Whenever the Super Bowl comes around angry Europeans flood the internet with comments about how much “football” sucks and how much better the real “futball” is. Even on the SDMB we get Europeans poking their head into American football discussions to complain about it.
But do Canadians have this happen to them? Do Europeans track down Canadian Hockey discussions and start berating them for having Ice Hockey be their national sport and not the superior Field Hockey?
Being a fan of just about every sport, including soccer and cricket, I’ve learned that some people seem to look down upon sports they don’t understand. That said, I’ve heard far more Americans complain about soccer being boring than foreigners complaining about American sports.
Also, there is plenty of soccer in both the US and Canada. Sure, neither country has had significant success at the highest levels of the game, but that doesn’t mean it’s not popular. I haven’t seen recent stats, but I know soccer was the most popular team sport for children in the US. Not sure about Canada.
We do? Can’t say I’ve noticed - my impression if that football (soccer) discussions get flooded with Americans telling us football is for wimps and there’s not enough goals. I’m not sure anyone cares what Canadians like to play or watch.
Maybe I’m just being naive, but I don’t think field hockey has the kind of universal fanbase that soccer does. I’ve certainly never heard of field hockey hooliganism, for instance.
EDIT: ditto for American handball/Olympic handball.
To be fair, soccer is really, really boring.
No, nobody does. Not even Canadians.
I don’t know… the arguments have always seemed to come down to this:
Europeans: American football is for the lazy; there are stoppages of play all the time. It’s confusing, etc… Real men don’t need pads or helmets. Football players couldn’t hack a soccer field without all the breaks…
Americans: Soccer is boring as shit. There are like 3 goals a game in a moderately high scoring affair. Most players aren’t actually doing anything useful and are just jogging around. Soccer players are greasy looking long haired foreigners. Soccer players are massive babies who flop, squirm and whine about the most trivial “injuries”.
And so on… I imagine Canadians are sort of like more polite Americans on this, and that the Europeans reciprocate. Plus, everyone knows that real Canadians play hockey anyway…
And yet, ice hockey remains popular for some reason.
Aren’t these arguments used more in a ‘Rugby Vs American Football’ debate? You don’t really need helmets in soccer…
Because in hockey, beating the hell out of one another is a feature of the game. 
Hey- I was just pointing out most of the prevailing attitudes and arguments I’ve heard from Europeans and Americans against the other’s favorite sports. Most Canadians I’ve heard preferred hockey anyway.
Personally, I like both soccer and football for different reasons.
I don’t know… I’ve heard Europeans bash American Football for wearing pads. Maybe not in a direct comparison of Football vs. Soccer, but just general condemnation of Football.
On the men’s side, yes, but the U.S. Women’s National Team has done quite well.
Yeah, but they took almost all of that out of the game! I miss the big fights!
Even without fighting, there’s still a lot of checking and slamming each other into the boards, with no one “flopping,” then whining to the official that they’ve just suffered a mortal wound, like in soccer. 
And college kids come back from semester abroad wearing European jerseys and looking down on the USA. Or, the obnoxious Europhile manbun in the sports bar drinking an import wearing a Barca shirt and telling everyone about the new ‘flat’ he just got while rolling his eyes at those watching the NFL and drinking Bud Light.
Writing as the European I am, I can tell you I don’t ever get mad at Canadians for not playing football or soccer, whatever you like to call it. Actually, I had not even noticed.
And before you have to ask: I do not much care either for US-Americans playing and showing on TV games they call sports like American Football or Baseball, even if the games get interrupted much too often so your TV-channels can insert adverts. It is strange when you see that in Europe (for instance during the Super Bowl) because our TV stations are not used to those numerous interruptions and do not know how to fill them with ads, so you get a lot of awkward pauses and commentary that sounds like mansplaining while nothing happens. This happens mostly around 2 or 3 am due to the time difference, so most people just switch off their TV and go to sleep. So do I, usually. Then we read what happened the next morning and shrug. Never had the feeling of missing out.
Same for the Canadian Women’s National Team. We have a lot of pride in Christine Sinclair.
As a European I think that American sports are mostly just simplified and easier to play versions of the sports that the rest of the world plays.
But I don’t give enough of a shit to go into threads about them to say so. Apart from this one of course…
For me… this is exactly what happened the last 3 times I decided to “stay up and watch the superbowl” (probably over a period of years or so.
What real football is concerned 
, most of us honestly don’t notice whether you are participating or not; the rest of the world is.
Not to start a flamewar, but how does that work? With the exception of soccer, what exactly do Europeans play that are more complex or harder to play than their American equivalents? Don’t say American football, because that’s absolutely not true. It’s every bit as complicated to understand and difficult to play, just in different ways than soccer. Basketball and baseball are homegrown animals so there’s no European equivalents, and soccer & hockey are imports.
And even at that, American football is an evolutionary outgrowth of rugby, which was the same thing for soccer.