You Make Americans Hate Soccer

On Wednesday I went to the Sounders vs DC United match at Century Link Field. The match in general was fun because the Sounders won 2-0, but very frustrating as they looked bad in their victory. However, I am not enough of a soccer expert to write about the failing of the Sounders offense during this game. Instead I want to concentrate on something else, or more specifically someone else, that caught my eye during the game, DC United Midfielder Sainey Nyassi.

This Guy...This Freaking Guy

To my untrained eye Nyassi embodies every reason why many American fans struggle to get into soccer. During the first half of the game he split his time evenly between playing soccer, rolling around on the ground and complaining to the referee. Of all those times he hit the turf, maybe one was a legitimate foul. At least once he fell completely on his own according with no Sounder player anywhere near him. His response to this embarrassment was to roll around on the ground, pop up and sprint over the the ref to plead his case for a foul.

Flopping repeatedly during a soccer match is super annoying. Sure players flop in other sports (basketball, hockey, etc) but in none of those sports is it quite so brazen. Americans hate it. We hate it more then we hate the low scoring or the lack of stats to judge players on. We hate it so much that it often blinds us to all the other good things about the sport. On Wednesday, Nyassi took flopping to a whole new level and he personally emobodied everything Americans hate about soccer. I don’t know if Nyassi always plays this way or if I just caught him on a bad day, but boy was it annoying. Enough so that Nyassi has now join the list of athletes I root against (including guys like Brett Favre and Carmelo Anthony).