I guess I don't get it

Soccer's world cup is happening right now and it's sort of a big deal on American television. It seems like every four years, America tries to care about soccer, but for the most part, nobody does. I can't recall a single time in the past four years where somebody I know was watching a soccer game.

I have to admit that I've seen some good matches, but they are mostly the underdog/miracle type matches. For instance, I enjoyed watching England vs. Trinidad & Tobago, even though England eventually won. I also watched the last 20 minutes of Mexico vs. Angola today. Angola was a man down for the last 10 minutes and was still able to keep a 0-0 tie, which the announcers said was possibly the largest upset of the tournament, except maybe Sweden vs. T&T, which was also a tie. Maybe that's the first thing wrong with soccer, 0-0 ties are exciting.

As far as the American team is concerned, I don't think I know any of the players and I don't mind if they do well or not. If I watch much more of the World Cup on television, I just hope to see more good soccer.

Watching these players play soccer, I've been trying to find similarities to ultimate. Possession is a little different in ultimate and soccer, because in soccer, possession seems to switch a lot. Maybe that isn't too different from ultimate, though. Teams have great offense all the way up the field and then just turn it over close to the goal or to the endzone. I have noticed the way that passing occurs in soccer and the way that good offenses utilize the whole field and keep possession until a good shot can be taken. In ultimate, poorer offenses just jam the disc up the sideline pass after pass after pass. Maybe they score, usually they don't, but when they score, they think that nothing is broke, so why fix it? A crazy ultimate player once said that ultimate closely resembles a good chess match and you want to position your players and the disc well on the field at all times, which means getting the disc in the center of the field at almost any cost. This means looking off the line cuts once in awhile to center the disc. It also means that disc movement against the force is just as good as disc movement up the field with the force. Most of the people who heard this laughed at him and didn't listen. Well, I think we just kept moving the disc up the sideline over and over again and lost a game to a beatable team.

Hmm...not sure what I'm saying. I'd kind of like to go play some soccer, though.