Monday, February 13, 2012

The Ball is Round

I was going to write about racism in soccer. How it’s not the acts that are bad themselves (because, let’s face it, there will always be assholes), but rather, how the inaction, and worst, encouragement of those acts, are what’s truly disgusting. I was going to write about how it doesn’t matter what Suarez/Terry said or did (or didn’t do), what matters is what followed.

Wait, I take it back, they’re both still jerks.

I was going to write about how it disgusts me to read what I have been seeing in my Twitter feed and in online comments sections. I was going to write about how Liverpool fans should stand up for their Club, not by defending racism, but by saying, “I support Liverpool, but I do not support how this situation is being handled.” I was going to write how angry this all makes me, how it makes me lose respect for a lot of people involved. 

I was going to write about all that, but then, three things happened.

The first was I came across the “Congratulations, you’ve achieved your fundraising goal!” email from Jumpstart. Which reminded me that soccer (and sport) can still make people come together for good.

The second was the Cup of Nations final. Which immediately made me fall back in love with The Beautiful Game.

And the third was an email sent to me by my brother. Which reaffirmed to me that soccer news can still be important without being tabloid material. (The email he sent was just one line, this url: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2028948731/the-soccermen)

Yes, there’s a lot of deplorable crap out there, but don’t forget, there’s a lot of inspiring good too.

Hopp,
scm. 


UPDATE Post script: After I posted this, I started to read Gay4Soccer's Allies list, which is all sorts of wicked awesome. Let's keep the positivity rolling here, check out the Allies (and the whole website) at http://gay4soccer.com/allies/ Super awesome. 

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