Out of Our Depth

Last night on "The Colbert Report" thanked the Japanese women's soccer team for saving America from having to care about soccer.  But maybe we've all been too hasty in our dismissal of "the beautiful game."  After all, international soccer has everything we American look for in a sport: athleticism, suspense, and apparently rampant corruption.

We're not just talking about the occasional steroid injection or a few grand slipped to the Belgian midfielder (did we say that right?  Midfielder?) to miss a free throw (whatever). That's kid stuff:

"Specific games that have drawn scrutiny include an under-20 matchup between Argentina and Bolivia in December in which the referee, who was from Hungary, extended the game by more than 10 minutes after gamblers had bet heavily that a goal would be scored in the last five minutes, and a Bahrain-Togo game in which the Togo team, a 3-0 loser, was later revealed to be fake."

We had to read that last part a couple of times.  The Togo team was fake?!?  How do you fake a whole team?  (Granted, people have questioned the authenticity of such teams as the New York Mets, but, hard though it is sometimes to believe, they appear to be an actual baseball team.)  Shouldn't the fact that the entire team of. . . Togans?. . . spoke only Mongolian and kept trying to whack the ball with a club carved from a yak's horn have tipped somebody off?

No wonder the US can't compete in international soccer.  Our athletes may be unscrupulous cheaters, but these guys are in a whole different league.

Solipsistography
"Game Fixing Rattles Soccer Around World"