How ReAl isn't Real to me!

Tonight the RSL Stadium becomes part of Salt Lake City’s history. I’m not too sure how I feel about that. To be honest, my feelings are about as twisted as a bag of 5 for $5.95 curly fries going this way then that. As a spectator watching from the comfort of my own home with the competition of the Jazz preseason home opener against Shaqdaddy and the NLCS Game 1, I have between a 0%-30% chance of watching the RSL game tonight. TiVo’s busy tonight so I’m going to have to make a decision. The stadium itself is a healthy dose of high-quality studliness. Part of the reason being that it sits in Salt Lake City and has the Wasatch Front rising high into the sky giving the new field a Home-Sweet-Home-Franklin-Covey feel to it, part of it can be that it’s a step in the right direction for Salt Lake to come from a small market to a mid market city. And part of it could be that the stadium is only 2 minutes from my house. Yes, I agree with most people when they say that the new stadium is amazing but it doesn’t overcome my feelings for the sport it was created for. The field is beautiful, no doubt about that, but the activities on the field I haven’t fallen in love with. I know I have every reason to love the world’s sport of soccer. I’m one tenth Argentine, I have a Major League Soccer team 2 min from my house, I was in Argentina during the 2002 World Cup and caught the fire of a frenzied nation, and I have the sport’s greatest and most celebrated player leave his arrogant homeland and join us here in the good ole U.S.of A. to help inspire me to like the game and yet I won’t be able to cause my finger to change the station from a non-HD KJZZ preseason NBA game to watch RSL in HD on ESPN2. What is the problem here? I’m not sure, but I think I need to say that I just don’t like Soccer. I might need to see a shrink but the sport just doesn’t do it for me. I know this might casue some discomfort to hear from some of the CBACSMACK counterparts but I can't blame them for getting sucked into the blindness of a sportless sport. Rather I'd like to explain myself more fully.

Why don't I like soccer? Well, I do understand that the sport requires endurance, balance, coordination, endurance, and endurance. If you can run a marathon you can be decent at soccer. When a sport makes your hands illegal the sport’s threshold for excitement is limited. If you can run fast and kick hard you can make it as a soccer player and many people in this world can run fast and kick hard. Maybe that is why the world loves the sport because the whole world can be good at it. Not everyone can hit a 95 MPH baseball 400 ft or throw a 65yard touchdown. Not everyone can even dribble a basketball much less compete at the level of the NBA. My point is this – MLS players are the best at what they do. However, the space between the best, the mediocre, and the poor is very small and has very grayed lines. And that is the reason for my distaste for the sport. With the empowerment of the average player to be great, comes the inability for greatness. Diego Maradona made some incredible goals in his career and it completely defined him as a person but his talent doesn't extend him to the outer reaches of sporting mythology. He might have been the only one to have completed such a task but there are hundreds if not thousands of players that are at a level not far behind. That is what bothers me about the sport. It's an "everyone's special" sport and when everyone is special, no one is.

I sincerely hope my opinion changes for my sake so that I can enjoy Rio Tinto Stadium down the street. But as for now, anything other than free tickets to RSL is too rich for my blood.