Here are the upcoming World Cup soccer semifinals:
| Uruguay | vs. | Netherlands | - | Jul 6 11:30am (PT) on ESPN | |||||||
| Germany | vs. | Spain | - | Jul 7 11:30am (PT) on ESPN | |||||||
Let me make a prediction: somehow, some way, some American soccerati pundits are going to cite this as Another Triumph of Diversity for soccer in contrast to xenophobic, nativist, redneck, racist American sports like football, where NFL rosters average only 31% white (but every single one of the NFL's soccer-style placekickers is a non-Hispanic white guy, which tells you a lot about how soccer in the U.S. is largely White Flight in Short Pants). I don't know how they will do it, but they'll do it.
(And if the Final turns out to be Netherlands v. Germany, then they'll just redouble their efforts! Or, if it's Uruguay v. Spain, the whitest teams of the final four, then that will serve to, uh ... prove immigration skeptics wrong!)
Seriously, in today's mental climate, it's very hard for American soccer fans to express the thought, even in the privacy of their own minds, that soccer is, by the standards of big American teams sports, a white-dominated game.
At the highest levels of global soccer, about 75 percent or slightly more of the top players are white. Soccer in 2010 is like basketball in 1959. But, most Americans commentators are too mentally disabled these days to notice what's in front of their noses.
Let’s look at ESPN’s list from earlier this year of the “Top 50 players of the World Cup.” The five best players in the world -- Lionel Messi of Argentina (who is of Italian descent), Christiano Ronaldo of Portugal (a Tim Tebow-lookalike), Wayne Rooney of England, Kaka of Brazil (who is from an upper middle-class family), and Xavi of Spain --are white.
Out of the top 10, eight are white and two from West Africa. Out of the top 50, the proportions look similar. Judging from their pictures, I would say 10 are black, one is mostly white but clearly part black, and the other 39 look more or less white. None of the top 50 are East Asian or South Asian, and I don’t see any that are as part-Amerindian-looking as, say, Diego Maradona, the star of the 1986 World Cup.
In contrast, only one American-born white guy has been selected to the NBA All Star game in the last half dozen years. Most of the prestige positions in the NFL other than quarterback are dominated by blacks.
(And if the Final turns out to be Netherlands v. Germany, then they'll just redouble their efforts! Or, if it's Uruguay v. Spain, the whitest teams of the final four, then that will serve to, uh ... prove immigration skeptics wrong!)
Seriously, in today's mental climate, it's very hard for American soccer fans to express the thought, even in the privacy of their own minds, that soccer is, by the standards of big American teams sports, a white-dominated game.
At the highest levels of global soccer, about 75 percent or slightly more of the top players are white. Soccer in 2010 is like basketball in 1959. But, most Americans commentators are too mentally disabled these days to notice what's in front of their noses.
Let’s look at ESPN’s list from earlier this year of the “Top 50 players of the World Cup.” The five best players in the world -- Lionel Messi of Argentina (who is of Italian descent), Christiano Ronaldo of Portugal (a Tim Tebow-lookalike), Wayne Rooney of England, Kaka of Brazil (who is from an upper middle-class family), and Xavi of Spain --are white.
Out of the top 10, eight are white and two from West Africa. Out of the top 50, the proportions look similar. Judging from their pictures, I would say 10 are black, one is mostly white but clearly part black, and the other 39 look more or less white. None of the top 50 are East Asian or South Asian, and I don’t see any that are as part-Amerindian-looking as, say, Diego Maradona, the star of the 1986 World Cup.
In contrast, only one American-born white guy has been selected to the NBA All Star game in the last half dozen years. Most of the prestige positions in the NFL other than quarterback are dominated by blacks.
Of the soccer top 50, 24 are white guys from the six sunny powers of Spain (9 of the top 50), Italy, Portugal, Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. In other words, almost half of the global soccer superstars are Southern Europeans. As baseball discovered back in the days of Joe DiMaggio, it doesn’t really hurt your sport’s popularity to have stylish Mediterranean guys as stars.
The World Cup is a paradox: the results of individual games seem pretty random but the results always come out about the same: traditional soccer powers get to the finals.
When people go on about how much they love diversity, what they mean is that they want about an 80% white majority and 20% colorful minorities to spice things up, roughly what high level soccer delivers -- not the opposite. (But the opposite is what everybody will eventually get.)
Much of the glamor of the World Cup stems from it being a mostly white sport. Do you think up-and-comers like the South Koreans would be fascinated by the World Cup if it were traditionally dominated by, say, Indonesia, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Pakistan, and Bolivia? Would SWPLs in the U.S. love soccer if it were associated in their minds with "Kinshasa" rather than with "Barcelona"?
Look at what's happened to interest in track & field over the decades as East Africans have come to dominate the endurance races and the West African diaspora the sprints. (People don't believe me these days when I say that the Olympic running races used to be a really big deal. Who'd ever be interested in people running?)
The rules of soccer could either be more favorable to men of West African descent who are great at sprinting but lack endurance, the way the NFL and the NBA are, by making the game more amenable to sprinters by having more times outs (great for TV commercials) and substitutions. Or soccer could be made more amenable to highlanders with less speed but great endurance such as East Africans, Mexicans, Bolivians, Rif Mountain Northwest Africans and the like by preventing players from wasting time whenever play stops. But the rules are set in such a way that whites predominate in soccer.
FYI: your flag graphics are screwed up right now.
ReplyDeleteI, an American football/baseball/work-out guy, had a compliment in regards to soccer posted on another blog, I thought I'd paste it here:
ReplyDeleteI didn’t see steroidial athletes out there. If people only knew how prevalent steroids were in our sporting events (as well as growth hormones and various other pharmacological concoctions), they’d be turned off. A man naturally makes 50-75 mgs of Testosterone per week in his testicles. Many, MANY bodybuilders will literally take over 10 times that amount. Chris Benoit had 10 times the normal amount of T for a man his age in his body when he died. The real scandal was that the media treated that as if it were abnormal. It isn’t. Its funny (I mean side-splitting funny) to see some bodybuilders get off steroids, and watch them lose 20-30 lbs of muscle over the next 12 months even though they are working out very hard to retain it.
Not having a damned horse’s level of male hormone running through their veins will do that. One thing that people miss in looking at the before-and-after photos of Barry Bonds, Mark McGuire, and Jose Canseco is this: those guys pumped iron before they got on the juice, but only became hyyoooooggee after they got on it.
Ronaldo might not look so “awesome” in standing-side-by-side comparisons to the athletes mentioned above, but I’d bet he’s got normal sized un-atrophied testicles and will not die of prostate cancer in his late 60′s with an enlarged heart that needs a pig valve (like Arnold has) in it.
Thats my compliment to soccer: Its played by men who aren't probably aren't juiced, and thus is a more true reflection of athletic capability, unlike hitting a good 30 more home runs than you otherwise would have without pharmacuetical innovatation.
Steve, no need to be so defensive about football.
ReplyDeleteDo most Uruguayans look like Diego Forlan?
ReplyDeleteI'm pulling for Germany or the Netherlands. The Spanish and Uruguayan sides are pretty swarthy in comparison.
ReplyDeleteThe final will be the Germans and the Dutch, because they have the best systems, and enjoy the ease of implementation that is common for homogeneous squads. Of course the Germans will win that, because they are a buzzsaw that doesn't care which player takes the final shot.
ReplyDeleteI didn't think to notice the racial makeup of the Uruguayan squad, but some Mayan features were detectable in the faces of the Paraguayans.
'Do most Uruguayans look like..'
ReplyDeleteYes, they do.
Steve's posts on soccer are really insightful- coming from the analytical American traditon. However, he treats soccer as something beguiling, something that must be explained through intellectual/mathematical discourse. But what is really interesting, and also really sick and mentally ill, is the psycho-sexual infatuation the avergae slovenly white man has for black americans. if anything, what soccer shows is the extent to which black 'altheticity' is really no that great, in compraison to your average working class white guy.
But to reiterate, Canadians love hockey, Indians cricket, Russians soccer and hockey, etc... The real exception in the world is not between those who love soccer and other sports. ITS BETWEEN WHITES IN AMERICA SO ASHAMED OF THEIR PHYSICALITY THAT THE ONLY SPORTS THEY ARE DEVOTED TO ARE THOSE WITHIN WHICH THEY ARE INCAPABLE OF COMPETING, and/or ARE DOMINATED BY BLACK MEN. What is wrong with you? Please explain.
Seriously, in today's mental climate, it's very hard for American soccer fans to notice and express, even in the privacy of their own minds, that soccer is a white-dominated sport.
ReplyDeleteI think a major reason is that the average American doesn't really perceive mostly-white Latin American countries like Argentina and Uruguay as "white." At least not like how they perceive say Germany.
What I found to be funny Friday was that they had these pronouncements and banners about saying no to racism before the game, and then when it came down to a penalty kick shootout at the end, the South African crowd loudly booed the white Uruguayans when it was their turn to kick and cheered the blacks from Ghana when it was their turn.
ReplyDeleteTwo Hispanic teams out of four!
ReplyDeletedon't forget Uruguay's blond striker Forlan.
Diego Forlan looks a lot like Rutger Hauer in "Blade Runner."
ReplyDeleteThe German team has at least Nigerian, Ghanaian, Tunisian, Turkish, Bosnian, Polish and Spanish DNA within it...
ReplyDeleteThey seem to have melded well into expressing the teutonic characteristics we expect.
Uruguayans are white; a mestizo population could not have launched a '60s rock invasion of another white country (Argentina).
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfVpvrYf_Lo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bladyea3_is
FIFA had the eight squads in the quarterfinals make anti-racist statements before their matches.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6612Z720100702
"I'm pulling for Germany or the Netherlands. The Spanish and Uruguayan sides are pretty swarthy in comparison."
ReplyDeleteWhich of these Germans is your favorite player, Boeteng, Cacau, or Aogo? They are all models of Teutonic paleness compared to swarthy Spaniards such as Juan Manual Mata, Xabi Alanso, or Fernando Llorente.
The renewed success of Germany is already being explained on ABC/ESPN as a result of diversity and multi-cultural immigration because half the team's parentage would allow them to play for another country. ESPN has tried to promote the Turkish descended Ozil as the up and coming superstar but the white boys Muller, Lahm and Schweinsteiger (plus the Silesian striker Klose) just won't follow the script.
ReplyDeleteBut to reiterate, Canadians love hockey, Indians cricket, Russians soccer and hockey, etc...What is wrong with you? Please explain.
ReplyDeleteYet the US can field a better soccer and hockey team than Russia and a hockey team that's the equal of the Canadians. And you're asking what's wrong with us.
Best utterance I heard today came from a South American guy working as a cashier at a health food store here in NYC. On hearing on the radio that Germany had scored another goal against Argentina, he said, "Oh, no! It's going to be an all-European final! That's so racist!"
ReplyDelete"ESPN has tried to promote the Turkish descended Ozil as the up and coming superstar but the white boys Muller, Lahm and Schweinsteiger (plus the Silesian striker Klose) just won't follow the script."
ReplyDeleteWell Ozil is the up and coming superstar, whereas Lahm and Schweinsteiger are good players but they've already peaked. Ozil is way better than them and plays a more important position (creative playmakers are more valuable than holding midfielders or fullbacks). Ozil was voted by his fellow players as the best player in the german league last year. http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id=720599&cc=5901. neither lahm nor Schweinsteiger and certainly not klohse (who is a backup for his team) were in the top three.
So no, its not ESPN that wants to promote ozil, he just that good. Keep sticking to your aryan nation conspiracy theories though.
"but some Mayan features were detectable in the faces of the Paraguayans."
ReplyDeleteLOL WUT?
Paraguay is in the southern end of South America; the Mayans are in Central America.
"What is wrong with you? Please explain."
ReplyDeleteNo what's wrong with you? You a classic example of a white guy who feels impotent because blacks are better athletes.
Which of these Germans is your favorite player, Boeteng, Cacau, or Aogo? They are all models of Teutonic paleness compared to swarthy Spaniards such as Juan Manual Mata, Xabi Alanso, or Fernando Llorente.
ReplyDeleteIn the main the Spanish side is swarthy. All the players on the Spanish side are Spanish. Boateng, Cacau, Aogo aren't German.
Uruguayans are white; a mestizo population could not have launched a '60s rock invasion of another white country (Argentina).
ReplyDeleteArgentina is one of the whitest countries in Latin America, but isn't as white as it's often claimed to be.
http://racehist.blogspot.com/2009/08/latin-american-white.html
"Amerindian haplogroups were most frequent in the north and south representing more than 60% of the sequences. A slightly different situation was observed in central Argentina where the Amerindian haplogroups represented less than 50%, and the European contribution was more relevant. [. . .] A minor contribution of African lineages was observed throughout the country."
"Regarding autosomal evidence of admixture, the relative European, native American, and West African genetic contributions to the gene pool of La Plata were estimated to be 67.55% (+/-2.7), 25.9% (+/-4.3), and 6.5% (+/-6.4), respectively."
Growing up I knew that there was an NCAA football and basketball champion, I knew there were golf championships and tennis championships...but I never heard of the World Cup. I thought soccer was a game played by kids, Europeans and third world countries.
ReplyDeleteI do not understand the interest in the World Cup.
People from Spain are not Hispanic. They are Spanish.
ReplyDeleteThe spainish team is very white. They have no Africans on the squad and team itself is fairly light haired and fair skinned. Look at torres in addition to others mentioned above.
There was an interesting article in Marca showing youth pictures of the team and a lot of them were blondish at the time. (not David villa, who is one of my favorites on the team). I can't find it on line tho.
I you have ever been to Germany you would know that a lot of the adults have dark hair as well. It is only among he young that you see mostly toe-heads.
Race aside, let's turn to geography. In particular, the most consistent phenomenon in World Cup history: Europe has won every Cup but one in held in its own backyard, while losing every single one held elsewhere.
ReplyDelete(The exception is 1958, Pelé's rookie year, in Sweden. The Swedes themselves, though, went to the final match.)
There is now a 75% chance (at least) this will be broken-- a breakthrough for Europe, right?
Not so fast. Note that this is the first non-European Cup staged in a European time zone. This year, Europe has a home-pitch advantage of sorts, while the Latins (and Yanks and Asians) are out of their temporal element.
Fun fact: Cape Town is within a degree of latitude of Montevideo, and within a half-degree of longitude of Stockholm. Which would you prefer to share?
Global soccer is white because the rich and mid-level countries that are most interested are also very white.
ReplyDeleteBut in the countries with significant black minorities, France and Brazil, blacks take over the national team.
There's not much evidence that France's black minority have contributed to the success of the national team or the economy.
"Regarding autosomal evidence of admixture, the relative European, native American, and West African genetic contributions to the gene pool of La Plata were estimated to be 67.55% (+/-2.7), 25.9% (+/-4.3), and 6.5% (+/-6.4), respectively."
ReplyDeleteThere's just no way. The average Argentine doesn't appear anymore native american than the average white appalachia resident. I'd guess both groups have native american admixture in the 5 to 10 percent range at most. And 6 percent West African? Surree. What is up with the obsession of certain posters on here in attempting to prove that any european-descended group who is remotely swarthy is non-white? Equating an abundance of recessive genes with proof of europeanness is just silly.
"I didn't think to notice the racial makeup of the Uruguayan squad, but some Mayan features were detectable in the faces of the Paraguayans."
ReplyDeleteDidn't know Paraguay was in the Yucatan....
What is up with the obsession of certain posters on here in attempting to prove that any european-descended group who is remotely swarthy is non-white? Equating an abundance of recessive genes with proof of europeanness is just silly.
ReplyDeleteWhat is up with certain posters who throw a fit any time a study indicating non-European admixture among certain Latin American and Southern European populations is brought up?
If you're aware of any studies showing otherwise please point them out.
Steve,
ReplyDeleteYou're right.
Yesterday some Dutch sports commentator was full of praise for Germany's good performance this world cup. Reason? Diversity, of course. See, Germany has some very good non-ethnically German players in their team now! (I must say that Özil and Khedira are indeed fantastic players. OTOH, Schweinsteiger, Klose and especially Mueller really play excellent career-making tournements.)
This Germany is good because of diversity is nonsense. Germany rarely gets knocked out before the QFs (in all-German teams). Diversity has zilch to do with their record. No matter though, they'll spin it until they win it. We'll see what happens from here.
Also, the people who wrote that South America had taken over football -- becuase 5 of 8 QF teams were South American -- seem awfully quiet too now. Isn't that petty? It was a stupid thing to say, as if the WC tournement ends at the QF. (OTOH, South America did pretty good, great teams all.)
Fred,
ReplyDeleteI can understand a reason besides racism why these South Africans booed the Uruguayans. In the extra time of the 30 min extra time an Uruguayan used his hands to prevent a header from going in. It would have been a win for Ghana. Ghana missed the penalty kick and later on lost on penalties. It was a dreadful moment for Ghana.
Speaking for myself, I also believed Ghana should have gone through. Uruguay didn't show sportsmanship, they were even quite content with their handsball-making team-mate.
'Let me make a prediction: somehow, some way, some American soccerati pundits are going to cite this as Another Triumph of Diversity for soccer..'
ReplyDeleteLet's make it easier for them.
There is no doubt that West Africans particularly are "more explosive" athletes, i.e. have better acceleration and can jump higher, on average. However, individual athletic ability, in those respects, is less important in Soccer than it is in American football or basketball. That said, if Soccer was the highest paying sport in the US I have no doubt America would own the World Cup.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing is that all the black teams who did well had white coaches. And many of their players usually play on the European circuit where they learned to play the European tactical style instead of their usual individualistic showmanship style. When you factor this in, your conclusion is even more devastating.
ReplyDeleteBTW, the Afrikaners in South Africa were mostly supporting Holland.
Fred sed:What I found to be funny Friday was that they had these pronouncements and banners about saying no to racism before the game, and then when it came down to a penalty kick shootout at the end, the South African crowd loudly booed the white Uruguayans when it was their turn to kick and cheered the blacks from Ghana when it was their turn.
ReplyDeleteYeah, that was a howler. Soccer is just so nationalistic and as Steve shows, nationalism is mostly race-driven. So soccer is basically a race-driven event. Yet Blatter and the other FIFA scoundrels/money-makers/SWPL's make these teams read out these annoying untruths against "racism". What hypocrisy!
That said, if Soccer was the highest paying sport in the US I have no doubt America would own the World Cup.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I had that impression as well watching the US team. The uS would certainly be a top contender if it were a national sport there. I was rooting for them all along, as long as they weren't going to play against Holland or Germany who would then get my support.
The success of the Netherlands so far is remarkable given that this year it has none of the great black players that have represented the country over the last couple of decades. The only black player for Holland playing in this tournament, Nigel de Jong (son of fellow Holland internationalist, Jerry) is not in the same league as past stars like Davids, Kluviert, or Seedorf, but he is part of a more successful team. It is traditional that the Dutch will have the most talented individuals but an ineffective team… usually by this point in the tournament the team would be on the plane back home amid reports of bitter divisions on-and-off the pitch between the black and white players. For the Dutch, anyway, relative lack of diversity seems not have hurt this time.
ReplyDeleteBTW, the Afrikaners in South Africa were mostly supporting Holland.
ReplyDeleteThe Boers were not only Dutch, but Dutch Calvinists. Talk about being a team of destiny!
Steve:
ReplyDeleteHave you seen Nike's ad thanking the USMNT for its performance?
It's a perfect example of how Nike pushes hard on the false "American soccer is an urban sport" meme.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hN3efui2fM&feature=player_embedded
Outland,
ReplyDeleteI disagree about the crowd's reaction to the Ghana Uruguay game. If the refs hadn't caught the Uruguayan handball, then their reaction might be understandable. But the refs did catch it, penalize the Uruguayans for it, and give Ghana a penalty kick to make up for it. About 85% of penalty kicks are successful, so Ghana had every chance to win it there, but their guy shanked it. That's their fault.
An NFL analogy would be if Uruguay had mugged a Ghana wide receiver in the end zone, preventing a touchdown. Then the refs would give Ghana a first down on the 1 yard line. If Ghana didn't score in four tries from there, that would be Ghana's fault.
As for the Dutch TV commenter, if we're thinking of the same one, he also blamed Argentina's loss on some kind of Latin American selfishness as opposed to the German selfless passing style, which caused the American black commenter to jump in and say something like, "Well it's not because they're from Latin American..."
Anonymous wrote, quoting some blog "Regarding autosomal evidence of admixture, the relative European, native American, and West African genetic contributions to the gene pool of La Plata were estimated to be 67.55% (+/-2.7), 25.9% (+/-4.3), and 6.5% (+/-6.4), respectively."
ReplyDeleteI didn't check your link, but the quoted passage was written by someone who doesn't understand how to analyse these types of data or interpret the results correctly. No statistician would calculate (or report) confidence intervals like that.
remember when British runners Coe, Ovett and Steve Cram dominated the 800m thru mile events?
ReplyDeleteGrowing up in Ireland, Dr. Roger Bannister was an icon......I wonder how many under 40 year olds in the US have ever heard of him?
(first man under 4 minutes for the mile)
I do wish Americans would stop using the term "Hispanic" when talking about non US matters. Outside of a US context the term is utterly meaningless.
ReplyDeleteSteve, vegas has yet to catch on to HBD- I put $ on Germany and Holland to win it all at about 8-1 for each- they may meet in final but either way I will win about 600 even if I have to hedge the final
ReplyDeleteSteve Sailer said..."Seriously, in today's mental climate, it's very hard for American soccer fans to express the thought, even in the privacy of their own minds, that soccer is, by the standards of big American teams sports, a white-dominated game."
ReplyDeleteNo surprise there. In today's mental climate, it's very hard for Americans generally to express the thought, even in the privacy of their own minds, that anything other than racism and hate-crimes is white-dominated.
Ozil is way better than them
ReplyDeleteTry actually watching the game. Schweinsteiger was clearly the best player on the field yesterday.
Good point: most people wouldn't care about soccer if was associated with second and third world countries.
ReplyDeleteAt its origin maybe soccer seemed a lot like golf does today, as it started in upper class English boarding schools.
If you are African 100 years ago (like Obama's ancestors) and your English colonial administrator plays soccer or follows soccer, then you'd probably assume its a high class game.
I'm looking forward to Netherlands vs. Germany, myself. All the WWII analogies...
ReplyDeleteToo funny--leave it up to men, men of all colors, to totally screw up by equating "athleticism" (ie, success in organized sporting competitions) with masculinity.
ReplyDeleteHunting (which requires visuospacial skills, planning, patience, cunning, courage, stamina), fishing (often requiring the same skill set depending on the terrain in which one is operating), building shelter.... all these things are a measure of masculine and yes, "athletic" abilities, especially when you don't make the mistake of thinking of "athletic" in its narrowest sense.
Anyway, get off the misapplication of "masculinity."
Okay, so I screwed up in saying that the Paraguayans had "mayan features." They do, however, have more Indian descent than, say, Argentines, for example.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking for myself, I also believed Ghana should have gone through. Uruguay didn't show sportsmanship, they were even quite content with their handsball-making team-mate.
ReplyDeleteThe Ghanians were flopping all over the pitch. The free kick that led to the goal scoring opportunity should not have been given. Besides Uruguay should have received a penalty earlier on.
The world has ganged up on Uruguay, especially Suarez for his 'Hand of God' and 'best save of the tournament' remarks, but also because as Gabrielle Marcotti commented this too many Europeans just wanted to feel good about themselves and be seen to be cheering for an African country. In the end the Uruguayans were mentally tougher than the fragile Ghanians who looked like deer in headlights during the penalties.
Needless to say the American 'experts', led by Alexi Lalas, were convinced Ghana would win because, according to Lalas, the Africans were more athletic. LOL!
ESPN has tried to promote the Turkish descended Ozil as the up and coming superstar
ReplyDeleteUmmm, Turks are white. A lot of Germans of Turkish descent are original Caucasians.
Just another example of how white="people I think I like".
Final will be Germany 2 Uruguay 1.
ReplyDeleteCall your bookies.
"Look at what's happened to interest in track & field over the decades as East Africans have come to dominate the endurance races and the West African diaspora the sprints. (People don't believe me these days when I say that the Olympic running races used to be a really big deal. Who'd ever be interested in people running?)"
ReplyDeleteBut far more Americans from all walks of life love the NFL and NBA more than soccer.
And heavy weight boxing was far more popular in the days of Ali, Foreman, and Frazier than today, with Klitsch at the top.
I think one of the reason why soccer hasn't caught on in a big way in America is that many suspect it can't be a REAL sport if it has few blacks. In America, many people think blacks = best athletes. So, sports without many blacks are rather suspect, thus the lack of interest.
Interest in track and field may have declined in events such as sprint and long distance running but they are still vastly more popular than white dominated events like shot put, javelin, and walking(!!!). Far many people tune into 100m and 200m finals during the Olympics than for the finals for the hammer throw(white dominated).
I wouldn't make too much of race in soccer. Brazil has been the best team ever. And with changing demographics in Europe, it's only a matter of time before soccer becomes blacker. I hear over 50% of babies born in Paris are black. And whole parts of Netherlands is already 50% non-white below the age of 20.
And there is no doubt European and Canadian teams became competitive with the US because they got themselves their own blacks(for boxing, track and field, etc).
And as I look all around, there seems to be vastly increasing numbers of white women going with black males. Soccer isn't gonna change anything, let alone save the white race. In every highschool, the games that really matter are basketball and football. Most stands during soccer games are empty.
"I'm pulling for Germany or the Netherlands. The Spanish and Uruguayan sides are pretty swarthy in comparison."
ReplyDeleteI'm pulling for the olive-tanned people. Germans and Dutch are pale and sickly looking by comparison.
"if anything, what soccer shows is the extent to which black 'altheticity' is really no that great, in compraison to your average working class white guy."
ReplyDeleteBullshit. If anything, soccer proves you can devise a game where the best athletes don't necessarily win. Same is true with baseball. Soccer and baseball are games where EVEN THE JAPANESE can on occasion beat whites and blacks. Japan has beaten European teams in soccer and Cuba in baseball. Imagine Japan beating a white or black team in sports which reward athleticism to a far greater degree and have a lesser element of chance. Imagine Japan winning in football or basketball?
I've been around. Blacks routinely beat up whites in all walks of life. Whites flee from blacks, not the other way around. Some blacks flee from Mexicans but only because Mexicans overwhelm them in huge numbers and aren't restrained by guilt-conscience revolving around 'racism'.
The extreme difficulty of making the goal is the great equalizing factor in soccer. Soccer athletes are great athletes but it takes more than strength, speed, and agility to win. It also requires teamwork, coordination, patience, alertness, and luck.
"What is up with the obsession of certain posters on here in attempting to prove that any european-descended group who is remotely swarthy is non-white?"
ReplyDeleteThey are a bunch of low IQ neo-nazi dummies whose only claim to superiority is their pale skin.
[S]omehow, some way, some American soccerati pundits are going to cite this as Another Triumph of Diversity for soccer in contrast to crypto-fascist-metaphor-for-nuclear-war football. I don't know how they will do it, but they'll do it.
ReplyDeleteFTFY...
Here is an interesting table on the ethnic compositions of Latin American countries.
ReplyDeleteAt 36% whites are the largest single group of people in Latin America. However, people in the US don't realize this because they associate Latin American with Mexicans and Central Americans who are predominately mestizos. Mestizos are the second largest group of Latin Americans comprising about 30% of the total.
There is no doubt that West Africans particularly are "more explosive" athletes, i.e. have better acceleration and can jump higher, on average. However, individual athletic ability, in those respects, is less important in Soccer than it is in American football or basketball. That said, if Soccer was the highest paying sport in the US I have no doubt America would own the World Cup.
ReplyDeleteThe objection I have to "ZOMG blacks R physically superior" mania is that it's sloppy; when formulated your way, with qualifications, it doesn't stick in my craw. Yes, blacks seem to dominate at the athletic activities people are most willing to watch for fun. No, I don't think that translates to the overly-simplistic "ZOMG blacks are physically superior" line people are so fond of. No, I don't think you could replace a bunch of ice people hunting mastodon in a European winter with Bantus and get better results, quite the contrary, even if you could control for culture. No, I don't think you could replace the Spartans at Thermopylae with Bantus and get a better result, even if you could control for culture.
Hey, Americans! Maybe Ghana won you just because deep down you know your own "diverse" team can`t win a superior team made out of nothing but superior black atheletes! It`s Harlem Globetrotters all over again!
ReplyDeleteAnonymous said..."Too funny--leave it up to men, men of all colors, to totally screw up by equating 'athleticism' (ie, success in organized sporting competitions) with masculinity."
ReplyDeleteToo funny--leave it up to women, particularly white women, to totally screw up (and get screwed over) by equating sexual athleticism of (i.e., success in indiscriminate sperm donation, sprinting from parental committment and long-distance running from responsibilities) with masculinity.
"Hunting (which requires visuospacial skills, planning, patience, cunning, courage, stamina), fishing (often requiring the same skill set depending on the terrain in which one is operating), building shelter.... all these things are a measure of masculine and yes, 'athletic' abilities, especially when you don't make the mistake of thinking of 'athletic' in its narrowest sense."
No argument there.
"Anyway, get off the misapplication of 'masculinity.'"[sic]
How I wish the clueless white women so enamored of the exotic Dark Other would get a clue and take this advice.
Bullshit. If anything, soccer proves you can devise a game where the best athletes don't necessarily win.
ReplyDeleteBullshit. "Athlete" is ancient Greek for "competitor," making this statement oxymoronic.
I mean, yeah, sometimes the "better guy" loses but that's why they play the fucking games - to see who wins. They don't compare spreadsheets.
"I do not understand the interest in the World Cup."
ReplyDeleteThe rest of the world doesn't understand your interest in the NCAA.
Whatever you are brought up with you will follow.
The black teams in the WC did terrible.Ghana shouldn't have even gotten out of the group stages.
ReplyDeleteI don't understand why white people in American support bb and football with all the blacks in it. If we had a free society,whites could have their own league and suppot their own children.
Fred,
ReplyDeleteStill, it could very well be possible that the South Africans booed Uruguay for Suárez' handsball. Some may have been racist, who knows? The WC tends to attract football lovers , not the aggressive hooligan high-T riot-crowds you see at clubteams.
On weak African performance:
I must say that I wasn't really surprised at how poor African countries played -- besides tactical errors and unnecessary cards.
Anyone with 5,- euro can buy a football magazine WC special and see at which clubteams WC players are playing for. The top African teams have some players at top European teams, but not very many. Highly talented football players end up in elite teams from Spain, Italy, England and Germany. The national selection with the most players active in these leagues is a good indication of their strength (except for England, they always disappoint for some reason.) For example, Nigeria won the Olympics in '96, beating, among others, Brazil and Argentina. That Nigerian selection played all over Europe, for top clubs too. Ghana and Ivory Coast have fairly good generations at this moment too; therefore, I can see why Ghana reached the QFs and Ivorycoast do fairly well in a difficult group.
"No what's wrong with you? You a classic example of a white guy who feels impotent because blacks are better athletes."
ReplyDeleteHow come black countries can't provide good paying leagues for their people to play in Africa?
If no whites supported the NBA or NFL,they would fold.
MQ said:
ReplyDeleteUmmm, Turks are white. A lot of Germans of Turkish descent are original Caucasians.
Just another example of how white="people I think I like".
Wow good point. So why do German's get accused of racism when these "white people" do not succeed up to the other "white people" standard? And why is ESPN and my local newspaper saying how wonderfully diverse the German side is and they point to "white people" like Ozil? Its so confusing.
"That said, if Soccer was the highest paying sport in the US I have no doubt America would own the World Cup"
ReplyDeleteNo they wouldn't dominate. They would be a top 5-8 team regularly,but the WC is very difficult to dominate. There are many other good countries. Soccer is big for women,but the US doesn't win evey WC. There are other good teams.It's easy to lose in a one off match agaisnt a weaker team.
"Try actually watching the game. Schweinsteiger was clearly the best player on the field yesterday"
ReplyDeleteIts one game fool. If you watch one baseball game Albert Pujols may go 0 for 4 and Scott Spezio may get 3 hits and 4 RBIs. Schwiensteiger had a better game against Argentina, but Ozil is Germany's best player.
Is it also an ESPN conspiracy that Barcelona, Arsenal and Chelsea want to sign Ozil?
http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/european/barcelona-want-to-sign-germany-star-ozil-2013473.html
http://www.goal.com/en/news/9/england/2010/06/17/1980618/chelsea-join-arsenal-manchester-city-in-race-for-20m-rated
"The national selection with the most players active in these leagues is a good indication of their strength (except for England, they always disappoint for some reason.)"
ReplyDeleteArgentina has dissapointed also recently and Spain just made the WC semi's for the first time ever.
Argentina made it 1 round further than England because of the draw that's all. England's record is not that bad, but it's very difficult to win the WC. From 1990 to 2006 England was the 6 best team in the WC which is good.Spain was the 8th,Dutch 7th.England should have moved ahead of France this year becuase France should not have even made the WC,but they are tied now with14 points.
"So no, its not ESPN that wants to promote Ozil, he just that good. Keep sticking to your aryan nation conspiracy theories though."
ReplyDeleteThe point that you missed because you had to get your reflexive "aryan nation" comment in, is that Ozil has not been the superstar so far in the WC. He has been good as has Kahdira but IMO it has been your "over the hill" Schweinsteiger (age 25), Lahm (age 26) and most of all Muller (age 20) who have provided the spark that has allowed Germany to do so well. But the point is these guys are 1) boring and 2)don't support the diversity model that ABC/ESPN wants to portray.
BTW, in the unlikely event Germany ends up against Uruguay in the Final do you think that ABC/ESPN will trumpet "All of Europe's hopes are on the shoulders of Germany!" as they did with Ghana?
Here is an interesting table on the ethnic compositions of Latin American countries.
ReplyDeleteAt 36% whites are the largest single group of people in Latin America. However, people in the US don't realize this because they associate Latin American with Mexicans and Central Americans who are predominately mestizos. Mestizos are the second largest group of Latin Americans comprising about 30% of the total.
This is actually quite tricky since there is no clear dividing line between white and mestizo.
Also, Spanish and Portuguese--and Southern Italians in Argentina--were originally more mixed than other Europeans thanks to their promixity to North Africa.
I suppose if we go by white = caucasian, even most Arabs and North Africans are white.
I'm curious: is 'Boateng' a very common name in Ghana, or is it a very elite family (like Kennedys in American politics)? See here for distinguished Boatengs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boateng
ReplyDeleteTwo Boateng footballers in the World Cup are indeed brothers (one in the Ducth team, one in the German), but I don't know if the other Boatengs are related. In the UK, there are two well-known Boatengs: Ozwald, a fashion desinger, and Paul, a Government Minister. If I recall correctly, they are related in some way.
"Growing up in Ireland, Dr. Roger Bannister was an icon......I wonder how many under 40 year olds in the US have ever heard of him?
ReplyDelete(first man under 4 minutes for the mile)"
This one has, but only because I did track in high school. But you're right, not nearly enough people know that the British used to dominate long distance and middle distance events in the Olympics.
"What is up with the obsession of certain posters on here in attempting to prove that any european-descended group who is remotely swarthy is non-white?"
ReplyDeleteNo, they are not non-white; however, they are more likely to be non-Protestant. As the sovereign debt crisis in Europe is proving, that's no small difference between nations.
MQ,
ReplyDeleteI thought today's Turks were from central Asian originally.
I like sport but I will really start to worry when the West stops producing scientists, computer geeks and entrepreneurs.
Off Topic but of interest to the Steve-o-sphere:
ReplyDeleteAfro City Brown, a black conservative woman who claims to suffer "diversity fatigue" writes about the state of black America. She lives in Chicago and is sickened by the constant murders of blacks by blacks. She's definitely an ally in the immigration battles, and a hell of a writer. Unlike his detractors, I believe Steve's Citizenism philosophy is very pro-black American, placing the interests of Americans first regardless of color.
Here:
http://alturl.com/i4i4c
Hunting (which requires visuospacial skills, planning, patience, cunning, courage, stamina), fishing (often requiring the same skill set depending on the terrain in which one is operating), building shelter.... all these things are a measure of masculine and yes, "athletic" abilities, especially when you don't make the mistake of thinking of "athletic" in its narrowest sense.
ReplyDeleteNot so sure about this. Hunting and fishing are great past-times, but they are far from being measures of athleticism or masculinity. After all, women and middle-aged dudes hunt/fish (in their conventional and modern forms) just as well as a physically fit 25 year old male...Any contest like that, by nature, is not an athletic one. And yes, the word athletic does technically have a narrow sense.
The World Cup is a paradox: it's pretty random but the results always come out about the same: traditional soccer powers get to the finals.
ReplyDeleteHow about using Occam's razor? The straightforward conclusion is that it is not a paradox because it is not pretty random.
It's always funny seeing people say, "Blacks would dominate this sport if they were interested in it." Golf is a sport blacks are very much "interested in," but with a notable exception, golf has little black presence at the very top.
ReplyDeleteThere are quite a few things, in and out of sports, blacks aren't "interested in."
Picture of Oezil. In the U.S. he would be accepted as white without a second thought. You can see a slight bit of Asian influence in the shape of the eyes if you're looking for it.
ReplyDeleteThe original Turks who conquered Constantinople 500+ years ago came from Central Asia (where they had already been race-mixing nomads for some time). When they settled in Anatolia they mixed with all kinds of Caucasians, Greeks, Armenians, Albanians, Persians, etc. Most of Caucasia converted to Islam and many Caucasians are in the population of modern Turkey (immigration of Muslim Caucasians continued up into modern times to get away from the Russians). As I understand it Caucasians are overrepresented among immigrants to Germany. Generally as you go east in Turkey the population looks more Asian.
Wow good point. So why do German's get accused of racism when these "white people" do not succeed up to the other "white people" standard?
Ummm, because Turks aren't German, and that's the important distinction in Germany? Of course, most American whites aren't German either. I guess if you wanted to go to Northern European (and counted slavs) you could capture a majority of American whites while still excluding Turks, if you wanted to.
Here's a NY Times article from 1909 , back when Sailer-ites ruled the world, on whether Turks should count as whites. (Can open it as pdf). The author, much like a lot of commenters around here, is led into confusion by trying to force the incredibly important role of cultural differences into made-up racial categories. But in the end he reaches the conclusion that Turks are pretty much white after all.
If you look at “Strong man” competitions, the winners are typically white men of mostly Northern European (includes Eastern Europeans) ancestry.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World’s_Strongest_Man
The top weight lifters, wrestlers, fencers, race car drivers and fighter pilots are mostly white. White people are the most generalised specialised human population. East Asians and blacks are super specialised in only some physical traits. East Asians have the fastest reaction time due to which they dominate sports like table tennis and badminton. The reaction time is slowest in blacks. Thus, in sports such as table tennis, blacks do not stand a chance to compete with East Asians. The only people who come close to challenging East Asians are Whites. Similarly West African descendant people are fast and dominate sports like sprinting, but are pathetic in endurance events which is dominated by Horn Africans and Eastern Africans. But East Africans and Horn Africans are pathetic in sports like sprint needing extreme speeds for short durations. But of all the races it is whites are second to only West African descended blacks in sprinting, second to only East Africans/ Horn Africans when it comes to endurance events. East Asians do not stand a chance to compete with Africans in both sprinting like sports or endurance like sports. Swimming for example is dominated by Whites and the only population with a realistic chance of challenging Whites are East Asians not blacks. Whites are also taking over all the major boxing titles from blacks, a fact the media tried to hide under the carpet.
Extremely mixed or generalised races (in a belt from the middle East via South Asia to South East Asia for example) are pathetic in Olympics like sports. India with a billion plus population hardly wins more than two medals in an Olympics.
In the 2004 Summer Olympic, of the 929 medals awarded, approximately 70 percent, or 650, were won by White athletes. East Asian athletes won 154 medals, or 16.6 percent, while blacks athletes won 89 medals, or just 9.6 percent of the total. The rest were won by athletes from other groups.
In the 2006 Winter Olympics, of the 252 medals awarded, 228, or almost 91 percent, were won by White athletes. East Asian athletes won just over 9 percent of the medals, with 23 total, and only one medal was won by a black. Of course one could ignore the Winter Olympics as blacks are not built for the cold climate. But if you believe that blacks or people from the tropics hardly win medals in winter sports because they do not participate, you are wrong. Check out the participating nations in the recent Winter Olympics held in Canada where nations such as Ghana, Jamaica and India have participated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Winter_Olympics
There are many sports that require no special equipment or expenses, but blacks just don’t have the build to emerge as top champions in these sports, e.g., cycling, bench pressing, karate, etc. The denser bones of blacks means that they cannot dominate swimming. The shorter, less powerful trunks of blacks means that they cannot dominate wrestling or bench pressing. The strength-agility-reaction time combination in blacks is such that they cannot dominate martial arts. The leg proportions of blacks, with relatively longer lower legs, means that they will not be dominating cycling. And so on; no amount of training, nutrition or good facilities is going to change this.
Blacks dominate only a few sports, and it is clear that Whites are overall the best athletes. The media also spreads misinformation about North East Asians being physically inferior. But they (Japanese, Koreans, Chinese) dominate all other Asians (Indians, Arabs, Malays etc...) in sports with ease.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Asian_Games
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Asian_Games
If you look at “Strong man” competitions, the winners are typically white men of mostly Northern European (includes Eastern Europeans) ancestry.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World’s_Strongest_Man
The top weight lifters, wrestlers, fencers, race car drivers and fighter pilots are mostly white. White people are the most generalised specialised human population. East Asians and blacks are super specialised in only some physical traits. East Asians have the fastest reaction time due to which they dominate sports like table tennis and badminton. The reaction time is slowest in blacks. Thus, in sports such as table tennis, blacks do not stand a chance to compete with East Asians. The only people who come close to challenging East Asians are Whites. Similarly West African descendant people are fast and dominate sports like sprinting, but are pathetic in endurance events which is dominated by Horn Africans and Eastern Africans. But East Africans and Horn Africans are pathetic in sports like sprint needing extreme speeds for short durations. But of all the races it is whites are second to only West African descended blacks in sprinting, second to only East Africans/ Horn Africans when it comes to endurance events. East Asians do not stand a chance to compete with Africans in both sprinting like sports or endurance like sports. Swimming for example is dominated by Whites and the only population with a realistic chance of challenging Whites are East Asians not blacks. Whites are also taking over all the major boxing titles from blacks, a fact the media tried to hide under the carpet.
Extremely mixed or generalised races (in a belt from the middle East via South Asia to South East Asia for example) are pathetic in Olympics like sports. India with a billion plus population hardly wins more than two medals in an Olympics.
In the 2004 Summer Olympic, of the 929 medals awarded, approximately 70 percent, or 650, were won by White athletes. East Asian athletes won 154 medals, or 16.6 percent, while blacks athletes won 89 medals, or just 9.6 percent of the total. The rest were won by athletes from other groups.
In the 2006 Winter Olympics, of the 252 medals awarded, 228, or almost 91 percent, were won by White athletes. East Asian athletes won just over 9 percent of the medals, with 23 total, and only one medal was won by a black. Of course one could ignore the Winter Olympics as blacks are not built for the cold climate. But if you believe that blacks or people from the tropics hardly win medals in winter sports because they do not participate, you are wrong. Check out the participating nations in the recent Winter Olympics held in Canada where nations such as Ghana, Jamaica and India have participated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Winter_Olympics
There are many sports that require no special equipment or expenses, but blacks just don’t have the build to emerge as top champions in these sports, e.g., cycling, bench pressing, karate, etc. The denser bones of blacks means that they cannot dominate swimming. The shorter, less powerful trunks of blacks means that they cannot dominate wrestling or bench pressing. The strength-agility-reaction time combination in blacks is such that they cannot dominate martial arts. The leg proportions of blacks, with relatively longer lower legs, means that they will not be dominating cycling. And so on; no amount of training, nutrition or good facilities is going to change this.
Blacks dominate only a few sports, and it is clear that Whites are overall the best athletes. The media also spreads misinformation about North East Asians being physically inferior. But they (Japanese, Koreans, Chinese) dominate all other Asians (Indians, Arabs, Malays etc...) in sports with ease.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Asian_Games
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Asian_Games
Ozil is a bum, he should be playing for his home country. That said, apart from his precocious skills, Ozil has excdllent vision and is unselfish. He has been responsible for a lot of the easy goals the Germans have been getting lately, and had a clutch gamewinner in group play.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I don't understand how anyone can call soccer boring, assuming you care about the outcome. (watching baseball or football isn't really fun either if you don't care about the outcome.) Soccer is 90 minutes of adrenaline, no respite. Basketball doesn't get started until the 4th quarter, hockey you can't see the damn puck, and football is only fun when the QB is passing - but soccer has the same kind of strategic timing and passing throughout, and you can pass backwards too.
There's something about football that seems wrong, whether it be the career-ending injuries every Sunday, or the pro-wrestling demeanor of the steroid-pumped behemoths (who can relate to these meatheads?), the giant rosters and convoluted rules (was he bringing the ball forward in a passing motion?), or the sequence that makes up 80% of the game: 2 minutes commercials, kickoff, 2 minutes commercials, 2-yard play, then one minute looking at men in tights, then 2.75-yard play with giant lingering dogpile, then timeout, then 2 minutes commercials, etc., then a penalty (that was holding??), then an incomplete pass, men in tights walking back slowly to their positions, punt, commercials, etc. I thought Americans were impatient?
Baseball is a fantastic game, but mainly for guys who like statistics. I cannot imagine it with as few numbers as basketball being fun.
just throwing in my 2cents-worth:
ReplyDeleteTwo Boateng footballers in the World Cup are indeed brothers (one in the Ducth team, one in the German), but I don't know if the other Boatengs are related.
The Boateng in the German squad is the bro of the one in the Ghanaian squad, both grew up in Berlin. The one plays in Germany, the other in the English league. Ballack, the actual German captain who had to skip the WC due to an injury also plays in the English league.
A particularly interesting thing was that the Ghanaian Boateng played against the actual German squad captain Ballack in an English league game, and so badly fouled/injured him that Ballack could not play the WC. So Lahm had to take over. Many considered this a loss because Ballack is older and has much experience, so he can quieten the younger ones down when the pressure is on and things go south. There was much discussion whether this was a deliberate attempt to weaken the Germans for the WC, i.e. a blatant race-crime on the soccer field. Of course the media quickly dampened the issue down, but to careful observers the coincidence was too canny.
Turks are a mixed bunch. Many are of Armenian or Greek origin. All these people were basically force-islamicized. So when you get a Turk, he may actually be a Greek, Armenian or even Crusader/Turk or Crusader/Byzantine admixture, or just a plain Turk. That is why this is so confusing.
ESPN has tried to promote the Turkish descended Ozil as the up and coming superstar but the white boys Muller, Lahm and Schweinsteiger (plus the Silesian striker Klose) just won't follow the script.
ReplyDeleteSame with the MSM in Germany. However, the real heroes are Lahm (captain) and Friederich. You can always find Lahm where things are dangerous. He mostly stands behind the goalkeeper when corners are given against Germany.
Friederich has been touted the best defensive player in a long time. Basically he always wins a duell and comes out with the ball, which is why so many top-stars fumbled against Germany. Him, Lahm and the other 2 defenders essentially neuter the top stars. The others follow his and Lahm’s lead.
The matchmaker in the middle is Schweinsteiger, another German name. And the top scorer Klose, who has a polish first name, is most probably actually German, since many Poles are force-converted Germans who stayed behind when Germany was dismembered after WWII.
The Turkish player Ötzil is playing a great game, but I'd say it’s a case of taking a talent from another nation and "Germanizing" i.e. assimilating him. We all know this principle works if your immigrant content is small enough, which is why Steve writes against mass-immigration. Mass-immigration basically destroys this cultural-enrichment which you get when you bring in a few talented ones and assimilate them. But when you assimilate someone, the diversity essentially goes away; this is why the MSM is so fucking stupid.
Why soccer will never get huge revenues in America:
ReplyDeleteSoccer is a middle-class, suburban sport. These people go to college and become professionals/entrepreneurs. The ones that are very good play in college and then to grad school or a middle class job.
Blacks, I mean 99% of blacks, hold out a hope of playing pro hoops or pigskin football.
Blue collar/rural whites play pigskin football and baseball.
AS long as the carrot of huge contracts/fame does not exist, blacks and rural whites will not consider soccer an alternative to hoops/fball/baseball.
Several things relating to this thread. First, the WSJ yesterday had an article about how the Anti-Fa (Anti-Fascist German Leftists) in Berlin were taking down a guy who put up a huge German flag. He's a Lebanese immigrant who loves Germany and is soccer-mad. He's had several of his huge flags stolen. The Anti-Fa call it "Kevin-Prince Boateng Kommando" in taking down and destroying German flags. Because the flag is racist, or somethign.
ReplyDeleteThe Anti-Fa are mostly young White German leftists from trustafarian backgrounds.
Second, regarding doping, there was an extensive article about blood doping and testosterone patches in professional cycling, as detailed by Floyd Landis, accusing Lance Armstrong and nearly every professional cyclist of doping.
It is curios that you never see many West African descent men accused of steroids/doping, save Barry Bonds. Even in the NFL. Nor doping accusation in marathoning amongst East African descent men. Only White guys show up in the majority time after time, in professional sports.
It would seem further, that while size/speed/strength and endurance are not normally distributed over each global population, hand-eye coordination is. And that further, middle class families with resources to coach/train athletes in complex, hard to master skills (Quarterbacking, kicking, hitting a curveball, snowboarding, skiiing) and/or some combination of low immediate payout tend to moderate West African / East African domination of professional sports.
BUT ... the Financial Times had a special about Rugby Union, in which it was noted that in Europe, RU was competitive financially and ratings-wise with soccer, and much more White. That France, which had been a losing nation in RU was now an up-and-comer, with many in France switching allegiance to RU from Soccer. Among SA Whites, RU is still far more popular than Soccer.
And the sport itself inside Europe has more upper class connotations than soccer, chief among them not standing for matches.
"Also, Spanish and Portuguese--and Southern Italians in Argentina--were originally more mixed than other Europeans thanks to their promixity to North Africa."
ReplyDeleteProbably it's too complicated to you but the NA inhabitants were white until the Arab's invasion, during the Roman Empire (do you know that?) NA was labeled as White Africa, there is Sahara between NA and Black Africa.
And furthermore between SE and NA there is the Mediterrean Sea: no black influx in Italy or Spain, no more that Mongoloids in Germany.
Global soccer is white because the rich and mid-level countries that are most interested are also very white.
ReplyDeleteBut in the countries with significant black minorities, France and Brazil, blacks take over the national team.
The blacks in Brazil's team are mutts or quadroons not pure blacks.
But there is another angle to see the issue: africans grow faster than whites and arrive before to play (it's not a case african's teams go bad in WC but dominate the youth's WC , such as under 17 or less, belong southamerican's teams.
Where there are too blacks the whites have not time to grow.
I actually remember playing soccer in 1959. The teams were indeed white - all white. That was because it was my high school gym class at Washington-Lee in Arlington Virginia. There was a screening board that gave every prospective student a thorough look over for skin pigment.
ReplyDeleteTherefore on that day when the class was introduced to soccer we were all white. There was one English guy in our class - we knew he was English because he spoke like the GEICO gecko. He hadn't been much of an athlete in our semester long survey of other team sports but he came into his own with soccer. No real American, myself included could even kick the damn thing much less dribble it down field. Our English cousin just ran through us as if we weren't there.
I have hated soccer ever since.
Albertosaurus
BamaGirl:
ReplyDeleteThe average Argentine doesn't appear anymore native american than the average white appalachia resident.
LOL. Maybe you should visit Argentina before making such ridiculous statements. This is how it is:
In Buenos Aires, nearly all "suits" are White. Not really distinguishable from, say, Madrid. The majority, however, have visible signs of Indian admixture. Around 20% look like Indians with only minimal European admixture. Such a distribution is, more or less, laso evident in Argentina's national soccer team. Do look.
Much of the glamor of the World Cup stems from it being a mostly white sport. Do you think up-and-comers like the South Koreans would be fascinated by the World Cup if it were traditionally dominated by, say, Indonesia, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Pakistan, and Bolivia? Would SWPLs in the U.S. love soccer if it were associated in their minds with "Kinshasa" rather than with "Barcelona"?
ReplyDeleteI dunno. NBA is mostly black, but Chinese and Japanese are crazy about it. Much more so than ice hockey.
Polka is all white and rap is nearly all black, but it looks like kids around the world--in Asia, Latin America, and even in Europe--love rap more than polka.
And I think people like Ali, Pele, and other blacks were huge stars all over the world. Indeed for the non-white world, the victory of non-whites in sports was often seen as a kind of triumph over Western power.
I think Sailer is wrong to say the world loves soccer because it's a white game. I think the world loves it because even weaker countries have a 'chance' of participating and doing okay or even pulling an not-so-rare upset.
ReplyDeleteEven if a handful of teams have won the World Cup, teams from all over the world get to compete and at least remain competitive throughout the tournament. Consider that Japan defeated Denmark, and South Korea defeated Greece. And Netherlands defeated the mighty Brazil. And Ghana did pretty good too.
It may be the only major sport where lots of countries can play and go back home without feeling totally shitfaced. Mexico lost but there is no great shame in losing by 1 or 2 pts. So, even in defeat, one's national flag and pride are not totally spoiled and soiled.
But imagine a world cup in basketball. US would romp everyone by 20-70 pts.
And a game like American football would favor only nations with huge guys and enough money to run an expensive football program. And no matter how much money they spend on the program, nations like Japan or Mexico will not have a chance of beating top teams; their guys are too small. In soccer, on the other hand, even medicore teams can either tie with or, in some cases, beat much better teams.
So, Sailer is focusing on the wrong thing. Soccer is not popular around the world because it is white and whiteness is cool. (If so, beach volleyball would be the biggest sport in the world.)
It is popular because it is one sport where all nations can wave their national flag and hope--even against great odds--that their team will do pretty well even if it doesn't win the big prize.
I don't think too many nations expect much of their national team in Olympics basketball. They know their teams are sacrificial lamb for the US Cream Team.
But all nations get excited with the World Cup. Even if their team doesn't make it to the final, there is some honor in making it to the final 16 or 8.
heavy weight boxing was far more popular in the days of Ali, Foreman, and Frazier than today, with Klitsch at the top.
ReplyDeleteI think one of the reason why soccer hasn't caught on in a big way in America is that many suspect it can't be a REAL sport if it has few blacks. In America, many people think blacks = best athletes. So, sports without many blacks are rather suspect, thus the lack of interest.
This rests on the assumption that its bottom-up fan pressure driving all these events. Do those who caommand marketing & advertising budgets, and TV scheduling have no say at all?
What if they were the ones deciding that a sport without enough blacks were not a fit spectacle. The sporting punditocracy seem to think so - are they channeling popular feeling or leading it?
"The blacks in Brazil's team are mutts or quadroons not pure blacks."
ReplyDeleteYup; Pele = Quadroon
Picture of Oezil. In the U.S. he would be accepted as white without a second thought. You can see a slight bit of Asian influence in the shape of the eyes if you're looking for it.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure about this. In many parts of the country and by many whites Oezil would not be considered white. He'd be considered Hispanic or Middle Eastern or something. Definitely foreign. In some place like New York he'd probably be considered white though.
Pele is as Congoid as they come.
ReplyDeleteOezil cannott pass for white. His is a swarthy mulim who reads the holy Koran before every match. 2 of the 11 starters on the German team are Muslim and two are poles. The first man off the bench is a black Brazilian!e
ReplyDeleteAgreed that he is the best player in the tournament.
Polka is all white and rap is nearly all black, but it looks like kids around the world--in Asia, Latin America, and even in Europe--love rap more than polka.
ReplyDeleteAgain, you leave out a major player - the media. Can we be entirely sure that at least some of the popularity of rap is not due to marketing?
I was talking to a young white guy the other week - very early 20s - he was saying how he used to listen to rap but, in essence, he had grown out of it now. Its a bit cliched but what was a formerly gullible teen - the prime target for music marketing - casting it aside.
Someone mentioned rugby earlier.
I understand its more popular than soccer in France, always has been. But the media hype would have one thinking otherwise ditto SA whites. Soccer is a black game, rugby a white one.
Even in England & Scotland I suspect that rugby is not as far behind soccer in popularity as the media would seem to portray, yet marketing spending and media attention is hugely skewed toward soccer.
In Wales, rugby is the national game more so than soccer.
In Ireland in recent years soccer has gained popularity but rugby is still more popular.
Whiskey:the Financial Times had a special about Rugby Union, in which it was noted that in Europe, RU was competitive financially and ratings-wise with soccer, and much more White
ReplyDeleteIt's more white for sure but ratings-wise rugby union is well behind soccer everywhere in Europe, except perhaps Wales. Even in Ireland and France soccer is still bigger, though the French rugby union league is doing very well these days. An important difference in Europe is that most people only watch rugby when international tournaments are held whereas soccer fans watch both national leagues and international tournaments.
Whiskey: That France, which had been a losing nation in RU was now an up-and-comer, with many in France switching allegiance to RU from Soccer.
France has always been a rugby power. It has won Five Nations tournaments going back to the 1950s. When I was growing up in the late 70s and throughout the 80s the French were generally considered to be the best in Europe, though not the world. They've also been finalists at the Rugby World Cup in 1987 and 1999 and semi-finalists in 1995 and 2007.
That all said, a recent poll in France showed that despite soccer being more popular than rugby twice as many French identify with the almost all white rugby team than with the almost all black soccer team.
"heavy weight boxing was far more popular in the days of Ali, Foreman, and Frazier than today, with Klitsch at the top.
ReplyDeleteI think one of the reason why soccer hasn't caught on in a big way in America is that many suspect it can't be a REAL sport if it has few blacks. In America, many people think blacks = best athletes. So, sports without many blacks are rather suspect, thus the lack of interest."
This rests on the assumption that its bottom-up fan pressure driving all these events. Do those who caommand marketing & advertising budgets, and TV scheduling have no say at all?
What if they were the ones deciding that a sport without enough blacks were not a fit spectacle. The sporting punditocracy seem to think so - are they channeling popular feeling or leading it?
Sports is like this. People are divided between wanting to see 'our side'(nation, race, ethnicity, city, etc)win versus wanting to see the very best.
So, everyone roots for their team in the NFL but everyone watches the superbowl.
Did blacks become popular in sports because of promotion by liberal media? I think that came AFTER their undeniable meritocratic rise in sports. For most of American history, they had to face many obstacles, and they certainly were not helped by whites.
Initially, many whites were reluctant to see rise the blacks in sports. I think this had less to do with blind bigotry than the fear that once blacks entered the sports, whites would not be able to compete since blacks are naturally better. And in some sports like NBA and NFL(and upper divisions in boxing until relatively recently), white fears proved correct.
White boxers didn't wanna fight blacks not so much because they feared losing but because they feared they would never regain the title upon losing. It would be a PERMANENT DEFEAT.
It's one thing to lose and keep the hope alive of winning the next time. But to lose and lose and lose and lose becomes humiliating. I think many whites are turned off by black dominated sports not so much because of black players but the sense of hopelessness for white players.
Whites wouldn't mind there being great black running backs or 100 m sprinters if some whites could do just as well from time to time. But it turns out blacks COMPLETELY dominate those events and positions. People like to believe in hope and change, but once blacks took over some sports, there was only hope for blacks. And despite all the crap about 'diversity', sports have become less racially diverse in many cases.
Though it may be true that Klitschkos were not promoted as heavily as some fighters in the past, it's also a fact that today's boxers are not of the caliber of past greats, and only liars would deny this. Not to take anything away form the Klitschkos, but they never faced anyone like Ali, Frazier, Liston, Norton, Foreman, Holmes, Tyson, etc. And Wlad got flattened by Corrie Sanders and Lamon Brewester of all people. Palookas!
The media does try to influence us, but it is also eager to give us what we want and cash in big on it. NASCAR became huge because it became an all-American white thang.
Music industry initially resisted rap music, but it got bigger and bigger. Major music companies figured they had to promote it too, or else lose out to the indies which were peddling that stuff.
The media is powerful but not all powerful. Suppose American Idol fixed results and gave top honors to guys like William Hung show after show. What would happen to its ratings? Media have been promoting Cate Blachette and Sarah Jessica Parker as beauties. Most guys just don't buy it from what I can tell.
adsfasdfasdf - I don't think too many nations expect much of their national team in Olympics basketball. They know their teams are sacrificial lamb for the US Cream Team.
ReplyDeleteYou quite sure about that?
wiki
They've done well but nothing like full spectrum dominance.
Re: England's poor WC performance (this affects Scotland, Wales and NI too in other years). UK teams play a longer season than many others, this means there is less time to prepare the England team before the WC or European cup. Even if the players who play outside England are available the ones plaing in England are not, they have less time to gel as a team plus there are issues regarding fatigue, tiredness.
Another theory is that for the main English clubs the rewards of the Premier league are so great, more than just about anywhere else in football, the English team requirements take second place. Just saying what I hear...
LOL. Maybe you should visit Argentina before making such ridiculous statements. This is how it is:
ReplyDeleteIn Buenos Aires, nearly all "suits" are White. Not really distinguishable from, say, Madrid. The majority, however, have visible signs of Indian admixture. Around 20% look like Indians with only minimal European admixture. Such a distribution is, more or less, laso evident in Argentina's national soccer team. Do look.
Buenos Aires also has a huge illegal Paraguayan and Bolivian population.
Headache says,
ReplyDelete"Many considered this a loss because Ballack is older and has much experience, so he can quieten the younger ones down when the pressure is on and things go south."
An American commenter said at the beginning of the WC that he'd rather play Germany with Ballack than without him, because Germany was more predictable with Ballack.
Yet the US can field a better soccer and hockey team than Russia and a hockey team that's the equal of the Canadians. And you're asking what's wrong with us.
ReplyDeleteThat may be true for some particular tournaments, but as a general statement it's BS. The Soviet team dominated international hockey for decades, and the post-communist Russian national team, while not quite that good, almost always finishes higher than Team USA in international tournaments. Team Canada usually trounces Team USA.
The Soviet national soccer team was pretty successful, too, and Russia currently has a lot more good players than the US.
As to the question of whether Turks are white, in Europe they certainly are not considered white. It is not that much about race (Greeks are generally considered white, even though physically they are pretty much indistinguishable from Turks), but about religion and culture. Turks are Muslims, who for centuries threatened and waged war against Europe. They also harbor very retrograde notions about women, for example.
In America, with its traditional cultural and religious diversity and lack of coherent ethnic identity for whites, physical characteristics are the only thing that matters when categorizing people. Therefore, Americans consider even Arabs as white people.
Steve:
ReplyDelete1. How about the Brazilians and Pele. Non-diverse?
2. The Ghanians kicked our asses.
3. There is a 50% chance the finals will end up multi-continent and the starting group of 32 had awesome geo-diversity.
The Brazilian squad is a special case. Americans, specially, tend to look at Brazil ignoring that, unlike America, race mixing has been going on for 500 years
ReplyDeleteThat means that Appearance and genes are correlated, but not strongly. Paulo Zulu is a Brazilian model who would go unnoticed in Madrid or Rome, and yet is 80% African in his DNA. Neguinho da Beija Flor is a samba composer, and Americans would call him 100% Negroid. Yet he is 80% European in his DNA.
I think that if a DNA test was made on all Brazilian players, the squad would be revealed to be much whiter than their looks suggest. There is an unspoken rule in Brazil, that all goalkeepers should be white because blacks can't do it. The experience of 1950 and 2006 shows why. Also, Brazilian coaches have always been pure white.
SO I not only expect the DNA of the Brazilian squad to mbe much higher than their looks suggest, but also Brazil to be increasingly white the more IQ demanding the position is
I think Sailer is wrong to say the world loves soccer because it's a white game. I think the world loves it because even weaker countries have a 'chance' of participating and doing okay or even pulling an not-so-rare upset.
ReplyDeleteBoth are wrong. Even in countries with no chance of ever making any major tournament it is usually the most popular sport by far. In many countries it is the most popular simply because it was the first international sport the population was introduced to but even in other countries soccer is unique in that it seems to catch up eventually with the traditional sports.
Soccer is just more appealing to more people whether they are casual or fanatical sports fans, no matter what their education, race, nationality, class, physical size, etc. Even in families like mine where most siblings and cousins grew up in different countries exposed to all sports at a young age - including baseball, basketball, American football, hockey, both rugby codes, cricket, tennis, golf, and motorsports - soccer is almost always the favourite sport. It is not due to lack of exposure (as is often claimed) to other sports.
I don't think too many nations expect much of their national team in Olympics basketball.
Perhaps because outside of tiny Lithuania and one or two other places nobody cares. Even in Serbia, Croatia, Spain, and other countries where they play basketball at a high level the sport doesn't capture the nation's attention the way soccer does. Canadians are better at basketball and baseball than soccer - they haven't qualified for the WC since 1986 - yet a WC soccer match on a week day morning involving obscure nations from the other side of the world is a bigger deal to Canadians (if TV ratings are anything to go by) than their national basketball team playing in the Olympics or baseball team at the World Baseball Classic or even major games involving virtually all their professional sports 'franchises' in prime time (except some NHL playoff games). It is the same throughout the world. Just saying "it is one sport where all nations can wave their national flag and hope--even against great odds--that their team will do pretty well even if it doesn't win the big prize" explains nothing.
LOL. Maybe you should visit Argentina before making such ridiculous statements. This is how it is:
ReplyDeleteIn Buenos Aires, nearly all "suits" are White. Not really distinguishable from, say, Madrid. The majority, however, have visible signs of Indian admixture. Around 20% look like Indians with only minimal European admixture. Such a distribution is, more or less, laso evident in Argentina's national soccer team. Do look."
I did: http://www.footiewallpapers.com/pic_upload/Argentina-Soccer-Team-wallpaper-27-512x341.jpg I don't see it..I have seen Argentines (and Chileans) though btw considering a large group of them lived on my floor at my university last year. Most of them just looked like mediteranean whites, one or two might have been castizos (1/4 Indian) though.
If you've seen Latin Americans with significant Indian admixture aka Mexicans, most Colombians, and Venezuelans it should be obvious that the guys on the Argentine soccer team have minimal indian admixture and are largely southern european in origin. Like I said, I'm pretty sure you could find whites in certain regions of the U.S with more indigenous blood. I mean come on, some of you would try to argue that slightly swarthy Cindy Crawford was not white if she came from the southern hemisphere.
Football is more interesting to watch than Soccer because there's a lot more complexity. It's a crypto-fascist-metaphor-for-nuclear-war and that's why it's fun to watch.
ReplyDeleteThere's the specialization of human types (bombers! fighters! tanks! artillery!), then there's the playbook (flank! pincer! ambush!).
Do they even HAVE a playbook for soccer?
Soccer's a lot of fun to play, in fact I enjoyed soccer more than football as a kid. But more watchable than football? You've got to be on something.
I mean, you gave it away as you described football in your comment, even; it practically screams "building tension." You don't write a good story by jumping into the climax and extending it for 90 minutes. You build slowly until the audience is ready, then you score with a 90 yard passing play. With football it's more of a boing-boing-boing-boing-boing-SCORE! type of thing.
ReplyDeleteAnd caring about who wins is the only way to get me interested in a Soccer game, but I regularly watch football just to watch football. I just pick someone to root for just to have someone to root for.
ReplyDeleteWhoops, mixed up my American and British English again. I meant with soccer it's a boing-boing-boing-score type of thing.
ReplyDeleteI did: http://www.footiewallpapers.com/pic_upload/Argentina-Soccer-Team-wallpaper-27-512x341.jpg I don't see it..I have seen Argentines (and Chileans) though btw considering a large group of them lived on my floor at my university last year. Most of them just looked like mediteranean whites, one or two might have been castizos (1/4 Indian) though.
ReplyDeleteIf you've seen Latin Americans with significant Indian admixture aka Mexicans, most Colombians, and Venezuelans it should be obvious that the guys on the Argentine soccer team have minimal indian admixture and are largely southern european in origin. Like I said, I'm pretty sure you could find whites in certain regions of the U.S with more indigenous blood. I mean come on, some of you would try to argue that slightly swarthy Cindy Crawford was not white if she came from the southern hemisphere.
Again, if you have any relevant genetic studies you could point to, please do so.
Soccer players aren't necessarily representative of the population.
ReplyDelete"But imagine a world cup in basketball. US would romp everyone by 20-70 pts."
ReplyDeleteWhat do you mean, imagine?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIBA_World_Championship
And no, US does not romp everyone. In fact, the last time the US team won a gold medal was 1994. Since then, they haven't done better than the third place.
"Soccer is a middle-class, suburban sport. These people go to college and become professionals/entrepreneurs. The ones that are very good play in college and then to grad school or a middle class job."
ReplyDeleteThe people who pay the money make it huge, not the players.If whites wanted to watch soccer it would become huge. Blacks are not the best soccer players. There are some good black players,but they don't dominate.
The suburban white football teams destroy black teams all the time. How many black publiic league schools have won the state championship in Illinois. One I think and East st Louis a couple of time.
"In Ireland in recent years soccer has gained popularity but rugby is still more popular"
ReplyDeleteIreland should have qualified for the WC over France but for Henry's handball. So the majority black France from a larger nation shouldn't have made it over small white Ireland.
The Brazilian team has always been essentially black and mulatto. On the other hand, it's famous race car drivers have been white. The brazil coach left off three of the countries best player in hopes of making his team a boring defensive white team like italy--and it failed badly. He was beaten by a Dutch team manufactured largely in soccer child labor camps--soccer bots.
ReplyDeleteEurope has small west African population compared toamerica . If it approached us levels the majority of the major west European national sides would be black.
Soccer will never be big in the US because the World Cup will never be big in the US. The WC is a contest between nations, and the United States is NOT a nation.
ReplyDeleteBesides the US-USSR hockey game in the '80 Olympics, I have zero memories of a game involving one of our national teams. But this I will never forget, and if I had a $165 million, I would give it all a way if that's what it took to beat those cheaters again.
But what is really interesting, and also really sick and mentally ill, is the psycho-sexual infatuation the avergae slovenly white man has for black americans…The real exception in the world is not between those who love soccer and other sports. ITS BETWEEN WHITES IN AMERICA SO ASHAMED OF THEIR PHYSICALITY THAT THE ONLY SPORTS THEY ARE DEVOTED TO ARE THOSE WITHIN WHICH THEY ARE INCAPABLE OF COMPETING, and/or ARE DOMINATED BY BLACK MEN.
ReplyDeleteWhite Americans favor baseball, football, and basketball because those have historically been their most cherished spectator sports, even prior to blacks’ domination of the latter two. It has nothing to due with supposed psycho-sexual infatuation with black Americans. White Americans simply have never been large fans of soccer beyond their prepubescent years. That they remain fans of football and basketball suggests greater loyalty to these sports than to blacks. It further shows that most U.S. whites lack the petty nationalistic tendencies that you so admire.
"heavy weight boxing was far more popular in the days of Ali, Foreman, and Frazier than today, with Klitsch at the top.
ReplyDeleteI think one of the reason why soccer hasn't caught on in a big way in America is that many suspect it can't be a REAL sport if it has few blacks. In America, many people think blacks = best athletes. So, sports without many blacks are rather suspect, thus the lack of interest."
This rests on the assumption that its bottom-up fan pressure driving all these events. Do those who caommand marketing & advertising budgets, and TV scheduling have no say at all?
What if they were the ones deciding that a sport without enough blacks were not a fit spectacle. The sporting punditocracy seem to think so - are they channeling popular feeling or leading it?
Sports is like this. People are divided between wanting to see 'our side'(nation, race, ethnicity, city, etc)win versus wanting to see the very best.
So, everyone roots for their team in the NFL but everyone watches the superbowl.
Did blacks become popular in sports because of promotion by liberal media? I think that came AFTER their undeniable meritocratic rise in sports. For most of American history, they had to face many obstacles, and they certainly were not helped by whites.
Initially, many whites were reluctant to see rise the blacks in sports. I think this had less to do with blind bigotry than the fear that once blacks entered the sports, whites would not be able to compete since blacks are naturally better. And in some sports like NBA and NFL(and upper divisions in boxing until relatively recently), white fears proved correct.
White boxers didn't wanna fight blacks not so much because they feared losing but because they feared they would never regain the title upon losing. It would be a PERMANENT DEFEAT.
It's one thing to lose and keep the hope alive of winning the next time. But to lose and lose and lose and lose becomes humiliating. I think many whites are turned off by black dominated sports not so much because of black players but the sense of hopelessness for white players.
Whites wouldn't mind there being great black running backs or 100 m sprinters if some whites could do just as well from time to time. But it turns out blacks COMPLETELY dominate those events and positions. People like to believe in hope and change, but once blacks took over some sports, there was only hope for blacks. And despite all the crap about 'diversity', sports have become less racially diverse in many cases.
Though it may be true that Klitschkos were not promoted as heavily as some fighters in the past, it's also a fact that today's boxers are not of the caliber of past greats, and only liars would deny this. Not to take anything away form the Klitschkos, but they never faced anyone like Ali, Frazier, Liston, Norton, Foreman, Holmes, Tyson, etc. And Wlad got flattened by Corrie Sanders and Lamon Brewester of all people. Palookas!
The media does try to influence us, but it is also eager to give us what we want and cash in big on it. NASCAR became huge because it became an all-American white thang.
Music industry initially resisted rap music, but it got bigger and bigger. Major music companies figured they had to promote it too, or else lose out to the indies which were peddling that stuff.
The media is powerful but not all powerful. Suppose American Idol fixed results and gave top honors to guys like William Hung show after show. What would happen to its ratings? Media have been promoting Cate Blachette and Sarah Jessica Parker as beauties. Most guys just don't buy it from what I can tell.
It's one thing to lose and keep the hope alive of winning the next time. But to lose and lose and lose and lose becomes humiliating. I think many whites are turned off by black dominated sports not so much because of black players but the sense of hopelessness for white players.
ReplyDeleteWhites wouldn't mind there being great black running backs or 100 m sprinters if some whites could do just as well from time to time. But it turns out blacks COMPLETELY dominate those events and positions. People like to believe in hope and change, but once blacks took over some sports, there was only hope for blacks. And despite all the crap about 'diversity', sports have become less racially diverse in many cases.
Though it may be true that Klitschkos were not promoted as heavily as some fighters in the past, it's also a fact that today's boxers are not of the caliber of past greats, and only liars would deny this. Not to take anything away form the Klitschkos, but they never faced anyone like Ali, Frazier, Liston, Norton, Foreman, Holmes, Tyson, etc. And Wlad got flattened by Corrie Sanders and Lamon Brewester of all people. Palookas!
The media does try to influence us, but it is also eager to give us what we want and cash in big on it. NASCAR became huge because it became an all-American white thang.
Music industry initially resisted rap music, but it got bigger and bigger. Major music companies figured they had to promote it too, or else lose out to the indies which were peddling that stuff.
The media is powerful but not all powerful. Suppose American Idol fixed results and gave top honors to guys like William Hung show after show. What would happen to its ratings? Media have been promoting Cate Blachette and Sarah Jessica Parker as beauties. Most guys just don't buy it from what I can tell.
"heavy weight boxing was far more popular in the days of Ali, Foreman, and Frazier than today, with Klitsch at the top.
ReplyDeleteI think one of the reason why soccer hasn't caught on in a big way in America is that many suspect it can't be a REAL sport if it has few blacks. In America, many people think blacks = best athletes. So, sports without many blacks are rather suspect, thus the lack of interest."
This rests on the assumption that its bottom-up fan pressure driving all these events. Do those who caommand marketing & advertising budgets, and TV scheduling have no say at all?
What if they were the ones deciding that a sport without enough blacks were not a fit spectacle. The sporting punditocracy seem to think so - are they channeling popular feeling or leading it?
Sports is like this. People are divided between wanting to see 'our side'(nation, race, ethnicity, city, etc)win versus wanting to see the very best.
So, everyone roots for their team in the NFL but everyone watches the superbowl.
Did blacks become popular in sports because of promotion by liberal media? I think that came AFTER their undeniable meritocratic rise in sports. For most of American history, they had to face many obstacles, and they certainly were not helped by whites.
Initially, many whites were reluctant to see rise the blacks in sports. I think this had less to do with blind bigotry than the fear that once blacks entered the sports, whites would not be able to compete since blacks are naturally better. And in some sports like NBA and NFL(and upper divisions in boxing until relatively recently), white fears proved correct.
White boxers didn't wanna fight blacks not so much because they feared losing but because they feared they would never regain the title upon losing. It would be a PERMANENT DEFEAT.
The World Cup is a paradox: it's pretty random but the results always come out about the same: traditional soccer powers get to the finals.
ReplyDeleteBesides this statement being self-contradicting, how "random" is the World Cup compared to America's most popular sport, the NFL, as has been claimed on this blog before?
Last 10 WC and NFL champions and runner-ups:
WC#1 WC#2 SB#1 SB#2
ITA, FRA Ravens/Giants
BRA, GER Pats/Rams
FRA, BRA Bucs/Raiders
BRA, ITL Pats/Panthers
GER, ARG Pats/Eagles
ARG, GER Steelers/Seahawks
ITL, GER Colts/Bears
ARG, NED Giants/Pats
GER, NED Steelers/Cards
BRA, ITL Saints/Colts
Randomness Metrics:
#unique #1: 5/WC vs 7/NFL
#unique #1: 6/WC vs 14/NFL
As of 2010, there are only 32 NFL clubs but about 200 soccer teams that compete which are narrowed down to 32 WC qualifiers.
Given the much larger field of competition and smaller randomness metrics above, the WC is far less random than the NFL.
By Steve's own HBD statements, this is expected because WC teams are largely composed of specific national ethnic groups compared to the enforced equality/player randomness of NFL team compositions.
The appeal of WC Soccer is not so much that it is "white", but because it is one of the only fields where instinctual human nationalism/ethnic tribalism is tangible, permitted and even celebrated in modern (esp Western) society. Similarly, quickly forgotten uni-dimensional track races were once more interesting every 4 years when they embodied a nationalistic Cold War faceoff with the Soviets and E. Germans.
The only way to interpret these continued claim that soccer is "random" in light of a HBD blog that previously claimed soccer is clumsey and awkward, is that the author believes soccer is not so much a sport of skilled athletes as a random game of chance. Better just say you dislike soccer than try to pass off negative analysis that starts with patently false and absurd assertions.
adsfasdfasdf - I don't think too many nations expect much of their national team in Olympics basketball. They know their teams are sacrificial lamb for the US Cream Team.
ReplyDeleteYou quite sure about that?
wiki
They've done well but nothing like full spectrum dominance.
I believe pros were not allowed in the Olympics until the 1988, so Olympics basketball used to be more competitive.
But once pros were allowed to play, US became dominant. Of course, when the best pros decided not to play, as in Greece in 2004, US did much less well.
But the best did decide to play in 2008 and they destroyed everyone.
"If you've seen Latin Americans with significant Indian admixture aka Mexicans, most Colombians, and Venezuelans it should be obvious that the guys on the Argentine soccer team have minimal indian admixture and are largely southern european in origin."
ReplyDeleteSome mestizos are exotically beautiful. Some are funny looking.
"That means that Appearance and genes are correlated, but not strongly. Paulo Zulu is a Brazilian model who would go unnoticed in Madrid or Rome, and yet is 80% African in his DNA. Neguinho da Beija Flor is a samba composer, and Americans would call him 100% Negroid. Yet he is 80% European in his DNA."
ReplyDeleteI'll bet Paolo is white in the DNA where it counts. Most DNA is just useless data, so being 80% African may not necessarily mean much.
Suppose within the African DNA, 20%of it is superfunky hardcore black while the other 80% is pretty generic. It could be Paulo got the generic African DNA but skipped out on the superfunky stuff.
To be fair, Ghana should have made it to the semifinal over Uruguay. Right at the end, a Ghanaian player headed the ball which crossed the goal-line but was swatted away by hand by Uruguay's Luis Suarez. Apparently in those situations they don't award the goal but allow a penalty kick. The Ghanaian player missed the penalty kick, the game ended and went into the penalty kicks round, and Uruguay won on penalty kicks.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/world-cup-2010/7870325/World-Cup-2010-why-cant-football-tackle-cheats.html
And no, I'm not shilling for the Africans or something. I agree with everything Steve has written about soccer and the World Cup over the past couple weeks. I'm just pointing this fact out.
http://gawker.com/5579405/joey-chestnut-wins-fourth-hot-dog-eating-contest-kobayashi-arrested
ReplyDeleteWHITE MAN IS KING!!!!
One thing that's annoying about the World Cup is how they use the plural forms of verbs when talking about the teams like they do in British English (ex. "England are scoreless"). The American commentators do this as well. Very annoying.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it's just me but watching the Argentina matches did anyone else get the impression that Diego Maradona didn't really know what he was doing as a coach? He was gesticulating a lot but I had the sense that he had absolutely no clue what to do.
ReplyDeleteBamaGirl:
ReplyDeleteI have seen Argentines (and Chileans) though btw considering a large group of them lived on my floor at my university last year. Most of them just looked like mediteranean whites, one or two might have been castizos (1/4 Indian) though.
Argentines living in your dorm are not representative of Argentina's population AT ALL.
As for the soccer team - although it doesn't have to be representative either, it in no way supports your claim that "the average Argentine doesn't appear anymore native american than the average white appalachia resident". Of the 13 that went against Germany, here is my subjective categorization:
Whites/mostly whites: Javier Mascherano, Maxi Rodriguez, Lionel Messi, Gonzalo Higuain, Gabriel Heinze, Nicolas Burdisso, Martin Demichelis.
Very obvious Am.Indian admixture, probably around 50%: Angel di Maria, Javier Pastore, Carlos Tevez, Sergio Romero.
Some/in between group: Nicolas Otamendi, Sergio Aguero.
In other words, almost half of the team would not be able to blend seamlessly in the Mediterranean, much less in Appalachia.
The Klitschkos seem to cause serious pain to black pride, based on some posts here.
ReplyDeleteI'm pulling for Germany or the Netherlands. The Spanish and Uruguayan sides are pretty swarthy in comparison.
ReplyDeleteFunny. Last week, many of you were trumpeting these “swarthy” nations as great exemplars of the white race. Now, we are seeing that the previous inclusion of Argentina, Spain, Paraguay, and Uruguay was simply a handy trump card used to aggrandize the race. We now know towards whom your true loyalties go.
This observation leads me to conclude that behind today’s white nationalism is a faint whiff of old-fashion Aryanism/Nordicism. However, because white nationalism has fallen into disrepute and remains a small, fringe movement, present-day nationalists realize the importance of enlarging the scope and reach of whiteness so as to bring numbers to their side. As the old adage goes, there is strength in numbers. One can argue that black Americas do the same by unwaveringly including mulattoes and quadroons in their pool.
Thus, Iberians, Armenians, Lebanese Maronites, Western Anatolians, Jews, Argentines, Southern Italians, Persians, and so forth are often lumped in with Germans, Scandinavians, Celts, and Slavs as fellow whites. I have no problem with this broad definition of white racial identity as it makes genetic sense.
However, I have a feeling that, if white nationalism ever gains true political force and begins setting actual policy, the definition of whiteness will eventually be tightened so as to concentrate power in the hands of a few selected, more “authentic” racial claimants. Therefore, Mediterraneans, Levantines, and other Whites with Gold Chains will be excluded from the Cool Kids’ Table, leaving only Northern Europeans and Slavs.
If I remember correctly, Friedrich von Hayek opined in Road to Serfdom that, in any totalitarian-like movement, the meanest tend to rise and grab the reins of power. If the most cynical and venal nationalists begin to run the show, even Slavs may be kicked out, as they were in a previous nationalistic episode several decades ago.
By the way, I must say that this year’s German team looks very impressive. Germany is likely due another World Cup title.
I'm pulling for Germany or the Netherlands. The Spanish and Uruguayan sides are pretty swarthy in comparison.
ReplyDeleteFunny. Last week, many of you were trumpeting these “swarthy” nations as great exemplars of the white race. Now, we are seeing that the previous inclusion of Argentina, Spain, Paraguay, and Uruguay was simply a handy trump card used to aggrandize the race. We now know towards whom your true loyalties go.
This observation leads me to conclude that behind today’s white nationalism is a faint whiff of old-fashion Aryanism/Nordicism. However, because white nationalism has fallen into disrepute and remains a small, fringe movement, present-day nationalists realize the importance of enlarging the scope and reach of whiteness so as to bring numbers to their side. As the old adage goes, there is strength in numbers. One can argue that black Americas do the same by unwaveringly including mulattoes and quadroons in their pool.
Thus, Iberians, Armenians, Lebanese Maronites, Western Anatolians, Jews, Argentines, Southern Italians, Persians, and so forth are often lumped in with Germans, Scandinavians, Celts, and Slavs as fellow whites. I have no problem with this broad definition of white racial identity as it makes genetic sense.
However, I have a feeling that, if white nationalism ever gains true political force and begins setting actual policy, the definition of whiteness will eventually be tightened so as to concentrate power in the hands of a few selected, more “authentic” racial claimants. Therefore, Mediterraneans, Levantines, and other Whites with Gold Chains will be excluded from the Cool Kids’ Table, leaving only Northern Europeans and Slavs.
If I remember correctly, Friedrich von Hayek opined in Road to Serfdom that, in any totalitarian-like movement, the meanest tend to rise and grab the reins of power. If the most cynical and venal nationalists begin to run the show, even Slavs may be kicked out, as they were in a previous nationalistic episode several decades ago.
By the way, I must say that this year’s German team looks very impressive. Germany is likely due another World Cup title.
"Suppose within the African DNA, 20%of it is superfunky hardcore black while the other 80% is pretty generic. It could be Paulo got the generic African DNA but skipped out on the superfunky stuff."
ReplyDeleteYou might want to ratchet down your scientific explanation to layman's decipherable level there, Francis Crick. Some of us did not earn Genetics PHDs from Caltech.
Anonymous:
ReplyDeletethe starting group of 32 had awesome geo-diversity
Do realize that this awesome geo-diversity is a product of very explicit quota system. Only under quota system Honduras and Ivory Coast can make it while many good UEFA teams must be left behind. (Without quotas, WC would become EC plus 3-4 American teams).
In the bigger scheme of things, blacks are completely insignificant.
ReplyDeleteThen why do people in the West—neocons, paleocons, HBDers, liberals, progressives—endlessly talk about them?
Funny. Last week, many of you were trumpeting these “swarthy” nations as great exemplars of the white race. Now, we are seeing that the previous inclusion of Argentina, Spain, Paraguay, and Uruguay was simply a handy trump card used to aggrandize the race. We now know towards whom your true loyalties go.
ReplyDeleteThis observation leads me to conclude that behind today’s white nationalism is a faint whiff of old-fashion Aryanism/Nordicism.
Yes, facebook is filled with these crypto-Nazi shitters.
As much as I respect Buchanan, his Germanocentrism--US and UK should have defacto sided with Hitler to defeat, enslave, and exterminate tens of millions of 'Asiatic Horde' Russians--sickens my stomach. God bless Churchill.
Richard Hoste also belongs in this sicko camp.
Re: Maradona as a coach ...
ReplyDeleteWell, what can you do as a World Cup coach once the game starts other than to gesticulate? It's kind of like being the Captain of the Ryder Cup team in golf. Your real job is mostly to do interviews to promote the Ryder Cup.
"Suppose within the African DNA, 20%of it is superfunky hardcore black while the other 80% is pretty generic. It could be Paulo got the generic African DNA but skipped out on the superfunky stuff."
ReplyDeleteYou might want to ratchet down your scientific explanation to layman's decipherable level there, Francis Crick. Some of us did not earn Genetics PHDs from Caltech.
Caltech? I got it from Youtech, aka Youtube Tech.
The Klitschkos seem to cause serious pain to black pride, based on some posts here.
ReplyDeleteOnce Pakistanis began driving taxis, black cabbies went into limo service.
Blacks left boxing, which they now see as a trash Latino and Slavo-white trash sport. I guess they are moving on up.
Dear Texas First:
ReplyDeleteThanks, I had forgotten it was 4th and 5. In retrospect, it seemed like Vince Young was so unstoppable that game I'm now surprised it took till 4th down.
My theory is that USC should have put Reggie Bush in at free safety on that last Texas drive with one assignment: to not let Young beat them with his legs.
Brazil until 1994 was mostly white.In 1982 and 1986 was 9/11 white: Zico,Sicrates,Falcao...only trought the last decade of the siecle, Selecao is become mostly quadroon or mutts.
ReplyDelete"I believe pros were not allowed in the Olympics until the 1988, so Olympics basketball used to be more competitive."
ReplyDeleteWrong again, Sport. NBA pros were not allowed, European pros have been playing in the Olympics forever: Thirty year old men vs. college sophomores, and they still got their asses kicked.
"This observation leads me to conclude that behind today’s white nationalism is a faint whiff of old-fashion Aryanism/Nordicism."
Whoa! ya' think?
"...leaving only Northern Europeans and Slavs."
Nope, technically not Slavs either, they are, ostensibly, not allowed into Neo-Nazi movements, as you have to be able to trace both sides of your heritage back to one of seven European countries.
The Poland-born players in the German squad are testament not to multicultural Germany but the opposite - to a conception of German nationhood based on blood - they emigrated to Germany under the German Law of Return because they are descended from ethnic Germans (though the connection may be tenuous).
ReplyDeleteI've seen pics of Lionel Messis's parents and while the dad looks 100 % Italian, the mother is definitely a mestizo (/a?).
ReplyDeleteHowever, I have a feeling that, if white nationalism ever gains true political force and begins setting actual policy, the definition of whiteness will eventually be tightened so as to concentrate power in the hands of a few selected, more “authentic” racial claimants.... If the most cynical and venal nationalists begin to run the show, even Slavs may be kicked out, as they were in a previous nationalistic episode several decades ago.
ReplyDeleteTribes are held together by their enemies. If a tribal/racist movement got real power and wiped out the "other", the internal civil wars would start within a generation or two. If not for the Arab threat to hold them together, Israel would be locked in civil war between the orthodox and secular right now.
Steve, Sean Taylor would have done better as a running back then Reggie Bush as a free safety. There is a ruthlessness that you have and that is honed from playing defense. Bush was a frigging halfback's halfback. heck, I'd put Clinton Portis ahead of Bush as a head-knocking football player...have you seen him flatten defensive ends with 50+ pounds more than him on pass blocking? Of course he's an awkward tackler too. :(
ReplyDeleteOnly under quota system Honduras and Ivory Coast can make it while many good UEFA teams must be left behind
ReplyDeleteAre you following the World Cup? What good UEFA teams? Teams that couldn't beat the likes of Greece and Slovenia to qualify? There were loads of mediocre (or worse) European teams in this World Cup. Maybe one can take away a spot from North America or Africa, but it should be awarded to South America, not Europe. Ivory Coast specifically - who have players in Europe's finest clubs - might very well have qualified in a different group. And anyway, I don't think some geodiversity in this case is such a bad thing. One would think that New Zealand owed their place to an unfair quota, but they managed to do very well nevertheless.
Brazil until 1994 was mostly white
Really? Brazil 1970:
http://www.pro-evolution-soccer.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/brazil1970.jpg
You wouldn't mistake it for a Klan gathering, would you? The 1982 team was somewhat whiter than teams that came before and after, I wouldn't make too much of this.
"Then why do people in the West—neocons, paleocons, HBDers, liberals, progressives—endlessly talk about them?"
ReplyDeleteThis endless talking gives them the false importance they get. See blacks and Whites are kind of obsessed with each other in many ways. For most Whites and blacks in the U.S.A, South Africa or say the U.K., race relationships for these two races means primarily the relationship between each other. Even though as we speak there are more Hispanics in the U.S.A than blacks and there are more Asian Indians in the U.K. than all the blacks (Caribbean and Africa) combined. And I am not including the Pakistanis and the Bangladeshis in the U.K. yet. I have come across many Asians who have pointed out this co-obsession. Even Shiva Naipaul, the brother of Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul pointed out his fact in his book on Africa 'North to South: An African Journey'.
But the fact is that in the coming future, the West is going to become much weaker and Asia much more powerful. And in the U.S.A Hispanics are gonna become a much important force. Hispanics do not have any guilt feelings towards blacks and once they remove Whitey from the number one position, will not need blacks anyways nor will they have any pity for them. In the global stage, there is no way at all that blacks can compete with Asians (includes South Asians like Indians and middle Easterners like Arabs etc…) economically. Tiny Asian Indian populations run the entire economies of African countries and have the ability to make or break them at their whims.
Africa matters only because they have resources except which their economic and geopolitical effect on the world is insignificant. And it is likely to stay like this.
"This observation leads me to conclude that behind today’s white nationalism is a faint whiff of old-fashion Aryanism/Nordicism."
ReplyDeleteObviously, and its a pretty disgusting whiff if you ask me. And honestly the Nordicist aspect of today's white racialism ensures that no one will ever take it seriously.
Steve: Well, what can you do as a World Cup coach once the game starts other than to gesticulate?
ReplyDeleteThey could make decent substitutions. Diego Milito scored both goals in the Champions League final in May, the winning goal against CSKA Moscow in an earlier round, the only goal in the Coppa Italia final, and the goal that won the league championship for Inter Milan, yet Maradona didn't put him on even as a sub against Germany when they were desperate. I think he only played 20 minutes or so during the entire WC. He also left some experienced defenders off the squad he brought to South Africa. Judging by how pathetic their defenders were against Germany it seems he got that wrong too.
To be fair, Ghana should have made it to the semifinal over Uruguay.
Stop spreading this nonsense. These kinds of desperate 'professional fouls' to prevent an opponent scoring occur in all sports, especially in the NFL and NBA. Ghana missed the penalty and Suarez, the Uruguayan got sent off and suspended for the match against the Dutch. Besides, as I said earlier, the free kick that led to the Ghanian goal scoring opportunity was an appalling decision by the ref so justice was done.
"One thing that's annoying about the World Cup is how they use the plural forms of verbs when talking about the teams like they do in British English (ex. "England are scoreless"). The American commentators do this as well. Very annoying.'
ReplyDeleteThat is grammatically correct in England. I thought is was funny when I first heard it too.
Hey Steve I'm guessing you'll stop "thinking about soccer" next week, so before your mind turns to finding a good non-QB white footballer read up on the "Soccer War" between the USFA, ASL and Fifa which ended the golden era of American Soccer.
ReplyDeleteBlacks left boxing, which they now see as a trash Latino and Slavo-white trash sport. I guess they are moving on up.
ReplyDeleteIf people "leave" sports, then did anyone "leave" boxing before that?
You might want to ratchet down your scientific explanation to layman's decipherable level there, Francis Crick. Some of us did not earn Genetics PHDs from Caltech.
ReplyDeleteThat's actually quite funny by your standards.
"Wrong again, Sport. NBA pros were not allowed, European pros have been playing in the Olympics forever: Thirty year old men vs. college sophomores, and they still got their asses kicked."
ReplyDeleteWell, pros in communist countries were not considered to be professional because athletes played for the state.
It was BS but that was the rule until 1988 or 1992. It may have been 1992. I think the Soviets beat the US college kids in Seoul. It's been so long I don't remember.
"Brazil until 1994 was mostly white.In 1982 and 1986 was 9/11 white: Zico,Sicrates,Falcao...only trought the last decade of the siecle, Selecao is become mostly quadroon or mutts."
ReplyDeleteIf quadroons are mutts, are pure race people 'inbreds'?
Other than soccer, I've noticed most of Brazil sports has been white in volleyball and basketball(at least until the early 90s). I think this is because Brazil is a capitalist country where only people with money got to play certain games. Any poor kid could play soccer, but only those with access to infrastructure could play stuff like basketball and volleyball.
ReplyDeleteUS is capitalist too, but a far richer country, so even kids of humble background got to play football, basketball, and now even tennis, with the William Sisters whupping all the white girls around the world.
In a truly poor country, poor kids have access to only stuff like soccer.
Cuba, on the other hand, had a state-run program that scoured the whole nation for the best of the best, and 99% of the top athletes turned out to be black.
If Brazil had a Cuban-style system for the Olympics, it could probably pool together a lot of athletic talent. But, maybe most white or rich Brazilians like things the way they are. They wanna play and win in most games--at least at home--while blacks are left to run around in the favelas.
The most interesting contrast is China and India. My guess is that the average Asian-Indian, being caucasianish, is naturally bigger and stronger than your average Chinese. But, India seems to show little interest in sports other than field hockey and cricket. In per capita terms in medals, India has to be the absolute worst.
India probably could be a major Olympic sports power if it wanted. But as with the poor in Brazil, the potential athletes goes unnoticed and un-nurtured in India, where most poor have no access to nothing and there is no government program of national athletics--as there is in China.
"Given the much larger field of competition and smaller randomness metrics above, the WC is far less random than the NFL."
ReplyDeleteIn the finals, yes.
But in the build-up to the finals in soccer, not-so-good teams from sucky countries do often tie or, even on occasion, beat much better teams. South Korea(!!!) made it to the semi-finals in Seoul.
Suppose we had an international contest in American style football. Could South Korea have made it to semi-finals? Could Mexico win a single game against the US, ever? No.
Also, NFL is made up only of American teams with pretty much the same makeup: mostly big blacks and some hillbillies. In NFL, all the teams are more or less comparable in speed, strength, and athletic firepower. It's more or less a game among equals, even if the best of the best pull out ahead.
But World Cup brings together the very best with the very worst--even freaking North Korea.
Even though the great ones eventually pull out ahead of the sucky ones, the fact remains that mediocre or sucky teams often tie or even beat the great ones.
A world cup of American-style football would be far more predictable than world cup of soccer. Japan, if lucky, may tie with Germany or even Brazil in soccer, but what is the chance of Japan tying with US in football? Japan will be lucky if it doesn't love by a 100.
Look at what's happened to interest in track & field over the decades as East Africans have come to dominate the endurance races and the West African diaspora the sprints. (People don't believe me these days when I say that the Olympic running races used to be a really big deal. Who'd ever be interested in people running?)
ReplyDeleteThe idea of being interested in watching people running seems bizarre to me. Once every four years I manage to pay a little attention to track and field, but let's be honest here - watching a bunch of guys running is a not a good spectator sport.
This observation leads me to conclude that behind today’s white nationalism is a faint whiff of old-fashion Aryanism/Nordicism.
ReplyDeleteWell, you would say that, wouldn't you? That being what you already believed long before you read the comment you were supposedly reacting to.
Polka is all white and rap is nearly all black, but it looks like kids around the world--in Asia, Latin America, and even in Europe--love rap more than polka.
ReplyDeleteRock-n-roll is nearly all white and it seems to be passably popular around the world.
Ozil is a bum, he should be playing for his home country.
ReplyDeleteHe is. He was born in Germany.
No, they are not non-white; however, they are more likely to be non-Protestant. As the sovereign debt crisis in Europe is proving, that's no small difference between nations.
ReplyDeleteIceland is about 85% Protestant.
Slavic and Latino trash? Thank you, you've made my point.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't say black heavyweights are movin on up, like Mr. Jefferson. More like down -- to the mat.
Obviously, and its a pretty disgusting whiff if you ask me. And honestly the Nordicist aspect of today's white racialism ensures that no one will ever take it seriously.
ReplyDeleteSo people of Northern European descent shouldn't be allowed to preserve themselves?
"Suppose we had an international contest in American style football. Could South Korea have made it to semi-finals? Could Mexico win a single game against the US, ever? No."
ReplyDeleteIf we had an international contest in American football, initially no other country would be competitive, because they don't have any kind of farm system. But if high school and college football became widespread in Europe or Asia, then in a decade or so there would be competitive games.
I've been around. Blacks routinely beat up whites in all walks of life. Whites flee from blacks, not the other way around.
ReplyDeleteI wish you pathetic nerds would not project your own gutlessness onto the rest of the white race. I've been around blacks - I served in the US Army. And I can't say I've ever been beaten up by blacks, let alone "routinely".
We are talking generally. I highly doubt if Brock Lesnar got beat up by blacks either.
"Blacks left boxing, which they now see as a trash Latino and Slavo-white trash sport. I guess they are moving on up."
ReplyDeleteIf people "leave" sports, then did anyone "leave" boxing before that?
Many whites left boxing because they saw little hope in it--like in the 100 m sprint.
But, many blacks left it because they got bored with it, and it because they found greener pastures in other sports, government jobs, or crime.
Boxing is a grueling sport where only the few at the top make any money. Rest just get their heads bashed in. Blacks lost interest.
Also, I think a lot of inner city gyms closed down for whatever reason--too much crime, kids into drugs than sports, bad attitude and no respect for coaches, etc.
"Obviously, and its a pretty disgusting whiff if you ask me. And honestly the Nordicist aspect of today's white racialism ensures that no one will ever take it seriously."
ReplyDeleteSo people of Northern European descent shouldn't be allowed to preserve themselves?
Don't let your blonde daughter marry a swarthy Greek or beastly Russian. Preserve yourself!!!
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Keep your pale sickly skin if it means so much to you.
"So people of Northern European descent shouldn't be allowed to preserve themselves?"
ReplyDeleteI do think Northern Europeans should preserve themselves in their own countries, and I believe all "old-world" countries should make an effort to preserve their indigenous population/heritage. However there is certainly no need to denigrate the "europeanness" of other groups. My ire is mainly directed towards the various (likely) Americans posters who have nordicist tendencies and spend too much time obsessing over recessive features. I don't think many white Americans outside the upper midwest are even technically "nordic" anyway, which makes it doubly dumb to focus on that as an aspect of white racialism.
However there is certainly no need to denigrate the "europeanness" of other groups.
ReplyDeleteHow does one group asserting its "Northern Europeanness" have anything to do with denigrating the "Europeanness" of other groups?
"Are you following the World Cup? What good UEFA teams?"
ReplyDeleteRussia (played in semifinals in the European Cup 2008), Sweden (round of 16 in 2002 WC, quarterfinal in 2004 EC, round of 16 in 2006, out in the group stage in 2008), Croatia, Ireland, Ukraine, Czech Republic, etc. These are fine teams, with decent and even some great players - like Arashvin, Ibrahimovic, Eduardo.
I do think that the European countries ought to have another team in the WC.
"But, many blacks left it because they got bored with it, and it because they found greener pastures in other sports, government jobs, or crime. Boxing is a grueling sport where only the few at the top make any money. Rest just get their heads bashed in. Blacks lost interest."
ReplyDeleteNo, they didn't lose interest. If you exclude all those Eastern European guys, you will see that your black comrades still dominate profi boxing overwhelmingly. LOL
I do hope that these illusions will help to heal your wounded soul. After your NBA affletes lose another championships, I am sure it will be because they are leaving NBA and started to play curling.
"I think one of the reason why soccer hasn't caught on in a big way in America is that many suspect it can't be a REAL sport if it has few blacks. In America, many people think blacks = best athletes. So, sports without many blacks are rather suspect, thus the lack of interest."
ReplyDeleteCuriously, these best athletes don't dominate any international sport and pick up by far the least number of Olympic medals out of all races. How is it possible?!
"In every highschool, the games that really matter are basketball and football."
ReplyDeleteFootball? That's the American variant of rugby, where guys play for 5 seconds and then the audience watches replays from different angles for quarter a hour?
"Bullshit. If anything, soccer proves you can devise a game where the best athletes don't necessarily win."
ReplyDeleteCan you understad, my dear, that the definition of the "best athletes" differs from sport to sport? Do you actually know, where your "best athletes" (blacks) stand in international comparison? Their moderate height (178 cm) certainly isn't anything spectacular and their overall body build is moderate, somewhere between that of Central Europeans and North Italians.
Yes, when your body fat is stored internally and not under the skin, the dark muscles look nicely ripped. And it doesn't matter that your torso is quite thin, when you can impress people by muscle concentrated on limbs. But the barbell in the gym lacks sense for aesthetics and it won't help you much, I am sorry.
http://www.iwf.net/doc/statistics/WORLD_CHAMP_SENIOR_001_146.PDF
http://www.powerlifting-ipf.com/fileadmin/data/results/2009/World_Men_and_Women/Men/scoresheet.htm
"But imagine a world cup in basketball. US would romp everyone by 20-70 pts."
ReplyDeleteIs somebody a psychiatrist here? Could this be classified as a sign of some delusional lunacy?
"I think many whites are turned off by black dominated sports not so much because of black players but the sense of hopelessness for white players."
ReplyDelete"Black dominated sports"? What is it? Do you mean NBA, NFL and track? Yes, I am shaking in my pants, standing in the front of this black sports achievment.
"But once pros were allowed to play, US became dominant. Of course, when the best pros decided not to play, as in Greece in 2004, US did much less well. But the best did decide to play in 2008 and they destroyed everyone."
ReplyDeleteThis is understandable, because mediocre players like LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony or Dwyane Wade just couldn't avert all those failures since 2002.
asdfasdfasdfad said...
ReplyDeleteWhich suckey WC team beat which great soccer team this year? Can you point to even a single match where an obviously superior team playing better soccer was defeated by a crappy team. I can't even with all the bad officiating that risks affecting soccer's lower scoring matches. Most likely, traditional powerhouses will again arise from the initial brackets of to the #1 and #2 position.
South Korea defeated Greece 2-0, tied Nigeria 2-2 and lost to Argentina 4-1 to make the next round. They lost to Uraguay 2-1 on a late score this year and were #4 in the 2002 WC. As your example of a crappy team, which superior team did S.Korea defeat? Are 3 of 4 consistently played games a fluke?
None of these scores are that surprising if you saw any of the matches, saw how the teams played and realize that highly cohesive teams like S.Korea often outperform fluid world rankings in venues like the WC.
Yes, I suppose a WC of American football would be won by Americans since it's been optimized with specialized roles for America's W.African/Euro phenotype mix. Similarly, a WCs of the following would probably be won:
sprinting: W.African
distance: E.African
jumping: E.African
boxing light: Latin
boxing heavy: Euro
wresting: Euro
strong man: Euro
UFC: Euro
swimming: Euro
cycling: Euro
decathalon: Euro
wintersports: Euro/NE Asian
(perhaps short track speed skating for African)
gymnastics: Euro/NE Asian
ttennis/badmit: Asian
etc.
Someone did a good post on how different phenotypes are better suited for different events. Although SE Asian Indians are caucasoid, they seem to be smaller and thinner boned with significantly less muscle mass, strength and endurance. In what sports do you think a well-financed sports combine in India would produce world-class athletes? What sports are wealthly, well-nurished Western-born SE Asian Indian interested in and do well in (I really don't know)?
What seems unique about soccer is that it is the only popular athletic team sport that can be played competitively by so many different ethnic phenotypes because the rules don't favor just one aspect like sprinting, endurance, physicality or skilled ball control. Even on the individual level, it even selects against extreme genetic freaks favored by other sports like American football or basketball becoming more than just a spectator sport.
Is there any other sport that comes close to being so ethnically and individually pheotype-neutral? As the globalized sport for our new world order, it's hard to imagine it not gaining ground in the US. That's one good reason for many here to hate soccer.
"US is capitalist too, but a far richer country, so even kids of humble background got to play football, basketball, and now even tennis, with the William Sisters whupping all the white girls around the world."
ReplyDeleteWilliams Sisters? I thought they were renamed as "Steroids Brothers" already.
"Cuba, on the other hand, had a state-run program that scoured the whole nation for the best of the best, and 99% of the top athletes turned out to be black."
An interesting observation, considering that Cuba with the average male height 174 cm is one of the least likely "athletic hotspots". The same is valid for Jamaica (173 cm). Since slightly undernourished West Africans have the same physique like Southern Europeans (ca. 175 cm, moderate body build), blacks in Cuba should dominate sprints and jumps, but not throws and longer distances, for which Spaniards are well built. However, even Cubans, who compete internationally in throws, are all black, and Cubans competing in the 800 m are almost exclusively black as well. This is helpful for us, because we know at least one country in the world with a similarly strange, unlikely pattern: USA. Which explains all the mystery of black athletic excellence in Cuba.
"I don't think many white Americans outside the upper midwest are even technically "nordic" anyway, which makes it doubly dumb to focus on that as an aspect of white racialism."
ReplyDeleteFor all the patina of science and objectivity, most HBDers just want to belong to the most exclusive definition of "white" that will have them. If they're Nordic, than limiting "white" to Nordic makes perfect sense; if they're not, then limiting the white club to Nordic's is "dumb" or evil. If it's dumb to draw a line between Nordics and non-Nordic whites, why isn't it dumb to draw one between whites and non-whites? Should the former Nane Maria Lagergren not live happily ever after with Kofi Anan?
“"This observation leads me to conclude that behind today’s white nationalism is a faint whiff of old-fashion Aryanism/Nordicism."
ReplyDeleteObviously, and its a pretty disgusting whiff if you ask me. And honestly the Nordicist aspect of today's white racialism ensures that no one will ever take it seriously.”
There is place for Nordicism as well as general White nationalism to exist at the same time. Yes Mediterranean Europeans are very similar to Northern/ Central Europeans but minor differences in looks and behavioural tendencies do exist even though these differences are smaller than say those between blacks and Whites. You see the world follows the Afghan tribalism phenomenon that Steve wrote about some time back. That village over there in my valley is my enemy but when faced with people from the other valleys, all villages in my valley become my allies. Similarly those people from the other valleys become by allies when I face people from a different region all together.
Thus Nordics and Med are allies when facing blacks, Arabs etc… but the internal competition can still exist.
One more example, I am an Indian and in India we hate Pakistanis like poison, but in a place like the U.K. we become ‘desis’. When facing native Whites or blacks for example there is a good chance that Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis will come together even thought we still hate and distrust each other. There are also cases in English inner cities where Indian and Pakistani businesses have helped each other fight black crime and black gang racism.
Besides finally, I am a non White and even I sometimes feel that few (just a few) Southern Europeans do not behave or look like Europeans. I have had other South Asians living in Europe point out this fact to me at times. We never get such doubts about unmixed Northern Euros.
"Which suckey WC team beat which great soccer team this year? Can you point to even a single match where an obviously superior team playing better soccer was defeated by a crappy team."
ReplyDeleteSmall geeky Japanese beat much bigger Danish team.
Italy didn't make it to the top 16.
Crappy Algeria tied with much better England.
Netherland defeated Brazil, a coniderably better team.
Ivory Coast tied with much better Portugal.
And North Korea back in the 1960s went pretty far. Rare, but miracles do happen in soccer whereas can you imagine North Korea defeating any major power in basketball or American football?
And France won the World Cup once too. France came out of nowhere to win.
"Steve: Well, what can you do as a World Cup coach once the game starts other than to gesticulate?"
ReplyDeleteMan, it seems that the ESPN doesn`t provide any information. For example in the Japan-Holland game you could see that the Holland changed their tactics during the halftime. Without it they couldn`t have breaked the japans tight defence. Of course you have also the substitutions. You can pick certain type of players for certain type of spots. The most important thing of course is to plan the tactics ahead of the game. For example Chile`s manager known as "el loco" will not decide tactics before he has measured the playing field with his own feet. I know this because I listen and watch some old guys moving pieces on the table and drawing on television screen before games and during the halftimes.
Yes, I suppose a WC of American football would be won by Americans since it's been optimized with specialized roles for America's W.African/Euro phenotype mix. Similarly, a WCs of the following would probably be won:
ReplyDeletesprinting: W.African
distance: E.African
jumping: E.African
boxing light: Latin
boxing heavy: Euro
wresting: Euro
strong man: Euro
UFC: Euro
swimming: Euro
cycling: Euro
decathalon: Euro
wintersports: Euro/NE Asian
(perhaps short track speed skating for African)
gymnastics: Euro/NE Asian
ttennis/badmit: Asian
etc.
Hold on, you're doing this all wrong.
Asians win in table tennis and badminton cuz they're the only geeks who play those dumb sports. If blacks played em, they'd prolly dominate. But no proud Negro would be caught playing something as gay as badminton.
As for light boxing, many of the great latinos have been black. Duran might have some negro genes. Even so, he lost decisely to Hearns, Hagler, and Leonard. Chavez was a great boxer but didn't do well against Frankie Randall(he lucked out in the second bout, winning by disqualification) and Sweet Pea Whittaker. Oscar Dela Hoya lost to a bunch of blacks. Mayorga got clobbered by a black guy too.
If best black athletes went into heavyweight boxing, they would win as in the days of Louis, Liston, Ali, Tyson. Boxing has become a joke. Not just pros but Olympics too. Olympics boxing used to have guys like Foreman, Ali, Frazier, Stevenson, etc. The heavyweight finalists for Beijing was some Italian palooka and some CHINESE GUY(!!!!!!!!). It's like even Cuba has pretty much thrown in the towel on that faded sport. If a Chinese lug can make it to the finals, it's a sport no one cares about. And I think some chinese guy won the light heavyweight medal. I mean what the hell???
There is no glory in boxing anymore. Blacks stay away from it.
I can't watch heavyweight boxing anymore. It's just slow plodding white guys and third rate black palookas. No great natural talent with the possible exception of Vitali Klitschko but he hasn't been truly tested since his Lewis fight.
Strongman competition. I dunno. It's possible that the strongest individuals are a bunch of Nordics or the fat Iranian guy who won weightlifting at the Olympics. But if huge and powerful Nigerians were fed well and trained for strongman competition, they might beat everyone. But it's a sport that doesn't attracts the best black talent.
If blacks entered swimming in a big way, they would win the short sprints. There are few blacks in swimming but they've done very well in short sprints or splashes as the case may be.
Cycling. Short distance would be won by blacks IF they entered it in big numbers.
Wrestling. A sport avoided by most blacks, but even so, they've done very well. Kenny Monday beat the best in two Olympics. Big black Cuban Wrestlers took on and defeated the best Russian wrestlers. If blacks enter wrestling in a major way, they would probably dominate, like they do in football.
UFC. More blacks will enter this as time goes on. Best lb for lb boxer is Anderson Silva. He didn't just beat whites but totally destroyed them. Rampage and Evans also won decisively against white guys. Brock Lesnar is a big lug, but if someone like Tyson or Foreman entered UFC, he could prolly beat Lesnar.
Williams Sisters? I thought they were renamed as "Steroids Brothers" already.
ReplyDeleteBlacks don't need steroids. Their body produces afroids.
Typo: Jumping: W.African
ReplyDeleteEveryone has their own subjective hierarchy for which sports should be considered the most athletic or most interesting to watch.
A lot of this has to due with cultural conditioning and personal experience. Sports that I aggressively played still give an adrenaline rush when I watch a good match years later.
If there is an objective standard, it should be those sports that emphasize our most primitive survival instincts: fighting. By this standard, UFC, wrestling and even the pretty artificial sport of boxing represent the peak of athleticism. All other sports consist of varying degrees of artifice and special effects entertainment.
Next on the objective hierarchy would be sports that demand a wide range of generalized skills like the soccer, triathelons and the decathalon that enhance human fitness for survival.
Next would be narrow athletic skills like running (long and short distances), throwing and swimming which could help in certain survival situations.
Next would be specific advanced skill that could be generalized into valuable survival skills like rugby union, O/D-line NFL, racquet/sword, and rollerball.
Last on the hierarchy would be freakish hyper-specialized sports with complex rules/equipment as well as entirely artificial playing field requirements such as our modern megasports in America. Basketball players, baseball players and wide receivers would be especially useless in a primative society unless they were good at some of the other sports mentioned.
In other words sprinting, jumping and catching (the domain of W.African athletic dominance) would be pretty useless in and of them selves in a outside our modern world that isolates us from demands of nature and competition from our fellow man. This is probably just one of the reasons soldiers from W.Africa, Indonesia and India didn't conquer and colonize as much as European, Middle Eastern and NE Asian societies did.
As a disclaimer, the media folks for American major sports do a great job within the US of packaging and marketing their product. The NFL has fallen flat abroad but basketball has had success abroad. Of the two, I don't really get the excitement of largely meaningless high-scoring ball in hoop games so much as the war analogy of the NFL (or it's forebearer Rugby).
As an increasing number of modern American men are jock-sniffing coddled wussies who never experienced a real fight or know the salty taste of blood, perhaps it's easier to sell these mega-sports that are so far removed from our base sense of reality, survival and true athleticism.
"What seems unique about soccer is that it is the only popular athletic team sport that can be played competitively by so many different ethnic phenotypes because the rules don't favor just one aspect like sprinting, endurance, physicality or skilled ball control. Even on the individual level, it even selects against extreme genetic freaks favored by other sports like American football or basketball becoming more than just a spectator sport."
ReplyDeleteThe popularity of football naturally stems from the fact that the demands in this game are extremely variable. Almost everybody can compete - both 165 cm tall Maradona or 202 cm tall Koller.
Other team sports like basketball, volleyball, rugby, handball or water polo place premium on extremely tall physiques, because the ball is either handled in the air or you are exposed to close body contacts.
I really don't understand, how a whole nation can be so delusional and believe that the excellence in basketball or American rugby (pardon, football) is some proof of "athleticism". The same can be said about other sports I mentioned above. These are sports for huge clumsy guys - or, better said, "for the most athletic among clumsy monsters".
Outside USA, the popularity of these sports is roughly proportional to the proportion of these monsters in the population, i.e. moderate at best. Only certain countries, like e.g. small Lithuania, can be called "basketball-crazy" nations, because the relatively low international competition in basketball can bring them some global success that they couldn't enjoy in such a highly competetive game like football.
If there is any "tall" sport with high demands on overall athletic abilities, then I would name volleyball, because the lean, agile physiques in this game stand closest to the widest range of athletic events.
"Stats don't lie" - or how did "the greatest athletes in the world" in the World Cup. Stats of activity during the game: totals+ averages per player in bars.
ReplyDeleteJudge by yourself.
Argentina-Nigeria 1:0
Low activity time spent (%) 87% -87%
Medium activity time spent (%) 6% - 6%
High activity time spent (%) 7% - 7%
Distance covered (metres) 95,427 (8,675) – 93 549 (8533)
Top speed (km/h) 30.93 (22.66) – 31.10 (22.29)
Sprints 851 (97) – 737 (86)
Greece-Nigeria 2:1 (Nigeria red card 16 min.)
Low activity time spent (%) 86 - 87
Medium activity time spent (%) 7-7
High activity time spent (%) 7-6
Distance covered (metres) 96 792 (8779) – 85 795 (8259)
Top speed (km/h) 31.57 (24.70) – 26.03 (21.96)
Sprints 782 (100) – 573 (65)
Nigeria-Korea 2:2
Low activity time spent (%) 85 - 83
Medium activity time spent (%) 7 - 8
High activity time spent (%) 8 - 9
Distance covered (metres) 99 304 (9028) – 107 515 (9766)
Top speed (km/h) 28.51 (21.15) – 30.02 (22.27)
Sprints 843 (99) – 1041 (117)
Cote d’Ivoire-Portugal 0:0
Low activity time spent (%) 84 - 81
Medium activity time spent (%) 8 - 9
High activity time spent (%) 8 - 10
Distance covered (metres) 105 125 (9565) – 109 763 (9979)
Top speed (km/h) 26.02 (20.65) – 23.63 (20.93)
Sprints 1036 (118) – 970 (112)
Brazil – Cote d’Ivoire 3:1
Low activity time spent (%) 86 - 87
Medium activity time spent (%) 7 - 6
High activity time spent (%) 7 - 7
Distance covered (metres) 97 670 (8930) – 95 748 (8706)
Top speed (km/h) 30.75 (24.94) – 28.51 (23.25)
Sprints 765 (96) – 834 (97)
KLDR-Cote d’Ivoire 0:3
Low activity time spent (%) 83 - 83
Medium activity time spent (%) 8 - 8
High activity time spent (%) 9 - 9
Distance covered (metres) 104 897 (9528) – 105 466 (9580)
Top speed (km/h) 25.87 (21.73) – 24.59 (22.20)
Sprints 963 (139) – 941 (109)
Japan-Cameroon 1:0
Low activity time spent (%) 83 - 85
Medium activity time spent (%) 8 -7
High activity time spent (%) 9 - 8
Distance covered (metres) 109 940 (10 584) – 102 958 (9841)
Top speed (km/h) 30.13 (25.15) – 30.13 (23.33)
Sprints 971 (116) – 782 (92)
Cameroon-Denmark 1:2
Low activity time spent (%) 85 - 83
Medium activity time spent (%) 7 - 8
High activity time spent (%) 8 - 9
Distance covered (metres) 99 675 (8821) - 106 780 (9457)
Top speed (km/h) 26.72 (22.31) - 27.11 (21.88)
Sprints 1005 (117) - 1054 (123)
Cameroon-Netherlands 1:2
Low activity time spent (%) 84 - 84
Medium activity time spent (%) 8 - 8
High activity time spent (%) 8 - 8
Distance covered (metres) 102 386 (9302) – 104 397 (9489)
Top speed (km/h) 22.85 (19.98) – 25.94 (21.00)
Sprints 977 (113) – 956 (110)
Serbia-Ghana 0:1 (Serbia red card 74 min.)
Low activity time spent (%) 86 - 86
Medium activity time spent (%) 7 - 7
High activity time spent (%) 7 - 7
Distance covered (metres) 94 150 (8740) – 97 692 (8881)
Top speed (km/h) 23.14 (21.02) – 29.03 (21.52)
Sprints 764 (88) – 937 (105)
Ghana-Australia 1:1 (Australia red card 24. min.)
Low activity time spent (%) 85 - 82
Medium activity time spent (%) 7 - 8
High activity time spent (%) 8 - 10
Distance covered (metres) 101 776 (9251) – 102 695 (10 001)
Top speed (km/h) 24.71 (21.64) – 29.36 (22.36)
Sprints 966 (111) – 1090 (121)
Ghana-Germany 0:1
Low activity time spent (%) 83 - 82
Medium activity time spent (%) 8 - 9
High activity time spent (%) 9 -9
Distance covered (metres) 106 051 (9640) – 108 940 (9903)
Top speed (km/h) 30.13 (22.24) – 28.39 (22.33)
Sprints 1037 (118) – 1098 (125)
Just a point about terminology: I think when people say "Nordic", they really mean Germanic (or should). The Nordic countries include Scandinavia plus Finland, Iceland, Greenland, and a few small islands. That's only about 25 million people in total. There's certainly more Germans with stereotypically Nordic features than in all the Nordic countries combined. Germanic means those descended from the Germanic tribes: the Nordics, Germans, Dutch, English, and Flemish. Unlike the fiction of Nordic particularism, the Germanic non-Germanic divide is a relevant one in Europe today (see Belgium).
ReplyDeleteP.S. Yes this doesn't account for the Scottish and Irish, but they've been thoroughly Anglicized by the English over the centuries that any differences are insignificant.
I didn't think to notice the racial makeup of the Uruguayan squad, but some Mayan features were detectable in the faces of the Paraguayans.
ReplyDeleteTry Guarani. For the Chilenos try Mapuche.
Someone who knows I follow soccer sent me a link to this post, and I've been reading the comments thread in awe. It's dumbfounding that this many people would expend all of this energy having what they think is a serious intellectual debate focused on a sport that they clearly know nothing about.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, I have read all 206 comments and have not seen a single one from an author who understands what makes a great soccer player or how a successful national soccer team is built. As far as I can tell, this is little more than a right-wing circle jerk whose participants are unfazed by their own cluelessness.
Wanna know why Germany's doing so well? Ain't got nothing to do with race. From an article in the Guardian:
"[A]fter his country's early exit from Euro 2000 'the German FA has invested an annual €20m [£16.5m] earmarked for talent promotion in the widest sense of the word. At grassroots level, a nationwide network of 366 training centres has been set up, mostly using the infrastructure of local clubs with above-average facilities, where 14,000 youngsters aged 11-14 receive extra tuition by way of a weekly two-hour training session imparted by a DFB-appointed coach. This is in addition to the training they do with their respective clubs. It is more than likely that some of them will feature in the German national team eight years from now.'"
Do you think many African nations have that kind of money to throw around? You set up a system like Germany's in Ghana, and you'd see a huge dividend on the field.
A successful World Cup team is the result of financial investment, a high level of cultural interest, and myriad other factors that include strategy, team chemistry, timing of peak performance, etc. Trying to tease out some lessons about race is a fool's errand.
Shut up and watch the games...or not. Those of us who love the game couldn't care less.