Here is an excerpt from Kissinger’s 1986 article on how the different playing styles of the major soccer powers reflect their national personalities. Some editor should get Kissinger to update it to see how much things have changed in 20 years.

World Cup according to Character

The German national team plays the way its general staff prepared for the war; games are meticulously planned, each player skilled in both attack and defense. Intricate pass patterns evolve, starting right in front of the German goal. Anything achievable by human foresight, careful preparation and hard work is accounted for.

And there have been great successes. Of the last six prior World Cups, Germany has won two, was second twice, third once and out of the running only in 1978. At the same time, the German national team suffers from the same disability as the famous Schlieffen plan for German strategy in World War I. There is a limit to human foresight; psychological stress on those charged with executing excessively complex maneuvers cannot be calculated in advance. If the German team falls behind, or if its intricate approach yields no results, its game is shadowed by the underlying national premonition that in the end even the most dedicated effort will go unrewarded, by the nightmare that ultimately fate is cruel ? a nightmare reinforced by the knowledge that the German media are unmerciful when high expectations go unfulfilled. The impression is unavoidable that an outstanding national soccer team has not brought a proportionate amount of joy to a people that may not in its heart of hearts believe joy is the ultimate national destiny. [More]

Tom Piatak responds:

Soccer represents the same sort of insidious threat to the American national character as did the metric system, nearly foisted on us in the dark days of the ’70s. Fortunately, we survived that threat, thanks in part to the patriots who filled all road signs giving the speed in kilometers per hour with buckshot.

Soccer is the metric system in short pants. It is the “sport” (if such a word applies to an activity as soporific as a telephone book reading contest) the rest of the world plays, and desperately wants us to play, so we can become like the rest of the world and lose what makes us American. Give it no publicity, lest the real Americans who read your site think they are “supposed” to follow soccer and end up just like the Europeans, rioting and looting out of the sheer boredom generated from watching such a game.