Ten Reasons To Watch The World Cup

...even if you don't care about the World Cup.

By Lindsay Cutler

Few of us have the World Cup marked down on our calendars. It sneaks up on us every four years, interrupting our normal sports coverage, and it is weird. Usually you can ignore the screaming in Spanish as you flip channels, because whatever — fútbol (lolz). But this year World Cup mania came on fast and strong, yelling "ENGLAND!" in our face and blaming it on the goalie, so now we care. In fact, America has never cared more about soccer — about the players, about the teams, about being just as good at it as other countries. So for those of us who aren't soccer fans, here are ten reasons to get on board with the World Cup.

1. Soccer's not as confusing or boring as other sports

Watching American football is like watching someone else play foosball from far away. Tennis looks like two people running back and forth for fun. Basketball is too contact-heavy — plus, the court is too small for its nine-foot giants. And even hockey players only watch hockey for the fights. Also, these sports have strange point rules that are a hassle to figure out. And why should you? Sports should acquiesce to your level of patience or drunkenness. Which is why soccer is such a friendly sport. Not only does it hop over cultural boundaries in a way that few other sports manage, but when you kick the ball between the posts, it's one point and that's that.

2. The sport is full of pretty people

Soccer players just look good. I don't know what it is about soccer, specifically — maybe it's the soccer-specific cardio routine or all that kicking — but soccer players make the best-looking athletes. Or maybe the best-looking athletes happen to be soccer players. It's a chicken-and-egg question, but it's more fun to ponder those kinds of questions when they concern good-looking men from Portugal and Uruguay. Even the Gucci-clad coaches are as tan and sharp-cheeked as Bond villains, making American football coaches look even schlubbier in their windbreakers.

3. Watching the Cup is an excuse for day-drinking

If you could drink all day, you would. We all would. Outside of weddings and bar mitzvahs, when does one have the go-ahead to get shitfaced during the day? Nowhere, unless you're in Spain. And now you, too, can make like a Spanish fan as you nurse a glass of sherry during the Spain v. Switzerland match next week. (Or you can go with Bud. Lots and lots of Bud.)

4. It will make you seem more European

There was a period of time when no one cared about soccer in this country, save for overzealous high-school players who turned into overzealous college players who turned into American expatriates because the wine here is just so bad. Kidding. But you know the type: the urbane American soccer fan who never seemed to care about the sport five years ago but now he's in your bar talking about how fast the African teams are, yet the sport will always belong to Spain. Memorize everything this man has to say, then repeat it shamelessly when he's not around.

5. The wives are hot, too

There's a British term for the wives and girlfriends of soccer players — WAGs. These women wear pink clothes and six-inch Louboutin heels, and can often be found in as many tabloids as their athlete boyfriends. They're also widely considered the scourge of the European games. England banned WAGs from this year's World Cup, citing them as "distractions." And look at them. They do distract. Mrs. Beckham worked hard to rise from trashy trophy status to elegant trophy status, but the other ladies have a way to go. Nonetheless, we still like to look at pictures of them.

6. Clint Dempsey looks like Javier Bardem

I know I brought up the pretty people and their wives, but there's a Clint Dempsey-shaped hole in my coverage of hot men. It might be savvier to bring up Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal's it-boy who allegedly put his face on Paris Hilton's face), Argentina's Lionel Messi, Camaroon's feared striker Samuel Eto'o, or handsome French person Yoann Gourcuff. But Dempsey is our man because USA, USA!

7. We shut England up

Well, we didn't shut England up. We tied England, which America was thrilled about and England absolutely hated (because they invented soccer and then we went and took its name, put it on another sport, tied them at the first sport, and acted super self-satisfied about it). Haters gonna hate, haters gonna call the tying goal "one of the softest goals you'll ever see at this level of football," but if haters want us to stop gloating, haters will just have to WIN THE GAME. OH, BURN!

8. If you've ever played soccer, you will appreciate the level of virtuosity on display

If you've ever played soccer, you know it's a really, really tiring sport. You don't need to be a sub-par intramural soccer player for eight years to figure out that it takes a mix of speed, strength, reflex and drive to become great. Or maybe it does take you eight years to figure this out, and then maybe you try another sport, like tennis, which you think would involve less skill or less coach-yelling, but no, it doesn't. Lesson: soccer is hard, but the men who represent their country are god-like powerhouses on the field — one little man kicking the ball over the span of an entire field. Your middle-school field didn't look like that, and you couldn't even master getting it out of the goal box.  

9. It's full of spectacular violence

No one likes it when an athlete injures himself, but we do love a spectacle. And spectacle — thy name is the 2010 World Cup. Argentina's coach has a public issue or two and will lunge at anything containing warm blood. The American team can get pretty brutal, too. England (I'm looking at you, Steven Gerrard) likes taking big, showy spills on the field. But top points go to France, currently leading the World Cup in fouls.

10. You'll learn about South Africa?

We're all hoping the people of South Africa will benefit from all the World Cup dollars pouring in. Unfortunately, more money is being siphoned from the country to pay for the expenses of hosting the Cup, than the country will actually receive. Most of the returns will go to FIFA, the Cup's sponsors, and its corporate vendors, rather than the country itself. (Meanwhile, Cape Town citizens were displaced from their homes and bussed to the middle of nowhere so tourists wouldn't be reminded of poverty, the AIDS epidemic, and the lingering effects of an apartheid state... South Africa! It's all better now.) So watch and enjoy, but remember the evacuated hovels demolished to make space for hundred-million-dollar stadiums.