The World Cup continues, but the USA’s run in the tournament is over. After escaping the group stages with a thrilling win over Ghana and a heartbreaking draw with Porugal (followed by a less than thrilling loss to Germany), the US Men’s National Team was dispatched by Belgium after an entertaining contest that saw the American goalkeeper Tim Howard put in a remarkable performance.
The World Cup has drawn plenty of attention to American soccer. While this uptick in interest during the tournament is not unprecedented, there has been some legitimate cause for increased optimism within the American soccer fanbase. EA Sports’ FIFA video game franchise has grown a sizable following in the states, leading many to show more interest in the sport. The generation of young people who play this game most often are growing up with the sport playing a larger part in their lives (i.e. more extensive participation in youth soccer) than it did in previous generations, a fact that could lead to more sustained interest in the game down the road.
Meanwhile, Major League Soccer (MLS), the USA’s top domestic professional league, has taken several major steps forward during the last decade, increasing the quality of its play, expanding into new markets (including several in Canada) and obtaining a level of financial stability hitherto unheard of in the world of American professional soccer. Whereas multiple prior professional American soccer leagues fell victim to financial catastrophe prior to their 20th birthday, MLS is going on year 21 with a very strong financial foundation and an optimistic outlook for the future.
That being said, this optimism has a limit. Soccer has come a long way in the USA, but there is still cause to believe that it may never go quite as far as it has in other parts of the world. Here are some of the reasons why.
1. Americans Are Not The Best At It
Americans aren’t used to playing role of underdog. American culture has always had a perspective that seems larger than life: it is the biggest, it is the baddest, and it is the best. That has historically been (for better or worse) the way Americans view themselves. Americans do not play catch up – they lead the way, and everyone else follows.
In soccer, Americans are on the other end of the spectrum: they are the underdogs who have been vigorously playing “catch up” with the rest of the world for decades and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
To USA Soccer’s credit, decent attempts have been made to turn this “underdog” angle into a positive one, tying into deeper American cultural memes that idolize the challenge of “climbing the ladder”, so to speak, and emphasize the value of perseverance in the face of long odds and the struggles associated with that process.
I fear that even with this reasoning, however, Americans will still maintain only a limited ability to warm to the game of soccer and their nation’s position within that game. Basketball, American football and baseball may not have the global following that soccer has, but Americans can say unequivocally that they are the best in the world at each of those games. Like it or not, the ability to make such a statement and feel comfortable about its validity matters a lot to Americans and probably always will.
That brings me to my next point…
2. Soccer Isn’t American
Baseball, American football and basketball are as American as apple pie. They were not only invented and largely developed within the USA, but they have also grown with the nation for more than a century and woven themselves firmly into the historical and cultural fabric of this society during that time. The American story is, in many ways, tied to each of these sports. They aren’t just games – they are America’s games.
While soccer has this kind of historical legitimacy in many other parts of the world (where it has been interwoven into the cultural fabric for over a century and become a fundamental part of other nations’ historical and cultural narratives), it does not possess that kind of legitimacy here. The game is, for the most part, foreign to Americans and its nuances entirely new to most of them. Granted, familiarity can grow over time but the existence of several other sports (all of which have more than a century’s worth of head start with regard to the manufacturing of that legitimacy) will limit the degree to which soccer can grow to really be considered a game that belongs to Americans and is more than just a distant European import.
3. Competition
Americans are unusual in the sheer number of sports they follow. In the UK, for example, the team sports landscape is quite simple. Soccer is the undisputed king of the hill, while sports like rugby establish a reasonably lucrative financial and cultural niche for themselves well below that level and every other team sport pretty much competes for the leftovers. English soccer has no true equal or peer in the UK sporting scene; it is in a league of its own at the very top of the pyramid.
In the USA, things are far more complicated. The NFL is generally considered to be the current king of the American sports hill, but it is rivaled by both the MLB and the NBA (in the addition to the NHL which, though smaller than the others, gets its fair share of attention and financial support). This means that, while nations like the UK really only have one team sport whose profile can be considered truly “major” and is generally unrivalled in stature by any other team game, the USA has several major team sports that could all be considered peers of one another.
This leads to a relatively crowded sporting landscape, one in which competition for viewers and broadcasting dollars is fierce year round. This is where things get tough for soccer: the game is arriving late to this party as a clear foreign outsider, and being forced to compete with not just a single league or game that is established already, but several major power players, all with much longer histories in the USA, more financial clout and a greater degree of resonance to the culture that the American public pledges allegiance to.
4. Lack Of Physicality And The Tolerance Of Weakness
Americans love physical games. The most popular professional sporting competitions in the USA involve the games of American football, ice hockey, baseball and basketball. All of these are sports that put a great emphasis on raw physical talent (height, weight, speed, strength), and that isn’t a coincidence: Americans like to see athletic heroes that are bigger, strong, and faster than everyone else, physical specimens that can be looked up to and admired. Games like American football take this to an extreme at which one pretty much must be a physical freak in order to compete at a high level.
Soccer, on the other hand, puts a much greater emphasis on technical ability, intelligence, stamina and mental fortitude than most major American team sports, while simultaneously de-emphasizing raw, god-given physical talent. You simply do not need to be a particularly gifted natural athlete to excel on a soccer pitch—many of the world’s elite players are not very big, not very strong, and not capable of setting the world on fire with their 100 meter dash times. They dominate anyway because of their incredible technical ability, IQ, and conditioning (both mental and physical).
It isn’t that Americans cannot appreciate such an athlete; it is just that they tend to appreciate such non-physical gifts much less than most of the rest of the world does, while simultaneously appreciating natural athleticim more than the rest of the world does. Soccer’s ability to give a platform to athletes like Lionel Messi or Diego Maradona (men who are technically gifted but quite small, not very strong, and not remarkably fast or otherwise impressive athletically) simply isn’t going to resonate quite as well in a society dedicated to the worship of unusually big, strong and quick physical specimens.
The prevalence of flopping and diving in the game of soccer only exacerbates this problem. While diving/flopping/injury faking occurs in American sports (basketball most prominently, less commonly in others), none approach soccer’s level of play acting. Players frequently fall to the ground after receiving only slight touches, a practice that is often necessitated by the fact that referees award them for doing so by calling fouls, handing out cards and giving penalties to the “offenders” seen to have cause the “injury”.
Americans love tough guys as much as they love their physical specimens. The popularity of American football is not coincidental: Americans identify very strongly with the physicality that the game represents. American football’s emphasis on the infliction of pain, the tolerance of pain, and perseverance through pain all resonate extraordinarily well with the American psyche. Americans love to see others struggle with pain and learn to overcome it, especially when they can do so as a group. In much of the country, the violent, aggressive, hard nosed, tough-as-nails, take-no-prisoners attitude so readily cultivated and displayed in American football is the most fundamental part of community identity. It can be credibly argued that there simply isn’t a narrative that the average working American identifies more closely with than that articulated in the game of American football.
It is this reality that will make soccer intolerable to many Americans, as it is a game where players too often act out precisely the opposite narrative. Soccer players do not inflict pain very often, appear to have a lower tolerance for its infliction via violent physical contact (as evidence by their frequent flops) and simply don’t often display the violent, aggressive, “tough guy” attitude Americans have grown so fond of over the course of well over a century.
The fact that they are rewarded for their lack of physical perseverance in the face of physical contact is simply intolerable to most Americans. Europeans look at a soccer player who falls down easily after receiving some physical contract (instead of staying on his feet and fighting through it in order to continue playing) and see an intelligent—if cynical and somewhat cheesy—strategic play designed to draw foul calls and put the other team in a more difficult tactical position. Americans look at that and simply see weakness and the promotion of weakness, and there are few things they hate more than that. The unfortunate reality is that this relative lack of physicality (and reward/tolerance of it) is a fundamental part of soccer, and it isn’t something Americans are ever going to warm to.
None of this is to say that soccer lacks great growth potential in the USA. MLS is expanding in earnest, and statistics relating to the game’s finances and popularity in the country have been trending upward for some time and look set to continue doing so. The biggest challenge that the game faces in the USA relates to its bid to win the hearts and minds of the American populace. That, I’m afraid, will likely prove to be an uphill battle. It will be very interesting to see how far the game can go in this country in spite of that reality.
Read Next: How American Football Became A Racket
It is mostly because america was never poor n’ crowded enough for soccer to gain popularity
On the contrary, just as American men get softer and more sophisticated (in a European kind of way) the trend will get reflected in favourite sports.
Eventually men will be playing chess as main sport! LOL
You said its not American and used baseball and apple pie as examples … Both were in England well before America
….and Golf….and Tennis……etc….
Tennis might be French. I’ll give em that.
Well America itself was in England before America.
#4 is a major reason. I simply can’t respect such “athletes” feigning an injury routinely. Collision sports like hockey and football have someone get knocked down much more violently and they don’t pretend to suffer injury. I also think the lack of stoppages make it harder for advertisements to run and Americans probably don’t have the attention span to watch 45 minutes straight of play.
I also think the lack of stoppages make it harder for advertisements to run and Americans probably don’t have the attention span to watch 45 minutes straight of play.
This sounds as a more plausible reason why soccer is not commercially viable.
That’s the obvious reason.
Body armour. The top Brazil player has a broken back. There is no body armour. All collisions are unpadded.
Hockey players routinely get hit in the face and continue playing. Football players have no padding below the knees and still receive full contact there.
By your same logic, USA will never fully embrace the Olympics…
How so? The United States is at the top of both the Winter and Summer Olympics. Plus, the Olympics is only focused on every two years for 2-3 weeks, just like the World Cup. Notice nobody cares about any of the Olympic sports outside of the Olympics (ever watch a diving competition? Me neither).
I don’t know about Basketball but both American football and Baseball are strikingly similar to Rugby and Cricket so they are modified offshoots of sports that were actually invented in the UK, not here.
basketball is Canadian.
Do Canadians even play basketball?
Hmm yes they do in fact a couple of their cities do have teams in the NBA..
The number 1 pick in the draft was Canadian…Wiggins…as was the number 1 pick last year….USAers only create off-shoot sports from the real sports created by others….i.e. cricket and rugby for baseball and USAer football..does nascar count?
Right, because Lacrosse came from….?
wtf is Lacrosse?
Yawnnnnn, get over it, its better sports. P.S Hockey was invented in the US
I played rugby in college and for years afterwards. When they invent a drug that reverses aging and heals all my old injuries, I’ll be hooking again. I still love watching it (but not 7’s).
football is already turning into the dramatics of w wrestling contest, with fake injuries, fake dives and ‘winning’ by cheating… so good if americans don’t get into it… the demise of a once great and gentlemanly sport will at least be slowed somewhat.
Basketball originated from netball aka air soccer. A much needed upgrade to be honest…thank you James Naismith.
Yeah, the author failed to mention cricket, but that simply means the Brits have three major sports rather than two.
Ann Coulter called America’s newfound love for soccer a sign of America’s “moral decay.” I hate that neo-con cunt but she made a few interesting observations.
She’s been a Republican cheerleader for decades but she’s finally coming around. Too bad Lawrence Auster is not around to see it.
Actually the American Football, Rugby and Football/Soccer are descend from the same original football game, its just they developed different rule sets as time went on and eventually they all became quite different.
It’s also very competitive. So you can’t back a winner that is also your own at World Cup. Brazil or Germany will always find a way to bury the US if a talented upstart like Belgium or whatever don’t beat the US earlier.
I think it will never supplant American games but I would imagine the credible performance from the World Cup will lead to an uptick in interest. America’s achievement of doing well in a sport that they don’t really give a shit about is pretty respectable. 20 years ago we would have laughed at you faggots but now you are competing well with good teams.
One other factor is the peculiar Cuckoldry that American sports reflect in the American psyche. Rooney’s failures are familiar to me, he’s very much like the kids I grew up with. Even Raheem Sterling is recognizable as a eager to prove himself Afro-Carib. That’s my England right or wrong. The US doesn’t want to examine itself. Instead physically fat freaks are put up there and hero worshipped by a bunch of obese nacho munching tits. It’s like porn.
Another major factor that I’ve noticed as a fan is that soccer can sometimes be a game of luck. You can dominate an opponent but lose in penalties. You can dominate an opponent but lose 1-0 where they knock a ball into the box and it takes a deflection into goal. I know all sports involve luck but I feel soccer involves more than the others.
The USA vs Belgium game is a perfect example we were being dominated yet took the game into extra time. Some will say “well Howard kept us in that game” and he did but goalkeeping is partly luck too, in my opinion.
The flopping bothers me too but on the bright side there aren’t commercials every 3 minutes like American football.
The apparent randomness in soccer is what it makes it a far more exciting game to watch than, say, American football, basketball, or baseball.
Hmm…
Amen
yeah no randomness doesnt = exciting basketball with its constant goals steals blocks etc is far more exciting than a small ball going through a net larger than my horny gfs cunt once a game i mean for fucks sake other than goals and the occasional block WHAT DOES SOCCER OFFER
and if you say play it no i like hockey (a real fucking blood bath best sport out there) its twice as hard twice as debilitating and 5 times cooler to watch
Flopping exists, but remember that you have to control a ball with your feet, while running at full speed. It is too easy to fall.
I think the title above says a lot….it is called FOOTBALL not SOCCER!
Besides….My guess is that in 10-20 years Americans WILL have to get used to a lot of things that before you did not have to!
Around September 2014 China will become the largest consumer nation on earth…..
they already sell more BMWs in China than they do in the USA..
Sometime within the next 20 years their economy will overtake that of the USA….
In 10-20 years time the USA will be just another country resembling socialist Europe….maybe then FOOTBALL will become a national sport.
5. Soccer requires strategies and tactics. Americans are too stupid for that.
Sorry mate but this article was stupid.
Unlike football and baseball?
The NFL has a fair bit of strategy and tactics too. Plus the US has an outsized contibution to nobel prize winners, scientific advances and has many of the worlds top universities, so you cant really say Americans are stupid either.
get a paper, write down “nobel prize”, shape the paper into a cone, shove it up your ass.
Obama got a nobel peace prize and the guy has blood on his hands
And heres me thinking that was an uncontroversial comment that wouldn’t make anyone “upset”. I suppose I should have put a trigger warning on that to warn the easily offended…
To address the point however, the reputation of the nobel prize has taken a hit in modern times due to Obama basically getting one for being elected President while black, but for quite a while the science prizes at least were considered an sign of actual accomplishment.
American sports are highly sophisticated tactical showdowns between coaches. I do think that real Football is favour able to
“highly sophisticated tactical showdowns”
LOL
The coaches are quite clearly in control. So it’s like chess. Football OtOh is magical.
Sooo, one guy writes a book, that all players have to memorise, meaning a good proportion of them have to learn to read before taking up their football scholarships, which has all the plays known to that guy, but that doesn’t mean theyre all the plays possible in the game, but if the new scholars deviate from the plays in the book (I won’t call it the bible because that’s the other book many players own), they have shown “initiative” and that’ll get them fired. But if they don’t show initiative it’s possible for them to earn millions and get into movies, just as OJ did. What a game.
You should have a look at the playbook american football players have to study.
Of course they have some planning, but not as much as soccer. Sports such as rugby and yankee football are extremely chaotic, they hugely depend on physical attributes rather than thinking. They do not require the same amount of planning and awareness that football does. Can you find me something similar to the tika taka strategy in eggball or baseball?
By the way this is coming from someone who plays rugby more than football. Football requires much more planning and creativity than american sports, hockey included.
Anyone who regularly plays any of these sports will agree with me without hesitation.
The situational awareness of all except the quarterback looks suspect. Zidane or Beckham or Best or Beckenbauer are similar to the best quarterbacks. But a football team has to have 4 really quick witted geniuses to win the CL or the WC. The Super Bowl can get by with a great coaching staff and great quarterback. Everyone else looks expendable to me.
Lol to say soccer requires more strategy than American football is an absolutely ignorant comment.
true. American football seems really complicated. They swap entire lineup in the middle of the match, right?
Just not true. Football is both tactical and strategic, and very complex. Most casual viewers don’t understand the sport very well, and the way it is covered on TV encorages that, but if you have played it at any competitive level, it’s much more strategic and tactical than soccer is. Soccer is more about execution, like basketball or hockey, with broad tactics. Every play in football is a strategic/tactical set piece. It’s one of the main attractions of the sport.
It’s striking that two of the most popular American sports feature that kind of tactical/strategic competition on every play (football and baseball) — something missing in soccer.
I think the other point not in the article is that soccer’s pacing is very uneven. Some popular American sports are slow paced like baseball, but it’s an even pace. The execution sports we have (basketball and hockey) are both very fast paced played on small surfaces. Soccer is very uneven in its pacing. It goes for long periods where the possession is going back and forth in midfield and the pace seems slow, only to speed up massively for an attack or a counter and then slow again. It’s hard to keep the attention of the American sports fan, who is used to either a series of set plays (baseball and football) or a very fast paced execution sport (basketball and hockey). Soccer is kind of oddly paced for the American fan.
Good observation. This tendency seems to be present also in other performance arts, like stand up comedy. I notice that in the US people are used to a comedian delivering a punch line every 10 seconds or less, just a continuous barrage. It seems to echo what you said about the pace of sporting events.
I shall refrain from puns about attention spans 🙂 However I will agree that soccer games (argh .. it’s football!) can vary greatly in their excitement. Some can be brilliant and have you hanging on the edge of your seat, while sometimes they can be placid and boring. That is certainly a legitimate criticism, although I guess it can happen in most other sports too. On the other hand, the unpredictability of a sudden counter attack that finally scores after a long time in stalemate is arguably one of the fascinations of the sport.
I’m not much of a sports watcher anyway. The world cup every 4 years is about the only time I watch a few games. We’ve discussed a few times on ROK the wastefulness of spending too much time preoccupied with the antics of pro players.
Don’t feed him.
if you look closely, you will find that soccer, even in Europe, is only popular among the poor. Football is the poor man’s game, Americans don’t like poor people stuff.
Just look at countries like France and England for example, you will find that the rich plays rugby and cricket while the poor plays football. That explains why western European teams have poor or immigrant players (Arabs and blacks in France and Belgium, Catalans in Spain, Turks in Germany, etc…)
Catalans in spain as poor or immigrant players? Haha fucking retard
Catalans in general are poorer than the rest of the population
Barcelona has many slums than any other city in Spain.
Catalunya is the wealthiest part of Spain. Are you off your rocker? that´s why they want´t to separate…because they are subsidizing the rest of the country.
lol. completely false.
You have no fucking idea. Catalonia has higher income per capita than the rest of spanish regions. Is one of the richest parts of the country.
You know shit about Spain and Cataluña.
yeah I do
Which is pretty funny, when you consider that American football, basketball, and baseball are all largely Third World sports.
This must be why France presidents have an habit or watching important football matches of the national team, then.
Whatever.
I think that it’s mostly a ‘Working Class’ game – i.e. people that work – people that don’t work are generally ‘poor’.
catalans poor? you wot m8?
Please continue. No better yet do you have a newsletter?
yeah ask your mom she get all the issues for free
If soccer were a poor man’s sport one would think americans would be better at it.
Ann Coulter called America’s newfound love for soccer a sign of America’s “moral decay.” I hate that neo-con cunt but she made a few interesting observations.
The incredible thing about her opinion is that it ignores the history of the game. It’s the game spread by privately educated middleclass white professions in the British Empire. It’s the essence of 19th century liberalism and Victorian propriety.
I Can’t take a sport serous that can end in a tie.Every time I look up at the TV some one is flopping or crying.The players act and look feminine as do most of there fans.The whole time keeping thing is one of the most laughable aspects of any sport I’ve ever seen.I could go on and on the sport sucks IMO.
Better not take the NFL seriously then because the NFL also has ties.
In Japanese baseball, games end if they are still tied past the 15th inning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQjIe_YFZ1g
These are the feminine football fans
My barber is from Italy and has soccer on his TV – every time I see a player flop and cry, I wish I was watching football or hockey. I thought the biting guy in the World Cup was great. If he played hockey, a goon would have removed all his front teeth before that game was over.
I thought the same thing when I watched Tyson bite off Holyfield’s ear in 1997. It put me off boxing for a long time.
The low scoring frequency is probably a part of it too. Its very unlike many other popular sports in that way, especially the sports that are popular in America. Not many moments of excitement.
Interesting essay, thanks. Is it not our reverence for physical strength to dominate our enemies in fact a weakness as we often get into foreign entanglements with weak adversaries who wear us down with unorthodox tactics until we claim victory and withdraw? The Vietnamese understood this and dragged it out for years without ever confronting out massive forces in a battle to end all battles.
Speaking of viets, my son showed me a web page advising not to let your girlfriend watch soccer. My wife has been glued to “univision” since it started. She has the thing on loud so I get to hear people yelling in Spanish while her friends are jabbering with her in vietnamese.
I am thinking of stopping by Big 5 and picking up a soccer uniform to give her a thrill.
Being the biggest and the strongest isn’t a guarantee of anything. If that’s all a person is, that will be easily negated by superior strategy and tactics.
Soccer is actually very popular in the U.S, in terms of people playing it, it’s just boring, compared to the other sports like baseball, hockey, basketball and football. This has to do with how people view athletes in America vs. the rest of the world. In the rest of the world, people look up to athletes and view them as just more “skilled” than they are. In America, athletes are looked upon as demigods.
We want to see demigods do extraordinary things that we can only dream we’ll ever do; that’s why the NFL combine gets more viewers than the MLS. They have such kinds of people in other countries, but they could care less, it’s why soccer pays more than any other sport in the world, outside of America. But this could be a good or bad thing, the plus side is that it gives people who are able to attain god like status a certain sense of confidence and charisma in their own powers and influence, on the flip-side, losers who can’t (and want to, but are either limited by biology), like many sportswriters and people like Elliot Rodger, are consumed by a certain sense of envy, that consumes them and reveals itself in the worse way at times. It’s probably why American men need game far more than men of other countries.
The skills of a football player are teachable. The size and height of an American Football player are not teachable. Steroids might help, but not much.
Emh, yes but they can also be refined and perfected, which requires hard work and imagination in order to stand out from everyone else, not to say that American athletes don’t have that, it’s just not the reason our celebrities are beloved, we could care less about their work ethic (as Michael Jordan complained about a lot).
Like you implied, they’re admired (sometimes even passionately hated) because they won the genetic lottery, like Achilles, they had the favor of the gods, which is why I said we want our sport stars to be demigods.
It’s Cuckoldry by another name. The genius of a Maradona or Bergkamp or Ronaldo are of course genetic. However, it’s not size but vision that determine their magic.
Overall a pretty weak article.
1. “Basketball, American football and baseball may not have the global following that soccer has, but Americans can say unequivocally that they are the best in the world at each of those games. ”
They are the ‘best in the world’ because they are the only ones in the world playing those games. lolz
2. “Soccer Isn’t American”
Neither are hockey, tennis, and golf, all of which enjoy huge popularity in America.
3. Whatever happened to competition? In practice, Americans don’t like it, so it’s likely that American sporting corporate interests are conspiring to hold back soccer’s popularity in the US.
4. Lack of physicality? Nonsense, as this World Cup has repeatedly shown. Ask Brazil’s Neymar if soccer is a contact sport. lolz Soccer players are simply better athletes than American athletes, many if not most of whom are big, dumb Africans who lack the stamina for the game.
totally agree. I have always been amazed at that. Not just America, but also Canada and other northern countries (Russia excluded). I mean, when was the last time you saw Norway or Canada in a major football competition? for some reason northern countries do not play multinational sports.
Football is pretty popular in Norway and all the other Scandinavian countries
Football is actually pretty popular in the Nordic countries and also in Russia.
How ignorant are you ? most of the world best football player are Africans descents and all the best long runners in the world with the best stamina are from east Africa. Hell most European national teams are field with Africans…..
The best footballers are black? get out of here. Spain? Argentina? Germany? Uruguay? Italy? It’s a white nation sport with the possible exception of the BrazilIans. It’s relatively evenly balanced on the individual level though. Plenty if individual black talent. The rule of football favour no race. Although I do think that Latins have a special affinity with the sport.
LOL, best player on Italy is balotelli, is he white? Funny how you left out the greatest soccer nation of all Brazil, and the greatest soccer player of all time, Pele.
Soccer is largely a rich nation sport, as the rich nations pay off the poor ones to throw the games. Argentine, uruguans, germans, italians, and spanianrds and brazilians are just most into soccer.
Balotelli is the best in Italy? Why? Because hes striker? Get out! Do you even Pirlo?
Have you heard about Di Stefano? Cruyff? Maradona? Maldini? Beckenbauer? Boniek? Platini? Kahn? Totti? Kubala? Puskas? Koeman? Cantona? etc.
Alfredo Di Stéfano, “The blonde arrow – La saeta rubia” died yesterday.
Some say that he was really better than Pelé who always has have better marketing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfredo_Di_St%C3%A9fano
You do not have to be black or blonde or rich or poor. You have middle class white geniuses like Messi or lower class blacks like Pelé. Super rich nations like Germany or third world countries like Brazil, Colombia or Argentina.
Pirlo, terrific player.
You can’t really compare football players who play at different positions. For example you can’t compare a goalkeeper with a CF. But in terms of pure watch. Canavaro was the man. You can’t have good football without a man living under a poverty, under a parang. Luxury and hamburgers and the OOOOH, YEAH BROS don’t make any football players. They make society assimilated pussies that can’t fart without permission. You need to be a total ass from those bad situations you lived to.be a top class football player. You have it from the age of 7. The passion, the everything.
Best player what????
We produced some of the greatest players in Football history. Balotelli is NOT one of them. Baggio, Baresi, Del Piero, And before of them there were many….Italians as Italians. Proper sportsman. Not like that idiot.Who is not a very good player to start with
Pele was a pussy and he only played in Brazil. Maradona was the man. And Beckenbauer. and Di Stefano as you right point out.
Balotelli is not even close to the best player on Italy. You are a moron
The soccer legends are mostly white Spaniards or Portuguese. Messi and Ronaldo are the Lebron and Wade of soccer.
ahem…..nope. if you say latine(including in the term latin Italy) then I agree.
Disagree! If anything, it seems football is the one sport where the races seem to actually be on the same level – and individuals may be good but team work is as necessary in winning games! That is why I believe Football is the most popular game in the world!
” 2. “Soccer Isn’t American” … Neither are hockey, tennis, and golf, all of which enjoy huge popularity in America.”
True, but none of those three games suck. You can understand how people could be bored to tears by soccer, right? Unless you’re really into watching pitching (not many are), baseball is almost unwatchable, too.
Incidentally, volleyball, cheerleading and surfing were invented in the US, too. You’re welcome.
well American football is 10 minutes of play that interrupt 4 hours of commercials. if that ain’t boring i dunno what is. Actually I like to see american football, but only the highlights. I could not bear to watch ever again a whole superbowl final. And no Superbowl commercials are not interesting. They are commercials. Stuff for dumb people.
Interesting that you bring the racial aspect into play here (implying that the inferiority of American athletes is tied to the prevalence of African-Americans in many major American sports) after you finish using Neymar (a multatto) to make a positive point about soccer.
Whatever works for you, man.
I believe the acceptance of soccer in the Black American community will be an important factor in soccer becoming a larger part of the American culture.
Basically once everybody who’s atheletic (of any background), who is bored with baseball, isn’t huge or tall realizes that they can make a lot of money playing soccer, and there’s actually a lot opportunities for employment (relative to the NBA, NFL), soccer will really become big. And realizes how fun it is to play, whatever you feel about watching it.
Think about the advantages if you are below 6′ and don’t weigh 220+ lbs. You can be a professional from before you’re 18, you can play until you’re over 35 or 40 if you really try, you get to see the world, skip the play-for-free in college thing, potentially make millions of dollars or at least a decent living in your twenties in a minor league, and easily play in over 40 leagues countries around the world.
If you’re a kid, all you really need is a ball to practice, not even a hoop, let alone pads or a ice rink. You could buy a ball or make one out of plastic bags. In other words you need less than a dollar to start playing one of the greatest sports.
It’s more fun to bounce and shoot a basketball and look cool than doing it, than it is to kick and chase around a soccer ball.
Urban African Americans will never choose soccer over basketball.
Africans from Africa are a lot more receptive to soccer than they are to basketball and American Football – African migrants living in America could go two ways – become like their African-American counterparts and go into basketball and football or decide to stick with their love for soccer!
“It’s more fun to bounce and shoot a basketball and look cool than doing it, than it is to kick and chase around a soccer ball.
Urban African Americans will never choose soccer over basketball.”
Except Urban black people in other countries choose it all the tie.
These are not bad until point 4, Put down the crack. Step away from the crack, refrain from the crack for a few days. The best long distance runners are all kenyans and ethiopians and other east africans. Most of the best players in soccer are black, pele, ronaldo, rinaldinyo, balotelli etc.
Soccer athletes are not better athletes by any measure. To be good in soccer though one needs good coaching which cost alot of money. The best teams do lots of short passing and work there way up in triangle forms. The worst teams just try to boot the ball up to the guy. I played pretty much every sport. The easiest sport in terms of physicality would be a baseball outfielder in right field as so few balls go that way, followed by soccer. Most soccer players except mid-fielders are hardly expected to do much running, and most soccer midfielders even on white teams like netherlands are black. Football wide receiver is easily the most tiring. You have to run 15 yards to the end of the field, run whether or not the ball is coming to you another 15-20 yards. Run back to the huddle which is another 15-20 yards. And by the time you get back you have 5 seconds before you have to run back to the end of the field and repeat. It is like practically running a marathon. I played soccer and it was easy peasy. Firstly when you are on defense (you know, when the camera isn’t showing the other half of the field) you are just walking or standing in one spot making jokes with other defenders. When the other team is attacking, the strikers are at mid field doing nothing but just watching. The mid fielders simply defend the mid field, and they only defend their side and once the ball passes mid field its the defenders job. Soccer requires the least physical fitness.
You were doing good until the big dumb Africans part and that your jackassery showed.
Those big dumb Africans seem to be taking up larger and larger spaces in European teams. Pele, one of the greatest of all time is a “big dumb African.”
And while I agree that soccer players are amazing athletes, I’d put someone like Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant above the vast majority of them.
http://cdn2.sbnation.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/6464387/handegg.0_standard_709.0.jpg
Note all the body armor and padding the pussy on the right is wearing.
note the cock sucking faggot on the left
Sounds like you have a crush on him.
Beckham’s married and has at least 2 children.
Last I checked, that would make him heterosexual…
no i just hate soccer
one two maybe three goals a game gay ass penalties etc vs football (the real one) with people beating the shit out of each other i mean really i want a war of the field and since we cant have gladiator matches (and all modern fighting matches are faked) i must take football
Join the fucking army. What a moron.
Except the one on the left is a French rugby player. Note lack of padding, helmet, Cadillac Escalade, etc.
Okay, let him line up in an American football team and tell me how many snaps he takes before he’s wheeled out on a gator.
And let the guy on the left remove his padding and you’ll see a physic easily as chiseled and buff as the rugby guy.
If rugby were even close to the sport that American Football enjoys, you’d see it much more prominently embraced.
Americans want winners that know how to WIN, (not punters who have to flop for the ref.)
There is a world outside of the United States.
I don’t dislike American Football or disregard the athletic achievements of the players.
However, one key measure of a sport’s popularity is how many countries play it to a competitive level. It is self-evident that American Football has no international game worthy of the name as no country outside of the US really cares about it or plays it enough.
The guy on the left doesn’t have 5 300lbs beasts trying to collide with him at full speed.
Funny, that doesn’t seem to stop rugby players from playing rugby.
Rugby players tackle. American footballer players collide. Completely different.
Yeah, because no one ever uses the term “tackle” in relation to American football. lol
Watching grown black men collide into each other?
How entertaining.
Michael Sam, is that you?
Mate shut up. Football is a better sport than the bs american version of rugby.
There is absolutely no finesse in U.S football. It is a crap sport.
Ted, we get it. Your mom wouldn’t let you play football.
I’m not sure you quite understand the difference between Rugby and American Football.
Rugby is not merely American Football wthout padding. It is an entirely different game with very different rules, many of which make it less violent than American football.
Principal among these is the lack of blocking. In American football, you are allowed to have players dedicated to blocking opponents. This leads to a large number of collisions every play as players tend to line up directly across from one another and collide in an effort to block/escape blocks. It is also common for blockers to blindside other players in American football (these tend to be among the most violent collisions). You don’t have this same lead blocking in rugby because you are not allowed to have dedicated blockers. This limits the number of direct, violent collisions relative to American football, where blockers are beating each other up every play.
A second difference relates to the nature of the two games. Rugby is a much more fluid, free-flowing game than American football. Players are moving around a lot more than their American football counterparts who are more likely to line up in rigid formations and essentially burst full speed into one aother. The American football stlye (line up, full speed ahead, collide with opponent on every play) lends itself to far more frequent violent collisions than rugby, where things just aren’t as rigid and players far more mobile and free.
A third difference stems from the second: rugby players play a more free-flowing game that requires a greater degree of aerobic endurance than American football does. Because of this, rugby players are necessarily smaller on average. They are still huge, but you average American football player is a bulkier man. This again impacts the level of violence in each game, as hits in American football tend to be delivered by more massive people (and, as I mentioned earlier, tend to be more direct collisions).
The final difference relates to tackling. Put quite simply, rugby players are superior tacklers. The reason is because they are actually required to – in rugby, most of the hits you see in American football are actually illegal. Rugby players are forced to learn form in order to execute legal tackles. American football players are taught some form as well, but the relative lack of restrictions with regard to contact, allow them to be far less inhibited. They can collide with a freedom and a force that a rugby player legally cannot. This, again, lends itself to more violent contact. Rugby players are much better tacklers, but American football players are more violent tacklers.
TL;DR: There is a very good reason why you see pads in one sport and not in the other. It has nothing to do with who is and isn’t a pussy, and everything to do with the nature of these two games.
Rugby
Football = Trench Warfare
Rugby = Blitzkrieg
Good analogy. Another one I like to use:
American Football Players: Regular Infantry
Rugby: Commandos
American football players operate like ordinary infantry grunts. They are given orders from the higher-ups, and generally expected to follow them without much regard to their own innovation/free-thought. This leads to a much more rigid game that isn’t as free flowing – guys are just following orders to the letter (though players at some positions, especially QB, have roles more similar to a US Army Captain or Lieutenant).
Rugby players have got much more freedom with regard to how they accomplish their missions (as opposed to just following strict orders and marching almost directly to them), leading to a more open and free-flowing game. They’re also more mobile than regular infantry.
“There is absolutely no finesse in U.S football. It is a crap sport.”
How many cocks can you fit in your mouth?
You make it sound like rugby players come to some verbal agreement as to who can pass without being harmed, to avoid contact and injury and all that other violent stuff that shouldn’t occur in modern sport. Doesn’t matter where you hit them, or how, the big guy charging at you still has to be stopped. And it’s not always big vs big either. The little guys get no mercy on a rugby pitch. Nor deserve to.
Or he was too much of a pussy to play.
Absolutely excellent post, and added credibly to the conversation at large, (and highly elucidative of the essential natures of the two sports.) Well done.
because muh balls
Football has a different point of tackle and the hits are harder. The men who play football also, due to the armor, do not hold back in their hits which makes it much more violent and attractive to the audience. No sane rugby player is going to hit anywhere near the same body point, nor with the same amount of unrestrained force (as defined by physics) as a football player.
I’m not a fan of football but the “they wear armor so that means they’re wimps” thing is a tired meme to say the least. Put a rugby player on a U.S. football field, pad him up and see how long he lasts. He’ll instinctively pull his tackles (since he’s trying to bring down an opponent, not cripple them as American players do) and will be smooshed into a fine European cream on the field in a matter of minutes.
Respect for Rugby but while they are related in origin, they are entirely different games with different approaches and physics in play. If Rugby players started getting seriously injured all the time they’d don armor soon enough.
Lately the NFL is wussifying the game with these new illegal hits and can’t tackle this way or that. WTF! Next they might cancel a game because of a little rain because the now female commentators on the sidelines will mess up her hair. Players now have to wear pink ribbons and shoes during a game for breast cancer shit. C’mon. It’s turning into a pussy sport.
“smooshed into a fine European cream”
Ha! Well put. I’d love to see any one of the smarmy, football-bashing commenters return a kick-off.
“and will be smooshed into a fine European cream on the field in a matter of minutes.”
Just because they aren’t darkies doesn’t mean they would kill the competition you turd.
Great ad hominem. Some day you can join a real discussion,
They do get regularly injured, and seriously. Six to nine month breaks from the game for ‘collision repairs’ is all too common. And while a small number get subbed off during a game, coaches only have access to 22 players for the entire game. Run out of fresh players to replace injured team mates? Too bad; put the least injured back on or play with fewer than the 15 you’re allowed on the field at any one time. There’s no such thing as subbing on an entire defensive team or offensive team in rugby; once you’re on the field you’re on for the duration
Wussifying? I’d love to see you if you could survive five minutes of any of these three great sports discussed.
Good observations. American football, for anyone who cares, started just as unpadded as rugby or Aussie rules football, but guys kept getting seriously hurt and knocked out, the game is so violent.
Massive head injuries caused helmets to appear, and have been systematically improved every since.
So many collar bones were breaking necessitated the creation of shoulder pads, with their concomitant upgrades. Same with every safety feature these players wear – the game is too violent for them not to wear them and expect them not to get seriously injured.
Am Football has necessarily evolved over the past hundred years accordingly. Just like the previous comment. Rugby dudes start getting seriously injured, they’ll don padding. It’s a business, remember?
Players are far too expensive to let them get wiped out on a single rogue hit. Concussions are the leading edge of ethical responsibility on the part of the league, so you’ll be seeing even more reduction of raw violence accordingly. Just like the tobacco industry has discovered. A pro footballer has a right to a healthy rest of his life – not a crippled version in exchange for not nearly enough money to take care of himself for the rest of his life.
Classic
Handegg still beats the “world” sport of grass diving:
http://t.qkme.me/3wgn.jpg
The picture on the left is called soccer.
Another reason for soccer’s relative lack of popularity in the US is the fact that there are fewer blacks in soccer compared to black-heavy sports like American football and basketball.
For some reason Americans–especially white beta-male fanboys–just love watching black men, which raises questions about white masculinity and racial fetishes.
Men flopping,kissing each other and basically running around with dike haircuts (soccer) is beta friend.
Right, because a sport that celebrates Michael Sam is so alpha.
lol
Enjoy the sight of men in spandex do you?
Right, because hockey is chock full of black men.
Hockey is awesome, in part because it features so few Africans, but among white beta-male fanboys the big sports are American football, basketball, and baseball, all of which are heavily Third World.
I agree about the big three, but hockey has a large and growing following. It’s not all about race.
I don’t watch sports per se, but if I had to choose one it would be lacrosse. Everything else is just so scripted and/or boring.
and soccer doesnt have third world black and brown people
Boxing lost a fan base in the US when all the champs at the higher weights started to be European (which I predicted would happen, way back in 2000, as the children of the Soviet breakup matured and became adults).
There is a BIAS against aggressive white males in our current US culture. We also tend to OVERstate black athletic superiority. Yes, black men run the 100 faster, but the fact is, the strongest men in the world are always white (particularly Nordic), and every single legit Powerlifting or Strongman comp is dominated and owned by white men. Yet, our media vaunts a 9 second run, while pushing an 1000 pound deadlift onto ESPN Ocho.
Iceland has won something like 8 strongman comps…the functional equivalent to Jamaica producing so many high speed sprinters–as far as the population of the island and unlikelihood of such stats. Proof that the two races both have gifts of different kinds.
Yup it’s a Moloch form of racial Cuckoldry.
Oh wow… you’re kidding right? Not enough blacks?
Uh, TRY THE ENTIRE CONTINENT OF AFRICA! THEY ALL PLAY SOCCER!
A basic internet search would have revealed that to you…
I would be easier for you to just say “I”m a racist troll, don’t take me seriously”
I don’t care if Americans embrace it. I love it and I embrace it
I hate when Europeans and other non-Americans try to say that Americans “don’t have the attention span” to watch soccer. Yeah, because baseball, America’s pastime, is really fucking riveting and action-packed.
Baseball simply gives Americans an excuse to to sit around, eat junk food, and drink beer, which they excel at.
That’s ridiculous. I watch Football to do that.
Had to laugh at this one…no drinking going on at the soccer matches (or in the pubs watching the game)?
I say watch either game with friends, have a few and a good time.
Life is short, gentlemen.
watching the NFL is like watching the shopping channel
How so?
There is about 5-10x as much commercial time per game (50-100 minutes) as time with the ball actually hiked and doing something (11 minutes)
Dude. Redzone Channel.
I watched a game of baseball at the 2000 olympics and was bored shitless. Basketball has too much scoring, it barely matters (might as well play a 15 minute game involving just the top 5 players on each side with 1 sub for all the scoring ends up being worth), NFL takes hours to play 10 minutes of actual game play.
Also, consider the lack of scoring. Soccer games have few “meaningful events,” i.e., goals. If a game is 0-1 after 90+ minutes, there is no preponderance of data (a statistically significant set) to conclude that one team was actually better than the other. These outcomes feel unsatisfying, to me at least.
Possession, pass completion, shots on goal, shots, corners all indicate a somewhat superior team. 0-0 is a feature of knockout tournament. The Professional game is quite high scoring.
i dont give a shit about a sport if some dude can fail so hard as to not get the ball into a net that is longer than the great wall of china taller than the willis tower and by and larger larger than kim kardasians asshole
Try the game yourself. It’s a tough thing. Scoring requires genius.
Well Germany has at the moment scored 5-0 against Brazil in the semifinal… although I doubt this makes rest of the match more interesting 😀
American games like basketball feature so many “meaningful events” that it becomes meaningless and boring.
Good point Fry. 0-0 and 1-0 games seem to be the norm, or at least that’s what we see the most of here in the States.
The NHL is a perfect example of the difference between European and North American athletes. Nearly all of the enforcers and physical players are Canadian/American, while the Europeans stay away from the physical game. It’s a complete difference in what we define as an athlete. Notice the US soccer team wasn’t flopping around anytime a player kicked the turf in front of them
English players tend to not flop over on contact. They are trained to be physical whereas a Spaniard or Italian is taught the dark arts at youth.
Soccer is played by foreign people. That is sufficient to make it a sport unworthy of Americans.
Tell that to Dominicans, Cubans, and many other Latinos who play Baseball….
The real reasons soccer has never caught on are different:
(1) Soccer does not have breaks where television stations can show commercials, and so doesn’t generate the same TV revenue and thus does not get promoted on TV.
(2) Youth Soccer is a joke, full of perpetually alarmed soccer moms who are scared of contact sports and afraid of competition.
But reason #1 is a bonus, not a detriment. Once you start watching sports with no commercials, its hard to go back. And the youth soccer leagues are starting to fix themselves and rid themselves to the toxic overprotective women, but they have a long way to go. High school soccer superstars ought to already be professionals.
Wait what? You mean the same soccer moms who let their kids play football?
Hahahahaha… No way in hell these SWPL soccer moms would let their kids play American football. Even baseball is too violent and competitive for them.
The silver lining is that once the soccer leagues get some Hispanics to join, the hysterical women pull their kids and the sport is allowed to be a sport. That’s why the youth leagues are improving.
But still the youth leagues have big problems, such as college players are too old to still be training, and soccer scouts need to identify and sign talented players long before then.
Once you start playing sports with your hands, it’s hard to go back.
true, like rugby or Handball. Men sposrts.
Soccer isn’t a sport. It’s an excuse for fans to have drunken mass brawls.
I don’t think ANYONE likes the tactics of flopping. We understand it is a part of the game and can be used for tactical advantage, but the strong players do not need to us it. When was the last time you’ve seen Messi or Ronaldo flagrantly flopping instead of cutting in between two defenders and scoring? That is why they are revered as the top players in the WORLD (general consensus of the world), they don’t need to use such second class strategies.
The only credible point made was number 3.
The sheer competition between US soccer and the other dominant sports here in the US is to much to overcome quickly.
I would be happy If I was from another country that soccer hasn’t gained as great a popularity in the US as it has in other countries. If we invested the amount of money, time, and used the higher class athletes that gravitate towards Hockey, Basketball and US Football instead of Soccer, I would be shitting myself.
What I find amazing is how far off the map boxing has fallen. The heavyweight champion used to be a household name. Now who even cares? I blame this in part on Mike Tyson biting Holyfield’s ear and confirming everyone’s worst ideas about the supposed savagery of boxing. I suppose it’s always been supported by corruption so the downfall of organized crime may have taken some money away from it. Anyway there was a time when it was #2 behind baseball (with college football #3, this was decades ago).
Blame UFC for that one.
We want an American wearing the heavyweight belt. A Ukrainian who spells Vladimir with a “W” doesn’t exactly fire the American imagination- however great an athlete he may be. Right now the heaviest American world champ is Bernard Hopkins at light heavyweight, and he can’t have too many fights left. We’re dominating the medium-sized weight classes but the heavyweight title is all the masses care about.
Actually, aside from Roy Jones (and much more recently, Hopkins), the 168 classes and above have historically been European (with the exception of HW, until the early 2000s). The bottom line is, two things: Americans aren’t that interested in non-American champs; and, blacks and latinos don’t like watching white guys (from anywhere) beat the shit out of blacks and browns.
Wladimir is arguably, adjusting for modernity inflation, the greatest HW of all time (his elder brother not far behind). They have something like the top 3 or 4 win averages, highest KO ratios and I believe Vitali has never even touched the canvas as a professional. UNHEARD of with black boxers.
If Calzaghe (yes, he clowned Jones and Lacy) and the Klits were black americans, we’d be hearing how awesome they are. Roy avoided Dariusz Michel-whatever, for years. The Klits have decimated black American HWs, and yet were cut by HBO.
I think USA could win the soccer world cup despise the scope presented by the writer, Americans could prove themselves as conquerors of a foreign sport, and I’m not even American. This article was unnecesary and sounds like a justification, men don’t justify themselves.
Every time I hear or read the word “soccer” I get chills down my spine. This sport is called FOOTBALL goddammit. Only a sucker calls it soccer.
You do understand that people in different parts of the world call things by different names, right? So we call it soccer, big hairy deal. If it affects you that much that you get physical reactions to hearing a word, you may want to consider that you’re taking it far too seriously.
It’s called Football in about a hundred different languages. That’s because it’s played with your feet and a ball. Just because a few former English colonies name it “soccer” doesn’t make it right.
The term soccer comes from “association football”, and it was the original name for the sport in England. So, YOU are the suckers who called it that, genius.
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/06/the-origin-of-the-word-soccer/
Football is actually what the lower classes called it when the sport spread. So, basically, you’re a god damned peasant, is what I’m saying.
As spook noted, the term “soccer” comes from England, not North America. The English invented the game, so that would seem to lend some legitimacy to the term.
That doesn’t make sense, why call it football when the goal blocks the ball with his hands and you throw the ball in with your hands, you play the game with your hands too!, and why call it football when you use your head to score half the time and to repel the corner kicks. Then you also have to watch out for high kicking. How can a game that punishes you for using your foot on the ball be called football? Soccer should be called soccer because all the idiots on the field wear big stupid socks.
Just because soms high brow Oxford students jokingly called it “Soccer” to shorten the word association, doesn’t mean the rest of the world doesn’t call it Football. People call it Football in over 200 countries in every possible language.
Even New Zealand and Australia officially changed it from “soccer” to Football.
Well, in that case let me tell you. Outside the US absolutely NO ONE gives a flying fuck about American “Football” and you’ll be looked at as an complete imbecil using the word “soccer”
Yes, that’s right. All other countries mock the US for this. We weren’t taking you that serious anyway.
Adios!
CFL, NFL europe, gtfo with that bullshit. Given the brits invented soccer it doesn’t make sense.
Another one to laugh at (but in a good way). So much anger over something so trivial.
Dave, if you ever came to the US and you asked for the directions to the water closet (or loo) we would point you in the right direction (to the rest room as we call it here) – because we care.
Have a good one, my friends. Let’s move on to more meaningful conversations.
If not for soccer the crime rate in high percentage hispanic cities would be astronomical. Also un-athletic white hipster kids need something to play that is less physical and talent dependent and soccer is perfect for non competitive types.
Don’t you dare degrade soccer. Hipsters and hispanics would be very upset with you.
LOL wut? Your half-rant has nothing to do with my comment.
People in other countries call cigarettes FAGS and I think we can agree that a cigarette is for certain not a homosexual man.
My point is that soccer is not football. I don’t care what people call in hundreds of third world shitholes.
The simple fact is in the USA soccer is a hobby. The only people that play soccer in the most sports obsessed country on earth are third world immigrants(mostly illegal) and hipster white kids. For goodness sakes most youth soccer leagues don’t even keep fucking score.
If not for the influx of 50 million third world hispanics in the last 30 yrs we would still be at “point and laugh” status in the USA.
While I too usually refer to the game as football, I’m speaking to a North American audience here. Hence, I use North American terminology.
This is merely an exercise in semantics – nothing to get too worked up about.
haha!
Good write up Athlone. I think you nailed it with point four, at least as I see it. The flopping does come across as just so….sissified…to most of us, even the folks who like soccer (that I am acquainted with).
I do take exception to “It isn’t American”. That’s true to a point, however, American football evolved from Rugby back at the turn of the twentieth century. In fact it used to be called (Insert University Name Here) Style Rugby e.g – Harvard Style Rugby, etc. The differences became quite vast over time as rules were implemented here that were not in England, and vice-versa, to the point that they became two almost, but not quite entirely, different games. As somebody else has pointed out as well, golf comes from Scotland and you can’t drive two miles in a state without coming across a golf range.
My biggest beef with the game is just the feel of collectivism it has to it. I can’t pin down precisely why. The in unison chanting, the “our entire nation stops working so we can watch” thing or something just under the surface that rubs me wrong, I don’t know. While clearly all sports have large audiences and conformity it just seems like soccer takes it to a whole new level that really gets the hair on the back of my neck standing up.
There is an element of Nationalism in World Cup football, which, to an American raised on hyper-individualism and social isolation, may seem weird. But football’s tribal aspect is entirely natural and speaks to a real human need to belong to a group, hence its global popularity (except in America, where authorities suppress Nationalism).
Not everybody embraces collectivism. What you call “hyper-individualism” we call simply individualism, and frankly a lot of folks here are way more collectivist than you’re aware of. There is no “social isolation” except insofar as a person chooses to make it so in his own life. We suffer no shortage of community events, celebrations, pubs and other social institutions.
That you said that nationalism in America is suppressed made me actually laugh, out loud, for real.
Actual nationalism (of the ethnic variety) is clearly repressed, suppressed and drowned at all times in the US . You are talking about civic nationalism.
American society is more divided, fractured, and balkanized than ever. It’s falling apart.
As I said, football speaks to a real human need for group tribal membership–an instinct that is largely suppressed in America–which is one reason soccer is so incredibly popular around the world.
Uh, the Super Bowl? Haven’t you seen the pre-game shows and the National Anthem complete with military flyovers? How is the World Cup any different from that?
American Football strikes me as totalitarian. The Coach almost seems to be an omnipotent god-King. It’s also a series of set pieces. As if you had 6 chances to lose possession and got a repeated free kick no matter what. Until you run out of downs. The set piece thing exists in Rugby League but not in Rugby Union. The free flow of play is what you find disconcerting IMHO.
What it is is militaristic. Rigidly hierarchical with a specified, well-defined command structure, and rife with military metaphor. Soccer is not really like that. It also explains why soccer is always will be the most popular sport in latin countries. American football is used as tool to boost morale, patriotism, and national pride. It is also used to assist the military with recruiting. Just my take on it as an American who plays soccer, but thoroughly enjoys college football.
“Americans look at that and simply see weakness and the promotion of weakness, and there are few things they hate more than that.” – I wish this were more true. These days there is a faction of the American electorate who have a vested interest in destroying this cultural tradition. A trait I might add that is almost always associated with Great Powers (British Empire, Romans, Spartans, etc.) The USA is sadly taking long strides down the road to weak, effeminate, craven, shamelessness.
Look at the NATO reaction to Russian aggression. The autocratic rulers of the eastern hemisphere are rising, while we in the West shrivel – embarrassed of our own long and glorious history. Sorry to turn a football article into a political rant but it had to be done.
The Frankfurt Schools guys wanted character and physical weakness amongst the western civilizations, to easier destroy them. It’s no surprise that our PC culture has embraced a sport like soccer.
The Frankfurt school created the Negrofest that is NFL and NBA. look at the list of owners of these franchises. Most of them are cousins of Theodore Adorno. Dr Frankenfurter himself.
Didn’t know the manosphere was full of stormfronters.
Let’s take rugby and give them superhero costumes: American football.
Let’s take cricket and give them beer bellies: baseball
Let’s take women and turn them into fat masculine pigs: Mac and cheese feminists
‘Merica….always taking it to the next level…
Stay classy, Murrica.
typical euro fag
Typical Murrican dumbass.
Feminism has origins in Anglo and Germanic cultures in Europe I’m afraid.
Baseball players are actually in pretty good shape, in case you haven’t seen a game in a while.
Rugby was a shared sport between the U.S. and Britain for a long time and evolved two different ways until it became two different sports around the 1920’s. We used to routinely play each other (colleges here and in Britain proper). The padding started here due to the stark violence of the game at the time, which did not quite take over in Britain to the same degree.
As the Brits put it: Football is a gentlemans game played by thugs, Rugby is a thugs game played by gentlemen.
LONG LIVE RUGBY! Beautiful legalised gbh ^_^ Waddaya mean your thumbs broken? It’s still attached isn’t it? GET BACK OUT THERE!
Beautiful.
The world rugby champions, the All Blacks (google it before jumping to conclusions) are playing the US Eagles in Chicago this year. Go to the game if you can. The Eagles will get dicked but they’ll still get some big, non-padded hits in. If it’s unmitigated violence you want (oddly, nobody’s mentioned “rucking” yet; google that too), rugby is the sport for you. And you won’t have to wait four hours for a result either.
I’ve got scars on my back from getting trampled in one ruck over. look a bit like pregnancy stretch marks unfortunately ^_^
I played Rugby at my local club for ~5 years. Quit in the end because my knee started playing up and that’s not something you mess around with.
It’s a good game and it would be good to see America embrace it as well. Although this article is correct to point out that the American sports scene is rather crowded.
Still, gonna definitely watch that game. Didn’t know about it so thanks for putting it on my radar.
Feminism isn’t Germanic.
It’s really the same with movies and comic books. Americans love violence and superhero freaks, Europeans love Donald Duck (ironically an American character originally). In the world of ducks, Huey, Dewey, and Louie of course win not by force but by being clever.
Did you know that Donald Duck is not only the most popular comic magazine in Finland, but the most popular periodical of any kind? (excluding two “free” co-op membership magazines)
Interesting point, but I’d posit that this is a change in Europeans, not something invented by America culture. We are at base a British/Anglo culture with a lot of other European cultures heaped on, and a bit of black and other minority cultures providing the sprinkles on the top. We like violence because our European ancestors adored violence in all its forms and celebrated it in ways that even Americans would find barbaric today.
The pantheons of Germans or Greek were not filled with Donald Ducks, but rather, superhero freaks.
the tough guys tended to migrate to the US in the old days.
The one’s looking for a fight tended to go to Cape Town or Kabul.
The hard part about soccer is playing the entire game, which you can’t appreciate unless you have some experience doing it.
Its actually a bit frustrating to watch the tail end of a soccer match because many of the goals scored aren’t technically beautiful, they just happen because the other team ran out of gas.
90th minute goals are like mercy killings. I do not like last minute penalty goals.
“Americans look at that and simply see weakness and the promotion of weakness, and there are few things they hate more than that.”
Doesn’t this fly in the face of this site’s frequent and substantiated assertions of the general pussification, PCfication and feminization of America? Going by that point of yours, at the very least you could make a case that there’s a sizeable and growing contingent of potential soccer fans in the US, since promoting, defending and extolling weakness seems to be the meme du jour in America nowadays.
I think the growth of soccer fandom in the states is a direct result of the hipsters and other faggy “elite” types. They seem to crave the sport, likely because they don’t have the physical gifts or potential to compete in traditional American sports and see soccer as something of an equalizer.
The growth of football fandom is more likely the result of a negative reaction to the crass commercialization, theatrics, thuggery, and Africanization of the big American sports. It’s simply a better, more exciting sport.
There is diving in soccer (football, fútbol, etc for the rest of the world) but you have to realize that you are controlling a ball with your feet and at the same time running with it. And dribbling, too.
It is too easy to fall even without your opponents trying to break your vertebrae.
Fair point.
Soccer crazy nations have waited one hundred years just to get into the semifinals. And they will have to wait another one hundred years just to get their first world cup star.
It is a very difficult game.
Are baseball players choosen for their physical strength or sheer size? I am not american but I would say that baseball players have more in common with soccer players than with football or basketball players.
Football players need to be able to run continuously for 90 minutes. They need to out muscle men who are often 3 inches taller than themselves and weigh an extra 30lbs and control a ball with tier feet then pass or shoot with the accuracy of a quarterback. It’s a big skill set. All rounder comes to mind.
Baseball players are usually very tall and very strong relative to the average population. The average height in the MLB is north of 6ft (6’1″, if I recall correctly). The game emphasizes arm strength quite a bit, which necessitates taller, thicker players. Speed is emphasized too for certain positions (ex: outfield), though not as much as it is in American football.
I would consider baseball sort of a medium between American football and soccer. Raw physicality matters less than it does in football (baseball is a much more technical game), but it matters far more than it does in soccer (much greater emphasis on height, speed and strength).
Interesting, thank you. There is only one postion in soccer where you really need a specific body type: the goal keeper. He must be tall, with long arms and quick. Also he has to have character so to project security in the rest of the team.
‘You simply do not need to be a particularly gifted natural athlete to excel on a soccer pitch’ Yeah you don’t know what you are talking about.
He didn’t say they were not athletic. The point was that they don’t have to be the most prime human specimen(such a natural Hercules) on the planet to even have a running shot at being a good soccer player at a professional level. He was stressing the intellectual and strategic side of the game as being more important than being built like a 20 year old Arnold Schwarzeneggar.
Yes I do. It is a fact that one does not need to be gifted with extraordinary height, strength, speed or agility to become a gifted footballer.
This is not true in most American sports, where one is essentially required to be gifted in at least one or more of those categories in order to excel. Soccer does not emphasize raw athleticism nearly as much as these games do.
All good points, the flopping was what really turned me off while watching World Cup games. I can appreciate the skill involved, but for me there are basic limitations to the game that I can’t overcome. Namely you’re limited to using your legs (other than goalkeepers) so you’re not seeing a full range of athletic ability, though hands are used a lot for cheap grabbing of opponents. Another thing is that the game fundamentally changes past the time limit and a well-played, defensive contest at 0-0, becomes a penalty kick score fest, an admission that these games would go scoreless if played normally.
I think the popularity of soccer wouldn’t be enhanced tremendously, even if the US won the World Cup. At the end of the day American sports are dominated by advertising, 45:00, commercial-less halves aren’t acceptable to corporations.
Enjoy your american football franchises. You can swap sandwiches whenever you want. Just as long as you remember what you are watching isn’t a sport merely entertainment like WWF. You are not a member of anything merely a customer paying for a seat.
Sorry but soccer is a physical sport. Just because there is some diving and theatrics(which I hate) does not mean it isn’t a physical game. Those guys are athletes and if you think otherwise you have never played the game and don’t know what you are talking about.
1. I didn’t deny that soccer is a physical sport. I merely claimed that it it is far less physical than many of the sports Americans are used to.
2. I did not say that soccer player were not athletes.
3. I have played soccer, albeit only at the youth level.
I’m sorry but this is where I divest myself from the other Americans on here. American sports for the most part dispossess legitimacy, what I mean by this, for instance, calling the SuperBowl champions, “world champions” is a blatant lie and misrepresentation of the sport. The last SuperBowl was between the Seattle Seahawks and Denver Broncos, with 99% of all the players on both teams being from the United States, hardly anything about that stipulates “world champion.” American football and baseball both promote obesity, and have only a few positions where the players are actually athletically “fit.” Besides, there are roughly 6-10 plays in a game where the foot is actually being used. American football is a vehicle for crass commercialism. When you cut out time outs, commercials, AF is only about 25-30 minutes long.
Real football is continuous. Lastly, no one outside of America and maybe Canada could give two shits about American so-called “football.” Also there is a stark intelligence gap, the average American football player is probably an idiot, and this goes up exponentially if the player is black. Real football promotes internationalism, having players out on loan etc. These men will accumulate multiple languages in their lifetimes by simply playing for multiple clubs. The average American football player graduates from college barely being literate. As far as Association Football is concerned, the whole world save for about 2-3 nations recognize this as the international and premier sport. As far as football nations being “sissy,” let’s take a look at Brazil, where the 2nd biggest and emerging sport is Mixed Martial Arts. Brazilians and Americans dominate the UFC. The UFC possesses legitimacy, meaning the best fighters from the world, fight in the UFC. No intelligent person could tolerate American football for over 20 minutes without turning due to the constant barrage of crass commercialism.
Good post. Well stated. Although again, commercial sponsors will damage Association Football because it is free flowing and continuous.
fuck internationalism what are we commies who want the world to get together for bum fucking sessions but i will give you that mma is ba
We don’t care if people outside the US like our sports or not. Thats what you are missing. We like them, play them, and don’t pay much attention to other sports. Whats so hard here. Again with the commercialism. Have you seen a Soccer match lately? Ads are everywhere. Yes, NFL over does it but so does Soccer. Ads on the jersey, everywhere. Its how modern pro sports are. If a sign can be put there, it will be put there. NO one said Soccer players were dumb and guys in the NFL are smart. Most aren’t. They graduated in Football, not world diplomacy. We get it. And everything else just looks like standard anti US insecurity dribble. BTW the SuperBowl is the most watched sporting even in the World. I’d say a few people care about it.
“Also there is a stark intelligence gap, the average American football player is probably an idiot, and this goes up exponentially if the player is black. ” You forgot to add hispanic.
All the hispanic football players in my school were as stupid as the black players. The 2 dumbest were named Andrew Ornelas (6’11 190 lbs) and Carlos Ramirez (6’2 230 lbs). Im gonna sound like Elliot Rodger here but what is it that attracts women to big dumb men?
And this is coming from a hispanic.
Sadly, the articles on ROK are getting dumber and dumber with each passing day. This author knows absolutely nothing about soccer. I am a youth soccer ref. Youth soccer participation has absolutely exploded over the last 10 years. Youth participation in soccer eclipsed little league participation years ago. Soccer is wildly popular in the United States, especially considering how many hispanics now live in the US.
Some of these articles are just so poorly researched and put together. I really want to stick with this site but if the quality continues to decline as it has, myself and likely many other avid readers of this site will jump ship to better sites and never return.
Makes you wonder if the article was written by a guy who has never played a sport in his life.
Typing is not a sport.
It’s written by a pig ignorant fool. Although I do think that commercial sponsors will kill the viability of the sport.
Prove it.
You can be fairly confident that I’ve played much more and at a much higher level than you have.
Ugh, could you people not from the US be so knee jerk and offended because of this. Please read the article more clearly.
Not only this, World Cup TV ratings exploded, especially when the US’s matches were happening. Many American fans are becoming fans of the English Premier League, Major League Soccer, and other leagues as a result of the World Cup.
I get the feeling that much of ROK is insecure regarding soccer’s rise in this country. If they don’t like soccer, they don’t have to watch it. At the same time, they should not shit on what others enjoy. That indicates a lack of maturity.
This is not the case.
I watch the game quite extensively (much more so than the vast majority of Americans, and not just at World Cup time) because I actually do like it.
Do not mistake a thesis regarding the limited potential of Americans to fully embrace soccer for my own unwillingness to fully embrace soccer. I do not have to dislike the game in order to point out the fact that many others may never warm to it.
I would beg to differ.
High participation rates at the youth level do not necessarily imply a full embrace of the sport. While participation rates have climbed in recent years, they have been consistently high for some time – Americans have long had a rate of youth soccer participation that would imply that the game should matter more here at higher levels than it seems to. The problem in America is retention in older age groups – while soccer is seen as a fine sport for little kids and girls, it has not been fully embraced as a worthy full-time athletic purusit by many older kids. Youths play soccer early on and, all too often, gravitate away from the game as teenagers, either abandoning it altogether for other more “mainstream sports” or continuing to play but not focusing on it completely (participating heavily in multiple other sports).
While the latter outcome (soccer as one of many sports) sounds okay, it does not bode well for the improvement of soccer development in the USA. It decreases the number of youths we have focusing exclusively on the game, and it is well known that it takes years of dedicated, focused mental and physical conditioning to build a top footballer. Though the academy system has improved in the USA, it still has far too many gaping holes and we still have far too few of our best potential footballers getting involved in the system at the right time and focusing exclusively on soccer (pre-teen/early teens).
You’re right to note the games popularity among hispanics. Immigrants (generally Mexicans, Africans and Afro-Caribbeans) and their children are vastly over-represented in the American soccer landscape today, and you could argue that an increase in their number may lead to an increase in the game’s popularity. You might be right, but there are limits to this. For one, immigrants are just a portion of the American population, and not ALL of them fully embrace the game (many become Americanized). Even if a slight majority do, that would still amount to just a portion of the American populace having fully embraced the sport. You need more than that in order to talk about a general “full embrace” by the whole American populace.
Furthermore, playing the immigrant angle when trying to establish the game can only take you so far. The failure of Chivas USA (a blatant attempt to capitalize on the apparent Mexican-American enthusiasm for the game) and the sheer number of Mexican-Americans who count themselves as El-Tri supporters first and foremost (enough so to get the American team booed on its home soil on occasion by legions of Americans of mexican heritage and a large percentage of the “American” fans at this most recent World Cup were there to root for Mexico) should tell you all about this. Don’t simply assume that hispanics are going to be a panacea for the embrace of the game in the USA.
Soccer may be popular among young kids, but that’s not enough to bring about a full embrace of the game. Soccer has to be seen as more than just a game for foreigners, hipsters, girls and little kids in order to receive that full embrace here.
My article is no poorer than your critique here. You insist that the article is low-quality, but have not actually addressed the content itself (ex: the bit about the competition soccer faces here, the american aversion to diving, etc) in order to explain why that is. All you have done is brought up high youth soccer participation rates as a general means with which to refute the title of the article (read: to explain why soccer will be fully embraced here), and that is an approach whose fallacy I have already explained above. The actual content of the article hasn’t even been touched in your critique.
It is one thing for you to claim that my work is “poorly researched and put together”, but it is another thing entirely for you to do so with the aid of a critique that is poorly researched and put together.
Do as you wish. I have neither the desire nor the means to stop you.
Or I could have just read this first.
Soccer has been played wildly in the US for a long time now. It wanes though as athletes get separated by talent as they get older and typically move into other traditional American sports. No one said it wasn’t watched or played in the US regularly. It’s just that its eclipsed.
Another dumbshit article by the anti-racist one.
Why American’s won’t fully embrace soccer:
1) YOU CAN’T USE YOUR HANDS. Aside from our brains, this is what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. You can do more with your hands than your feet. Example, none of the posts or comments written here were toe-typed.
2) No established centuries-long tradition here.
3) We have money for baseball diamonds, football fields, basketball courts, etc and related equipment; many soccer-loving countries don’t
4) we have bigger dudes here. In other countries guys are smaller – more participation in a minimal-contact sport.
5) Natural selection – historically, people crossing oceans were hardy, brave, tough, and creative. Therefore a greater proclivity for invented, complex sports involving physical contact.
So in the rest of the world, you have poorer countries with smaller dudes and centuries-long established soccer traditions. In america, you have bigger, tougher guys descended from well-bred slaves and pioneers, so there’s a greater inclination for more contact in your sport.
Association Football was spread by English and Scottish engineers, miners, machinists, lawyers, doctors, soldiers, technicians, surveyors…to places like Brazil, Argentina, Columbia, Mexico, Spain, Italy, Russia, China, Nigeria, South Africa. It’s a modern sport invented by privately educated middle class white men who administered and built the first global empire. How come you don’t know this?
Don’t forget tens of thousands of Irish slaves who made football and boxing popular.
And who invented it, beyond being an immigrant, is important why?
Never forget…Irish slaves! I’m pretty sure this is why Cricket never took off in Sligo.
And I’m the “dumbshit”?
This aside from the fact that some of the points you’ve articulated here were touched on in the article itself (ex: the lack of a centuries long tradition here), and you’ve offered no rebuttal to the rest of them (implying that I got them right). If you agree with my “dumbshit” article, does that make you a “dumbshit”?
Troll better, bro.
Fair enough, my points 2-5 are essentially your 4.
But you missed the most important one, point one. There’s limited use your fucking hands, which is the major sticking point in lieu of tradition, financial constraints, and a physically small population.
You can troll better also dude. But at least I’m not masquerading my trolling as article-writing. Go suck some ZOG cock 🙂
LOL, what…..
Soccer is also the hardest sport in the world with the most players.
The Czech Republic has never accomplished much in soccer even though it is way more popular here than ice hockey.
Maybe their best athletes are going into Hockey instead? Czech team has great players on the Ice. I heard Hasek was a good Soccer player growing up. Doesn’t mean one is harder than the other really.
I am from the Czech Republic btw. I don’t know about that, I think it is mostly because it is more expensive, if every kid could play hockey, maybe there would be more ice hockey players here, (in terms of % of population the CZ is third in the world) growing up I wanted to play Ice Hockey but couldn’t since my mom could not afford it.
What I mean by harder is that it has way more players, most sports are only relevant in few countries whereas soccer is played on a fairly high level in almost every country in the world.
Also it is physically extremely demanding. All of the top forwards can’t compete past the age of 30 because they lose speed whereas Jagr plays NHL at 42.
You’re article could also be presented as “Why soccer will become America’s top sport as Feminism advances”
What Feminism exists in Brazil or Spain? The creed is strongest in American metropolitan areas.
Particularly point 4, Soccer seems to be a sport that American feminists love. The term soccer mom exists for a reason, they don’t want their sons playing traditional American sports.
That’s circular logic. No sport is really “traditional” except perhaps Cricket. Most of these games are modern confections.
You forgot to mention the fact that soccer can end in a 0-0 tie as being a reason Americans won’t accept it. Why even bother to watch (or play) a game where its possible to have no winner?
Non-Americans should be thankful we don’t like the sport. If it exploded here to the point that US TV contracts were a huge % of FIFA’s income, they would start demanding all sorts of shit that you wouldn’t like. TV timeouts would certainly be at the top of that list.
I don’t like soccer. But I have absolutely no quarrel with those who do. If I’m going to get in a fistfight with someone it’s damn well going to be over something important, not because I think someones choice in sports makes him a pussy (or vice versa).
I can see it now: “Ford vehicles are the epitome of the fast, agile, stylish and advanced game that is football. That’s why we’re so proud to have our F40 selected as the official vehicle of the next FIFA World Cup. And to celebrate this happy occasion, we’re introducing independent rear suspension!”. Yeah, that’ll get the global community salivating for more US corporate sponsorship.
You summed it up excellently Athlone, nothing to add here
As a huge soccer (and basketball/football) fan, I expected a worthless article like the one Ann Coulter wrote the other day. On the whole, it’s a pretty good article with a fair amount of thought and facts in it. I’d suggest that soccer also needs to reduce offsides (say you can’t be offsides once the ball is past 1/3 of the way to the goal, like hockey) or just eliminate it all together. They also need to add instant replay for any penalty kick and red card as well as issue yellow/red cards for diving post match with progressively worse fines/penalties.
I would however suggest that the IQ in soccer IS part of athleticism and one that is underdeveloped in most other sports. It’s one reason for example the QB is so valuable in football b/c that is the only real one position (besides the coaches) that need to have high IQ in order to be successful.
I think football is just fine without changing the rules to suit the Americans.
It’s not to suit Americans–it is literally for the integrity of the sport. Offsides is called wrong all of the time (even worse at lower levels of soccer) and allows for corrupt officials as well. The poorly called/missed penalty kicks and diving literally calls are literally ruining the game and again–also lend itself to having corrupt (bribed) officials. Allowing a couple of coaches challenges for instant replay or just having an instant replay from officials upstairs would make the games far more accurate and eliminate 80% of poor officiating determining games.
The fact that doing these things would increase scoring (which FIFA wants–which is why Goals scored is the second tie breaker after goal differential), is just a bonus.
Offside rule can’t be changed casually. Non involved players is already a stretch. There could be more oversight in real time from linesmen looking for fouls between forwards and defenders. It wouldn’t require much at WC level to add another official looking for sly bulshit from either the forward or the oafish defence.
It absolutely can be changed easily to be like hockey (no offsides once you get to the final 1/3 of the field) or eliminated altogether. It serves almost no purpose except to prevent cherry picking yet 99% of all offsides calls are not cherry picking but one half to one step ahead of the defender–hell the fact that you can be called offsides on a flick on a corner kick is insane.
field hockey got rid of the offside rule in about 1996 – best thing they ever did to the game, speeding it up a lot. 2-3 years ago they also added the autopass rule to stop dirty play slowing things down – essentially you get to pass to yourself on free-hits, all you have to do is bring the ball back to the place of the foul and have it stationary to begin with. This stopped all the cynical stuff on breakaways.
Good bringing together of ideas that are floating around in the UK but never really thought through properly. Interestingly, there is a large discrepancy between countries about what constitutes faking/diving and just playing the game. In the UK, we tend to frown on European and South American superstars who go down at the lightest touch to try to win a foul. Europeans and South Americans consider it playing the game to their advantage (not unlike playing the game with women in many ways, actually). The response to diving is deeply ingrained in sporting identity and seems to say something about national attitudes. The USA, always patronized and ridiculed by us Brits in football (soccer), share a similar disdain for diving, and have shown incredible work rate, stamina, and athleticism in the current and previous world cups (something us Brits, typically lacking the sheer talent of the European/South American countries, have always applauded). As for the USA in soccer, they are extremely effective. The for the past 3 world cups they have turned up with a team of players of very modest international standing, and have consistently out-performed many high-standing teams (England included, sadly). Whatever the national support,they are very firmly on the way up
I agree, I watch the Premier leagues from time to time and there is far less diving. Almost none really. But I think the real reason is, is that if you dive and are rewarded for it, you may find your life in danger from some of the fans there afterwards 🙂
The American male macho phsyc is the real reason.
Pussy betas need to feel macho somehow.
A little 5.2″ chick will boss them around and yell at them, so they need an outlet where they can be Macho men.
Hater much.
Yeah slap that 5′ 2 bitch. And tell her to wear her black eye with pride. Else she won’t get another one.
It’s official…soccer is gay… 😉
http://www.theonion.com/video/soccer-officially-announces-it-is-gay,17603/
It’s not, but the reason dickheads like yourself don’t like it is because soccer plays to be more fit and attractive than your sorry ass, and pull fine chicks that you simply have 0 chance with
Point 1: “Americans Are Not The Best At It
“We love Ice Hockey even though the Canadians beat us every time. LA won the Cup this year.
Point 2: “Soccer Isn’t American
“See above: Ice Hockey isn’t even American.
Point 3: “Competition”
Yeah, OK, that’s a pretty legitimate statement. May also something to do w/how extreme our seasons are, with many areas of the country having normal weather that ranges from 20F to 110F during the year, which you don’t see in many other heavily populated parts of the globe. In the 100% climate controlled 21st century, that may not seem like a big deal, but 140 years ago when these sports were being created it probably mattered a lot.
Point 4: “Lack Of Physicality And The Tolerance Of Weakness”
DId you not read Moneyball? Americans’ guts may make football #1, but our hearts still say baseball. The book Moneyball (the film was a fan of the book’s dream come true but inevitably had to skip large parts) plainly showed that there is no relationship between physicality and talent. Babe Ruth was a fat ass. Hank Aaron is 6′ even and did not look very imposing in his prime (Hank, do you even lift !?! – I kid – he’s still the all time great, especially after BALCO). Back to Point 1, Sid Crosby, one of the best hockey players in the world, is 5’11″(which probably is rounding up form 5’10” something) and around 200 lbs, a very in shape but hardly massive specimen. Wayne Gretsky looked gaunt but is the still the Great One.
The reason we don’t like soccer is that it is a jaw droppingly dirty game, that is boring as hell due to lack of scoring opportunities to create suspense (note the word “opportunities” – Yanks still like watching hockey games that often end 1-0), with no apparent strategy going on on the field, and with fans so violent, offensive, and racist, they make Phili and Oakland fans look like English gentlemen.
I’ve thought a lot about this too so I thought I’d add some additional dynamics to the discussion. This is geared more towards casual or non fans who in soccer terms in the US still way outnumber diehard fans or fans who know a lot about the game.
1. Individual Performances – A lot of sports in America are marketed towards stars and superstar individuals on teams. This means a lot of people like watching a game where these individuals put on a show and rack up quantifiable stats. Its fun and easy to watch Lebron James score a triple-double or watch Peyton Manning throw three touchdown passes. Soccer and hockey to an extent lack this. The exceptions I would make are goalies and the occasional star forward scoring multiple goals in one game though this doesn’t happen consistently. Hence, who is getting the most media coverage right now from the US soccer team? The goalie Tim Howard for his performance vs. Belgium.
2. Stats – Don’t discount fantasy leagues as a factor in the successful marketing of major American sports. Fantasy leagues have opened the floodgates on casual followings of individual players and teams mostly either from a gambling standpoint or just for fun. Football, baseball and basketball provide plenty of stats to play with.
In order for US soccer to make headway and turn the corner on popularity, it needs to make a serious run in the World Cup and it needs its own David Beckam: a homegrown, internationally recognized superstar that a casual fan can tune into a game and watch put on a show.
1. Agree with that one. I hate how some sports (especially the NBA) have been all about a player and not a team. However, it happens often in Soccer to (Rinaldo, Beckham, etc) but not as bad.
2. God, nothing makes me shake my head where i hear something like….he’s set his countries record with 3 lifetime World Cup goals. Wow, a whole 3. I thought Mario Lemieuxs 5 goals 5 different ways in one game was impressive but not anymore.
3. And you last point, yes. I think there is so much money in sports that we will all become like the old USSR where they put you into a sport based on size, ability, things like that. They will find some amazing Soccer player in the US and likewise find some great baseball pitcher in France one day.
As a European who grew up with both football/soccer but also with the Dream Team and basketball, I’d like to chime in.
First of all, soccer is the everyman’s game, the working man’s game, it was right from beginning an alternative to the rigid, brutal and elitist rugby that originated in British boarding schools. The elites of Europe played sports long before the masses, because quite simply, the working man spent so much time working that off time was spent drinking. As such, rugby, tennis, cricket have the values of the upper classes, the strict hierachy and organisation in Rugby and the focus on building character and winning, not on having fun. It is not ‘fun’ to play rugby, it is challeging and rewarding. Cricket the same is an exercise in concentration and endurance. Tennis is a harcore mental game of one on one.
Soccer arose as the working class sport. It’s a flat hierachy, it’s faster and easier to understand than rugby. It is more entertaining than rugby to the untrained eye. Notice that Rugby Union is the original elite game popular still with the elite, while Rugby League, the preferred gamed in working class England is a much more free flowing and fast paced game with more scoring. It is more ‘fun’ than ‘challenging’.
Soccer is an everyman’s game where almost every physique and mentality can find a niche. In Rugby, the smaller player is relegated to wing and back positions, the least prestigious positions. Again, soccer is the sport of the masses, its values are of those of the masses, first of all it must be ‘fun’ to play, it must be open to everyone, it shouldn’t have hierachy or excessive organization. It’s a socialist game, which is why a lot of European football clubs have names like ‘Internationale’, ‘Forza/Forward’, ‘Lokomotiv’, ‘United’ in different languages. It reveals the socialist beginnings of these clubs.
American sports are elitist. Baseball and Football are just variations of cricket and rugby. It’s not so much about ‘fun’ but about ‘challenge’. Sports are seen as an extension of character, not as simple fun past time. No one in Europe is going to say that being a footballer is saying something about character, but I bet many Americans will definitely attribute positive character to the quarterback or footballer in general.
All the above being said, the reason soccer will never be popular in the US is because you can’t cram an hour of commercials into it and I honestly don’t understand how americans can even watch sports on television.
Forgot to add, that Basketball, my personal favorite american sport, was invented by a Canadian and it today hugely popular with the lower/working classes as well for the same reasons as soccer being popular in Europe. Basketball is the american soccer.
If you think Baseball and Football are elitist then I ask you to come to any urban area of the US and give it a watch. If anything they are classist. They are sports of the poor (look how many South Americans are in baseball). We may not be able to cram commercials into it, but at least are players aren’t wearing giant BIMBO bread logos on them.
“In Rugby, the smaller player is relegated to wing and back positions, the least prestigious positions”
Wrrrronnggg
Outside backs, as the wings and the fullback are termed, are usually the fastest on the field, score the most tries or kick the most goals, and tend to be the tackler of last resort should the opposition break through the defensive line. They’re the most prestigious players on the field.
Soccer is inherently unAmerican. When you fly over Italy, you swear that soccer fields were the main economic generator. All you see is literally hundreds of soccer fields when you enter rome by plane.
Soccer requires relatively mild weather which countries like italy, france, spain and uk have, they do not have the huge snow storms that the us has. You can play football in the winter snow but not soccer.
Soccer lacks contact, it also requires a large degree of patience. Very little happens in a soccer game, and only a few teams are truly enjoyable to watch. In short, soccer lacks action! How long does it take to score a goal. And then soccer’s flopping is unAmerican, we like contact sports, two men in a ring or on an ice rink beating the shit out of each other is something we understand. Allow bear knuckle fighting in soccer then its popularity in America will rise. Baseball is America’s game, it doesn’t have “fighting” but it does have home plate tackles and slides, it has fights when the pitcher drills the batter and he drops the bat and charges the mound, it has pitchers getting drilled with the ball. Baseball has its fair share of violence. Soccer has almost none. The biggest story of the world cup was the bite. Allowing bare knluckle fighting and rough tackles and biting and Americans will love soccer.
I live in an immigrant area, the way how italians, spaniards are crazy over soccer, most americans never will be able to get so excited over it
I’m just going to go ahead and leave this here, with regards to #1.
Dumb article. Not even worth debunking.
By the time apples arrived in the Americas, cooking with apples was nothing new. In fact, the first recorded recipe for apple pie was written in 1381 in England, and called for figs, raisins, pears, and saffron in addition to apples. Early apple pie recipes were a lot different from what we know today, as they rarely called for sugar, an expensive and hard-to-get item at the time. Originally, this apple pie was served in a pastry called a “coffin” which wasn’t normally meant for consumption and was only supposed to be a container for the filling.
Thats very interesting….
Reading the comments on this article is beyond embarrassing.
Red pill men bitching like women ? Fucking lol.
I do have to lol at the people who think Football isn’t physical. Top tier players regularly hit over 12 kilometres (7 miles) a game in distance, and get up to speeds over 25kmph during sprints, covering 50+ yards back and forth repeatedly. They also need to do this while keeping a tactical shape as a unit, while still keeping hold of their own individual requirements, _without_ the benefit of getting 40 seconds after every play for the coach to decide exactly what the player should do on the next one.
Distance Running is also physical by your reasoning.
Exactly
Physical as in violent. Thats our definition of physical sports. Not athletics as you are saying. We see that they are in great shape (like Tennis players are) but he is referring to physical nature of violence in the game.
Wow…I can almost guess that the writer doesn’t watch world football (soccer to us Yanks) on a regular basis. But as far as physicality? Soccer is as physical as it can come. Ask Neymar as he got his back broken last week or Didier Drogba has he was concussed from a header about 2 years ago or the many others who have suffered serious injuries ALL THE WHILE PLAYING WITH NEARLY NO PADS and running up and down a 100+ yard field non-stop for nearly 10 months of a year. And sure while some America sports may be ‘king of the hill’ attendance is down. The MLB is down for the 2nd straight year (http://bit.ly/1owLDxz) and the NFL, due to high ticket prices, has been dropping for 5 years and going (http://foxs.pt/1kzok3D) however MLS attendance was up before the World Cup (http://bit.ly/1rLQCPY) and likely to continue rising. So um, yeah Americans are embracing it. Yeah we may never ‘fully embrace’ it (as you stated) like the rest of the world due to other big sports draws here but if ticket prices and accessibilty continue to rise not to mention the fact that there has been a big shift in the socio-cultural environment, soccer may supplant other American sports. Just look at the trends and it’s not as big of an uphill battle as you may think.
Do me a favor. Look at the injury chart after an NFL playoff game and look at one after a Soccer match. Most men are brain dead within a decade after leaving the NFL. Many are crippled y their 50’s and many die before 60. Soccer is not as physical as it gets. More physical then we may think, Ill give you that, but no…no
I’d run up and down a 100 yard sideline for TWELVE months of the year for 30m euros.
Good article, pretty much sums it up. I like watching “futbol”, but watching the American team makes my stomach turn. Even with the less-than-manly way that most of the world plays, US soccer still comes off like a stack of pansies, always playing “not to lose” instead of playing to win. Its like they recruited these weenies straight out of a drum circle or a women’s studies class to represent the world’s capitol of ass-kicking. When much smaller and waaay poorer countries are kicking (America’s) ass at this game, I can only think we might get a better showing if they got some meat-eaters out there to represent instead of these douchey soccer-hobbyists.
Great point. We have been playing this lets just survive and hope for the best style for ages. Sad part is, we still do better than many other teams using it.
True, we DO do better than a lot of countries, but damn, we HAVE a good youth program, we HAVE quality nutrition, we HAVE good coaches, what we don’t have are hard-asses that want to get out there and crush everyone they face.
For fuck’s sake, stop saying soccer.
Its the word we know. Football was already used (early American Football had no passing). Also, I think it was a British man who gave that name Soccer to the US. Something like Association of football or something and they called it Soccer (taken from the association part). We’re not gonna say American Football on our websites sorry. Just have to get used to it.
Well since they outlawed the Holy Roller play lol
Dunham
It’s the flopping. It’s the flopping that makes soccer so hateful to Americans. When they’re used to seeing enormous men running at Olympic level speed collide, then get up and do it again. Seeing a man untouched, flop onto the ground and writhe in pain most closely resembling childbirth, American’s are disgusted. And rightly so.
Soccer has an advantage in that it is more egalitarian ie: it is not a prerequisite to be very tall or very big. One of the major reasons why I don’t care for football or basketball is because I cannot relate to the player as well as in soccer, baseball, or hockey.
The White boys of Germany just ripped apart the mystery meat Brazilians.
I watched that match. It looked like a group of German Engineers on meth working on a nuclear submarine. What a technical dismantling that was.
American football is just about a bunch of big dudes huggin each other. Nothing manly about that.
By hugging you mean laying hits on each other than can exceed 6000PSI and running at speeds of track athletes and every play has been designed and must be executed and their are many different sizes of people on the field at the same time and there is actual scoring and comeback and last second victories….and…..you get the point.
Both soccer and American football are stupid. But American football or rugby as is, is VERY dangerous and damaging! It is also very violent game. Cannot understand why Americans are so in love with it.
Im sorry ur butthurt. NOT!
Not butt hurt, just setting folks straight.
6000 PSI no less! That’s a startling statistic. I didn’t know the body could handle that sort of impact. Ohh wait – it doesn’t. The armour does. Silly me.
You mean that thin piece of plastic they have on their heads and shoulders. Studies have shown those actually make the game more dangerous. Makes players reckless and lead with their heads. Like I said, look at injury state and life expectancy.
Shout out to UM!! Go Griz!!
It’s just fucking dull, that’s all. And don’t give me any shit about the lyrical beauty of the play. Kicking a ball around for 90 minutes and then 1-nil. It’s like watching grass grow. Plus it’s being pushed by all those worthless SWPLs because it’s non-violent and one-worldish, that’s reason enough to resist this abomination. I’ll bet about half of kickball’s native fans in this country are brainless liberal manboobs watching not because they enjoy it but because they think they ought to.
Actually no, basketball was invented in canada, by a canadian no less
And Hockey was first played in the US.
” Soccer’s ability to give a platform to athletes like Lionel Messi or
Diego Maradona (men who are technically gifted but quite small, not very
strong, and not remarkably fast”
High standards mate. Both were/are pretty fast. Although not as fast as some others.
There are people in the NFL that are the size of trucks and run at 4.5 speed. Some of them will be carrying 100lbs more in body weight the Soccer players. Soccer players are fast for normal people, but like he said. The sports we watch are mostly made up of super freaks.
Or guys (like baseball players) with exceptional hand/eye coordination.
The real reason is advertising. The only break in soccer is halftime. CocaCola, Budweiser and the networks can’t have that. Americans don’t like soccer because corporate America has decided we won’t like something they can’t make money off.
And yet before TV and radio Americans watched many sports, and soccer wasn’t the major one. Clearly corporation preferences are secondary causes or results rather than a catalyst of anything.
The Yasiel Puigs and Yoenis Cespedes’s of the world can throw a baseball at a high rate of speed and perfectly hit a target 250 feet away.
How many soccer players can do that with their feet (kicking a ball)?
Face it, your feet weren’t designed for intricate coordination, and this is the fundamental issue that makes soccer an inferior sport.
Serious Question:
We’ve all fapped before. Who here uses their feet to do so?
I must admit, I wanted to go to World Cup in Brazil. Because of unforeseen circumstances (laziness and stupidity) I did not go…why…why…why, some of the worlds hottest tail in a place renowned for its hot tail…why. Ok, i’m over it. But I have watched some matches and some have been damn good. Not all, but quite a few. I still have a ways to go in fully understanding the innate details (I thought Colombia would destroy Brazil, Brazil would destroy Germany, etc). Not to steal from Ann Coulter, but as immigration increases (and boy will it, the elite have went all in on that one) more people in this country will play it and excel.
The parks in Detroit now are filled with immigrant or 1st generation Americans playing soccer. The local ice rink went from three ice rinks and one indoor soccer field to 2 and 2. Schools have cut some sports programs because of costs but to appease the enlightened children (disease free of course) from the south they will continue to keep Soccer going. So…eh, it’s 50/50 I would say. Also, I honestly don’t think the US is that far off (see earlier statement about me guessing outcomes). But really, it’s not like the US team playing Russia in the 80 Olympics here. We did better than many many other “powerhouses” and didn’t do too terrible in the last World Cup either.
Ohh you forgot one more thing (which you kind of eluded to). This is not an insult to anyone who plays Soccer in the US. But Soccer was the sport for kids who weren’t athletic or big. The best athletes in the US play some form of Football, baseball, track, wrestle, something along those lines. You are typically getting the bottom 25% of athletic ability playing Soccer in the US. Not all mind you, but typically. I doubt some kid who was 6’2, 190lbs, could run like a deer, and was as dexterous as a Gibbon would not be steered towards Soccer growing up. The standard 3 letter High School athlete in the US is baseball, football, and basketball or some other sport not named Soccer. I would be willing to bet our top 25% of teenage athletes have never even played an organized Soccer game.
One more final point I swear. Whats up with that shoot out????? You telling me that teams break their backs year in and year out, train like special ops soldiers, put their heart and soul and national pride on their backs and every 4 years there is this worldwide super contest over a month long to determine who’s the best and a match can be decided by a lucky guess of unlucky guess of a goalkeeper in a shootout where the guy is 15 feet away and has an acre of land to put the ball on either side???? Are they serious??
Football (soccer) is the most interesting and versatile sport to watch.
“Soccer players do not inflict pain very often” Not true, do your research
This is an opinion
I have done my research and can say conclusively that it is very true.
Soccer is a contact sport, but not to the same extent that hockey, rugby, and American football are. All of these sports lend themselves to the more frequent infliction of pain by the players involved because they tend to welcome more violent contact absent any penalty.
Relative to these and other team sports (ex: Aussie Football), soccer players do not inflict pain very often. The game emphasizes finesse much more and de-emphasizes the violence. I am not saying that soccer is not a contact sport and that its players do not inflict pain, but they do not do so with anywhere near the regularity of many other team sports.
Horse—t. All I see are a bunch of halfwits, the leader of which pretty much rolls on the ground in “pain” if another player so much as farts the wrong way at him. That isn’t finesse, that is CHEATING. I see a bunch of grown men kicking a ball up the field, down the field, up the field, down the field, and yet at the end of 90 minutes it is actually possible that NOBODY has mastered actually putting the ball in the net, a score of 0-0: that isn’t strategy, that is actually COMPLETELY WASTING MY TIME AS A SPECTATOR SINCE NONE OF THESE 20 MEN CAN EVEN DO WHAT THE ULTIMATE POINT OF THE GAME IS…CRAP, THEY EVEN CALL IT A GOAL!!!! I see a bunch of men who think they are the sexiest thing on two legs, but don’t realize they are wearing knee socks that most women left behind in Catholic school!! And above all I see money and corruption-it is bad enough that the refs have been caught taking bribes, but has it occurred to anyone that part of the reason Europeans have less choice in what they can choose for sport is that soccer represses any challengers by good ol’ boy relations with politicians, the latter category providing the financial table scraps for anything else since any other sport must be “recognized” by the state to be legit?
Good Lord look at the Europeans get their speedos in a bunch when you talk about Soccer. My God. Lads, chill…ok. This is how the world works. Some cultures do things you find strange, and you do things they would find strange. the author was trying to make a point of why it will never get “big” in the US. It hasn’t gotten big and it probably won’t. Thats the point. You don’t like the US then don’t fucking come here.
Lets call this what it is ok. Its a gay, crappy sport played by medium sized white guys and undernourished brown people where most of the game is spent complaining, whining, diving, jogging, showing views of a coach (who is always under pressure for some egregious mistake he made the last match) who looks as if he just saw a truck load of puppies get their throats cut while people struggle to get any openings and players complain to the referee (who does not speak their language) and it becomes a nodding and hand gesture match and they dance to a 1-1 tie after 90 minutes of a pseudo track meet that countries play because they played it for years without thinking of inventing a better sport and are now stuck with it and poorer nations can’t afford equipment to play other sports and its the only way to escape their Dictator and can be determined by a missed or correct guess of a goalkeeper. For some reason burly guys in the UK get really riled up over it as well.
Soccer is the only sport in which a person without arms or (both) hands can participate.
Thai kick boxing excluded
That is an excellent point. But isn’t there a sport like Badminton that only uses feet as well?
LOL like a conversation between dumb and dumber ^^
Don’t cry, theres no crying on the internet.
Are you the “dumb” or “dumber”?
You non Yanks out there have to understand one thing. Just one. Some things is the US just simply didn’t catch on. Thats it, thats all it is folks. It’s not personal or an insult to your culture. It’s just how it happened. Tea, Soccer, the song the “International” are example of things that didn’t catch on. It was a unique nation born from unique ways and ideas. We didn’t intentionally turn our backs to those. ‘The nation had people crammed together with totally different histories, backgrounds, cultures, foods, beliefs, etc. Along the way new things got invented and old things got lost. That was kind of the whole point. So it doesn’t matter who invented what sport or what the inventor used or didn’t use as a model, the point is that the people liked it and it caught on. So we are not being arrogant by not doing things you find exciting or interesting or whatnot. It was simply a matter of how the people and nation developed. We are Americans, not Texans (lol).
Think about it, what is some first generation American living in some coal mine community in the central US gonna know about tea or Soccer, Monarchs, tradition, or heritage? Nothing, theres no culture there, no history, nothing. Just labor and survival.
This was fun, i’m going to bed. Please leave death threats below.
One thing to remember is that sports are a fantasy for the followers. The fact that soccer players look more like average guys is also an advantage. An average guy can relate to them and dream of being successful, while in reality all he does is sit on a couch, eat potato chips and watch TV.
I can think of another sport which features average-looking guys. It also has another peculiar correlation with soccer in that it’s popular in countries like England, Germany, Italy and Brazil. In Finland it’s even more popular than soccer.
I’m talking about Formula 1 of course, the most ultra-masculine and physically demanding sport on Earth. Soccer not enough “complex” for you? Formula 1 is so complex you pretty much have to have a mind of an engineer to fully appreciate the technical aspects, which means you will likely be a man. Athletically speaking F1 drivers are like fighter pilots who do triathlons and marathons for fun in their spare time. But they look like normal guys, their height is between 5’5″ and 6’1″. The raw natural talent is hidden inside.
I heard an interesting theory on how a small country like Finland can produce so many great F1 drivers. It’s because Finns were hunter-gatherers relatively recently. Agriculture hasn’t managed to completely dumb them down and destroy their instincts and cognitive performance, including reaction times.
For people living in Western countries, Formula 1 is fundamentally a fairy tale of traditional gender roles. A fantasy world where men and women are still allowed to be men and women.
http://www.motorsport-total.com/bilder/2014/140623/z1403513689.jpg
The great dichotomy is this: though Americans love the physical game (which I’m not sure is correct), they are encouraging their boys to become wussies with the whole bullying epidemic as they’ve considered it.
Yes, but the bullies will go into the physical sports. Thats what the NFL is. The sport of bullies. Bullying is even rampant in the NFL itself. Just like Hockey. A player is doing to well a minimally talented thug is set on the ice to try and intimidate him.
Oddly, the fastest growing team sport in the US is football. The second is cricket! Who’d have thought…
Males are wussies nowadays by design, and the phenomenon you’ve stated is a predictable result.
Having played cricket most of my life, with many broken bones to prove it, I can assure that being forced to stand a couple of yards away from a guy who’s just had a 5.5 ounce lump of concrete thrown at his head at 90 mph and has now decided to hit it directly towards you r unprotected body and non-mitted hands at a similar speed (repeat for 5 hours) is not a game for the timid. Unlike soccer. Which is a wusses game.
The reason I will never embrace football, is because Anne Coulter says that it is unamerican and meant for sissy men, and I do not want Anna Coulter, or any woman for that matter, to have a low opinion of me. I need their validation in order to feel happy with myself. If Anne Coulter says that I am doing something wrong, I will immediately correct that behavior, no mater how much of an inconvenience it is and no mater how much i have to lie to myself. http://www.ibtimes.com/ann-coulter-soccer-fans-are-leading-america-moral-decay-1613092
American sports celebrate the conversion of mass and power into brief moments of sheer performance.
How would a mildly twitchy game such as soccer, played by speedy, skinny people, compete with glorious crescendos of super-male collision?
I look forward to American excellence in soccer anyway, simply on the merits of being able to watch magnificent red card events that resemble snapping the opposing team’s captain like a turkey’s wishbone.
Maybe that’s what that Colombian player had in mind when he snapped Neymar like a twig — Colombia v Brazil, and then Brazil all fell down …
Again, Americans will never fully embrace soccer because of the severe limitations of the use of your arms and hands.
To find similar competition where the use of essential extremities is limited, you’d have to go to the Paralympic games.
American society today is very unhealthy and this is further evidence. What kind of society HAS to be the best at anything to simply appreciate it ? Why must the heroes be steroidal giant monsters ? Why is someone not athletic if they’re not using brute force constantly ?
International football is the most popular game in basically every nation. The game was invented in England, but that hasn’t stopped any other country from embracing it. Imagine if the Brazilians, Argentines, Germans or Italians said “nah our ancestors didnt make createit so fuck that worthless foreign shit.” Besides, baseball is based closely off of cricket (English), basketball is based off of a sport called netball (also from England) and American football evolved from rugby football (thanks again, England). The notion that the sport has to be purely of the said nation to embrace it fully is totally absurd. Much like the mindset of many people in this nation.
I notice a large amount of opposition bordering on hatred with mainly older, more conservative Americans. Why the hatred? If you don’t like it, no ones holding you down to a chair with your eyes peeled back Clockwork Orange style. I personally find baseball about as exciting to watch as golf, but I’m not going to go on a rampage against these sports, I just don’t pay attention to them. Some Americans seem bizarrely threatened by international football.
International football is not for the weak. These players are incredibly strong and athletic. Jaws, legs, vertebraes are broken on a regular basis. Concussions are an unfortunate part of the sport. A proper slide tackle from a defender like the Netherlands Ron Vlaar would put most fit men out for awhile. That said, FIFA needs to get ahold of the diving. Thirty years ago the game was more physical, the players seeing little protection. But the refs would get this wrong, too. Also, isn’t taking falls a regular part of basketball? Isn’t that how they cause the foul to be called on the other player? So yes, Lebron and many others take dives. Are these also men showing “weakness”?
Lastly it should be said that due to our maniacal worship of larger than life steroid and hgh users, injuries are becoming more common and more serious in the Nfl. The average Nfl players’ career is around 3
Years. 3 YEARS. Many of these men are on painkillers and serious medications for the rest of their lives, having trouble walking or not being in constant pain.
It’s a serious issue. International footballers, while risking serious injury, have far longer careers and typcially live healthy lives afterwards. It all reminds me of Idiotocracy. Everything in this nation must be the “biggest, strongest, best, loudest, most powerful” thing on earth, otherwise it’s seen as “weak”, “gay” or simply unworthy. This is the mentality of a boy. Or a deeply insecure grown man.
Sorry to say I see a connection.
Sidenote-I played both international and American football through high school and enjoy watching both.
Not coincidental. Remember that America is a very young country relative to most. It is still a boy relative to Europe.
Soccer players are bigger, faster, and stronger than you think.
I know precisely how big, fast and strong the typical professional footballer actually is. They are, therefore, no bigger, faster, or stronger than I think they are.
Soccer (or Real Football) will never be as popular in the US b/c Americans need to have commercials and constant interruptions to run to the kitchen to get more beer, snacks and hit the can.
but really, for you to make such assessment, you dont understand soccer as a sport – its athleticism, technique and tactics. Soccer is a sport where different body types provide different dynamics and influence a different style of play.
Starter Basketball players average 30-35 mins of play w/ interruptions. Football players about 20-30 mins of Real game time, again w/ constant interruptions. a fat 6’5 350 porky or a fat beer drinking chain smoking pitcher aren’t athlete’s to admire. a 7’2 center in Basketball who cant shoot free throws, cant dribble but is a professional b/c of height to probably block 2 shots a game isnt admirable. this is a professional not good playing the sport b/c he is tall.
Kobe Bryant and in his prime in soccer would be a defender b/c his height makes him less agile to shorter players. B/c of his height he would not be fast to make the cuts to make him exceptional. Messi b/c of his low center gravity is extremely agile and can change direction instantly. He may not be fast but is quick. Players like Messi can reach their top speed with 3-4 steps. Usain Bolt the greatest runner of all time takes him 30-40 yards to hit top speed.
Highly recommend for you to watch: Christiano Ronaldo Tested to the Limit.
You will be able to see what a player like Ronaldo is physically able to do and compared to other athletes. it will justify the above.
then how can you diminish endurance?
The US team is one of the most exciting in the world. Their never say die attitude, work ethic and underdog stereotype make them a dynamic team. This last World Cup again was successful. Again the US ended up in the top 16 teams (out of 180) in the world.
I’d agree.
The problem here is that your typical NFL player is not a “fat 6’5″ 350 porky”. He is a bulky 6’2, 300lb tank with less than 12% body fat (similar to the picture of Brodrick Bunkley I put up above), an olympic-caliber athlete like Robert Griffin III or Jeff Demps, or a very strong, lean, muscular specimen like Jordan Tripp (one of the Montana linebackers pictured in this article).
You see a lot of “porkys” playing American football in highschool and even the lowest levels of college football (ex: 3rd division). They do not last long at truly competitive levels of football because, frankly, their body type is not conducive to playing at a high level. The 6’5, 350lb men you see in the NFL are the few men that size on the planet capable of being that big while maintaining elite agility, quickness and strength.
The fact that you aren’t aware of this tells me you don’t know the game very well, which is ironic because you just finished alleging that I don’t understand soccer (which I fully do, for the record). Don’t fall victim to your own crime.
…a top speed that is (as you conveniently neglect to mention) much higher than Messi’s.
The acceleration of your typical NFL player is as good or greater than that of any elite footballer, including Messi. Why? Precisely because of what you said here:
American Football is a game of set pieces that emphasizes nothing but rapid anaerobic explosion (similar to track and field, actually). American Football players are not only selected for their explosiveness, but they do little else but hone said explosiveness throughout their careers (hence the reason so many of them are often competitive track athletes during their teens and early twenties). This is part of why they are also so bulky – all of that muscle does them not good when it comes to aerobic stamina/endurance (read: they have no hope of covering 12km successfully within a 90 minute period), but it does wonders for short-burst explosion.
This gives them a tremendous advantage over your typical footballer (an even greats like Messi), because football is a game that does not prioritize anaerobic explosion to anywhere near the degree of its American counterpart. Football requires its players to cover vastly greater distances over the course of a single match, and that necessitates greater aerobic prowess at the expense of anaerobic explosion. This is part of why footballers are not as bulky as their American counterparts – they don’t need the bulk and actually can’t practically carry it anyway. They sacrifice the explosion of American footballers for greater aerobic stamina.
Messi has many things that even elite American footballers lack (superior aerobic stamina, superior technical skill), but agility and acceleration are not among them. Messi will not compete capably with most professional skill-position American football players in any test of agility or acceleration because he is not conditioned anaerobically in the way the typical American football player is.
I didn’t. Aerobic performance is great, but it is not more valuable than anaerobic explosion/endurance. People arguing in favor of soccer players as athletes relative to American football players are quick to turn to the aerobic endurance argument (noting that a typical footballer can cover far greater distances than his American counterpart), but they don’t mention the tremendous corresponding advantage American footballers have on the anaerobic end (greater short burst explosion leading to superior acceleration and change-of-direction). I’m merely adding that portion of the argument to the broader equation.
This tournament was a great victory for CONCACAF in general.
The author doesn’t know much about soccer, if he thinks it lacks physicality. I suggest he sit close to the field during a professional game. The amount of slamming into each other with huge force the players do is incredible AND with no protective gear as in American football!! Soccer pros suffer a lot of serious injuries. It completely replaced my former interest in baseball, once I got into it..
I know more than enough about soccer (knowledge drawn in part from the live attendances you suggest) to make the conclusions that I am making. There is not comparison between the level of violence seen in soccer to the level seen in the likes of American football, ice hockey, and rugby (among others). Furthermore, there is no comparison between the degree and the rates of violent injury in American football and soccer; the American game is vastly damaging to the body, and the raw data (actual statistics measuring vilent injury rates, average career length, etc) more than back this up if it isn’t already obvious to you (which it should be). Soccer is a more technically focused game that does not put as much emphasis on raw physicality as many other sports. That is the fact of the matter.
The problem with sports like football and basketball is that there is no competition for it outside of the US. Yes we are the best, but that is because no one else is playing these sports. That is like saying you are the least retarded on the short bus, when you are the only one on it.
I will concede that the play acting is extremely frustrating at times, and you could see the American values come forth in the US games in the World Cup. The US players were getting pummeled by soccer standards and would not fall half as often as the other players. One of the players was bleeding and refused to leave the game, which was somewhat unprecedented among the other teams.
Regardless of what you think of soccer or the tactics employed, it is a game of us versus them. As someone that has moved around quite a bit, football has never had much allure due to the fact that the teams and the fans are basically all the same. Hell, they trade players all the time. The only thing making one team different from another is the funding it receives. In that regard, soccer is different when it comes to the world cup, where only players of a particular nationality can play for their team. A team’s wealth is not necessarily the deciding factor.
On a side note, I don’t think soccer is anyone’s game, in the same way that the Olympics aren’t considered as belonging to any one country or continent. Whether you enjoy a particular competition in the Olympics is beside the point. You want to see Americans taking home medals.
I should mention that I don’t have anything against football. It is a pretty exciting sport on a game to game basis. The problem I have is that I have no stake in any particular game. I personally don’t care if X team beats Y team, because as far as I am concerned X and Y are the same.
Because major league soccer is fucking boring
GO MAVS
this is a late reply and who knows who will read it but:
FACT: “Soccer(no it’s not football…when your country wins two world wars you can rename sports) but as I was saying….Soccer is for women and children, PERIOD.”
there is no strategy to soccer, the only skill one needs is endurance but thats hardly unique to soccer so we cant take that as the reason soccer is good. it is literally kick the ball across the field repeatedly and hope you are lucky enough to score. and unlike Hockey, there is no skill to kicking the ball…Hockey is not only physical, but requires skill, and their goalies put up with a lot more crap than any soccer goalie could fathom.
the fact is Soccer is the only sport where you can take your average man, woman, and child, and toss them into a game and they will all play more or less the same because at the end of the day all you really need to do is kick a fucking ball.
Baseball? different pitches, field positions, intentional walks, etc.
Football? play calling, timeout management, onside kicks, etc.
Basketball? play calling, rebounds, free throws, REQUIRES SKILL to score a basket
Hockey? Skill to ice skate at such high speeds and crashes and not die, goalies, keeping track of a tiny ass puck.
Soccer? Kicking the ball.
that’s why Soccer sucks, and thats why Americans should reject. Americas accepting soccer is Americas accepting mediocrity. any sport that requires you to not use your hands, you know one of the primary reasons we rule this planet, is a sport for women and children because women and children are the inferior parts of the human race….men rule.
now is it fun to play with women and children? and are women and children a vital part of the world? absolutely. but the old phrase “the men are talking” rings true when it comes to soccer. you must teach your young boys to shun soccer, and the women should be at home not working in the first place.
the rest of the world liking soccer is just proof they are a punch of pussies. Americans liking soccer is just proof we are turning into pussies.
as for the so called intelligence of soccer players? OH LOOK I AM KICKING A BALL ACROSS THE FIELD…IM SO SMART!!!!
lets compare a quarterback….must have eyes all across field to find open man, must call plays, no huddle offense, audiables, etc.
basketball? point guards run offense, must call plays, call for picks, and cuts and so on
Baseball….Pitcher and catcher are calling plays all game they are actually trying to outwit the batters.
i rest my fucking case….Soccer is women and children and manginas.
Because it’s a game for fags. 22 men chasing a ball and in the end the Germans win.
The world can have it.
This has probably been stated before – American sports are tailor made for people with ADD – short, sharp bursts of physicality, no lengthy, open, constant, strategic play, in between insane amounts of adverts. On paper, Americans should love Rugby, but for the reasons just mentioned it would never take off.
I don’t think the arrogance from the rest of the world helps either. Every time I hear some snooty Europeans claim that soccer is the world’s game and that eventually will be america’s most popular sport, it just makes me want to go to the local sporting goods store and pop every soccer ball, burn every soccer field and and trash every FiFA game. Americans hate being told anything, especially by Europeans (aside from the cosmopolitan liberal intelligentsia). The surest way to ensure Americans will never embrace soccer is to continue to act as though its god’s gift to the world and not just a sport that happens to be popular.
I love hockey, so a lot of people thought I would find soccer interesting, I didn’t really. I mean I would rather watch it than Baseball or basketball but I doubt I would go out of my way to watch it.
Yeah well, Galatians 4:16 and you’re ugly as sin. Have a nice day