The beautiful game???

The beautiful game?

Hardly...

What is the opposite of beautiful? The ugly game just doesn't sound right. But it really wouldn't be inaccurate.

Soccer (its not called football) is a horribly boring sport played by athletes with egos that dwarf even those of North American professionals. Alex Rodriguez has nothing on Cristiano Ronaldo, who once likened his more than $10 million/year contract with Manchester United to "slavery."

Okay soccer snobs, before your heads explode, I understand that yours is far and away the most popular sport in the world. 3.5 billion fans in over 100 countries on every continent blah blah blah blah... It doesn't change the fact that its a bunch of grown men endlessly passing a rubber ball back and forth with their feet while taking the occasional break to flop about in the grass any time an opposing player comes near to touching them. If you're lucky, 90 minutes of this will produce a goal. If not, you've got to sit through even more of it.

"You just don't get it," is the popular refrain from those who sing soccer's praises. You're right! I don't get it. I don't understand how one person, let alone billions can sit through the tedium of an entire game of soccer. It baffles me that the world's most popular sport is so overcome with cheating and corruption - games in the World Cup (supposedly the greatest sporting spectacle in the world) are being decided by the ability of player's to feign injury. It is a complete mystery to me.

So, why don't we call it the boring game. The over-hyped game. The corrupt game. Anything but the beautiful game...