Soccer and the intellectual

Clever piece up at Slate today by Bryan Curtis, on how soccer has become the favorite sport of American intellectuals. I especially liked this observation:

There's also a frisson of underworld glamour in soccer writing. To chronicle the international game is, in many cases, to mingle with thugs, hooligans, and all sorts of unsavories. "There's a strong, strong element of working-class chic in American fandom," says David Plotz, Slate's resident soccer obsessive. "It's like fake macho for smarty-pantses." One needn't venture to Glasgow or Rome to seek out lunch-pail pals, of course—the intellectual could just as easily find them stateside at a college football game or NASCAR event. Perversely, it seems easier for an American soccer fan to make common cause with Italian mobs, who might happen to be shouting pro-fascist chants, than with someone from Alabama, who might happen to be a Republican.

It will surprise no one, I'm sure, to learn that I don't give a rat's Ronaldinho for soccer, but that's not because of faux-populism. I just don't like sports all that much. I much prefer the drinking, the eating and the carousing that attend sporting events (what is LSU football season for except to drink beer and cook up a big gumbo?). That said, I will once again put on my KNVB jersey, find a Dallas sports bar that will broadcast a match involving the Dutch team, and turn out to root for Heineken, I mean, HOLLAND. Go Orange!