I don't agree that it's "tragically flawed" at all. Knock the ball in the goal. Quite pure as sports go.
If you want to talk about flaws, we could go all day on football. Lots of penalties, TV timeouts, drawn out official reviews, bringing out the chains, etc… that suck the life out of a game. Extremely convoluted rule book. Players with certain numbers having different limitations and lining up differently. Rules change all the time based on complaints from the previous year, decided by a committee. Technological issues (headsets, possibility of stealing signals, camera angles). I can't think of another sport that requires a referee to explain to the crowd what just happened on a given play and why they ruled that way.
You could look at all these things as flaws or you could look at it as adding to the drama. In a sense, football is absolutely uniquely American. It's incredibly specialized, position by position. It's also the most litigious sport. Every single thing is disputed and reviewed and discussed and revised. To me, it's all part of the game that I love.
Having said all that, the diving in soccer does bother me sometimes. I think players that dive should be mocked, laughed at, called pussies and regarded as fools who take away from the beauty of the game.