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This Flop Might Be The Reason So Many Americans Just Don’t Like Soccer

Don’t get me wrong: all things being equal, soccer is a great sport. It’s thrilling, emotional, and bicycle kicks alone are reason enough to call it “the beautiful game.” But even soccer’s most ardent supporters will take one look at this flop by Real Madrid’s Pepe and say “Okay, well, I can see why you would hate that.”

Real Madrid and Valencia were battling in the second half of a La Liga match that would eventually end 0-0. (As a side note, nil-nil ties can also been aggravating for Americans who expect touchdowns and grand slams and and-one dunks.) After Real defenders broke up an exciting run, both sides went for the ball. Then, if you’d believe Pepe’s version of this, all kinds of violent hell broke loose.

Even the commentators, who have seen this kind of thing from Pepe before, can’t control themselves. It’s one thing to go down — but to have spastic convulsions and continue to writhe around after the foul has been called, and your teammate is begging you to stand up and keep playing? That just looks, well, wimpy.

Americans are used to showings of strength. We want crushing hits by cornerbacks on unsuspecting wide receivers. We want brutal posterizations at the rim. We want hockey fights, the sooner the better! And we love it when people play hurt — see Willis Reed and Curt Shilling as good examples of this sadistic sports truism. Soccer, as noted above, is called the beautiful game. But sometimes it needs to stop looking so pretty and start getting real. Mad real.

Hey, there have been some gutty performances in soccer, but they are overshadowed by this ridiculousness. Look, Pepe: we’re going to continue laughing at you and not paying attention to your sport if you keep acting like this. We’re not going to tell you again. Now go out there and run non-stop for 90 minutes.

h/t Reddit