ENG 112
The world's number one game, the beautiful game, the one religion where everybody is welcome. Soccer has gone far beyond just being a game, it can please an entire city or country and sadden another in just a ninety-minute game. The most joyful game on earth, however, what we have witnessed in the past few decades shows that soccer is becoming less of a fair play and joyful game, players wouldn't mind taking dives and faking injuries demanding a penalty or a punishment to players from the opponent team such as a red card. In order to keep the game, and clean out of faking injuries, there have to be penalties imposed, after the game is over, on those players who dive.
First of all, soccer is well-known as the world's number one sport, it is followed by billions of fans across the globe, everywhere on the planet, there are at least two or more soccer fields in every little town in our world. Furthermore, as soccer can be a source of happiness to many fans, it can also be a source of depression, in fact, it results in violence sometimes, an example of that would be the football war in 1969 that was fought between El Salvador and Honduras, which resulted in thousands of deaths. This shows that soccer cannot be treated just as a regular sport, it is way too far beyond that, it involves politics, economies, and diplomatic relations.
Secondly, one of the most significant things that prove that soccer is too far beyond just a game is the money involved in it, tons of money that even exceed countries' budgets. Money controls everything; stadium naming rights, jersey sponsorship deals, and player transfer fees and sponsorships. It is crazy watching a soccer game like el Classico (Barcelona VS Real Madrid) with twenty-two players on the pitch that are worth more than Spain's budget as a country. It is even crazier when knowing that Neymar Jr. transfer to Paris Saint Germain cost 222 million Euros when it only cost France 40 million Euros to build the Eiffel Tower. From this, we can conclude that money has a big influence on the soccer world and makes the game even more serious no team wants to lose a single game, especially those high-level teams. Also, we can infer that there are huge investments and competition between giant companies and corporations in soccer.
Furthermore, soccer has a huge impact on politics, as we can always see, presidents, leaders, and kings of countries having to attend the significant games. Soccer has been used by leaders to glorify their images in front of their nations. An example for that would be Austria VS Italy in World Cup 1934 when the Italian leader Mussolini himself picked the referees, and as a result, Italy won 2-1. Another unforgettable example would be when Argentinas junta hosted the World Cup 1978 as a propaganda for the regime, the junta regime had shipped 35,000 tons of wheat to Peru in addition to an interest-free loan of $50 million to the Peruvian government, in order to let the Argent...
