Gooaalll!

I want to like the World Cup. Really, I do. I loved playing soccer when I was younger, and I even seriously followed the 1994 World Cup back in high school. But, I’m finding it hard to take this sport seriously. I’ve only watched a little of the World Cup this year. But I’ve seen a lot of highlights, and here are a few of the problems I’m seeing:

1) Players flopping. What's up with this? I’ve seen numerous players falling down without getting touched and writhing around in fake pain trying to draw a yellow card on the opponent. Are these guys gunning for a Best Actor Oscar? If I want to see a fake sport I’ll watch professional wrestling. If part of the strategy of the sport is to cheat, I’m going to have a hard time getting into that sport. It's 2010, we have replays, can't we suspend the floppers?

2) Horrible calls by referees. Did you see the U.S. “winning” goal against Slovenia disallowed for some reason? I’m still not sure why. Apparently the refs are not required to provide justification for the calls. Really? No explanation? Shouldn’t fans be able to follow what’s going on? I want the ref to have a microphone like in the NFL and give a detailed explanation to the crowd.

3) Ties. Especially the 1-1 or 0-0 varieties. I mean, can you really get excited over a tie? Especially when it involves no goals? Overtime, penalty kicks, whatever it takes, let's avoid ties. These are professional athletes, shouldn’t they battle it out until there’s a winner, not settle for a tie and go home with their “participant” ribbon?

So on the eve of the U.S. match against Ghana in the knockout round, here’s hoping soccer can remedy some of these problems. I’ll be rooting for an American win tomorrow. I might even watch some of the game . . . if I remember that it's on . . . and we're back from Home Depot in time . . . and it's not on at the same time as the baseball game.