Working on my post about David Hogg put me in the mood to watch the Key & Peele Futbol Flop sketch.  I love that show.

I did a Google search that found an old Atlantic article from 2014.  I know it’s six years old, but I started reading it and decided to post about it.

Dissecting American Soccer’s Hatred of the Flop Is a World Cup Tradition
Another World Cup has begun and that means another opportunity to explain away America’s global soccer failures on our stubborn obsession with fairness and sportsmanship.

An American obsession with fairness and sportsmanship.  Tell me why that’s bad you Leftist fucks.

Experts agree that American soccer players are particularly bad at one essential skill of the sport: flopping. On the cusp of the U.S. team’s opening match against Ghana, The New York Times reminded us why the U.S. just doesn’t flop very well, or much at all. The practice of the flop is a tried-and-true method of manipulating each game’s referee to make calls go your way by aggressively exaggerating fouls or the appearance of fouls. The benefit — as Brazil’s Fred showed on the opening day of the World Cup (image above) — can be as decisive as an occasional undeserved penalty kick.

American players are still Americans, and deep down in their American hearts, they just can’t bring themselves to use a bullshit appeal to authority to get an unfair advantage.

However, American-born players rarely flop and aren’t great at selling their falls. The prevailing theory why that is? Flopping is dishonest and… un-American:

That idea [of flopping], though, runs contrary to the ethos of idealized American sports. As [World Cup assistant Tab] Ramos said, American athletes are typically honest on the field, no doubt influenced by years of being told to be strong, battle through contact and finish the play. The tendency of American soccer players to eschew diving, [ex-player Kyle] Martino said, is directly related to the fact that diving is one of the things that soccer critics in the United States rail against so passionately.

That is quintessentially American.  We believe that America is the land of opportunity and if you just be honest, work hard, and persevere, you can be successful.

We don’t like corruption, and we don’t like to think of it as the norm.

To the major practitioners of the flop — Europeans and South Americans — flopping is part of the game. 

Because Europe is the land of big government and South America is the land of Banana Republics.  The people there know that to get ahead you either have to appeal to big government or bribe a government official.

In the States, however, it’s often cited as one of the key aspects of soccer that keeps it from wider American acceptance. In basketball or hockey, for instance, the worst thing you can be accused of is taking a dive just to get a call.

At this point, it should be noted that the World Cup was most popular in Blue America that wants us to act more like the rest of the world.  Those same places that voted for Hillary.  It’s the donors for those places that are the bankers that got a pass for the skeezy bullshit they pulled with the housing market.

Wider America that hates professional liars and cheaters, and doesn’t want to pull a fast one on the ref to be the way to win hates World Cup soccer.   They also hate Elizabeth Warren.  And they should on both accounts.