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In How Soccer is Ruining America: A Jeremiad by Stephen Webb, the main strategy that he uses is irony. In the majority of the passage Webb does nothing but insult the game of soccer and all who support and play it. He does this in a variety of different ways. He continually brings up god in his arguments stating that any sport that restricts a player to their feet is not worth playing. " Did Jesus wash his disciples' hands at the Last Supper? No, hands are divine (they are one of the body parts most frequently attributed to God)" this quote qualifies his last statement that the feet are worthless because he alludes to the bible by bringing up Jesus and his disciples.
He continues to bash on soccer by comparing it to baseball and stating how baseball is so much better of a sport because it takes courage to step up to the plate and have a hard ball thrown directly at you. He then build ethos by providing the fact that he used to play baseball himself. He also compares standing at the plate to being in a western shootout. Webb also says that the language in baseball is tougher with words such as "bases", "bats", and "strikeouts". He states that it is a tougher sport all around. He then makes his argument even more insulting by saying that soccer is a girls sport. Not only is this insulting to both males and females it is incredibly sexsist. He also calls soccer a "foreign invasion" which if that was even the slightest bit true it would not have grown into one of the most popular sports in America. The American people obviously like soccer so it is more of a "foreign gift" then a "foreign invasion". He continues to go on for two pages about how soccer is a disgrace to America and it is running it into the ground before the admits in the last paragraph that he himself is a supporter of soccer. He also admits that all of his kids are on travel soccer teams and that he goes to support his kids. This is where the irony comes in, if he actually is a supporter of soccer why did he spend two pages slamming it? He did that because in the last paragraph he destroys every argument he brought up in the first two pages completing imploding the argument against soccer.
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