The “guardian”
“This isn’t the most reliable news source, but neither is it the least reliable, and this rings true.”

The “guardian”is a pile of crap, a wipe ass paper controlled by Mi5 and doing the biding of its puppet masters.

Seriously if any jew thinks that protesting against the genocide in Gaza is an attack against them, it means they are all lying scumbags and deserve what will happen to them and has happened to their evil race since the beginning of times because of their evil deeds.

He failed to use SPF 50 this Summer.

adsfasdfa…

Your ridiculously extreme homerism regarding W.African/AfAm athleticism suggests that you're more of the jock sniffing type than anyone whose actually competed in many sports.

Most people, including myself, generally have a more balanced and respectful view of good athletes, regardless of color, if have fought against them.

To your point about the fear of AfAm criminals, the reasons are both rational and irrational. The rational:

* much higher criminality rates in virtually every place and time in history

* intensive cradle-to-grave brainwashed victim mentality promotes aggressive antisocial behavior and irrational racists hatred of non-blacks

* inflated and fragile ego easily offended even if imagined due in part to a self-destructive under culture and pop media that demands blacks (esp testostone filled young males) to always dominate, never back down and seek out racism in everything even when it usually doesn't exists

* poor impulse control often resulting irrational and unpredictable violence whether due to SES, culture or other (eg rap music, bling culture, B/W savings rates with equal income)

* less to lose materially and less fear of consequence due to much greater familarity violating social taboos like having a rap sheet or spending time in the joint (32% of black males born in 2001 can expect to spend sometime in prison)

* social indulgences that promote dysfunctional behavior such as gaining social status by being a thug or having served time

* legal and media systems that hunts down whites for any real or perceived racism while promoting black racism (e.g. only white men cannot be victims of hate crime according to DOJ, media treatment of crime).

* Blacks can be explosively fast and many have a seething anger (rational and irrational) that gives a strong will and edge in attacking and fighting non-whites

* most non-whites, esp middle class and above, have been conditioned to be non-violent whimps who have entirely lost touch with their animalistic nature

The irrational fear of blacks are:

* Human inability to distinguish between individual and group character, intent, behavior in all situations (overgeneralization -> racism which will always exists, more often in the less intelligent and aware)

* The myth that blacks are stronger. US sports have become tailored to the explosive sprinting abilities of W.Africans/AfAm because it makes good highlight reels and entertainment. US sports media is 110% PC and propagates this. W.African much lower body fat exaggerates relative musculature that misleads anyone who hasn't visited a lot of weight rooms into believing this. The facts show this is the opposite of the reality.

* The myth that blacks are better fighters. Again, look at who dominates the strength and fighting sports and who are the bravest, most disciplined and even craziest in elite military units. Most fights

There are a number of factors that limit the individual and especially group fighting abilities of W.African blacks despite their amazing explosiveness and decent strength and size advantages. Your problem is that you're always exaggerating the case for W.African atheletic supremicism.

adsfasdfa…

Btw, how is it 'bigoted' if it's based on TRUTH and FACTS? If whites fear black criminals more than they fear criminals of other races on the FACTUAL KNOWLEDGE that blacks are stronger, how is that bigoted? It sounds rational and enlightend to me. And how many white liberals dare live in neighborhoods with lots of dangerous blacks?

It's bigoted because you well know the FACTUAL KNOWLEDGE is that the W.African/AfAm blacks you boast about are demonstrably WEAKER than Europeans and even Asians (see bottom of this thread).

White's dominate ALL STRENGTH competitions nearly as completely as W.Africans dominate ALL SHORT SPRINT RUNNING events. Euros also outperform Africans in all major fighting sports likes wrestling, boxing and such. Euros also do better in comprehensive and more balanced multiskilled sports like soccer, decathalon, iron man, etc.

I suspect that W.African/Euro hybrids (not pure W.African) could do better in the fighting sports with more training and access. Their good access to high level track feeder events however, shows that they are probably inherently limited by their relative lack of endurance.

American sports have become tailored for the W.African/AfAm phenotype. The best sport to judge atheleticism based upon widest accessibility, interest and most participation is unquestionably soccer. The whitest team in the world won the first World Cup held in Africa and the semi-qualifiers were among the whitests. This may be an exception in how extreme the results were, but it shows W.African explosive sprinting ability in no way makes for a complete athlete or team.

adsadsadsad….

the thing that really matters: blacks have more dense muscles and are stronger

Why to you keep repeating the same false popularisms here about W.African supremacy that have already been debunked? See the last few posts in this thread by Steve.

To specifically address your repeated false claim that W.Africans are the strongest:

* Euros dominate all strength sports like powerlifting, strongman, shotput, hammer, discus, etc. Since you particularly like to disparage "geeky" Japanese, note that there have been 10 Japanese and Chinese world champions powerlifters in the past 20yrs but not a single African or Carribean (perhaps the highest W.African genetic concentration outside Africa).

* Euros dominate nearly all fighting sports like boxing, wrestling, and UFC (less). Your lame excuse that imaginary great black boxers with no major crossover sport opportunity would rather drive taxis or collect unemployment than deign to whip Euros is a joke.

Again, since you hold Asians up as the lamest of athletes, note that there are 4 current Japanese world boxing champions and 0 from the entire continent of Africa and 0 from high W.African genetic Carribean nations. Although again, a W.African/Euro (esp Hispanic) mix seems to be a good mix in the lighter divisions.

The World Cup is… tedious to actually watch

Why does Steve hate soccer like so many other traditional American sports fans?

I can understand. I grew up obsessed about American football. When I was first exposed to soccer abroad 20yrs ago, my sensibilities were offended by the fact that there was so little scoring, the players weren't freakishly monsturous and I initially sucked at it despite being athletic in the states.

Unlike Classical or Jazz music which I knew I was suppose to enjoy before I could, I started out hating soccer like Steve. It was instinctual based upon my cultural conditioning, and it took me a much longer time to come to soccer than more mature forms of music.

It's taken over two decades in part because soccer exposes the extremely narrow assumptions American mega-sports make about athleticism: meticulously choreographed short bursts of high energy (NFL) and genetic freaks on display (NBA-showcase the least awkward and lumbering of human giants).

One cannot come to truly appreciate soccer without understanding the athleticism and skills involved. This understanding in turn exposes American mega-sports for the highly artificial bang-bang construct they have evolved to become (esp NFL).

It also raises the question of what is athleticism. Logically, it seems this should be sports that are most tied to skills for basic fighting and survival. Who would you rather have in your tribe 2,000 years ago or besides you in a Vietnamese jungle or Afganistan mountain – a top NFL linebacker/NBA center or a champion boxer/world class decathalon athlete?

However, fundamental human athleticism tied to fighting and survival are uncomprehensible to the masses of veal our modern world has made of men (esp Western and white). Such sports are also insufficiently visually stimulating for spectators accustomed to fantasy FX Hollywood movies or video games.

Thus, the American genius for turning a buck turned sports into entertainment and redefined athleticism from primarily survival/fighting skills to highlight clips of short busts of activities like jumping or sprinting by staging them in totally artificial settings.

The UFC is undergoing this transformation now. It was more realistic 10yrs ago, but considered boring and too violent. The rules have been changing to make it more visually appealing to the masses who cannot understand the fundamental skills involved.

Although I have no interest in the NBA I still enjoy the NFL for the elaborate show they put on and the particular talents players have. In that sense, soccer is a threat to mega-American sports and their fans (in addition to being tarred as the sport of liberals, SWPLs and globalist).

adsadsasdmbas

No, fool. It's widely understood that blacks are stronger, faster, and more athletic. So, if a mixed-race person does well in sports, it prolly owes more to the genes of the athletically gifted race.

Maybe this "fact" is widely misunderstood among insecure, ill-informed and desperately-need-to-believe in myths of racial supremacy fanatics like yourself. Again, just a few facts for you:

* No African or even typical 80% African-American has won the "world's greatest athlete" in living memory if ever despite the vast over representation of blacks in track and field feeder events and their clear advantage in 40% of the events.

Euro do the best with several exceptional performances by Euros or NE Asians with a small W.African admixture. Other comprehensive athletic events like Triathelons or Ironman competitions also strongly favor the more generalized Euro phenotype (swimming, cycling and running).

* Several of the most European 4 soccer teams are contending to be the World Cup champion. A game which anyone can play with just a ball and is the most popular game for over a billion blacks in Africa and the many more millions outside Africa. All but one African team eliminated in the first round and most probably wouldn't have even been in the tournament if not for slots reserved by region.

* Euros dominate all strength sports like powerlifting, strongman, shotput, hammer, discus, etc. Since you particularly like to disparage "geeky" Japanese, note that there have been 10 Japanese and Chinese world champions powerlifters in the past 20yrs but not a single African or Carribean (perhaps the highest W.African genetic concentration outside Africa).

* Euros dominate nearly all fighting sports like boxing, wrestling, and UFC (less). Your lame excuse that imaginary great black boxers with no major crossover sport opportunity would rather drive taxis or sling hash than deign to whip Euros is a joke. Again, since you hold Asians up as the lamest of athletes, note that there are 4 current Japanese world boxing champions and 0 from the entire continent of Africa and 0 from high W.African genetic Carribean nations. Although again, a W.African/Euro (esp Hispanic) mix seems to be a good mix in the lighter divisions.

* Euro/N.African whites and E.African blacks dominate all endurance sports. Your superman W.African athletes are invisible in these types of long distance events.

W.Africans are unparalleled athletes when it comes to their niche in sprinting, jumping and short burst activities. To say, as you do, this means they also have the best endurance, are the strongest, best all around, etc when they demonstratively are not is willful ignorance.

American mega-sports, their rules and their selective enforcement of them have evolved to favor W.African phenotypes over all others.

For example, your beloved NFL has very short burst of activity between many long rests micromanaged by an army of smart guys controlling every aspect of the players. There are unlimited subsitutions, long commercial breaks, extremely granular roles and even then players rest on the sidelines half of the actual clock time.

These elaborate well-staged plays with so many specialized roles result in very marketable highlight reels for the culturally initiated. However, this extreme complexity is a measure of its artificiality and limits it's innate appeal for non-Americans.

hardly the measure of true overall athleticism.

Some lucky combination of W.African and Euro genes results in some supreme athletes in sports that are not like Ali and Jordan (who looks like your average AfAm carrying 14-20% Euro genes).

asdfasfasdf said…

It doesn't matter if Dan O'Brien is 80% white. His EDGE came from blackness.

By your logic, it doesn't matter if AfAm athletes who average about 14-20% Euro genes are black. They all get their EDGE from whiteness.

You are such a self-delusional race supremists.

adsadsadsdsa….

For one thing, most blacks don't enter into decathalon. They aint into javelin, hammer throw, and that stuff. So, BEST black talent stay away from decathalon.

Nobody grows up being "into" things like the javelin, hammer throw or discus, black or white. They wind up in those events because they are just not good enough at the main track events everyone starts out on, the running events.

Where do the huge numbers of blacks that don't make the cut at all the various distances running events go? They generally don't have the skills and phenotypes for big money sports (don't confuse wide receivers who dabble in track with true track stars). For these guys, it's either track or anonymously scratching out an existence somewhere.

Club and national teams sift through these all these failed black speedsters looking for anyone with more generalized talents since the specialized W.African phenotypes gives them an an unparalleled advantage in 40% of the decathalon events:

Day 1
* 100 meters (W.African)
* Long Jump (W.African)
* Shot Put (Euro)
* High Jump (Euro)
* 400 meters (W.African)

Day 2

* 110 meter hurdles (W.African)
* Discus (Euro)
* Pole Vault (Euro)
* Javelin (Euro)
* 1500 meters (E&N.African/White and Black)

What is surprising is how Euro the decathlon is given how clearly disadvantaged they are in 40% of the events vis-a-vis W.Africans. In otherwords, the highly specialized pure W.African phenotype must be absolutely terrible at the other strength and highly technical events to never win the "the world's greatest athlete" competition (I don't understand the high jump enough to understand why Euros dominate it).

I'm sure that phrase sticks in your craw and you'll just fall back on that old chestnut that anything your master race isn't the best at is because they are not interested or that the potential best black athletes decided to become theoretical physicists or brain surgeons.

What a frail, frail ego you must have to insist against all the evidence presented that the W.African phenotype is the best one over all others in every category and every sport.

You've been fooled by American big-money sports which hugely favors specialized W.African advantages in sprinting and jumping into making unwarranted generalizations.

And decathalon winners have been blacks or black-gened folks. The British guy in the 1980s was half-African. The American winner in the 90s had some black genes. And the recent winner was something like half-Japanese, half black, and half something else.

This is as bad as your black actors playing boxers would beat a white actor playing a boxer claim to racial superiority.

Via Wikipedia on best scores by year for the last two decades (1990-2009):

11 titles won by Euros

6 titles won by Dan O'Brian who is primarily white. He is described as half-AfAm but his picture shows he is about 80% white with thin straight brown hair, pencil thin lips, prominent nose and yellowish skin standing next to Jessie Tompkins, a typical AfAm (80%Af/20%Euro).

3 titles won by Bryan Clay who is 50% Japanese and possibly 40% 10% Euro going by US averages of white ad-mixture in AfAms. His kids by his white wife look 100% non-Mediterrian European so he likely has more Euro and less Afro genes than the averages would predict.

0 titles won by pure Africans or even typical African Americans (80%Af/20%Euro genes).

Keep in mind that American blacks might have a proportionally higher exposure to high-level track and field training than whites these days so the talent pool the decathalon draws from is very much non-white.

Maybe the optimal athlete for this sport is a a lucky hybrid between largely Euro and some W.African genes. Still, the evidence shows that the composite nature of all 10 events strongly favors Euro phenotypes in stark contrast to straight sprinting (W.Africans) or long distance running (E.Africans).

asdfasdfasdfad said…

Gay or not, Asians are better at table tennis and badmitten because they reportedly have faster reaction times than your "proud Negro". There is a physiological basis and blacks wouldn't dominate if they tried.

Just as many boxers of yore were black, many of the great basketball players were Jewish and the top sprinters were ye olde British. Today is a very different world that is far more competitive in finding, developing and promoting global talent – much of it based on genetics.

These days Hispanics dominate the lightweights just as Caucasians dominate the heavier weights. Like white sprinters and Jewish basketball players, black boxers of yore have been displaced by better talent. After all, boxing doesn't have overlap with any more lucrative sports that are siphoning off any of the present black boxing talent you wish existed.

Strongman, powerlifting, hammer throw, shotput, etc are all dominated by Euros. Even the position for the strongest guys in the very black NFL tends to an island of whiteness (O-line). You have no argument here with your mythical Nigerians.

The word "sprint" in an athletic competition doesn't necessarily mean that blacks will dominate. Swimming favors Euros from a wide variety of perspectives: boyancy, bone density, limb/torso ratios, etc. Vertical land sprints that favor W.African longer legs/shorter torsos, bigger thighs/butts, fast twich muscles may generalize to short track speed skating but much less so for swimming sprints.

Cycling, like swimming, is a highly technical sport that requires a obsessive internal loner mental state in the longer distances. It doesn't seem to appeal to blacks in enough numbers for any meaningful sample. All things being equal, physics and physiology favor the shorter legs and longer torsos (lung capacities) of Euros.

Wrestling has nothing to do with football – there is no ball and no running, jumping, throwing, catching. The closest it comes is the O-line which again is an island of whiteness in the largely black NFL. Although black participation is low, there is no reason to believe blacks would dominate wrestling anymore than a mean of powerlifting and UFC results today.

UFC is what it is today despite your what-if scenarios, exceptions to the rule. Tyson and esp. Foreman are old men and it would be elder abuse to pit them against Brock. You meant to say that the top heavyweight boxer in the world today (Vitali Klitschko) would prolly beat the top UFC fighter today (Brock Lesnar). But only if Vitali landed a solid/lucky punch as Brock was passing inside the power zone of Vitali's striking range.

asdfasdfasdfad said…

You appear to neither know about soccer nor have watched any of these games. Again, which game did you see where the clearly more athletic and better performing team lost?

The talent of a team is measured by their performance on the pitch and the score, not by reputation, height or your perceptive concept of geekiness.

RE: Japan vs Denmark

Height in and of itself has little to do with soccer skills except for goalies. Your comment that the Japanese players are small and "geeky" is too ignorant to even address.

Japan fielded a decent team this year. They defeated Cameroon 1-0 (#19 world) and held the Dutch (#4) to 0-1 so it wasn't surprising they beat the Danish (#36) 3-1 who had a slightly worse record.

RE: Italy, France and England

They all put in terrible performances compared to their reputations and potential. All deserved to tie or lose the games they did if you watched them.

The wealthy, spoiled and ever distracted Brits called in their performace per usual, didn't win a match and were crushed by Germany 4-1. The French publically self-destructed. The Italians showed nothing special that warranted anything other than the early exit they got.

RE: Brasil vs NED

Again, if you watched the game, Brasil(#1 world) in no way played a considerably better game than NED (#4 world). The 2-1 result was reflective of the talent each team put on display.

RE: Portugal vs Ivory Coast

Outside their drubbing of N.Korea, Portugal didn't score a single goal against their other 3 opponents during this WC (BRA, Spain, Ivory Coast). They pretty much sucked – just not nearly as much as N.Korea in their own epic failure against Portugal.

You are a moron for suggesting that no country can be that good at soccer unless they are also good at American football or basketball. They are entirely different sports that demand different skills and phenotypes. It's as stupid as claiming Americans could never create good films or music because they don't do good Kubuki theater.

Typo: Jumping: W.African

Everyone has their own subjective hierarchy for which sports should be considered the most athletic or most interesting to watch.
A lot of this has to due with cultural conditioning and personal experience. Sports that I aggressively played still give an adrenaline rush when I watch a good match years later.

If there is an objective standard, it should be those sports that emphasize our most primitive survival instincts: fighting. By this standard, UFC, wrestling and even the pretty artificial sport of boxing represent the peak of athleticism. All other sports consist of varying degrees of artifice and special effects entertainment.

Next on the objective hierarchy would be sports that demand a wide range of generalized skills like the soccer, triathelons and the decathalon that enhance human fitness for survival.

Next would be narrow athletic skills like running (long and short distances), throwing and swimming which could help in certain survival situations.

Next would be specific advanced skill that could be generalized into valuable survival skills like rugby union, O/D-line NFL, racquet/sword, and rollerball.

Last on the hierarchy would be freakish hyper-specialized sports with complex rules/equipment as well as entirely artificial playing field requirements such as our modern megasports in America. Basketball players, baseball players and wide receivers would be especially useless in a primative society unless they were good at some of the other sports mentioned.

In other words sprinting, jumping and catching (the domain of W.African athletic dominance) would be pretty useless in and of them selves in a outside our modern world that isolates us from demands of nature and competition from our fellow man. This is probably just one of the reasons soldiers from W.Africa, Indonesia and India didn't conquer and colonize as much as European, Middle Eastern and NE Asian societies did.

As a disclaimer, the media folks for American major sports do a great job within the US of packaging and marketing their product. The NFL has fallen flat abroad but basketball has had success abroad. Of the two, I don't really get the excitement of largely meaningless high-scoring ball in hoop games so much as the war analogy of the NFL (or it's forebearer Rugby).

As an increasing number of modern American men are jock-sniffing coddled wussies who never experienced a real fight or know the salty taste of blood, perhaps it's easier to sell these mega-sports that are so far removed from our base sense of reality, survival and true athleticism.

asdfasdfasdfad said…

Which suckey WC team beat which great soccer team this year? Can you point to even a single match where an obviously superior team playing better soccer was defeated by a crappy team. I can't even with all the bad officiating that risks affecting soccer's lower scoring matches. Most likely, traditional powerhouses will again arise from the initial brackets of to the #1 and #2 position.

South Korea defeated Greece 2-0, tied Nigeria 2-2 and lost to Argentina 4-1 to make the next round. They lost to Uraguay 2-1 on a late score this year and were #4 in the 2002 WC. As your example of a crappy team, which superior team did S.Korea defeat? Are 3 of 4 consistently played games a fluke?

None of these scores are that surprising if you saw any of the matches, saw how the teams played and realize that highly cohesive teams like S.Korea often outperform fluid world rankings in venues like the WC.

Yes, I suppose a WC of American football would be won by Americans since it's been optimized with specialized roles for America's W.African/Euro phenotype mix. Similarly, a WCs of the following would probably be won:

sprinting: W.African
distance: E.African
jumping: E.African

boxing light: Latin

boxing heavy: Euro
wresting: Euro
strong man: Euro
UFC: Euro
swimming: Euro
cycling: Euro
decathalon: Euro

wintersports: Euro/NE Asian
(perhaps short track speed skating for African)
gymnastics: Euro/NE Asian
ttennis/badmit: Asian
etc.

Someone did a good post on how different phenotypes are better suited for different events. Although SE Asian Indians are caucasoid, they seem to be smaller and thinner boned with significantly less muscle mass, strength and endurance. In what sports do you think a well-financed sports combine in India would produce world-class athletes? What sports are wealthly, well-nurished Western-born SE Asian Indian interested in and do well in (I really don't know)?

What seems unique about soccer is that it is the only popular athletic team sport that can be played competitively by so many different ethnic phenotypes because the rules don't favor just one aspect like sprinting, endurance, physicality or skilled ball control. Even on the individual level, it even selects against extreme genetic freaks favored by other sports like American football or basketball becoming more than just a spectator sport.

Is there any other sport that comes close to being so ethnically and individually pheotype-neutral? As the globalized sport for our new world order, it's hard to imagine it not gaining ground in the US. That's one good reason for many here to hate soccer.

The World Cup is a paradox: it's pretty random but the results always come out about the same: traditional soccer powers get to the finals.

Besides this statement being self-contradicting, how "random" is the World Cup compared to America's most popular sport, the NFL, as has been claimed on this blog before?

Last 10 WC and NFL champions and runner-ups:

WC#1 WC#2 SB#1 SB#2

ITA, FRA Ravens/Giants
BRA, GER Pats/Rams
FRA, BRA Bucs/Raiders
BRA, ITL Pats/Panthers
GER, ARG Pats/Eagles
ARG, GER Steelers/Seahawks
ITL, GER Colts/Bears
ARG, NED Giants/Pats
GER, NED Steelers/Cards
BRA, ITL Saints/Colts

Randomness Metrics:

#unique #1: 5/WC vs 7/NFL
#unique #1&#2: 6/WC vs 14/NFL

As of 2010, there are only 32 NFL clubs but about 200 soccer teams that compete which are narrowed down to 32 WC qualifiers.

Given the much larger field of competition and smaller randomness metrics above, the WC is far less random than the NFL.

By Steve's own HBD statements, this is expected because WC teams are largely composed of specific national ethnic groups compared to the enforced equality/player randomness of NFL team compositions.

The appeal of WC Soccer is not so much that it is "white", but because it is one of the only fields where instinctual human nationalism/ethnic tribalism is tangible, permitted and even celebrated in modern (esp Western) society. Similarly, quickly forgotten uni-dimensional track races were once more interesting every 4 years when they embodied a nationalistic Cold War faceoff with the Soviets and E. Germans.

The only way to interpret these continued claim that soccer is "random" in light of a HBD blog that previously claimed soccer is clumsey and awkward, is that the author believes soccer is not so much a sport of skilled athletes as a random game of chance. Better just say you dislike soccer than try to pass off negative analysis that starts with patently false and absurd assertions.

First, like many, I criticize Steve's soccer posts because they are so poor in comparison to his usually well researched, reasoned and executed ones. I can understand his perspectives when sound even when I disagree with him, but these soccer posts have come across as half-baked anti-soccer/pro-NFL homerism. To wit:

Soccer is inherently pretty clumsy and random. It would be hard to think up a game worse for displaying skill and technique

Which, along with subsequent posts criticizing the low scores in soccer, is where I came up with my statement that:

"Steve seems to imply that soccer scoring is so low that it "frequently" falls below noise level resulting in "many" random and meaningless outcomes that can be interpreted however one wants."

Admittedly, these soccer posts have evolved and improved slightly. The last several posts have zeroed in on a more insightful hypothesis although it's still pretty untestable: soccer's low scores more easily allow individuals to impose their own narratives on the outcome.

Even this observation is suspect as the scale of scores don't change human nature. My experience is that there is just as much "narrative" imposed on American sports as soccer:

* if Payton didn't choke in the big games
* if their secondary wasn't so porus
* if the Oline could give the QB enough time
* dropped passes or RB fumbles at critical times/positions
* yada, yada

For a stat guy, this is a very innumerate argument. Steve seems to imply that soccer scoring is so low that it "frequently" falls below noise level resulting in "many" random and meaningless outcomes that can be interpreted however one wants.

Steve comes to this idea because he admittedly doesn't really get soccer. Also, he does not realize that the World Cup is a once every 4yr exception to the rules of how the game is played.

One suggestion would be for Steve to use stats to demonstrate such randomness by how often clear "upsets" occur using historical data. Crack a book (or browser) open and do at least minimal legwork to attempt to support your claim. Then compare this with his favorite sport which seems to be the NFL. I think any data driven results would be a wash at best.

For example, Manchester United won 11 of the last 18 premier league championships while Arsenal and Chelsea won 6 of the remaining 7 titles. Although there is more concentration of talent in these clubs than for NFL teams, all those "low-scoring" matches don't seem to create the randomness Steve thinks should come from the most clumsey and awkward sport he could imagine.

It is sadly atypical for Steve to make sweeping generalizations without any supporting quantitative data on a subject he clearly does not understand.

One thing that could help Americans understand the skill and athleticism of soccer would be more close up camera work on the players with/near the ball.

Without playing the game beyond kiddy levels it's hard to appreciate the skill, physicality, speed and endurance the sport requires. Perhaps a split screen with both a wide angle field view and a closeup of the players near the ball would inform Americans like Steve how demanding the game is.

Something exceptional about soccer is how it appears to be the most HBD-inclusive physically demanding team sport in the world. Where else could Latin America and Asia outperform Europe and Africa in the qualifying rounds? Where wealthy and advanced Germany, Japan and S. Korea be as obsessed as sub-Saraha Africa about the same game?

asdfasdf… has the most informative comments on the issue. As implied, "scores" are simply arbitrary quantized abstractions of to differentiate between team/individual play.

I doubt any neutral observer would find 6 day test cricket matches the most exciting sport due to their extremely high scores. Similarly, basketball is often more boring than American football due to it's quick and high scoring nature (the first 7/8th of the game is usually meaningless to the outcome).

Even with the many bad goal calls in this World Cup's low scoring matches, I can think of no example where the better team did not prevail or pass through to the qualifying round. Soccer results are far from random and good defense at the expense of offense is indeed a feature in this WC (even for the Brazilians).

Although no expert on soccer, I've lived abroad enough to pick up the game and understand the skill and appeal. Now as a parent, it appeals to me as a uniquely athletic skill sport where the entire spectrum of humanity can field competitive teams.