Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
FIFA FO FUM
Association football, aka soccer, aka football, is said to
be “the sweet sport,” though no one seems to know why. Soccer is nominally a
healthy youth sport in which teams of young men and women kick a round ball and
occasionally each other, but what one observes in the FIFA World Cup is a sour
political mess of grownups acting like children without any positive role
models.
When we drive by a school or a park and see children playing
sports we consider how good it is for them to practice self- and external
discipline in pursuit of a common goal.
When we open the news and read about adults burning down
cities in response to other adults playing those same sports, we wonder at what
point did society fail to heed the lessons of youth.
No sport can be considered sweet when its commercial
sponsors, national sponsors, fans, and players choose to condemn each other in
matters religious, national, racial, and political, with apparently little
regard or respect for a well-played round, inning, or goal. There are lots of
accusations and few congratulations, and fists instead of handshakes.
FIFA footer is not a sport, it is an incubator of hatreds
and ideologies, and for a very few, great wealth.
This nation is hardly innocent in the matter – the behavior of
adults attending youth sports in schools and even in church leagues reminds us
that at one time children were encouraged and guided in sports by the adults in
their lives, not overwhelmed with partisan passion from the stands. As President Theodore Roosevelt said,
"It is not the
critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or
where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the
man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and
blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again,
because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually
strive to do the deeds…”
Sports for young people are important as part of their intellectual,
moral, and physical development. A child participating in a team or even
kicking a ball around the back yard is much further along to adulthood than the
poor schlub vegetating on the couch with the little Orwellian telescreen for
hours at a time.
A parent must determine that elusive dividing line between
encouraging the child in sports as opposed to displacing the child from making
any decisions, and it’s never easy.
But as for FIFA as a role model for anything, that’s easy – no.
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