach, putting a Real Madrid Jersey (soccer team) on my corpse, and calling the cops, the police would plant a suicide note on my body and everyone would understand why a person who liked that team would off themselves after Madrid played Barcelona. 

Madrid and Barcelona are the two biggest teams in Spain (also they are cities but no one seems to care about that fact) and this year they have played five times.  Every time they played, for days afterwards, every conversation is dominated by what calls were unfair and who really should have won or why the team that won deserved it.  Every XY chromosome has some sort of input to add just like in the United States.  Something about Spain (or maybe just my region), there seem to be no competetive female sports on any level.  I have no idea why and I'll be honest about something here, I miss strong females.  One favorite past time of the Basque people is screaming at T.V screens and the starting fist fights in real life because of what happened on said screen.  Out of all the problems that affect the game one of the worst is the refusal of referees to use instant replays.  It would be like working on a math problem then not double checking with a calculator, sure the technology is there but where is the excitement of a stranger showing up at your house to break your knees after their building collapses to faulty engineering.  Actually for causing a building to collapse you would probably just get fired, but if you fuck up a Futbol call you better start wearing shin guards and and a cup year round, because the fans are coming for you.  And they're pissed.

All in all I can't wait to get back to the U.S and have a Superbowl party and some March Madness parties.  Who knows, I might even watch some sports.