Soccer

I don't dislike soccer as much as Simon Heffer who "loathes" it. I have the feeling that what he means is that he loathes everything around soccer: the wags, the lifestyles of footballers, the maniacal followers who brawl as much as support teams etc. I loathe all that too. But I can't say I dislike the game itself though I have not watched much of the World Cup (and glad it's coming to an end not least because of the noise of those dreadful, unmusical horns). What I have watched, however, I've found pretty tedious stuff. One of the football journalists, Matthew Norman, wrote that it was the worst world cup tournament he had ever experienced - and he'd seen quite a few.
Sports have been invented to play and watching other people play them can be entertaining but usually only if they have reached a certain high standard; the odd thing about this world cup is that the players are at the height of their playing careers but do not entertain very much. Maybe one of the problems is that they are all so good they cancel each other out: they depend more on defence than attack.
I was surprised to discover how much soccer is played in America and how much it was watched there on TV. Probably because their team did so well was the reason that 20 million people watched the last game their team played; yet it's a popular game there especially with youngsters.
I played it as a pupil at a grammer school many moons ago. We were not allowed to play rugby until the age of about fourteen; before that we played soccer. In most private schools rugby was the game played, never soccer. A.J.Ayer, the philosopher and soccer fan, reasoned that this was because they could get thirty boys on the field instead of twenty two.
Good reasoning Prof!