Yup. Bit like you regularly play tennis with another couple and one day the husband is on business and the wife reveal she’ll be partnered by Sampras or Becker or Borg.
I assume this is a joke (in which case it is well made) but just in case, from my perspective, coming into this thread and talking about how great football is would be akin to threadshitting, just as if the OP had made their post in a football thread. Whereas talking about other sports seems perfectly legitimate in this thread.
No. Bugt my suggestion to “accidently” bowl a beamer at his head was summarily rejected. He would have probably knocked it into the next county anyhow.
Sorry, I totally missed sciurophobic’s post. This is an understandable complaint; it helps to know why it’s an issue.
There are two main aspects involved. The first is rules based. The second is based on the nature of the sport.
The first reason you don’t see a lot of contesting the ball (in many games) is that such contests are made more difficult by the fact that soccer is forced in most cases to be a “zone defense” game. Think of a college basketball game where the defense is in some sort of zone, and the attacking team is passing around the perimeter. Rarely are those passes contested. It’s the attempt to penetrate the zone, get close to the basket that draws the fight over the ball. You see the same thing in a soccer game, especially when one team decides to play “11 behind the ball”, and hope to score on counter-attacking chances (think a basketball fast break).
The rules encourage this because the rules are set up so that you are usually in violation of the rules if you attempt to play the “man”, and not the “ball”. That seems like it SHOULD produce a contest for the ball, but it means that off-the-ball play is much more controlled in soccer (or at least, it is in theory; see the dispute in the World Cup thread over certain penalty calls :D). You aren’t supposed to even impede or interfere with your opponent. So, short of just following him around as he runs around the field, if you were playing him one-on-one, you wouldn’t have much you could do. Sometimes, a player will have such an assignment, but it’s risky, because doing that can leave open spaces on the pitch for the attacking team to use.
The other aspect has to do with what happens in a one-on-one between an attacker with the ball, facing an opponent defending. In such cases, the attacker almost always has the advantage. If the defender attempts to stick a foot in and tackle the ball, the attacker will simply go around him like a signpost. We teach players NOT to try and “dive in” until they know that they have a backup defender behind them in support. Heck, even if they don’t dive in, most good soccer players can take the ball around a good defender close to 50% of the time, especially if the defender attempts some sort of tackle in the process. Thus, the first job of ANY defender is to “delay” the attacker.
Now, some teams are more aggressive than others. My favorite team, Leicester City in the English Premier League, is known for running like a bunch of nuts all over the pitch to try and chase down the ball. It’s especially done by our forwards (usually Vardy and Okazaki), to make moving the ball up the pitch hard. But many more teams, when facing a superior opponent, will simply lay back and try and keep the ball out on the periphery. That makes it hard to attack. Spain had that trouble against Russia earlier in the week.
This is a stereotype that has been untrue for a decade.
There are many ways to define “popularity,” but if you define it as “Percentage of Americans who say it’s their favorite sports,” then soccer is tied with baseball. Football Still Americans' Favorite Sport to Watch
If you mean “by revenue,” Major League Soccer falls in just behind the National Hockey League. And that’s to say nothing of the Americans who also watch foreign leagues. Top Professional Sports Leagues by Revenue
Relatively speaking, though, soccer isn’t as popular in the US as it is in most of the world. In many countries it’s the biggest sport. In the US, it at least lags behind American football, basketball, and baseball (and probably even college football and basketball).
I agree that it’s not unpopular though; I live in the Seattle area and our Sounders team gets plenty of attention. I know many people who are fans and it’s not unusual to see people wearing team apparel or having other Sounders-themed merchandise. Soccer is still a third sport around here (after football and baseball) but people definitely know it exists. I’ve been to a Sounders game once, and it had plenty of attendees and I had a great time.
I think another reason for American frustration with soccer is the high percentage of “failed” possessions.
In American football, anytime the offense gets the ball, there’s a good chance they will score. Perhaps not a touchdown, but a field goal is always quite possible.
In basketball, many possessions will end in a basket, which although only 2-3 points, is still a possession that paid off.
But in soccer, a great deal of possessions simply end up with the other team winding up with possession of the ball instead. I don’t know the stats, but perhaps only about 5% of soccer possessions actually end in a goal? That constant lifting-up-of-hopes only to send them crashing back down again, up and down again, dozens of times per game, can be very irritating.
Of course, someone is going to claim that that constant disappointment is a virtue.
It depends on what you call a possession. A passed ball can be intercepted, technically changing possession, then errantly kicked out of bounds or stolen back immediately. That “possession” could only last a few seconds. Or if you kick a ball and an opponent deflects it out of bounds, technically they had possession for a split second. For the most part, possession is defined as whoever last touched the ball.
So I assume you mean a prolonged possession, enough that one side totally controls the ball. You still have many of them in a match. Even in that definition I’d wager that 5% is high. That would mean that in a 1-0 match, with one point scored, there were only 20 total possessions (10 per side). That doesn’t seem right. It’s probably closer to 2-3%. Just speculation on my part.
I think they actually keep number of possession stats, but not sure if they are part of the normal stats provided. I mean, they now measure everything so I wouldn’t see why not. That said, the goal per possession stat must vary by quite a large amount and not really tell us much. It all depends on the style and quality of both sides, and the rare ability to finish. A club like Barca of recent years can string together passes all day long, and often score at the end. Others can do the same without being able to sxore as often. Others don’t have the quality to secure and maintain possession, so look to defend and counter (watch Uruguay without Cavani tomorrow)
Whatever. Still a girlie sport. KICK the ball and run, run, run, WHEE!
Better than what you call football. “OMG, I might break a nail, let’s wear tonnes of protective gear”.
A little sexist, don’t you think? Obviously you haven’t watched any matches. The physicality has been high. Blood has been spilt. This mornings Uruguay v France match will be very physical if Cavani can’t play.
As opposed to what? Baseball where you don’t even kick the ball, you hit it with a stick and run, run, run, WHEE! ?
Not to mention, female soccer players can be bad-asses.
Baseball has been a major spectator sport in the USA for well over a century and is characterized by failure.
There is nothing inherent in soccer that makes Americans like other sports more.
It’s worse than that, even thought the ball is lighter and less dense than a cricket ball the baseball fielders actually use gloves to catch the ball.
Mostly just…bad. The quality of coaching at ostensibly top levels of women’s football is appalling.
The exit speed of a batted baseball just might be higher that a cricket ball. 
Caught both barehanded (couple of years ago for baseball), and I can’t recall any difference as such in speed. The ball felt different, notably softer. It was like taking a catch with a very old cricket ball.
Reported for spam (link is a betting site).