Re “Meditations on the beautiful game” by Enrique Krauze (Opinion, June 12):

The late Christopher Hitchens once wrote: “Whether it’s the exacerbation of national rivalries … or the exhibition of the most depressing traits of the human personality (guns in locker rooms, golf clubs wielded in the home, dogs maimed and tortured at stars’ homes to make them fight, dope and steroids everywhere), you need only look to the wide world of sports for the most rank and vivid examples.”

There is more than a seed of truth to this. Soccer, however, and in particular the World Cup, is the exception. The “beautiful game,” like a work of art, contains an ineffable aesthetic and intrinsic quality for which the enjoyment of it requires no further explanation.

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Note: This appeared as a letter to the editor in The New York Times.