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- scifipirate, on 10/12/2007, -27/+156WTF, how can you say soccer players are better at Fair-play, you haven't ever seen some one help some one else up playing football? It says Americans dont like soccer becuase soccer players are better sportsmen? Thats lame and not true.
- lava, on 10/23/2007, -12/+134I say it's because it's not a good sport to broadcast, and therefore the networks won't push for it. You can't have a commercial break every two minutes like you can in football.
- dermoth, on 10/23/2007, -33/+92"but its boring when you don't really care anything about the people playing especially in a professional capacity where 45 minutes can pass and all that's happened is the ball bounced back and forth up and down the field and the score is still 0-0"
See, this cracks me right up. I'm a successful sports gambler, and I watch a lot of American sport, and I know exactly how much action you'll see in 45 minutes of "play". Timeouts, ad breaks, huddles, substitutions...
And yet, I have money on the result, so I care about who wins. And I *still* find it boring. Baseball is the worst, obviously, but American Football isn't far behind. Stop. Start. Stop 7 seconds later. Wait a bit. Start. Stop 3 seconds later. Start. Possession changes. Funny, the clock says only 12 seconds have passed, but it feels like 12 minutes... hang on! IT IS 12 MINUTES!!
This is all about conditioning. You've all grown up with your sports, so you understandably love watching that staccato excuse for entertainment you mistakenly call football. You haven't grown up with real Football (you know - where you kick a *ball* with your *foot*), so you don't appreciate it.
So - you might find it boring, but the rest of the world disagrees with you. And while "soccer" is becoming increasingly popular in the US, the rest of the world couldn't care less about your national sport. Christ, even Baseball is more popular than American Football, and I'd rather watch my family being slowly murdered than endure half an innings of that turgid rubbish.
Unless there's nothing else to bet on... - dogshaft, on 10/23/2007, -4/+59It's not because it's boring, or else baseball and golf wouldn't be so popular.
- ChileanGoD, on 10/23/2007, -4/+45And it should get big. To play soccer you only need a ball, a grass surface and a bunch of people. It's easily the most inexpensive sport you can practice accessible to everyone. Actually, I'm kinda glad you guys havent jumped into the soccer bandwagon because i'm pretty sure you could become one mayor force in international soccer. You guys have all the ethnical diversity to do so.
- ocsurfreport, on 10/23/2007, -2/+39Americans in general like soccer just as much as anyone else. The difference in the USA is that the advertisers don’t like soccer due to the fact that it’s two 45 minute sessions with no advertising. Even the little box at the top that sometimes shows a logo is annoying to all soccer fans. The advertisers love football, baseball and basketball, because you can stretch 1 minute of play to 5 minutes of advertisement.
- atdigg, on 10/12/2007, -7/+45I think people make the mistake of comparing Soccer with American Football, that's probably because of the name, actuall there's nothing to compare between them, if anything Soccer is closer to Hockey: there are passes and dribblings, ball or puck go back and forth and there's somehow similar team strategy, even scores are in the similar range (more goals for hockey games though).
- smitting, on 10/12/2007, -13/+45Combine soccer and crash-up derby and you've got yourself an American hit.
That's the entire problem with soccer. Not enough car crashes. They need to learn their lessons from nascar. - dermoth, on 10/12/2007, -6/+38@Fredfredburger -
If "soccer" is so boring, why is it also the most popular sport on the planet by miles and miles and miles and miles?
Some stats about the 2006 World Cup for you -
284 million people watched the final
5.9 billion total viewers for the whole tournament
Average of 93 million viewers per match
Kinda puts the Superbowl in perspective, doesn't it? - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+32http://duggmirror.com/soccer/Why_Americans_Don_t_Care_About_Soccer/
- rokinroj, on 10/23/2007, -1/+28It's simple...Americans don't follow soccer as much because they aren't raised to follow it. In Europe, South America, Africa, etc kids grow up watching their fathers, uncles, friends, etc worship the game.
In America you have the same exact following, but of different sports. No need to over analyze here its just simple tradition. Kids follow by example.
However with the influx of Mexicans into the US there seems to be an increased soccer presence in the past 5 or 6 years. It will eventually infiltrate and spread. - Demagogue, on 10/23/2007, -4/+31The reason football and soccer are compared is because football is easily the most popular sport here in the US.
I think that the younger generation will really start to watch soccer more and more as time goes on.. Soccer is getting big in the US. - Phennim, on 10/23/2007, -11/+36It's because the can't start a national league and then call themselves "world champions"
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -5/+30"and being a soccer player, while a step up from chess club, doesn't get a lot of people laid."
pretty much all the best looking girls in europe are dating soccer players.
Cheryl Tweedy anyone? - j.carcinogen, on 10/23/2007, -10/+31Analysis of Americans from a site with the url: superfrenchie.com??
ha! - mlorimer, on 10/12/2007, -4/+24And watching a redneck drive in circles is SOOOOOOO much more exciting.......
- mavranos, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16Whenever I expressed an intrest in soccer may dad would say:
"You're not playing that commie sport"
And there you have it. Americans don't like soccer because its a commie sport!;) - Mozmonkey, on 10/12/2007, -7/+21That article is complete BS and is presented by the author's slanted view of all Americans from a couple meaningless encounters. He's just creating new stereotypes about us that just aren't true.
Why isn't soccer popular...well, why is anything popular or unpopular in any country. It's just the way it is.
Take hockey for example. Hockey is truely a team sport (vs. his 1st argument), minimal stats (vs. 2nd argument) and filled with average sized people (vs 3rd argument). Hockey is reasonably popular in the USA and not very popular in Europe. Why is that?
"I believe it's because Europeans hate ice and feel that it's wrong to skate around like ballerinas holding big sticks. Furthermore Europeans do not like physical contact in any way, and feel uncomfortable watching somebody get checked into the wall. It's just in their timid nature"
Of course I don't believe that but I'm just using the same logic he used to prove his point. It's all junk. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -14/+28In the NFL, all we really cheer for is the jerseys, the players change, the coaches change, the owners change, the general managers change. In soccer, especially in the World Cup, it's all about your home country, soccer teams are like families where as football teams are a bunch of Jug-heads that often don't even like eachother.
- CamoChris, on 10/12/2007, -6/+20@ lava: "Not a good sport to broadcast"? In the UK, BSKYB must have made millions (perhaps even billions) from their deal with the league to show live matches in the Premiership (the BBC can only show highlights). They make a lot of money from subscriptions as well as from advertising (which there is a lot of, the matches themselves are sponsored (at the moment by Ford), and the lack of short breaks during the action is almost made up for with longer ones during half time). If you look into it, the amount of money involved in the English game is astonishing.
- Jagdhund, on 10/12/2007, -5/+19I agree. Denouncing American sports players as unsporting compared to the rest of the world is just rubbish. I've heard of so much hatred and racism and threats towards the different players and different countries playing soccer. That and the fan riots.
It is typical to say that Americans are so inferior to the rest of the world. With our affordable housing, booming economy, and team strategy-oriented sports (football), we are obviously worse for wear.
This article is biased and poorly written. - wedderburn, on 10/12/2007, -2/+15Soccers the best game around it unites people from the poorest of Africa to the richest of Europe soccer is still the one constant.
soccer is the great equalizer in the world, everyone can acknowledge a good soccer player no matter there creed. - scrimaxinc, on 10/12/2007, -14/+26I've been hearing that for years, and I think it has more to do with the fact that parents dont like their children playing violent sports. My friends and I all played soccer when we were younger mostly because we were influenced by our parents to do so, but as we got older (and made more choices ourselves) we all switched to football. Oh and that sportsmanship line is garbage. There is no sport where people fake more injuries, have more fan riots, and chant racist and ridiculous remarks than international soccer.
- evilTak, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14A large number of Americans *do* care about soccer. Maybe this article should be titled, "Why rednecks and WASPs don't care about soccer."
- j0ew00ds, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12I continue to be amazed by the ignorance of my fellow countrymen.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14@ocsurfreport -
bingo. if soccer had 3 second plays separated by 3 minutes of advertisements, the american advertising industry would've found many ways to make it popular by now. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12Uncoordinated? Are you kidding me? It takes incredible coordination, dumbass
- stevievep, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Regarding the difference between american 'football' and world cup 'football', my brother in law pointed out this observation..."Have you ever seen a fat soccer player"?
- kar_el, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12Soccer is a popular sport in the states. The reason we don't see it more on television is because the NFL, MLB, and NBA take up more time right now. All these sports grew up and have become a part of our culture and soccer just didn't catch on. Now that it is starting to draw some crowds due to the MLS we will see it gain the same kind of stature that these other "American" sports have. But it will be a few years.
I marked this as inaccurate as it's all opinion. Then again so is mine. - Foosinho, on 10/12/2007, -11/+20Re: kingfarook: "I don't like it for the same reason i don't like hockey. Not enough scoring."
Using this past weekend's NFL games, normalized for time it takes to play the game and 1 TD equaling 1 goal, soccer games typically have about 75% of the scoring football games have. (i.e., in 2 hours of "walltime", there are about 3.5 goals scored in a average soccer game, and 4.4 touchdowns scored in an average football game.)
Plus you get to get on with your life after two hours. No variation in the length of the game. You don't have to pad your TiVo recordings. - Kbennett, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12As a soccer player for the last 20 years I agree the fair play concept is bunk (fair play exists in every sport no more than any other), but the other points are decent, in unexceptionally, insightful. In the end, soccer is only slowly catching on because America, in the broadest sense, is very conservative. We're not early adopters or all that open to change. Despite the fact that soccer is as old or older than most sports in the US it really didn't "appear" till the 60s and 70s, and by that time the other sports this country loves had enshrined themselves in popular culture. Soccer has an uphill battle ahead to become more than just a sport foreigners or kids play, but it is inching up that hill, and we Americans so do love our inches.
- commiecat, on 10/23/2007, -0/+7I think it's mostly because soccer is "foreign" to us. Foot/base/basketball are all considered American sports because the versions we follow all originated here. That would also explain why hockey isn't nearly as popular as the major sports.
"It's easily the most inexpensive sport you can practice accessible to everyone" - I've heard this argument as well and I'd say that basketball is the most accessible and inexpensive of all the big sports. Any park that has soccer goals probably has basketball goals as well. For basketball all you need is footwear (without cleats), a ball and the goal. You can play an actual *game* of basketball with as little as two people and you don't really need much real estate.
The points in the article are kinda silly, IMHO. Without going too much into it; soccer has stoppage as much as any other sport - football just has so much because of TV timeouts, which any football fan would gladly get rid of. "We don't like team sports" - football is more team-oriented than soccer. No debate. "Fair play" - give me a break. We hate people flopping in basketball and punters falling over to draw a penalty. Soccer players flop ALL THE TIME. They usually don't help each other up because they know the other is probably faking it. Hell, the World Cup was marred by a soccer icon headbutting his opponent.
My $.02. I like watching World Cup and that's about it. We like soccer as kids until we're old enough to play the major American sports. That's how it is and that's probably how it will be for a long time. - mandarin, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11Soccer is more focused on footwork. Its a sport which you can play easily.
I actually like it better than American football. Golf and Nascar bores me. How many people can afford to play those sports anyway? - j3one, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10I love soccer. I am American. There are Lot's of Americans that love soccer.
I also am a man attracted to women. I guess that's where our similarities ended huh. - mlorimer, on 10/12/2007, -4/+11"3. Can't pummel guy with ball."
Thanks for proving that you have never watched 30 seconds of a soccer game. - greenreefer, on 10/12/2007, -6/+13Super Frenchies list :
• Americans don’t like uninterrupted play.
I'll go along with that. Ad is on...Beer.
• Americans like game stats: soccer doesn’t have any.
In soccer, there are no stats, because nobody scores. Ever.
• It’s a team game: Americans prefer individualistic games.
Baseball,hockey basketball,everyone touches the "ball", everyone scores.
Soccer, everyone touches the ball, nobody scores.
Ever.
Until the game is over, and they give each team five free shots at a net the size of Rhode Island. Then the made to feel like the goat goalie is murdered in his home country for not stopping the ball.
Frenchie says "But come on! in football, the team is only there to serve just 4 players: the quarterback, the running back, and the receivers."
I admit, he has got me there with that sophisticated analysis, so answer me this then, Frenchie..How often does a soccer goalie score huh?
Come on now how often? Huh?
• Soccer is for average-size people
What Frenchie really means is,
American sports are not for "french sized" people.
• Americans love order and precision
That and we like to see a score at the end.
• Fair-play
We don't help each other up. Okay, that trend went away, but fans from the other village routinely cheer the opponent as he gets up or is carried off, actually hurt. Sometimes dead.
Soccer players get bumped just a little, and writhe on the ground for minutes,screaming and whining in false pain trying to get an unfair penalty called, which is French for fair.
*****
Really we don't like it because it is boring, you have to run around for a freekin hour without even Any gatorade even, and especially because you dont get to use your hands.
All of our games involve the hands, from drinking the beer,to pool, tennis,drinking the gatorade, Golf, punching nerds,eating the hotdog, volley ball, workin the bar-b-Q,climbing stuff,horseshoes, badminton,throwing stuff,riding and steering stuff,and especially for the bigger sports like Yahtzee,Football, and cheerleader chasing.
This leads to Cheerleader Grabbing.
Cheerleader Grabbing.
Ever try that with just your feet Frenchie?
Eh?
I bet you haven't.
Cuz if you did, I know you would have been really bad at it. - Nougat, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10Come on, you all know the real reason the US doesn't watch soccer - because it's played by stinky foreigners. We'll stick with our World Series of baseball which only includes teams from the US (is Canada even in MLB anymore?).
(Laugh, it's a joke. Sort of.) - Bigdee4933, on 10/12/2007, -4/+11Do away with golf, nascar, and tennis and show soccer in it's place. And who says soccer is boring, have you ever watched a baseball game. I got one of my friends who is a big basketball fan to watch world cup. When I saw the footwork and the moves they do, it changed his mind. They should start showing these games on ESPN.
GO Manchester United.... :) - scottylist, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8What's dangerous about baseball? That the ball will poke you in the eye?
- canewediggit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6damn. someone woke up on the wrong side of the continental divide this morning.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9Every American is a Soccer fan, when he's watching it on the 12 inch screen in the corner of the room while he waits for his wife to come out ot the dressing room at Foley's.
- uttles, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6@tewas, you have no clue at all about American Football.
Linebackers and Defensive Backs are the best overall athletes on the planet. We're talking people who are 6' to 6'4", 220 to 260 pounds, have about 5% body fat, run 40 yards in 4.3 seconds, and could snap the average soccer player's neck just by looking at him.
You think they would get tired? You obviously have never been to a football practice, and you obviously have never met a real linebacker. - crapuccino, on 10/12/2007, -4/+102 words for you buddy.
Rugby. League.
Helmets are for girls. - Crosshare, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8This article is completely off base. I was hoping to really see a good write up here. I've been converted to a soccer fan (although not rabid) over the last year and there are better reasons it doesn't catch on in America.
1. Level of Talent - The MLS is atrocious to watch compared to the English Premier Leagues, the Europe Leagues, and the World Cup. Like myself this is most Americans 1st experience with soccer. My statement usually was damn soccer teams ruin the football field. You don't get to see great players make great plays like - Beckham, Ronaldhino, Ronalda, Rooney, etc. I started to become hooked when you can see players bend it in from 30-40 yards out.
2. Intricacies of Rules and Play - Seeing Soccer in the states is horrible about explaining the game. Up until recently I never even knew there was an offsides, I thought it was free for all. The game will become much more exciting when you understand why players are making position passes etc.
3. Marketing - Soccer just doesn't get the market/media blitz that it get in other countries, or that other pro sports get here. Being in Europe this last year, I got to see the difference, in the huge arenas, and advertising/merchandise everywhere. I really wish I could've gone to a match.
I highly rec commend the movie Goal to anyone who hasn't seen it. Kind of shows how soccer is regarded differently. Great part when he's in the pub eating breakfast before his tryout and he asks the locals if they're talking about soccer and they say no. Then he pauses then asks them are talking about football? Then there's this chummy uproar. - EComni, on 10/12/2007, -4/+9Hockey's not popular either. They've been losing ratings and they lost a few broadcasters.
- CollinTiegs, on 10/12/2007, -10/+16I think this is exactly it. I tried to watch the world cup. I really did, but every time someone would start flopping around on the ground in agony when he had his foot stepped on it felt like someone was dragging a cheese grader across my face. Then to see them magically healed when someone squirts a bit of cold water on them was enough to make me turn the channel.
Perhaps there's something American about disliking people who fake injuries. Think about the last time you called in sick to work. The next day did your co-workers ask how you were and offer help? In my experience they're more likely to give you ***** for being out and half the time don't really believe you were sick to began with. - cmallinson, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6A waste of time?
I agree - sport is a waste of time. We should also get rid of reading, and looking at art, and music, definitely music. What an awful waste of time. We should be spending our time eating, sleeping, and waiting to die. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8Because nothing is better than watching cars go around in circles for hours.
- alarion, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6I think you pretty much nailed that.
That and a lot of americans view Soccer as s girls sport. Just not something many are interested in. Has nothing to do with how time is tracked, our attention spans or the niceness of our players. Watch a NFL game sometimes, even amongst the fiercest of rivalries you will see opposing players help each other up (sometimes) and pat each other on the butt/head/shoulders/whatever. No, not every play - but it does happen and the article author makes it sound like it never does.
As for size - sure it's generally accepted that the taller you are (in basketball and football), the better off you are - but also consider people like Warwick Dunn, Steve Smith, Barry Sanders, Mugsy Bogues (he was 5'3" for crying out loud). - r81984, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8Baseball is the lazy mans sport. I think baseball is one of the only sports were your practice is harder than a game. Most of the players in baseball just stand around or sit. At least in soccer there is action the whole time and you really have to be an athlete to be good at it.
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