Soccer has been hailed as the "next big thing in the next 10-20 years" for 10-20 year plus....hasn't happened and I don't believe I'll see it supplant the other 4 sports in popularity here in my lifetime....and Hockey already draws more crickets than fans on TV.
the only reason i think this may change now is because of the internet. 20 years ago, an American kid who wanted to see the best players in the world playing soccer had to hope someone had a satellite feed as no TV station was showing any games. And if you did become a fan of a player via the world cup ('94 - Jurgen Klinsmann perhaps) you had no viable opportunity to watch him play club football in the following year. This has changed now. If a kid in California sees Wayne Rooney and falls in love with him, he/she will find it much easier to follow their new favorite player. Idolizing your favorite players is huge in building a sport, and prior to the past 5-10 years, most Americans had no way of following the best players.
as Odub noted, with more access to watching top-level Football/Soccer on tv or the internet, i think more and more Americans will become more interested. Will it surpass the NFL in my life time, doubtful, but I do think 10 years from now we are going to find that a good percentage of Americans are watching Soccer matches (be it MLS, or in Europe).
In the 70's Pele came over and played for the NY Cosmos and was going to make Soccer as big in America as it was around the world.
Latest attempt was Beckham, but I'm willing to bet more Americans have seen him and his wife on "Access Hollywood" than actually playing in a game.
and if i am not mistaken, the cosmos were almost selling out Giants stadium for a time. And Beckham, for all that i despise about him, has undoubtedly brought more attention to the game. The point being that big players do attract a lot of attention to a sport.
my point though is that growing up in the 80's/90's, the only place i could watch professional soccer was on Spanish speaking TV once a week. Had i the opportunity to watch Italian or German club play, I may have followed the sport a lot more.
whether or not it is the MLS, i think in the years to come you will see more Americans following top level Soccer. Last season you could turn on Fox-Soccer Network or ESPN 2 and see great players each week. Fox was so confident about European soccer this year that it showed the UEFA final on a Saturday on the Fox channel (as opposed to their soccer channel). 15-20 years ago, that wasn't even a possibility unless you had satellite TV.
HarveyCanal"a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
Rockadelic said:
In the 70's Pele came over and played for the NY Cosmos and was going to make Soccer as big in America as it was around the world.
.
It was big in my neighborhood back then...we were all Tampa Bay Rowdies fans.
My next door neighbor's older brother played for his high school team, as did one of his friends farther down the street...so I wound up going to grip of Archbishop Shaw vs. ______ games.
My dad had played soccer back while he was in college. My uncle and his buddies were big into it as well. We were all thinking it was time to get a youth league started up through the same organization that hosted our bigtime football, basketball, and baseball leagues. So my dad assumed the position of coach and off we went.
Well, only about 12 dudes showed up for try-outs and then for the next practice we were down to like 7. So that ended that right there.
Aside from a select number of high schools having teams, there were no youth soccer leagues throughout New Orleans, that at least I knew of, at the time. This was around '81.
The biggest obstacle to Soccer taking off in the US is that the networks hate showing it. With no timeouts they get almost no ad revenue. Its like the opposite of basketball or football which are full of built in pauses when commercial can air.
...and without advertising/sponsor $$$, you can't fund a professional league that would create the kind of incentive to draw both overseas players as well as lure homegrown players away from other American pro sports.
It's a bit chicken/egg of course but I think both the lack of professional soccer broadcasting AND the lack of money circulating in the league are both hinderances. BUT, as others have also pointed out, Americans already have a ridiculous number of pro sports to cheer on. The fact that we don't seem to care about soccer so much isn't necessarily about soccer; it's about the strength of basketball, baseball and football.
Tour De France is well known in Europe, but it's not that popular. The majority of people wouldn't be able to pick Lance Armstrong out of a line up.
The World Cup is hugely popular in most countries across the World, apart from the US. I mean WHOLE countries almost come to a standstill when their teams play.
I think if the US actually won the World Cup it would be seen as a huge coup. Winning at a sport you don't even care about, cause YOU"RE NO.1! Would that not change minds?
There are so many reason football hasn't caught on in America, David Simon could make a mini series about it. Bringing in a big (but well passed their best) star is never going to change things. It has to start from the 'grass roots' as they say. Young boys all over the world grow up idolizing and emulating their favourite soccer players, and some grow up to be emulated them selves. Until America can get there and create their own star I doubt things will change. But America may never get into it, honestly the rest of the World is probably quite happy about that.
First off, comparing Soccer to Cycling is moronic... you're talking about an actual game, between two sides, to a bunch of dudes biking through France. One is actually a sport that many Americans play and one sounds like something to do on vacation.
The sport I have a passion for Aussie Rules is only played in Australia and will never become successful any where else. i grew up with it and used to go see my team Hawthorn play nearly every weekend during the season. Growing up in Melbourne AFL was something nearly everyone followed. You had to support a team it was a part of our life.
Soccer in Australia has grown in my lifetime both in participation and crowds but most Aussies couldn't and will never really give a shit about it. Like in NZ as a kid It was always referred to it as Gayball or the very non PC Wogball. A lot of Aussies jumped on the bandwagon last world cup but following our spanking by Germany interest in Australia for this one isn't really there except by the hardcore.
After supporting sports where the players show real courage and put their bodies on the line it is really unbearable to watch the staging and histrionics that regularly occur in Soccer matches. The other thing that i find strange is why doesn't the sport embrace technology more and utilise video refs on important calls. Goals and penalties etc. In a sport where a single goal may be the only score after 90 mins play why not get it right. The world cup has been marred by so many dodgy referring decisions.
Soccer is hugely popular in the US, but only in certain areas.
It's much like hockey - people in some places crack jokes about it and couldn't name more than 2 NHL players, while in other places it competes in popularity with local NHL/NBA/MLB franchises.
Where I live, in Boston, there is a huge 1st/2nd generation Anglo/Euro culture, so you actually find a lot of folk into the EPL/SI/LL who will have a team they root for based on spurious reasoning.
In other parts of the country, though, it is definitely seen more as a "foreign" sport ... the messed up schitt is towns banning soccer playing in parks, basically as a keep-the-brown-people out move.
There are also stories I've heard of Rush Limbaugh doing radio ads warning parents not to let their kids play soccer because it will leave them crippled ... !?!?
Millions of kids play it in the USA, but it seems like most switch to the more popular sports as they get older, only the die-hards stay with it past kiddie leagues, but their numbers are definitely growing every year, along with the popularity of the sport.
Soccer is hugely popular in the US, but only in certain areas.
It's much like hockey - people in some places crack jokes about it and couldn't name more than 2 NHL players, while in other places it competes in popularity with local NHL/NBA/MLB franchises.
Where I live, in Boston, there is a huge 1st/2nd generation Anglo/Euro culture, so you actually find a lot of folk into the EPL/SI/LL who will have a team they root for based on spurious reasoning.
In other parts of the country, though, it is definitely seen more as a "foreign" sport ... the messed up schitt is towns banning soccer playing in parks, basically as a keep-the-brown-people out move.
There are also stories I've heard of Rush Limbaugh doing radio ads warning parents not to let their kids play soccer because it will leave them crippled ... !?!?
Millions of kids play it in the USA, but it seems like most switch to the more popular sports as they get older, only the die-hards stay with it past kiddie leagues, but their numbers are definitely growing every year, along with the popularity of the sport.
my neighborhood (sunnyside, queens) is very OTB irish and very latin american, so there are ALWAYS soccer games going... all the pubs have signs year round saying which Premier League games they are showing... between the irish and the latins i think soccer is the most pop. sport in my area, with maybe baseball catching second among the archie bunker irish types...
re: parks... went to Flushing Meadows recently (home of the US open) and there was like 10 different games going on, with refs, sponsered uniforms and all... latins don't joke w/ futbol...
so, yeah, as this country becomes more hispanic, soccer will get bigger... i am actually suprised there aren't more latin players on the US team... i guess wait 10 years...
LOL at Rush Limbaugh.. "do you think your crippled sons have some percs i could have?"
If you haven't played it you will never understand.
This is true of almost every sport, and the number one reason for popularity of sports in specific areas, obviously.
I never really played soccer as a kid or in school, but I played some pick-up for a few months a year or two back with some talented friends ... it was really fun and incredibly exhausting. They told me I played too much like a hockey player but also that my experience on the ice clearly helped me adapt to soccer quickly. I miss playing now.
If you haven't played it you will never understand.
They told me I played too much like a hockey player but also that my experience on the ice clearly helped me adapt to soccer quickly. I miss playing now.
Being able to bond with strangers through participating in team sports is the best thing about them. When I was 20, I went alone to Thailand, and after a few days in Bangkok I decided to buy a football and wander the city looking for a game. I found one in the King's Park, asked if I could join in and had a great afternoon. I found games of football all over Bangkok, was always warmly welcomed and had loads of fun despite not speaking any Thai. Obviously I'm not going to claim that any particular team sport is better than others, but the ubiquity of football across the globe and the cheapness of it make it the best game for this. You just need something round(-ish) and bouncy to kick, and you can play anywhere. That's it.
There was something on the radio this morning about "bosses are being urged to let their staff watch England's Wednesday afternoon game at work, and make up the time later if necessary". This does make me think that the world's obsession with football might be a bit annoying for people not interested in it. If I wanted to watch the World Cup, but all of the staff involved with sending the tv transmission had taken time off so that they could watch something stupid like, I dunno, the Cricket or something, I'd be pissed-off.
DocMcCoy"Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,917 Posts
Duderonomy said:
There was something on the radio this morning about "bosses are being urged to let their staff watch England's Wednesday afternoon game at work, and make up the time later if necessary". This does make me think that the world's obsession with football might be a bit annoying for people not interested in it. If I wanted to watch the World Cup, but all of the staff involved with sending the tv transmission had taken time off so that they could watch something stupid like, I dunno, the Cricket or something, I'd be pissed-off.
Yeah, you do hear plenty of complaints from people who can't understand what the fuss is all about whenever a big international tournament like the World Cup takes place. I keep seeing that Charlie Brooker quote about football being no more than ???22 millionaires ruining a lawn??? quite a lot lately. Thing is, a game of football doesn't require the same level of commitment, time-wise, as a five-day test match, for example, and the drama is, generally speaking, more concentrated than in other sports.
Also, I may be putting the unusually cordial tone of this thread at risk by saying this, but I always chuckle to myself whenever fans of a sport that involves 30 blokes running around a field covered in mud and sweat, grappling one another and taking regular handfuls of each other's nutbags and arses, try to tell me that football is ???gay???.
The other thing that i find strange is why doesn't the sport embrace technology more and utilise video refs on important calls. Goals and penalties etc. In a sport where a single goal may be the only score after 90 mins play why not get it right. The world cup has been marred by so many dodgy referring decisions.
I won't pretend that I'm not annoyed when referees make bad decisions, but I think it's probably a good thing that football sticks to it's principles by not introducing a load of technology into games.
One of the reasons for football's popularity is its simplicity and universal nature. The way that the game is played and officiated by the worst Sunday league pub team is, in principle, exactly the same as the way it's played by Brasil or Argentina at the World Cup. If you start introducing technology and video refs you create a division between the game as it is played at one level compared to another and it starts to become slightly less universal.
am I really
because I find the assertion that Lance Armstrong is not a huge sports star ridiculous?
HE HANGS WITH MCCAUGHNEGHGHGEY AND DATES OLSON TWINS. WTF MORE DO YOU WANT?
NFL football grew with TV here, they cannot exist without eachother. I'm always amazed when I go to an NFL game at the amount of time is dedicated to TV: where we all stop and wait for the TV to come back...I know that's a common hippy complaint of football, but it's valid. I don't think you can underestimate NFL and TV's connection. NFL is good here though, it's the one I want to watch, because that's what all the kids want to play. It'd be incredible to see some dude like T.O. playing World Cup Soccer: can you imagine?
...but, like dude said, the world don't really want none with us...we're a huge country. We're almost competing with all them foreigner types at their level now, imagine if it was to the point of "everyone watch at work, and make up the time later." We'd crush. Actually, thinking about it, it's better that we aren't into it that much: it'd be dream team every four years..total domination, with the faint hope of little man upsets...USA USA USA USA USA!!!!!!
lol
One of my favorite things, being somewhat of an asshole, is the nationalism and ridiculous shit people will say about other teams/countries...Germany is always well-organized, with a good strategy. Brazil are all dancing the samba. Italians are passionate actors. Shit like that, it cracks me up... A new one for me is the North Koreans are robots. So good. So fuckin good... Americans are whiny preppies (?--not sure..."try hard but don't have the history"?)...
--Why soccer has not and will NEVER penetrate the U.S. mainstream is beyond me. First it was going to be Pele that did it, then the 1992 Olympics, then the MLS, then Freddie Adu, then Beckham. To me, it's not that the game isn't good , it's that there is no room in our attention span. We already have American-style football, baseball and basketball. NASCAR (no Formula One, for the international set) is right there, too. NHL was in the mix for a while but I am pretty sure poker was a bigger TV draw during the years that bookended the lockout. Soccer just isn't going to be in the mix as far as ratings go. I work at an international wire service (R*u*ers) and one of my co-workers who is a huge baseball fanatic doesn't like soccer. His reason? "Because they can't use their hands." It was a shock to hear that in the office and I just don't get it.
--I have always loved soccer for many of the reason I love hockey -- the action rarely stops and everything is fluid. Basketball and football abide to a slightly lesser extent. JLee: coaching is HUGE in hockey for calling the lines alone. See a bad coach who can't correctly judge the energy and cohesion of his team and you will quickly see a team that is a loser and that can be blamed solely on the coach. However, I can agree to a certain extent on the coaching: We like a strategy more than a tactic, I guess. A 4-3 defense, a triangle offense, an overpowering pitcher and a bruising designated hitter. It's the American Dream to smack a baseball out of the park and take advantage of your one opportunity to make it big. We have no time for a game built around endurance and teamwork, of small battles that don't show up on the scoresheet.
man I really think it's just as simple as "it's not good for TV." Whether or not that's true, I think that's the perception... That's the way people make money from sports here: TV advertising. Right? I think so. Baseball's got built-in breaks every ten minutes... TV's so powerful that the NBA and NFL games stop FOR it! That's crazy, when you think about it...the broadcast isn't so much reporting on the games anymore, it's part of the sport. "TV time out."
It's supply-side sports entertainment...
whoa, deep.
Really, I think it's that the money doesn't want it to happen; or, at least, it's not worth it to them yet. If it stays the global game, though, and our country continues to get more "global," they'll be forced to buy in. The availability of EPL and other soccer leagues on cable and broadcast TV is growing every day...it's happening.
I don't think it's a "this or that" situation, either. We have 24 hour sports news networks now. Our capacity for this stuff knows no bounds! When it makes sense to cram soccer in there too, it'll happen. I can't believe it's not worth it yet, but it seems that it'll have to be soon...
HarveyCanal"a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
Americans can't fully comprehend/accept not being able to use their hands. All that evolution that led us to enjoy the perks of opposable thumbs, which sets us apart from so many others in the animal kingdom...and you're saying we're supposed to just leave them idly dangling as we use our feet instead? Um, what's next...we can't bring an atom bomb to a gun fight? GTFOOHWTBS!
i spent all my childhood summers in italy and that shit is like bread and wine out there. even my grandmom used to watch the world cup. i remember 82 when we (italy) won...man, there was no escaping it in the home in the workplace, in restaurants in the church in the streets. i played a little bit in the states, maybe 2 or 3 years and that was it. never really been much of a fan since. i think you just got to be saturated in it and surrounded by it. its kind of like basketball in the hood...you got outside and there is a crate on a telephone pole and there are always people ballin at every court in every park. its always there, you can play by yourself or with however many people. all you need is a ball.
i dont follow the leagues much at all and i rarely watch the games in this cup, but there is an electric unifying current to it. much more world than the world series will ever be. its a universal language, maybe due to its elegant simplicity like some people mentioned. american fans are pathetic compared to the madness ive seen in other parts of the world...especially at soccer games. truly next level...to the point where the upper levels have been architectural designed to sway up and down a little, cause if not they wouldnt be able to support the thousands of fans chanting and jumping up and down at the same time
you see soccer everywhere in philly right now. its really blowing up in the neighborhoods...but thats due to the central americans and mexicans in south philly and the africans in west philly. i still dont play, but it feels like the rest of the world is finally cracking thru that american isolationism
ok , what the fuck is up with dude 20 seconds in?!! half these motherfckers look like they are flying!
damn.
for real, please explain to me what the fuck jus thappened there. it look slike he jumps and then the hand of god pull sup him up another notch. this defies all laws of white boy gravity
The one thing that does trip me out about the World Cup is FIFA always changing the ball. Does this happen throughout club soccer? Granted baseball had subtle tweaks of the ball over the years that kept it in or out of the ballpark. But basketballs, footballs, pucks -- all of that has kept relatively the same, meanwhile FIFA has the ball flying in all sorts of new directions. Not very cool, IMO.
i still dont play, but it feels like the rest of the world is finally cracking thru that american isolationism
Folks said that at the last World Cup.
naw, i meant seeing it played all over philly. not by long standing philadelphians, mind you, but by recent immigrants, mostly. and i said it "feels like"....but i got no illusions about that. theyve been saying socer is gonna blow up for ever and its still a college /high school sport with no marketing juggernaut
its really a matter of "real heads" knowing the deal.
soccer (futbol) IS played, talked about, watched and ENJOYED everywhere in the US by MILLIONS of people, children, high school kids and adults.
why does soccer in the USA need to be "commercialy viable" to be taken seriously? it sure as hell is not going away and it is just a popular as ever. why are dudes acting like Nike, Addidas, Gatorade and the rest aren't giving multi-million dollar sponsorships in the US? cuz they certainly are...
i know the game, i love it. i could give a $hit less if Miller Lite beer drinking Joe the Plummber doesn't.
Comments
the only reason i think this may change now is because of the internet. 20 years ago, an American kid who wanted to see the best players in the world playing soccer had to hope someone had a satellite feed as no TV station was showing any games. And if you did become a fan of a player via the world cup ('94 - Jurgen Klinsmann perhaps) you had no viable opportunity to watch him play club football in the following year. This has changed now. If a kid in California sees Wayne Rooney and falls in love with him, he/she will find it much easier to follow their new favorite player. Idolizing your favorite players is huge in building a sport, and prior to the past 5-10 years, most Americans had no way of following the best players.
as Odub noted, with more access to watching top-level Football/Soccer on tv or the internet, i think more and more Americans will become more interested. Will it surpass the NFL in my life time, doubtful, but I do think 10 years from now we are going to find that a good percentage of Americans are watching Soccer matches (be it MLS, or in Europe).
Latest attempt was Beckham, but I'm willing to bet more Americans have seen him and his wife on "Access Hollywood" than actually playing in a game.
and if i am not mistaken, the cosmos were almost selling out Giants stadium for a time. And Beckham, for all that i despise about him, has undoubtedly brought more attention to the game. The point being that big players do attract a lot of attention to a sport.
my point though is that growing up in the 80's/90's, the only place i could watch professional soccer was on Spanish speaking TV once a week. Had i the opportunity to watch Italian or German club play, I may have followed the sport a lot more.
whether or not it is the MLS, i think in the years to come you will see more Americans following top level Soccer. Last season you could turn on Fox-Soccer Network or ESPN 2 and see great players each week. Fox was so confident about European soccer this year that it showed the UEFA final on a Saturday on the Fox channel (as opposed to their soccer channel). 15-20 years ago, that wasn't even a possibility unless you had satellite TV.
It was big in my neighborhood back then...we were all Tampa Bay Rowdies fans.
My next door neighbor's older brother played for his high school team, as did one of his friends farther down the street...so I wound up going to grip of Archbishop Shaw vs. ______ games.
My dad had played soccer back while he was in college. My uncle and his buddies were big into it as well. We were all thinking it was time to get a youth league started up through the same organization that hosted our bigtime football, basketball, and baseball leagues. So my dad assumed the position of coach and off we went.
Well, only about 12 dudes showed up for try-outs and then for the next practice we were down to like 7. So that ended that right there.
Aside from a select number of high schools having teams, there were no youth soccer leagues throughout New Orleans, that at least I knew of, at the time. This was around '81.
...and without advertising/sponsor $$$, you can't fund a professional league that would create the kind of incentive to draw both overseas players as well as lure homegrown players away from other American pro sports.
It's a bit chicken/egg of course but I think both the lack of professional soccer broadcasting AND the lack of money circulating in the league are both hinderances. BUT, as others have also pointed out, Americans already have a ridiculous number of pro sports to cheer on. The fact that we don't seem to care about soccer so much isn't necessarily about soccer; it's about the strength of basketball, baseball and football.
For me, it's "The Soup", but I can't speak for every 'Merican on the board.
The World Cup is hugely popular in most countries across the World, apart from the US. I mean WHOLE countries almost come to a standstill when their teams play.
I think if the US actually won the World Cup it would be seen as a huge coup. Winning at a sport you don't even care about, cause YOU"RE NO.1! Would that not change minds?
There are so many reason football hasn't caught on in America, David Simon could make a mini series about it. Bringing in a big (but well passed their best) star is never going to change things. It has to start from the 'grass roots' as they say. Young boys all over the world grow up idolizing and emulating their favourite soccer players, and some grow up to be emulated them selves. Until America can get there and create their own star I doubt things will change. But America may never get into it, honestly the rest of the World is probably quite happy about that.
:off_the_wall:
Soccer in Australia has grown in my lifetime both in participation and crowds but most Aussies couldn't and will never really give a shit about it. Like in NZ as a kid It was always referred to it as Gayball or the very non PC Wogball. A lot of Aussies jumped on the bandwagon last world cup but following our spanking by Germany interest in Australia for this one isn't really there except by the hardcore.
After supporting sports where the players show real courage and put their bodies on the line it is really unbearable to watch the staging and histrionics that regularly occur in Soccer matches. The other thing that i find strange is why doesn't the sport embrace technology more and utilise video refs on important calls. Goals and penalties etc. In a sport where a single goal may be the only score after 90 mins play why not get it right. The world cup has been marred by so many dodgy referring decisions.
Enjoy the world Cup those that are into it
It's much like hockey - people in some places crack jokes about it and couldn't name more than 2 NHL players, while in other places it competes in popularity with local NHL/NBA/MLB franchises.
Where I live, in Boston, there is a huge 1st/2nd generation Anglo/Euro culture, so you actually find a lot of folk into the EPL/SI/LL who will have a team they root for based on spurious reasoning.
In other parts of the country, though, it is definitely seen more as a "foreign" sport ... the messed up schitt is towns banning soccer playing in parks, basically as a keep-the-brown-people out move.
There are also stories I've heard of Rush Limbaugh doing radio ads warning parents not to let their kids play soccer because it will leave them crippled ... !?!?
Millions of kids play it in the USA, but it seems like most switch to the more popular sports as they get older, only the die-hards stay with it past kiddie leagues, but their numbers are definitely growing every year, along with the popularity of the sport.
my neighborhood (sunnyside, queens) is very OTB irish and very latin american, so there are ALWAYS soccer games going... all the pubs have signs year round saying which Premier League games they are showing... between the irish and the latins i think soccer is the most pop. sport in my area, with maybe baseball catching second among the archie bunker irish types...
re: parks... went to Flushing Meadows recently (home of the US open) and there was like 10 different games going on, with refs, sponsered uniforms and all... latins don't joke w/ futbol...
so, yeah, as this country becomes more hispanic, soccer will get bigger... i am actually suprised there aren't more latin players on the US team... i guess wait 10 years...
LOL at Rush Limbaugh.. "do you think your crippled sons have some percs i could have?"
If you haven't played it you will never understand.
This is true of almost every sport, and the number one reason for popularity of sports in specific areas, obviously.
I never really played soccer as a kid or in school, but I played some pick-up for a few months a year or two back with some talented friends ... it was really fun and incredibly exhausting. They told me I played too much like a hockey player but also that my experience on the ice clearly helped me adapt to soccer quickly. I miss playing now.
Being able to bond with strangers through participating in team sports is the best thing about them. When I was 20, I went alone to Thailand, and after a few days in Bangkok I decided to buy a football and wander the city looking for a game. I found one in the King's Park, asked if I could join in and had a great afternoon. I found games of football all over Bangkok, was always warmly welcomed and had loads of fun despite not speaking any Thai. Obviously I'm not going to claim that any particular team sport is better than others, but the ubiquity of football across the globe and the cheapness of it make it the best game for this. You just need something round(-ish) and bouncy to kick, and you can play anywhere. That's it.
There was something on the radio this morning about "bosses are being urged to let their staff watch England's Wednesday afternoon game at work, and make up the time later if necessary". This does make me think that the world's obsession with football might be a bit annoying for people not interested in it. If I wanted to watch the World Cup, but all of the staff involved with sending the tv transmission had taken time off so that they could watch something stupid like, I dunno, the Cricket or something, I'd be pissed-off.
Yeah, you do hear plenty of complaints from people who can't understand what the fuss is all about whenever a big international tournament like the World Cup takes place. I keep seeing that Charlie Brooker quote about football being no more than ???22 millionaires ruining a lawn??? quite a lot lately. Thing is, a game of football doesn't require the same level of commitment, time-wise, as a five-day test match, for example, and the drama is, generally speaking, more concentrated than in other sports.
Also, I may be putting the unusually cordial tone of this thread at risk by saying this, but I always chuckle to myself whenever fans of a sport that involves 30 blokes running around a field covered in mud and sweat, grappling one another and taking regular handfuls of each other's nutbags and arses, try to tell me that football is ???gay???.
I won't pretend that I'm not annoyed when referees make bad decisions, but I think it's probably a good thing that football sticks to it's principles by not introducing a load of technology into games.
One of the reasons for football's popularity is its simplicity and universal nature. The way that the game is played and officiated by the worst Sunday league pub team is, in principle, exactly the same as the way it's played by Brasil or Argentina at the World Cup. If you start introducing technology and video refs you create a division between the game as it is played at one level compared to another and it starts to become slightly less universal.
because I find the assertion that Lance Armstrong is not a huge sports star ridiculous?
HE HANGS WITH MCCAUGHNEGHGHGEY AND DATES OLSON TWINS. WTF MORE DO YOU WANT?
NFL football grew with TV here, they cannot exist without eachother. I'm always amazed when I go to an NFL game at the amount of time is dedicated to TV: where we all stop and wait for the TV to come back...I know that's a common hippy complaint of football, but it's valid. I don't think you can underestimate NFL and TV's connection. NFL is good here though, it's the one I want to watch, because that's what all the kids want to play. It'd be incredible to see some dude like T.O. playing World Cup Soccer: can you imagine?
...but, like dude said, the world don't really want none with us...we're a huge country. We're almost competing with all them foreigner types at their level now, imagine if it was to the point of "everyone watch at work, and make up the time later." We'd crush. Actually, thinking about it, it's better that we aren't into it that much: it'd be dream team every four years..total domination, with the faint hope of little man upsets...USA USA USA USA USA!!!!!!
lol
One of my favorite things, being somewhat of an asshole, is the nationalism and ridiculous shit people will say about other teams/countries...Germany is always well-organized, with a good strategy. Brazil are all dancing the samba. Italians are passionate actors. Shit like that, it cracks me up... A new one for me is the North Koreans are robots. So good. So fuckin good... Americans are whiny preppies (?--not sure..."try hard but don't have the history"?)...
World Cup Soccer it's so good dude wtf srsly
lol
--Why soccer has not and will NEVER penetrate the U.S. mainstream is beyond me. First it was going to be Pele that did it, then the 1992 Olympics, then the MLS, then Freddie Adu, then Beckham. To me, it's not that the game isn't good , it's that there is no room in our attention span. We already have American-style football, baseball and basketball. NASCAR (no Formula One, for the international set) is right there, too. NHL was in the mix for a while but I am pretty sure poker was a bigger TV draw during the years that bookended the lockout. Soccer just isn't going to be in the mix as far as ratings go. I work at an international wire service (R*u*ers) and one of my co-workers who is a huge baseball fanatic doesn't like soccer. His reason? "Because they can't use their hands." It was a shock to hear that in the office and I just don't get it.
--I have always loved soccer for many of the reason I love hockey -- the action rarely stops and everything is fluid. Basketball and football abide to a slightly lesser extent. JLee: coaching is HUGE in hockey for calling the lines alone. See a bad coach who can't correctly judge the energy and cohesion of his team and you will quickly see a team that is a loser and that can be blamed solely on the coach. However, I can agree to a certain extent on the coaching: We like a strategy more than a tactic, I guess. A 4-3 defense, a triangle offense, an overpowering pitcher and a bruising designated hitter. It's the American Dream to smack a baseball out of the park and take advantage of your one opportunity to make it big. We have no time for a game built around endurance and teamwork, of small battles that don't show up on the scoresheet.
It's supply-side sports entertainment...
whoa, deep.
Really, I think it's that the money doesn't want it to happen; or, at least, it's not worth it to them yet. If it stays the global game, though, and our country continues to get more "global," they'll be forced to buy in. The availability of EPL and other soccer leagues on cable and broadcast TV is growing every day...it's happening.
I don't think it's a "this or that" situation, either. We have 24 hour sports news networks now. Our capacity for this stuff knows no bounds! When it makes sense to cram soccer in there too, it'll happen. I can't believe it's not worth it yet, but it seems that it'll have to be soon...
At this point does the sport really need ABC/NBC/CBS/FOX to be successful?
What 13 year old cares about prime-time televison?
b/w
Certain Americans needs a home grown Soccer celebrity.
ok , what the fuck is up with dude 20 seconds in?!! half these motherfckers look like they are flying!
damn.
i dont follow the leagues much at all and i rarely watch the games in this cup, but there is an electric unifying current to it. much more world than the world series will ever be. its a universal language, maybe due to its elegant simplicity like some people mentioned. american fans are pathetic compared to the madness ive seen in other parts of the world...especially at soccer games. truly next level...to the point where the upper levels have been architectural designed to sway up and down a little, cause if not they wouldnt be able to support the thousands of fans chanting and jumping up and down at the same time
you see soccer everywhere in philly right now. its really blowing up in the neighborhoods...but thats due to the central americans and mexicans in south philly and the africans in west philly. i still dont play, but it feels like the rest of the world is finally cracking thru that american isolationism
for real, please explain to me what the fuck jus thappened there. it look slike he jumps and then the hand of god pull sup him up another notch. this defies all laws of white boy gravity
Folks said that at the last World Cup.
And they're gonna say it every World Cup. "Is this the year America starts loving soccer?" No. No it isn't.
naw, i meant seeing it played all over philly. not by long standing philadelphians, mind you, but by recent immigrants, mostly. and i said it "feels like"....but i got no illusions about that. theyve been saying socer is gonna blow up for ever and its still a college /high school sport with no marketing juggernaut
soccer (futbol) IS played, talked about, watched and ENJOYED everywhere in the US by MILLIONS of people, children, high school kids and adults.
why does soccer in the USA need to be "commercialy viable" to be taken seriously? it sure as hell is not going away and it is just a popular as ever. why are dudes acting like Nike, Addidas, Gatorade and the rest aren't giving multi-million dollar sponsorships in the US? cuz they certainly are...
i know the game, i love it. i could give a $hit less if Miller Lite beer drinking Joe the Plummber doesn't.