I was surprised recently when reading the 606 sports message boards at the BBC website to see that there were still many Brits criticizing the lack of interest the United States shows in adult level Soccer.
Now, I’m an American Soccer fan myself, so I too wish it was more popular here, but these criticisms were far more angry and accusatory than that. What I wonder is why the US is singled out on this issue.
Canada shows no more interest in soccer than the US does, and Australia has likewise adopted a different code of football as it’s biggest one, yet rarely do I here them criticized for not buying into the “world’s game”.
So what’s the deal, is this people just looking for a convenient issue to criticize the US about or am I missing something here?
What’s to criticize? It’s not like we’re not trying. We’re even paying David Beckham, who’s clearly past his prime and was never the best player at his position, $50 mil a year to promote the sport here.
We can’t help it if we invented at least 3 sports far superior to soccer in appeal.
Message boards such as the BBC 606 ones are not exactly renowned as the home of reasoned debate, so I wouldn’t take those comments too seriously. I’m not sure why anyone would criticise the US populace for its lack of interest in a particular sport.
But I don’t think these things are anti-American, per se. It’s just that America is the big kid on the block, which makes it the obvious target for a lazy rant. It just part of being a big important country, I’m afraid. It would look a bit odd to go into meltdown about, say, the state of soccer in Canada. Canada is not even on the radar of the average 606-er.
I’m a fan of most every sport and I’m a soccer fan as well. With FSC I can see almost every Premier league game. At my work, we had Olympic soccer on every day and there was a lot of talk about it. The US Women’s team is the best women’s soccer team on the planet.
People in Europe (that includes the UK, whatever certain Brits think) just don’t get it. They travel 100 miles…BAM! They’re in another country. We travel 100 miles…plop. We haven’t left the State (read: province)
So the idea of an “international sport” has trouble crossing 1000 miles of sea. So what?
Reminds me of my friend who was working in Iowa with a bunch of Europeans last summer. Two Frenchman insisted they were going to take the train to Disneyworld in Orlando for the (2 day) weekend, and couldn’t figure out why everyone was being so damn discouraging.
Disdain for the lack of interest we show in soccer here isn’t based upon our lack of interest so much as our own vocal disdain of the sport. There are many people in this country who vilify the sport, accusing it of all sorts of things, including not being a real sport, etc. This attitude on the part of many Americans tends to produce a response from the rest of the world that isn’t particularly complimentary.
In Canada, they don’t go running around saying that soccer sucks all the time, hence they aren’t the target of ire from soccer-mad nations.
Here, soccer means ‘pack-ball’ played by overprotected little snots with overprotective soccer moms shuttling them between planned events to the exclusion of free play. We have a couple of real sports for families to bond over: Baseball for the traditionalists, football for the big guys. The culture over here is different and if the BBC message board punters can’t understand that, so much the worse for them. They probably think the Commonwealth ends at the Home Counties, too.
Beckham’s salary is a bit shy of $7M/year. The $250M figure was speculation based on what he could possibly make including endorsements and image rights.
I don’t really ever hear any disdain for soccer over here. I certainly remember there being some vocal critics when the World Cup was here though. These days my experience as a soccer fan consists of people being slightly surprised when they discover that fact, but otherwise I’ve not had anyone speak bad of the sport.
Yeah, that was pretty much what i was going to say. If someone says that they’re not into soccer, no problem; but i’ve lost track of the numbers of times that i’ve heard Americans mount vociferous arguments about the objective inferiority of soccer, and how it needs a million rule changes to turn it into a “proper” sport. It just gets a bit old after a while.
The reason professional soccer hasn’t gained a foothold in the U.S. and Canada is that there are already too many team sports with firmly established fan-bases (i.e., baseball, football, basketball, and hockey) to compete with. In comparison, what else is there in the UK? Do British sports fans turn to cricket during the two or three month off-season or do they just take a break from following sports during that time?
Two years out of four there’s the World Cup or the European championships, so the break from soccer is even less than that. Wimbledon, cricket, Formula 1 and golf tend to fill the gap otherwise, along with the Olympics of course. But yes, soccer dominates here in a way that no one sport does in North America.
But British teams are also competitive in piles of other international sports, some played virtually in competition to football. Things like rugby union, rugby league and field hockey. Even the Irish Gaelic footballers have been able to fashion a hybrid game that is played against an Australian “Aussie Rules” team.
They are a long, long way behind soccer in terms of attendance, viewing figures, column inches and revenue, though. International Rugby Union matches do get big audiences, but club games much less. I’m not sure I’ve even seen field hockey on TV outside the Olympics.
[ETA] I can’t speak for Ireland, but I get the impression that things are more evenly balanced there, with Gaelic football and hurling both major sports roughly on a level with soccer and rugby, maybe more popular than Irish domestic soccer. Soccer fans over there tend to turn their attention to the bigger leagues in England and Scotland, I think.
:dubious: I think you underestimate how popular American football is.
Ask someone what they’re doing for Superbowl Sunday and they’ll outline their plans for the game months in advance. Ask someone what they’re doing for the 4th of July and, more often than not, they’ll shrug and say they’ve got some extra yardwork to get done. There have been serious movements to get the day after Superbowl Sunday declared a national holiday so no one has to go into work. There are people betting on the game already and it will be months before we even know who’s playing in in.
Do they REALLY want the US to get into soccer? Think about the payroll of the NFL or MLB, and what would happen if the US started pouring an equivalent amount of money into soccer. US teams would buy out the best players of Europe and bring them to the US. It would be like hockey, where I watch Canadians play for US teams.
That all said, with every year soccer gets more popular. I coach kids soccer (I have a club level boys under 14 team right now). Over half of my fellow coaches played as kids. When we get to the point that even more adults played as kids, you will see more of those tickets for games sell. With more sales comes the cash, the endorsements, and the mighty American Marketing Machine. My guess is that in 20 years soccer will be sport along side Baseball and Basketball, and closing on Football.
The NFL may be bigger than anything in the US but it’s popularity is not so overwhelming that it nearly completely marginalizes every other team sport like soccer does in the UK. While they may not get Superbowl numbers, events like the World Series, the NBA Championship, the major college bowl games, and the NCAA Final Four are still quite popular.
