Tag Archives: football

Global Soccer State

            There is no such thing as a “Global Soccer State.”  The phrase itself is simply laughable.  It implies the entire world under a rule of the game of soccer, and such a thing is impossible due to the nature of “soccer.”

We, The United States of America, elected an American soccer player as president in the year 2–8.  He had run as an independent, and the only reason he was elected was because the candidates running for the two head parties had both called upon the help of their organizations to make the most convincing argument to the people not to vote for their opponent–that they were dead.  Pretty soon, both parties were left in shambles from the constant hits, and there were so few candidates left alive to choose as a head for either party that the best-choice candidates elected to run were, for the Reds, a pet rock; and for the Blues, a bucket of old seawater.
Joshua Damien Johnson was one of the greatest American soccer players in the history of American soccer.  Not being a European, not a single soul knew who Joshua Damien Johnson was.  Soon, he changed his named to the simple Dámíén; and, without knowledge of the team he owned in the America’s soccer league, transferred himself to the English Premier League where he was promptly exalted as a thoroughly mundane footballer and the glorified hope of the American national team.
After his team was relegated two years in a row to the third-tier league he was discharged from his English team and bought back by a team in America’s soccer league for three hundred million dollars.  No one in America knew or seemed to care that the English League One was not in fact the number one league in England, and no one in America knew that this man coming in from Europe who had a Brazilian-sounding name was actually an American.  Three years playing in Europe had erased twenty-eight years living in America as Dámíénmania gripped the collective hearts of the American media and the collective hormones of American teenage girls.   Then, after rounding up a career of overhyped ineffectuality, Dámíén surprised the nation with the fact that he was, in fact, an American citizen, when he saw that his popularity for doing nothing was a perfect wave to ride into a political career by running for President.
On the pitch of himself in the 2–8 election, Dámíén was able to capture the vote of every foreigner, immigrant non-citizen, Californian, independent, and every other hypothetical voter whose vote did not count or matter.  Against the fierce competition, he was able to squeak out a narrow victory, winning by a few hundred or so votes to gain the presidency.  There was some speculation as to how he won without having any political experience, but the truth was that he fit into the field naturally.  After all, just like soccer with the World Cup, politics only mattered to Americans once every four years.  And at the end of those four years, we never once won.
There were off-year elections, but our off-year political elections only seemed to be watched by the rest of the world to see to see whether or not the US would shape up its blundering act.  President Dámíén saw that this was not right.  In his mind, as the special one- the one with the power to change it- he saw that the United States should have been involved in the off-year contest.  It just wasn’t fair to the people that it only mattered every four years.  Why should it be that only European countries could play in the off-year Euro competition?
So the United States of America joined Europe.  We joined the European Union and told The International Mapmaker of the World to rename the Atlantic Ocean the European Pond.  Along with it, the word “soccer” was erased from the International Dictionary to be replaced by its proper form, “football;” and America’s national anthem was modified to become a Techno version of the Star Spangled Banner.  Dámíén finally got the dream that every American soccer player dreamed- to have been born in a European country.
Canada and Mexico, who had both been kneeling for the past something-hundred years underneath the US president’s desk, quickly followed; and when South America received word of this sometime within the next ninety years, they also tagged along.
Suddenly, with the whole western world- basically, the whole world- now Europe, we were a Global Football State.  To make it official–and to make things easy–the rest of the world came swiftly.  First was Australia, who said that they had become Europe before everyone else- even Europe- but had forgotten to tell everyone and so deserved special privileges (which they were denied for having been Australia).  Then, after Russia decided to stop being difficult by splitting themselves in half and being in two continents to just be one, the rest of Asia gave up their whole “Eurasia” bellyaching and decided to give in to just calling themselves Europe too.
(On an unrelated note:  in the year 2–0, The International Mapmaker of the World accidentally spilled a bottle of White-Out on where Africa was without knowing it before turning it in to the World Map Association- and ever since then, the rest of the world had forgotten them.)
Under the Global Football State, countries and continents were no more.  Instead, the world was divided into States where the powerful and prominent football teams were centered, spanning the area in which the supporters of that State Team resided.  In such a vast revolution, one thing stayed the same- the two-party system.  Half of us went on to riot; the other half went on to become the police force as a result of it.

Over time, things only got worse for Europe… but we got used to it.  The rioters and the police constantly fighting in the streets… it was eventually droned it out as the sounds of nature.  And when a few rioters got a little overzealous about the tenets of their team, oh well… another Football War, which with the tangled alliances between the Nationalized State Teams, ended up as another World War.  But World Wars weren’t even that big of a deal anymore.  With somewhere around 90 of them, no one seemed to care that much anymore (besides the people who died; but they were dead, so no one cared about what they were saying).  In fact, the World Wars became so routine that nearly immediately after they all started happening, they began to get sponsors.  Immediately after The Gatorade Seventeenth World War, up came World PowerAde War XVIII, and AIG’s World War 20, just to be followed by Microsoft ‘-8 World War 40: Home Edition.  My favorite, due to the sheer irony of it, was The 78th World War Sponsored by Band-Aid.  There were some World Wars that didn’t get sponsorship- but that’s because they didn’t have sponsors, and therefore, weren’t advertised enough to catch on, and ended up ending themselves before they could get a sponsor.
And that’s not what you had to watch for, anyway.  The World Wars were nothing.  What you really had to watch out for was the Super World Wars.  I can’t begin to describe how huge they are using ancient world standards… let’s just say that Super World War II was so big that Coca-Cola and Pepsi teamed up to cosponsor it.
The people still alive at the end of the last Super World War… consisted entirely of the advertisers, now rich beyond our means.  We were so rich, we couldn’t even count how much money we had.  A lot of us planned to use our wealth to research some way to make a new block of land that we could put new armies and soccer teams on.  Instead, we just ended up all buying million-euro pairs of the new Adidas Dámíén PredatorSwevePulse # 10 boots, and in 2-9-, we lucked out and found out there was some new country that wasn’t on any maps, unknown to Europe, and completely untouched by civilization, not counting the civilizations that were already there.
When we got to the new world, the natives there told us to “keep it down.”  We promptly took their land, enslaved them, and called it America; and the Crusades were over.

It’s the year 2–2 now, and things are good enough now.  Right now, I’m sitting out on my apartment balcony- a first-generation American in second-generation America.  It’s good enough, and can’t that be good enough?
Hey, some kids are playing soccer down in the streets below.
Let’s hope to God they don’t start calling it “football.”
I don’t want to have to write all this a third time.