Calcio Fiorentino, aka I Will Punch You In Your Face Soccer, Is What We Need in America.

Holy shit.  I just found out about this sport via Twitter, thanks to @TariAkpodiete.  It’s called Calcio Fiorentino, and it’s the manliest thing I’ve ever seen, EVER.  You know the expression, “I went to a fistfight and a hockey game broke out?”  That’s pretty much what this game looks like.  The best way I can describe it is that it’s like if you take Fight Club, The Outsiders, and just a little bit of rugby.  Of course, this trumps any words I might be able to provide:

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never watched anything with so much palpable tension at the outset.  Calcio has to be just as tiring to watch as it is to play.  Do they even call it, “Play?”  I imagine that when a Calcio Fiorentino “player” leaves the house for a match, he doesn’t say, “I’m going to go to the match.”  He says instead, “I’m going to go ruin someone’s fucking face today.  See you for dinner, honey.”

Kill the guy with the ball. Seriously. KILL HIM!

Calcio Fiorentino apparently predates football, and it seems pretty clear that there’s some distant, cousin-fucked relation there, if only in the fact that American footballers run into each other for about eight seconds over and over again.  What a bunch of pussies.

Calcio has a few rules.  Who needs a rulebook?  No suckerpunching or kicks to the head.  Take this ball and put it in the goal.  50 minutes, no timeouts, no substitutions.  Sand field.  No team names: Red, Blue, Green and White (who probably have lots of trouble playing against the Red team about halfway through a game).  As you might guess, scores don’t get too high in this game, and I’m not certain how much attention is ever paid to how many points a team has at any given time. Italian police dole out disqualifications  for games, and convicted criminals aren’t allowed to play.

Sounds fun to watch, doesn’t it?  I know I’ve watched the video like five times while writing this, and it’s not just because the poster set it to Iron Maiden.

I WANT THIS SPORT IN THE UNITED STATES.  People everywhere have been saying we’re turning into pussies for the last twenty, maybe thirty years.  I can’t think of a better antidote.  What’s more manly than 54 dudes on a sand volleyball court beating the living shit out of each other?  Mark my words, this WILL FIX OUR COUNTRY.

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