Football versus "futbol"

With World Cup madness firmly gripping the rest of the world and a minority of the US, it's hard to find a decent sports bar in America not playing a soccer game. You can usually even determine prior to even entering whether or not the establishment has a World Cup game on. Place your hand against your ear and face the doorway of the establishment. Do you hear anything resembling an angry hive of stinging insects? Congratulations! You have found a World Cup game!

I spent some time in a local pub this evening and watched perhaps the most soccer I ever have.  It was everything I expected it to be:  men running back and forth, trying in vain to kick a ball into a net in order to get even a single goal, allowing the game to end with at least one winner and one loser.

I reflected on the metaphors both American football and European "futbol" or soccer represent for each of our respective continents, and even abroad.

For example, American football pretty much symbolizes America's past and present.  It is a microcosm of our culture, both internally and how we deal with other countries.  We have two (usually) white general squaring off across a field both of them seek to dominate.  Their armies consist of (usually) minorities.  They are cheered on by a squad of artificial women, idealized Barbie dolls brought to life as encouragement for the troops and a distraction to the watching crowd.  That crowd is made up of the world, cheering or jeering every move, every injury, and anything resembling conquest.  The entire point of American football is land acquisition, taken by force from the opposing team only to penetrate their end zone and deposit their football-shaped sperm there.  The process repeats until one team emerges with more "penetrations" than the other.

Soccer, on the other hand, seems to epitomize European and third world dealings around the globe.  The entire field is a maelstrom of people moving in little eddies and swirls, following the golden snitch or soccer ball.  They move it back and forth, across, up, and down.  Occasionally, one team will maneuver the ball close to the other team's absurdly large goal net.  A few aborted attempts at a goal and it's back to the moving the ball around, even as the crowd continues to go crazy as if something actually happened.

This is the history of European and third world politics.  Eddies of power swirl around the "ball", which gets passed all over the place, depending on who is in a good place to kick at that time.  Conflicts arise in which two players lightly tap each other and each falls backward, as if shot by a cannon, begging the world and the rest of the field for attention to the serious wounds they must have sustained from the light contact with the other person.

The tension builds as they move the ball toward a goal, perhaps some kind of UN resolution which might or might not have teeth, if only they can sink it and convince the world of their determination, their drive.  Only to have it deflected by someone who, by all appearances, was rather surprised to have even managed to block the shot.  Out of perhaps 20 different attempts or drives for each side, 1 goal is made in the entire game.  Sometimes, none are scored and the players are content to walk off the field with such a result.  Meanwhile, their fans overturn cars as the cacophony of buzzing moves to the streets.