As a sports fanatic, I watch all sports, even boxing on ice. I am referring to Ice Hockey where players with tremendous skills balance their acts while skating and expending a lot of energy fighting in a manner reminiscent of a boxing match but with different rules.

In this game, you win by scoring goals and scores are all too often settled by additional physical contacts.

Hockey is a contact sport punctuated by frequent collisions making it one of the most physically demanding and challenging games akin to football and boxing.

Soccer, on the other hand, is not as popular with guys here as any of the other games mentioned earlier. The reason being, perhaps because it is a game played with much less contact and players do not have to pad- up or wear helmets to minimize injuries or pain.

Invectives such as sissy have been used to describe it because the game requires little or no roughness.

The Federation of International Football Association (FIFA) had tried to popularize the sport in the U.S. by having us host the 1994 World Cup Soccer tournament. In the end, it is the U.S. female soccer team that has been able to gain prominence in the world, leading to a somewhat tacit endorsement of the sports in this country as one fit solely for women.

The unsuccessful bids of the men’s team at world competitions have not helped to blunt the “sissy sport” lampoon.

 Players of soccer are hardly padded; they depend on high skills to evade tackles, dribble past opponents sometimes with masterpiece footwork, outrun them and strike at the goal with anticipated accuracy.

 The adaptation of the use of feet to play the ball is the main enticement of the game.

 Why soccer, played mostly with the feet which are not accustomed to being used to handle things, thus requiring tremendous skill and tact is considered a female sport and basketball played with the hands is not, is not easy to understand. Soccer has more contact and has a longer duration than basketball.I am not knocking any sport but should we agree that soccer is a sissy sport, then one reason could be it is mainly played in a gentlemanly manner in which case the sissy moniker should be changed to the gentleman’s game. After all, we are all gentlemen, and that will be hard to reject.