When the case is made for soccer as the “beautiful game” it invariably comes down to points about expressionism, flair, and its irresistible cycles of heartbreak and joy.
To that I’ll add a modest reason why soccer is a beautiful game: It takes two hours.
Another World Cup has re-established this obvious point. Sit down for a game at 2 pm, and you’re reliably done a little after 4 pm Even with stoppage time, even if prolonged by two 15-minute sections of extra time, and then those brutal penalty kicks, you’re not looking at a commitment of much more than 2½ hours, maybe 2:45-ish.
It’s crisp, gloriously so. It’s a reason alone to tune in. I’m not saying you can set your watch to soccer—nobody besides the ref really knows how much time is actually left—but you can almost set your watch to soccer.
Do you know what a speedy blessing this is? Modern sports fans can agree: almost nothing in sports is two hours anymore. We are amid a Great Sports Time Creep, in which we have prolonged the brisk games of our youth into bureaucratically exasperating, needlessly delayed, day-sucking affairs.
Today you can barely make it halfway into the second quarter of a college football game in less than two hours. Throw in commercials, halftime, time outs, and replay review, and you’re lucky to get out of a Saturday contest by Tuesday. NFL games feel almost as exhausting, especially if the Denver Broncos are involved.
Basketball’s worse, too. The NBA is stretching its games with maddening replay forensics to determine the aggressiveness of contact or whether or not a stray fingernail lightly grazed the ball before going out of bounds. Somehow we played generations of basketball without this time-consuming technology, and the game survived. Now coaches challenge fouls! Does the NBA know what its product is? Who departs an NBA game thinking: What a magical night—Luka’s shooting; Ja’s dunk; Jason Kidd challenging a blocking call.
College is just as afflicted. The other day, I tried to watch the Wisconsin Badgers defeat the previously undefeated Maryland Terrapins, and I honestly believe the final two minutes of action took longer than medical school. I’m not kidding: I actually stopped watching the Badger game, and enrolled in medical school at UW-Madison. I’m an orthopedic surgeon now. I’m installing eight new hips on Friday. Sign yourself up.
Baseball, of course, is routinely condemned for taking too long—analytic moves; pitcher parades; hitters stepping out of the box to adjust batting gloves, stare heavenward and mull their 401(k)s. I am convinced that Major League Baseball is in cahoots with the timepiece industry; there’s got to be some kind of scam in which everyone’s secretly getting a fresh Patek Philippe. They’re introducing a pitch clock to accelerate play in the 2023 season, but I’m skeptical. Baseball could cut four innings and still wind up an hour longer.
You can watch a soccer game and accomplish other things with the rest of your day.
Photo:
Martin Meissner/Associated Press
Honestly, this issue feels bigger than sports. Technology was supposed to streamline our lives, but everything now takes longer: travel, meetings, dinners, parenthood. Movies? I feel I need to take a thermos of coffee and a sleeping bag to the movies. Even this crummy sports column is way too long.
Soccer feels like an antidote to all of this. It begins when it’s supposed to begin. The clock ticks forward, but you get used to it. There are no commercial interruptions until halftime. There can be whistles, video reviews, injury delays, fake injury delays, and more fake injury delays, but compared to baseball, it flies like a 100-meter dash.
If you don’t think there’s enough action in a soccer game, let me ask you a question: Do you want to watch insurance commercials and talking heads, or athletes running around and playing a sport? Watch soccer.
Best of all: You can watch a soccer game and accomplish other things with the rest of your day. Watch Brazil play Croatia Friday, and you have time to accomplish other goals. An NFL Sunday isn’t like that. Sit down to watch an NFL game, and you’re done for the day. It’s like eating a lamb chop for breakfast.
We’re into the good stuff now. The World Cup quarterfinals are full of soccer powerhouses like France and Brazil, plus the exciting ascension of Morocco. There will be thrills and tears, goals that blow your mind, and of course a few untouched players writhing on the turf as if they have been mauled by a bobcat. Memories of a lifetime, neatly wrapped in a couple of hours, no coffee or sleeping bag required. It’s the beautiful game, indeed.
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