Impossibility: What makes soccer more fascinating

NOTE: This is not a post related to JRNL1220. This is a post related to COMM1100.

by Xin Li (Stephen)

You may say that soccer has the power that union the people around the world together; you may say that soccer has the spirit of never give up; you may also say that soccer has the magic to stop the wars and bring peace to the world. Yet when I ask you the ideology of soccer, you may start to scratch your head and ask me back.

What is the ideology of soccer? In fact, soccer has different ideologies to different people. It can be a money-making machine for professional gamblers; it can be a spiritual power for a nation like Brazil; it can be a belief for most fanatical fans that cannot be offended; it can also be Nazism for a man like Paolo Di Canio, the former Italian soccer star.

I am not going to discuss fascism though, although we all understand soccer have different ideologies. For some people, the ideology of soccer is Hollywood. There are quite a few soccer movies from Hollywood such as “GOAL!” by Danny Cannon. I found that movie boring as it only tells a story how a Mexican kid become a soccer superstar, and we see that on real-life soccer field all the time. I remember when I was a kid I was addicted in the anime “Captain Tusbasa” by Yōichi Takahashi. This is not the 1^st soccer anime in Japan but it eventually becomes the most successful soccer anime in the world, not only because of its outstanding story line, but also its Hollywood style special effect. We can look at one like this.

How often have you seen a shot that breaks the net? I guess never, but that is exactly the beauty of the anime. Not too long later, the famous Hong Kong actor/director Stephen Chow found out people’s love on this kind of Hollywood special effects, therefore he made the film “Shaolin Soccer” with similar techniques and it turned out to be another successful movie.

I guess you have never seen a soccer game like this before, not only how one-sided the game goes, but also how impossible people shot a goal like that. I believe the attractiveness of this ideology is the impossibility. While people can watch different exciting games on TV, these kinds of scenes you don’t see in real-life soccer games give people more excitements and sensations.

While creation like movies and anime give us excitements and sensations, transformation from real-life soccer games into Hollywood style looks a little funny, but it also has its own feeling.

The world of soccer is ever-changing, but one thing is sure that it is one of the most wonderful sports in the world. Because of that, we have different fascinating ideologies of soccer, which make the world of soccer more wonderful.