Soccer

Great Debates
21

Football/soccer is hardly a wussie sport. Anyone who has ever played it or taken more than a casual interest in it nows that. It is however officially a non-contact sport, which just goes to show how seriously we can take bureaucrats…

I myself am not sure why the sport has such an undeserved reputation in some countries. I’d suggest it’s partly because of the 'lesser’contact (when compared to some of the other pretend football codes) and possibly even some homophobic problems.

I know when I was young most non-soccer-playing males made fun of soccer ‘pansies’ because they were affectionate on the field after scoring a goal (hugging etc). No other sport at the time (70s and early 80s) really did that and in such a masculine society as Australia (transltion: homophobic) such behaviour qualified as poofter behaviour. And we all now poofters can’t be manly so they have to be by definition wussie and delicate.

Back off - I’ve still got more posts than Cecil!!

22

Another thing to consider is that the game does not seem to be as fast moving as say basketball, due to the large field. I know this isn’t true, since I have just come back from my soccer game. (but then again, from outside viewing, like on TV, it may seem slow moving to the untrained eye.)

Also, I have heard people say that the don’t like soccer because they can’t understand how come people can’t score on such a large net. Obviously they have never played the sport.

23

No, no… “real men” play rugby (either “Union” or that “League” variety) and run into each other on purpose, without padding or helmets. :slight_smile:

24

Unlike which sports? The USA doesn’t really compete in any team sports at an international level because the sports which are popular in North America are only really popular in one or two other countries.

The question in the OP pops up from time to time on this message board and the same people give the same answers (including DSYoung’s erudite history of football variants). The question you should really be asking is, “Why have Americans invented a bunch of sports that nobody else in the world is interested in?” Surely if American sports were any good they would have caught on elsewhere by now. An allied question might be, “Why are American sports characterised by a distinct lack of the physical exertion which is a central aspect of the sports the rest of the world plays?”

25

Oh TomH…what have you done?

26

TomH:
In all fairness, Americans are the best at basketball, which can be argued is a sport with worldwide popularity. Of course, basketball is a derivative of the Dutch game of “korfbal”, but I digress.
Your point about other American sports is quire right, although ice hockey springs to mind as well. But of course, that’s what the Canucks are good at :smiley:

27

Tom, be serious. To the extent that lacrosse, American football and basketball are invented by Americans, it is clear that none of them falls into the category of a sport with “a distinct lack of the physical exertion which is a central aspect of the sports the rest of the world plays”. Indeed, given that golf is a product of the British Isles, as is cricket, one might conclude that your neck of the woods is just as apt to produce mind-bogglingly slow and unphysical games, also.

Baseball is slow and easy because it gets HOT in most of central and eastern America during the period May thru October, and no one wants to be doing much running around in 95 degrees with 80% plus relative humidity.
As for worldwide appeal, basketball has been an Olympic sport for years, has many professional leagues on both the Eurasian landmass and down in South America, and is not by any means an unpopular sport around the world. Similarly, though not as widespread, baseball is popular in a number of other countries, including Japan, Korea, and several in the Western Hemisphere. Now, granted, American style football hasn’t made it big anywhere else (for obvious reasons), but let’s not turn that into a metaphor for all that is American about sports.

28

DSYoung, Good points, perhaps I should have said “sustained exertion”, since American football contains so many stops, starts and rest periods that it makes Rugby League look like a non-stop action frenzy. Likewise, many more substitutions are

Basketball is pretty fast-moving, granted, but it’s also played on a small area. I have no figures to back this up (though I’m sure somebody else can provide some) but I wouldn’t mind betting that the distance an out-field football player moves in the course of a match is many times greater than that of a basketball player.

In fairness, basketball is catching on in a big way in this country too although I’m not sure that the fact that it’s an Olympic Sport stands for much: so are bobsleigh and gymnastics.

29

Tom, the reason I mentioned the Olympic factor is that, to be in the Olympics, a sport must have a certain percentage of the overall membership of nations playing it (that is, have a national governing body of the sport). Baseball was held out of the olympics for a long time for this reason (among others). Of course, given that sponsorship of a ‘sport’ can guarantee practitioners in almost any country, you get such silliness as freestyle skiing and rhythmic swimming, beach volleyball, etc., so perhaps it isn’t the best point.

As for basketball, the court measures approximately 100’ end to end. Given that a typical NBA game results in scores of about 90 points per team, at roughly 2 points per successful scoring attempt (time down the floor), and given that success rates for such attempts run about 50% on average, we can conclude that the basketball player, just by running up and down the court, is making 180/2 = 90*2 = 180 trips of 100’, or a distance of 18,000 feet (3.4 miles or 5.7 km) during a time frame of 48 minutes (one soccer half). Add in the side to side, the running around just to get open for shots, or defending against, and you probably get them up to at least 4 mi. or 6.5+ km. Now, granted, they get a 15 min. break between halves, but the pace of play is consistently much faster for the team as an aggregate than it is for a soccer team (the narrow playing area and limited number of players prevents people from standing and waiting for action in their area). It would be kind of like being first or second attacker/defender in soccer for the whole game, always in motion. No, it’s not as energetic as hockey, but then, what the hell is? :wink:

As for American football and baseball, the real question is, do those sports have stops and starts because we don’t like sustained exertion, or because our spectators prefer action that is concentrated, making it easier to watch without missing vital action. I know that, as a trained American sportswatcher (with thousands of hours to my credit :wink: ), I find it difficult to watch hockey and soccer for precisely this reason (hockey is easier these days; they have all sorts of television timeouts now). Mind you, I love soccer, but I get squirmy when it is minute 78 and I have to use the bathroom and want a snack and know that Arsenal could tuck it in the back of the net any second without warning. But this gets a bit chicken and egg here. :slight_smile:

30

DSYoung, You seem to be arguing that it’s not that Americans don’t like exertion, but that they have short attention spans.

31

TomH, you obviously can’t read. Mr. Young is arguing that Americans have small bladders :smiley:

32

Off to Great Debates.

33

Dammit, manhattan, over here someone will turn it into either a religious debate or a rant against big government!!! (grumbling about moderators who actually do what they are supposed to… ) :wink:

34

I don’t know what kind of soccer you’ve all been watching, but seeing an MLS game on ESPN is not soccer (everyone else in the world calls it football, by the way). Anyone who has played the sport at even a college level for a decent team will realize that soccer players have to be in excellent shape to run up and down the field for 90 minutes, and still have enough in them to keep control of the ball and get it past the goalie. Sure there are some people who will try to get players on the other team carded by flopping on the ground every chance they get, but a few cheap players doesn’t invalidate the sport as a whole. I grew up playing soccer and compared with other sports I’ve played, such as basketball, baseball, track, etc., soccer is by far more demanding physically and mentally. As for american football, how much strategy does it take on the part of the player to run the way coach told you to in practice? Or to hit the guy in front of you or knock someone down? Sure the players are in good physical condition, but they could do most of that blindfolded. Soccer involves a lot of on the fly decision making and strategy, and that’s why I don’t find it wussy.

Okay, that’s the end of my little rant. If you would like to see some real soccer, watch the World Cup matches, they’re awesome, and most of them are broadcast on ESPN or local cable channels.

35

I saw an analysis in one of our newspapers (probably means nothing since it was the Mirror) and it compared the time that players were running at full speed at fast trot etc and finally standing around waiting.

This was done across the top three teams of each league division and the top non-league(non-pro)

There was a nice correlation which showed that the further up the professional pile you went ,the more high speed running you did.The top teams were shown to rest less than 10% of the 90 minutes the lower ones more than 25%.

An American football game will last for hours but the action/spectatating time is far lower than soccer.Soccer players will expect to play the full 90 mins but Football players at the top level are far less likely to.

Go and watch a game of top flight rugby such as Australia vs NZealand. You will see plenty of strength speed and skill.

36

You gotta be kiddin’. Football (soccer) is a game which requires not only stamina to run the length of the filed in a full sprint after running for god knows how long before that, incredible co-ordination to hadnle the ball with feet, chest and forehead, and an excellent knowledge of your teammates. I played a year in hogh school, and found this much more demanding than the hits in Football (football). I love football for the strategy and the “big play”, I watch football regularly (go niners!) but soccer is the more difficult to play (having played High School soccer and some fun-league football).

I think soccer is a more difficult game to understand for a non-participant. Football has a natural appeal for spectators who have never played the game, easy to watch with a group, and each to cheer for.

Now the atheletes involved on the NFL are top-notch, many of whom could and do excel at other sports, so don’t think I’m implying anything different, but to me soccer is a harder game to play.

Sili