English soccer team loses, player blames video games

Just a month or so after Harry Redknapp, manager of a soccer team in the English Premier League, spoke out against people replacing soccer love with video game passion, West Ham goalkeeper Robert Green added to the chorus after England lost to Croatia and failed to qualify for Euro 2008. The player, whose talents can be seen in the video above, said "I think we would have the best team if we could go into every household and throw away every PlayStation, Xbox and video game. We have the players and the best league in the world. The way the game is played here is so different though."

OK, English soccer players and coaches. We're going to lay it out slowly: You're embarrassing yourself. If you can't cobble together a decent team from the 50 million people living in your county, it's not the fault of Mario and Sonic. The simple fact is that video games continue to take up a larger portion of the populace's free time and money, and they cuts have got to come from somewhere. And if that prevents Mr. Green from robbing happiness from a bunch of Croatians, I think Bill, Kaz and Reggie are going to sleep OK tonight.

Consider yourself lucky. In America, video games have made the populace so thick and unwieldy that Domino's not only brings the pizza to our doors, but chews it up and spits it in to our mouths like mama birds. It's a terrifying sort of paradise.