How come people often tend to think of soccer as a sport for wussies?
Maybe it’s because, without a timeout, players tend to take advantage of any excuse to fall down - both to try and draw a penalty and to catch a few minutes rest while the pretend to writhe in agony before everybody has had enough histrionics and it’s time to sulk back into position for the continuation of the match.
Or maybe it’s because they look so teeny tiny on the wide-angle views that predominate soccer telecasts.
Or maybe it’s because it’s one sport where women seem to be every bit as good as the men, so the perception is that the men are doing something that every 9 year old girl can do.
Maybe it’s because you never have to flail a club or throw someone to the ground… and the the exertion is not expended “against” something… no strain, just continuous movement seen from hundreds of meters away.
Maybe because it’s associated with European athletes who have wissy continental accents.
I can only guess, because I don’t happen to share that viewpoint. Like most stereotypes, it’s probably due to ignorance.
*It has a reputation in this country of being a sport for rich people. As most other “rich” sports are non-contact(golf, tennis), some tend to assume that soccer is the same.
*Unlike in most sports, we aren’t the dominant nation when it comes to soccer. Rather than consider that other nations might have superior development systems and/or players, some find it easier to write off soccer for a stupid reason.
*It appears to be slow paced and not athletically challenging. This would make it an ideal for sport for those who can’t cut it in other sports, the “wusses”. Anyone who’s watched English Premier Keague, Bundesliga, or another good European or South American league knows that good soccer is neither slow nor “easy”.
FWIW, On my college rugby team it was said “Women’s soccer is redundant”, but consider the source. I agree that is physically challenging in the sense that running for 90 minutes is a difficult task.
When is C#3 going to show up? Is he still around? I forget his latest username.
As far as wimpy “rich persons’” sports go, an exception may be lacrosse, which was traditionally (at the prep level at least)a ‘rich’ private school affair. Picture hockey on a soccer field, with all the attendant body and stick checks if you’re not familiar with the sport.
What does the media-created label, Soccer Moms, suggest to you? Soccer, in the USA, is an activity relegated to kids. “Real men” run into each other on purpose!
Hunh! Arrgh! Doh!
Get my drift?
Seems odd to me that Americans will judge soccer on the basis of watching women play instead of seeing it at the international mens team level.
Watching a sport at the lower levels of accomplishment and then using that as a reason to criticize the sport as a whole is quite eccentric.
I would not care to make a call on basketball or ice-hockey simply because I know nothing about them.
If you are self-conscious then you will conform to the values of your peers and fall in line with their views, which is possibly what happens when Soccer is criticized.
That does not make Americans unique by any means as Brits are quick to make unfunded judgements about US sport too.
Yeah, dammit, why won’t anyone fund my judgements?
(sorry Casdave)
Following up on that point, in the US soccer is one of the few team sports whose players tend to be clean-cut middle class kids with decent grades and few disciplinary problems - in other words, wusses. The Roy Keanes and Vinnie Joneses of the European game are quite rare in American soccer.
(Vinnie’s the one on the left in that photo, btw, and it should go without saying that anyone who thinks soccer players are wusses would be well advised not to express that opinion in his presence.)
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If we’re going with the pictures to make you wince thread, try this one. Warning - it’s not pretty. The player in question, David Busst, was an average pro whose career came to a crunching halt at this moment. He recently said that he couldn’t hear the crowd over his own screaming. The match restarted once the groundsman had mopped up the blood, and the opposition goalkeeper later had counselling.
[/hijack]
Returning to the question in hand, I agree with the consensus that it’s because it’s primarily a non-contact sport. The countries that seem to label it a “soft” (and therefore uninteresting) sport are the same ones that seem to have a predominant “hard” sport - e.g. American football, Australian rules football and so on. I wonder whether to become more popular than the dominant sport in a country requires you to outplay it at it’s own game - be more violent, have more contact etc.
Oh, duh. That should be “its”, not “it’s”.
I concur with the opinion that it’s b/c the people who play soccer in America are the wusses, relatively speaking. I played organized baseball, basketball, and soccer. Baseball was typical jock-types (who were too small for the football team, but whatever), basketball tended to be kids with an urban flavor, shall we say, and soccer was populated by whiny rich boys and kids named Bernard ("don’t call me “Bernie”). Not a bad game, but one does get the feeling sometimes that you’re just running track with a ball in your way. With shin guards.
Varlos, when and where did you attend high school? Soccer is growing in popularity, and it is much more competitive in some areas of the country.
I’m currently attending high school in the San Francisco bay area. It’s my perception that baseball and basketball are the sports for people who couldn’t make the soccer team. Football is no cut, so I can’t compare that.
While almost everyone who tries out makes the basketball and baseball teams, only about 50% of those trying out make the soccer team. Someone cut from JV soccer last year started varsity basketball this year and played quarterback on the football team. I realize that that’s only 1 example, but it directly conflicts with your experience.
Soccer is considered the working man’s game in most other countries. International superstars like Ronaldo and Dwight Yorke didn’t go to prep school. They lived in poverty and spent their free time playing soccer with whatever round object they could find. At 15 or 16 they were basically sold to a European team and fled their lives of relative poverty.
Lawmill, right, well that’s my point. IN AMERICA, soccer has a hardcore preppy/immigrant following. Elsewhere, these rules do not apply. More on that in a moment.
Never said I played in H.S., didn’t mean to imply that. Played in organized leagues in New York City, not too long ago (. . . 8[?] years ago. I’m in college now.) But you bring up H.S., so let’s talk H.S.
We were in Manhattan, so we had a diverse student body. Every sport made actual cuts. Football was populated by large a**holes, as was Rugby. Baseball and Basketball, just like I said in my previous post. Soccer was an odd mix; mostly track-types, and no one who would make it on the football team. BUT. . .
We did have one kid from Brazil. Huge, at 17 he was 6’3" or so, 220 I’d guess (but surprisingly fast), not preppy by any standards. He, of course, played soccer. Everywhere else in the world, soccer is what folks like him play; in America, soccer is what folks like him laugh at. It’s the mindset we grow up with, and it gets passed down generation by generation. That having been said, I’m sure soccer is generally more popular on the west coast then in the east, and my school did put particular emphasis on football and rugby; we won two national championships in Rugby, so it was a bit more glamorous. (In case you’re wondering what I DID do in H.S., I was captain of the Speech and Debate team. Guess what kind of kids signed up for that. . .)
Football is a non-contact sport? First I’ve heard of it. I’ve never watched a lot of MLS but from what I did see it tended to be old pros seeing out the last couple of years of their careers in the sun while raking in bags of dough. The atmosphere is less competitive and the level of contact permitted is greatly reduced. Football can be and often is a brutal game.
Someone above mentioned something about women playing at an equal standard is men. Simply not true. Don’t get me wrong I’m sure there are some good women playing football but the overall standard is much lower.
Someone else likened football to simply running for 90 minutes with a ball as an obstacle. All I can say is your games must be pretty dull if that is the case. Non-players underestimate the skill involved, perhaps the same way I would basketball (8ft tall guys reaching up and sticking a ball through a hoop, like, whoopee!).
Not at all, when you consider the quality of the US international men’s team.
At least we were at USA '94. 
(skipping, ducking and running…)
And now, a reply to the OP:
Soccer isn’t considered a sport for ‘wusses’ (whatever that term is supposed to mean; ‘sissies’ I suppose is similar) by anyone who has either played the sport or watched it played by teams of quality. But let’s set aside some misconceptions I have read in this thread to date.
If by a ‘sport for wusses’ you mean, why is soccer considered less physically demanding than, say, American (gridiron) football, it is because it IS less physically demanding in terms of potential for damage and danger to your body. It was MADE that way on purpose. To understand this, you have to go to mid 19-th Century England, where the sport originated and the rules were formalized.
I won’t get into a long peroration on the subject here (if you want to read prior posts by me on this subject, try using my UserName and the keywords soccer and England), but in the middle 1800’s, there was a split of thought about how ‘football’ should be played. Some wanted it to be a neat, clean game with little physical contact; others wanted it to be a game where men’s mettle was tested with some battle. Connected to this was the question of who should be able to handle the ball; the light contact people wanted no handling; the heavy contact people wanted the ability to carry the ball, requiring a physical grabbing to tackle the ball away.
The split came to a head when the various schools and clubs playing the game tried to codify rules that could be used by all. Some decided to adopt the rules formulated by Rugby School; that brand of football, involving carrying the ball and physically grabbing players to stop them became Rugby football, and forms the basis for American Football, Aussie Rules football, etc. The other group decided to adopt rules making most physical contact illegal; this group formed the Football Association and from this group came Association Football, later Assocer or just plain soccer. Of course, as the years went by, and the game was played increasingly by working men (as opposed to ‘young gentlemen’), some roughness crept back in. But the bottom line is that soccer is intended to involve less physical contact. If that makes it a sport for ‘wusses’, I suggest the non-wusses try running up and down a soccer field for 45 minutes without break, and experience a bone-crunching tackle or two from the Roy Keane’s of the world.
Usually (for all sports) people insult sports that they aren’t good at, so they blame the sports, not themselves. It is often just an excuse for there lack of talent in that sport.
Soccer is not a sport for wussies. Personally, I love the sport.