Happy Memorial Day boys and girls. I hope you are enjoying your holiday while properly honoring those who gave their lives to protect our country.

While many of us are enjoying hamburgers, hot dogs, a nice beer (I recommend Magic Hat's Number 9 for such an occasion) and the company of family and friends, others are out on the internet, posting their inane ramblings on American soccer and ruining my mood.

I give you two such imbeciles after the jump.

First, a caveat: Bleacher Report (the site which is currently featuring the two posts I'm about to highlight) is a wasteland of poor writing, ridiculous ideas, and almost nothing of merit. Of the "stories" posted to Bleacher Report, it is my humble estimation that a full ninety-nine point nine percent of them are so poor that they are actually damaging to any reasonable soccer brain (it's equally as bad in the other sports they "cover", but this is about soccer). I generally try to avoid Bleacher Report at all costs, but today I couldn't help myself.

My case, in two perfectly illustrated points:

First, a nice little post written in a "slide show" format, which I assume helps get the writer points across with clever word bites and pictures. Thanks buddy, those shots of random MLS action really made me think. The post is entitled "What the MLS Must Do To Still Be in the US in 2020", and bravely sets out to "fix" soccer for the American audience.

Check out these brilliant ideas:

1. Increase the goal size to increase scoring (blech)
2. Reduce the field size to create faster play (Um, ok)
3. Shorten the game to 60-70 minutes (What?)
4. PK tie-breakers for all games (No, no, no, NO!)
5. Increase PK calls during matches (Hold please, I need to vomit)

I have neither the time nor the energy to rip into these ideas individually, but I bet you can guess just how that would go.

But wait, there's more!

Not only does our first writer suggest ridiculous ideas that would so completely change the game that we might as well just come up with a new name for it, he actually has a defender!

Okay, so not completely, but he is followed up by someone equally as dense about soccer, who begins by explaining why his fellow Bleacher Report "writer" is wrong, and then goes ahead and suggests slightly less stupid but equally as ridiculous (not to mention "done before") ways to "Americanize" the game.

May I present do-do number two's main points:

1. Keep the official time on the scoreboard, and have it COUNT DOWN (Wait, haven't we done that before?)
2. More subs, with re-entry allowed (Some of you might like this, I don't)
3. Go back to American-style nicknames (Americans don't like soccer because a team uses "FC"? Please)
4. No jersey sponsors (How does this have bearing on the popularity of the sport?)

Daft guy number two then defends the idea of tiebreakers and more penalty calls (hold, vomiting again), while actually managing to suggest a few reasonable ideas (mid-market expansion for one). Hey, even a blind man finds a penny every now and then.

Both of these pieces speak to issues I have with Americans and their attitudes towards soccer. Neither one of these guys seems to understand that the game doesn't need to be changed to be successful here; slow and steady growth is preferable to any possible overnight increase in interest if it means fundamentally altering the rules by which the rest of the world plays the game. American hubris, that we know better and are free to change anything we'd like whenever we'd like, is so contradictory to the strides that soccer has made in the U.S., that it makes me angry to hear it spewed.

Mr. Bleacher Report Writer, what you've just written is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever read. At no point in your rambling, incoherent post were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone on the internet is now dumber for having read it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

Am I overreacting here? Am I wrong to think that changes like those posed at Bleacher Report would ruin the game and make it less popular in America?