Should Soccer Make Space for Other Sports?

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Should Soccer Make Space for Other Sports?

That distinction has only become more pronounced in the years since. The major leagues in the major sports — the Premier League, the Champions League, the N.B.A. and the N.F.L. — are now year-round entertainment. They are awash with money. Their stars are among the most famous people on the planet.

Almost every other sport, by contrast, seems to be struggling to find its place. That is never more clear than during the Olympics, that quadrennial spectacle in which most of us find ourselves captivated by swimming or track and field or volleyball for 17 days and pledge to watch more of it, to embrace a healthier and more varied sporting diet.

And then, of course, we find ourselves drawn back into our old habits, intrigued to see how that new midfielder will do, dazzled by the bright lights, appalled and thrilled by the vulgarity and the absurdity of it all. (The new ********* season has not yet started and the sentence “

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As a rule, this is treated as a problem for everyone else to solve. Soccer is held up as an paradigm of what a sport can become if only it tries hard enough. Its competitors, all those mere games it has left behind, are encouraged to find ways to make up ground, to be more creative, more open to ideas, more receptive to investment. It is, they are told, a Darwinian, dog-eat-dog world, and if they cannot keep up, they deserve to be left behind.

That is why, at the Paris Games, the pole vault posts light up green when a jumper clears the bar, and red when they fail. (It is a tremendous shame that nobody has yet thought of a glowing, flashing discus, but that idea is available to rent at a cost.) It is why cricket authorities have experimented with various new formats in a game that cherishes its tradition like few others.

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#Soccer #Space #Sports

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