Put soccer on steroids

THEY TELL ME one of every five human beings will watch the final World Cup soccer match next month, which means four of five don’t care to waste their time.

It makes you wonder why they’d even go ahead and stage the event.

Think about it. If they put on a TV show and only one member of a family of five took an interest, the other four would vote to watch something else, and the show would be canceled.

I suppose soccer is doing what it can to attract more viewers -- making it known, for example, that anyone who scores a goal for Angola will receive $5,000.

That might keep the folks in Angola parked in front of their TVs, but knowing how often goals are scored in a soccer game, and how close I came to winning $10,000 the other night going online to pick suitcase No. 5 on “Deal or No Deal,” who scores for Angola probably isn’t going to keep the attention of anyone with a computer and within earshot of Howie Mandel.

If four of every five people in the world don’t care about the July 9 soccer match of all soccer matches, who is going to be watching Tunisia’s tilt with Serbia and Montenegro a few days earlier?

I’ll admit, I’m a little curious why two countries will be allowed to gang up on one, but beyond that, I’ve got a feeling Tunisia versus Serbia and Montenegro isn’t much different from a late June baseball game between Minnesota and Kansas City.

Can you name the starting infield for the Royals? How about the starting midfielders for Serbia and Montenegro? You see what I mean.

Unless it’s the Yankees against Boston in June, there’s not much to get excited about. And as I understand it, only seven countries have won the World Cup Championship since 1930, so unless it’s Brazil versus Germany, what’s the point?

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Now I applaud all these people for trying to make the World Cup sound like it’s a big deal, but according to the “Essential History of Soccer” by Bill Hutchison, soccer got its start with the “Chinese military during the Han Dynasty around the second and third centuries BC.”

If that’s true, and soccer was such a big deal everywhere around the world, don’t you think the Chinese would take particular pride in coming up with the sport and be a bit better at it than anyone else? It’s like Tom Lasorda told the kids who went to the Olympics and won the baseball gold medal for the USA: “This is our game.”

In fact, you would think if even one out of every five people in China took an interest in soccer, that would be some big pool of talent to draw from when picking a squad. But four years ago, after advancing to the World Cup for the first time in 40 years, the Chinese squad lost three straight matches while failing to score a goal. Maybe they don’t have a Chinese version of Lasorda.

Hutchison, though, goes on to write that Britain is really “the undisputed birthplace of modern soccer/association football,” and he tells a story about the first game, in which the “locals played ‘football’ with the severed head of a Danish prince they had defeated in battle.”

That might draw more viewers, especially in this country if certain politicians were required to participate in a similar manner, but modernized as the game is played, I’m not sure it would pack the same punch watching a keeper catch a long shot.

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The sport of soccer obviously has a problem if it can’t reach four of every five people. It’s helpful, of course, that a lot of soccer players have just one name, such as Ronaldo, Pauleta and Nesta. And if someone could tell me what country they play for, it would probably make an even bigger difference.

And there’s no question if you have to go to the bathroom or want to get something to eat, maybe cut the grass or take an hour nap, soccer is the ideal sport to follow, because there’s a real good chance you won’t miss anyone scoring.

That’s why the announcers scream “Gooooaaal,” knowing how loud one must be to be heard over the sound of a lawnmower.

I just wonder, though, if there’s something that could be done to boost soccer’s popularity. I wanted to save hockey too, but obviously I was too late.

I know when baseball took a dive in this country -- and you can look it up -- steroids brought the fans back in droves as they watched big player after big player power the ball out of the park. You could even argue that steroids put the NFL on the map years ago, the huge hits making it the must-see TV that it is every Sunday.

Now I certainly wouldn’t advocate anyone taking steroids, but how much more excitement would the sport of soccer generate if the players were scoring more, maybe giving every one a banana kick or bicycle kick that goes the length of the field and into the net?

They probably wouldn’t have to put up those fences surrounding the field anymore, which have been necessary to keep fans frustrated by the lack of scoring from storming the field.

More than that, just think of the attention it would bring to the sport, the next three years filled with talk and suspicion about steroids in soccer, soccer remaining big in the news -- and when’s the last time that happened? -- all the way leading up to the 2010 World Cup.

I just think if people are going to put so much time and energy into something like the World Cup, it ought to get more than one of every five people taking notice. Otherwise, some folks might think all this World Cup Germany 2006 hoopla is much ado about nothing.