The whole world is mad about football - except for us here in the United States. At least that’s the impression we get from the press. It’s a little hard to believe; surely there are other parts of the world where soccer has failed to catch on, where other team sports are more popular. Can you give me examples, please?
(Obviously, I mean relative to competing sports: I’m sure the US beats most smaller counties in absolute numbers of players or dollars spent on soccer.)
My neighbor is Nicaraguan. She told me the other day that baseball is the number one sport there. Kids aspire to play the game and there are makeshift ball fields all over the place. Apparently this came about because there used to be a US military presence there and the game caught on.
Obviously, there are SOME soccer players and fans in most countries, but there are many countries where it’s not THE biggest sport.
Baseball is still bigger in Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela.
Hockey is much bigger in Canada.
India just isn’t a sports mad nation overall… but their rabid sports fans are far more interested in cricket.
Ireland and Australia certainly have soccer players and fans, but both countries have indigenous sports that are more popular.
The old Soviet Union poured a lot of money and effort into MANY sports, but never much into soccer. It still doesn’t seem to be as hugely popular in Russia as some other sports.
Australia has a healthy national soccer league. We also have large numbers of migrants from Britain, the Mediterranean, and to a lesser extent, South America, which helps a lot.
It doesn’t really hold a candle to Australian Rules football, the various forms of Rugby, or cricket, but soccer could be described as healthy here. It just doesn’t get much airplay on TV (or not AS much).
Thing is, a lot of kids play soccer, especially with recent concerns about injury in other football codes. This is like one of those weird facts I can never quite get my head around: apparently the number one sport (in terms of players, not spectators) in this country is, of all things, baseball. Again, it’s mostly kids playing it, but there are adult leagues too.
Soccer is a popular sport for kids in the US as well, but it seems like most people kinda, well, grow out of it as they approach adulthood.
I got the impression that China does not do a lot of mass audience team sports - at least, there seems to be no use for the Olympic stadium other than as a deteriorating tourist attraction. I could see where until recently, large excitable crowds were not viewed as a good thing in China; and a few decades ago, sports might have seemed decadent other than the prestige value of national performance at the Olympics.
Add together China and India, plus Russia and North America, and a lot of the world population doesn’t care about soccer.
Twenty years ago, I’d have said precisely the same thing for Australia. Now, with migrant kids growing up, and more mainstream acceptance of soccer, I’d not be so sure. It seems to be getting ever bigger.
I’m an Indian and therefore can tell you that you couldn’t me more wrong.
India does not produce quality football players, the reason for that is below average cricketer are paid 10x of good footballers here and the football infrastructure is really bad.
But 1/4 of the country is football mad. The north eastern states, West Bengal (where I’m from) and Kerala - in these states football is #1. around 225 million plus people in these states so it’s not entirely a minority.
Most of my friends have one club that they support locally, and one international club as well. For example I’m a big Manchester United fan.
This is probably better suited to the Game Room.
George
I’m not sure Russia should be lumped in with some of these other countries - football has been popular there for a long time. It might play second fiddle to ice hockey or whatever, but Russian (and Soviet beforehand) club and national teams have a decent record in international terms.
But “decent” is a long way from dominant. The Russians have NEVER been any closer to winning a World Cup than the United States has.
On the other hand, the Soviets spent a lot of time and money developing world class swimmers, track and field stars, ice hockey teams, basketball teams, weighlifters… the Russians dominated several Olympiads.
But they never showed nearly as much interest in developing a soccer team good enough to compete at the highest levels.
That’s true, but the USSR team won the Euro Championships once, and were runners up three times.
Perhaps they just didn’t stumble on the right chemistry 
Russia has been no closer to a World Championship than the USA but it’s only existed as a country in international football for 20 or so years. The Soviet Union got to a World Cup semi finals in 1966, after winning the European Championship in 1960 and getting to the final in 1964.
Russia have also been to the finals of the Euros recently (in 2008). Russia has had good quality international footballers and through the USSR had good teams. I would argue that the reason that they look like they didn’t have good quality teams in the past is that their model (putting all the best players in the army and drilling them as pros) just didn’t work as well in football as it did in other sports.
Only 8 countries have ever won a world cup. Majority of football playing nations have never been dominant. Holland for example were the best team in the world multiple times without winning the WC.
The Communist Chinese love watching televised soccer, it’s just due to corruption, red tape and hostility to children pursueing non-academic pursuits, the national team is ridiculously bad.
As many of the most important skills in soccer and team sports are hard to measure from bulk assessing individuals, they can’t factory farm athletes like they do for individual disciplines
The Subcontinent: India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka are all Cricket crazy. Bangladesh alos, but football probably is bigger there still.
Australia and New Zealand: Cricket and Rugby are definatley bigger. In the SOuthern Hemisphere, South Africa has a major presence in Rugby and Cricket, but football still is one of the largest sports.
Russia and Sweden: Major football support, but Ice Hockey is the biggest sport there. Might be the case still for Czechs, no idea
Japan: Major football players, but Baseball is the national sport
The UK: Football is the largest sport, but Cricket and Rugby are still popular and command wide followings, especially since (England) the later two has England actually winning. Withi the UK, you have regions where football is not the largest sport, Wales is rugby region for example.
Other countries in Europe have major following of other sports, with football being No 1. France is quite big in Rugby (the Netherlands of it in fact). Field Hockey is fairly big in the Netherlands and IIRC Germany.
Sepak Takrawis huge in South East Asia. Basket/baseball is big in Taiwan.
AK84 is right, in the UK, different regions like different sports, Cricket is a big deal in Yorkshire.
Erm… Qatar?
Here’s what I said about soccer in the US in another thread.
This may have been the case in the past, but when I lived there a decade ago, they had a very strongly attended soccer league. I attended the opening match for the TEDA Football Stadium and the TEDA F.C. is pretty big.
So do the non-communist Chinese, which make up the vast majority of China. I don’t know how many identify as communist, but only 5-7% are in the party.
That is interesting about the national team, which should be a major player. Where did you read about the corruption and red tape affecting their national team so badly? It would explain a lot. Even North Korea has gone far in the World Cup, and that is a super corrupt nation. China, on the other hand, has managed to become dominant in almost every major sport.