ruadh:
Baseball is boring too. That’s why its popularity here is on decline.
Yet it remains bigger than hockey because old habits die hard.
Total twaddle. English, French, Italian, German kids have just as much ability to involve themselves in complex games with high equipment costs (have you ever seen what goes into a cricket match? Golf evolved in Scotland. Need I go on?) Yet in each of those countries, Soccer remains the main sport of choice at all levels of economic status.
More twaddle. Soccer remains one of the top two participatory sports among kids in America. WAY more kids play soccer than gridiron football. And it is quite biased to assume that ‘foreign’ kids can’t discern whether a sport is more exciting than another. If Basketball, gridiron football, etc. were so boring, the rest of the world would have switched to them long ago.
Still more un-informed twaddle. Soccer is very popular in such cold climes as Norway, Russia, Sweeden, etc. Indeed, the seasons in each of those countries is altered to accomodate the seasonal freezing weather.
The only thing the cold affects is the playing season. As I noted in my post above, the fact baseball had the summer wrapped up made it harder for soccer to compete. But you might want to note that, in all those warm-climate countries you are thinking of, most soccer goes on hiatus from May to late Aug or early Sept. In other words, they don’t play it in the heat.
The demise of soccer in the early part of the century in America had nothing to do with low scoring. Most sports start out as low scoring affairs, because that makes the anticipation of scoring more exciting. If soccer had remained popular in the USA, what would have happened as it became a TV sport is that the rules would have been changed to make more scoring, pandering to the masses glued to the tube, who watch not out of fandom, but out of desire to see scores.
Well done DS - saved me having to correct the twaddle.
Actually it’s on a huge upswing thanks to Mark, Sammy and andro.
Baseball was not a low-scoring sport when it started before the Civil War. Games used to be played until someone scored 21 runs regardless of innings. Low-scoring games didn’t start until after the Civil War when the rules were modified. Also, it took a while before baseball players got hip to the idea of using gloves to catch the ball.
When baseball scoring totals dropped, the press thought it was a great idea and appreciated the style of play.
Any sport which has a 0-0 score close to the finish is exciting to me because it means that neither team can afford to make a mistake and usually both teams will be playing their best (whether it is soccer, baseball, hockey, or [rarely] football)
I believe that soccer is a slow rising sport, as far fans go, is because of the fact that there are so many other sports here in America. The four (five including golf) major sports have just dominated the market. They get a lot more media exposure. This is due to the fact that that’s what many American’s want to see.
I’ve watched some MLS and I didn’t miss a game of the Women’s World Cup, but in the most part, major soccer teams are in other countries. I haven’t become a big fan, not yet at least.
The NHL had a tough time a few years back. Then they started to expand the market and put teams where they hadn’t been before. I wasn’t really interested in hockey until South Florida got the Florida Panthers. Now it’s my second favorite sport, behind football of course.
If you like soccer, keep supporting your local or favorite team and hope for the best. I’m a sports fan in general, so watching highlites are a must, but to extensively watch all sports would just fry my brain. Then I wouldn’t have enough of it left to post here :(.
Incidently, does anybody else hate the -offsides- rule in soccer?
Confusious Say:
-Man who stand on toilet,
Is high on pot-
I think Americans, or anyone anywhere else, will pay attention to anything if the MONEY is there. That is why I am hoping that Women’s soccer will get some corporate sponsors that will put in the millions needed to make people perk up and listen.
But…for that kind of money, the game may have to be changed so that you can have commercial breaks, more time-outs, etc. so that the sponsors can try to get their money back.
It will also need another look by the media at how they televise the game so that not just the individual abilities are evident, but also the team strategies involved, with immediate feedback, etc. and announcers who really know how to point out the subtle moves. Again, the game will have to be changed to allow time for that to happen.
Tough order.
What about the size of the field? I played soccer for many years, but every time I see a game on TV, the field seems enormous. To me, there is a lot of time blown where the ball is moved up or down the field with little or no contention. Sure, there’s conflict as you approach the goal but the majority of the time there are very few intense battles for the ball.
Iin junior high, we’d play soccer on a small indoor basketball court after lunch. The combination of a small playing area, no out of bounds, no offsides and a huge mob of kids playing was very entertaining.
You are right, and that’s one of the many problems. I get exhausted just watching the ball ran back and forth. It is also the reason why it always seem like the camera is on the INDIVIDUAL and not the TEAM. It is difficult to discern an overall strategy being exercised by the team or the coaching.
I don’t know what the solution is, perhaps it will take picture in picture type displays with one camera on the individual with the ball and another, computer enhanced one showing what the rest of the team is doing on the field to get into position.
This game is definitely not easily a television game as in hockey or football. I remember years ago, Indoor Soccer was tried, and I watched one of the professional game. It just was not the same with hockey style rebounds, etc… Although it might have played better on TV, the game died anyway because it seems to be too far from the original game.
It needs a complete overhaul of broadcasting methods to make it entertaining.
Actually, this describes Indoor Soccer, a game that has not one, but TWO professional leagues in the US, the NPSL and the CISL. Other, more regional leagues also exist. It is soccer’s version of Arena football, and actually is called ‘futsal’ now, and even has its own world championship, sanctioned by the Federation International de Football Associations (FIFA).
As for the other comments on watchability: Why is it that Americans always assume they can make a sport ‘better’??? The rest of the entire WORLD watches soccer without commercial interruption. The field is as large as it is to make the game MORE interesting, which is why such boring soccer is seen at the high school level in America, where it is often played on fields no more than 60 yards wide or less (international preference is 75 yards). And as for what the camera shows, well, we don’t have a split screen showing us the various receivers going out in their patterns. Instead, we watch as the camera follows the ball to the intended target, and wonder where the heck the receiver was when he doesn’t make it there for the catch.
Soccer is not PRESENTLY popular as a viewing sport for a few very easy to define reasons:
- You don’t hear about it much. This is, of course, a chicken and egg problem - you don’t hear about it because sports editors and televion magnates don’t think it is popular enough to talk about or show, etc. Major League Soccer constantly beats its head against this brick wall. The only ‘solution’ is to let the sport’s popularity rise slowly, as more and more people become converted into soccer fans.
- Most of America is soccer illiterate. Even kids who play soccer into their teen years are often not taught anything about soccer. They don’t learn the true strategy and tactics of the game. They learn nothing about the international organization of the game. Therefore, watching a soccer game is less enjoyable than watching something like baseball, where every red-blooded American male over the age of 5 knows the game, or thinks they do.
- Soccer is hard for Americans to watch. This isn’t because of how it is shown, per se. But soccer’s one difficulty is that it has constant action, with no stoppages of play (compared to other American sports). This means you can’t turn your attention away from the television without risking missing a goal, a carding of a player, etc. It also means that it is very difficult to use that most American of television devices, the replay.
- There are no soccer stars. Soccer in America has done a very poor job of marketing its stars. One of the positives from the Women’s World Cup is that some of the stars of that team are becoming increasingly popular among kids. But in general, American soccer stars are total unknowns. This, of course, makes it difficult for kids to get excited about the sport on television, or to want to go to see a game at the stadium. What Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Wayne Gretzky, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Joe DiMaggio, etc. have done for their sports, no one has done for soccer, yet.
Soccer will never become as big as baseball or American football, why expect it to do so when we already HAVE sports that command our attention at that level? But with patience and work, it can certainly be as successful, and hopefully more so, than hockey.
I agree with everything DSYoungEsq wrote.
In the community where I live though, soccer is definitely a major sport for the kids, and had been for many, many years. There are leagues and very serious travelling teams, etc… Its just unfortunate that for all the various reasons, these activities never make it to the professional level. Great for the kids, mind you.
I just want to emphasize the fact that the continuous activity in the game makes it impossible to show strategies on TV. Football has the advantage of stopping at every play so that the announcer can do instant replays with different camera angles, and they can show computer diagrams of what happened. It makes everyone an armchair quarterback. This is missing from soccer.
Exactly, the goals are more meaningful because there are fewer of them and it’s more difficult to recover when the other side takes the lead.
If that rule didn’t exist each team would
just park a striker in front of its opponents net and the defenders would just hoof long balls up the park to them. Midfield play would disappear. No more passing game. God then even I would find it boring.
Never regret what seemed like a good idea at the time.
American football? Catch the ball, run straight into a bunch of other guys, cut to commercial. Repeat as needed.
Never regret what seemed like a good idea at the time.
As I much as I don’t care for George Will, his description of American football was something like that, “It is typically American. It’s violence interrupted by committee meetings.”
Soccer played on a narrower field would be even more low-scoring as the defense would be packed in more closely.
I don’t know why people dislike the offsides rule. Probably because it’s hard to figure out if you haven’t watched much soccer.
I’m in the small minority of people who enjoy both baseball and soccer. Each one is a different type of experience to watch.
The one thing to remember about soccer or baseball or any other sport you might not like: just don’t watch it.
BobT, I’m in that minority as well - I’m also a baseball fan (though as a native Baltimorean it’s bloody difficult these days). I’ve lived in England and I have a lot of British and Irish friends and it really is funny how many parallels there are between their dislike of baseball and Americans’ dislike of soccer. It’s just different traditions, that’s all.
Never regret what seemed like a good idea at the time.
I have absolutely no evidence to support this, but I think soccer is not a popular spectator sport in the US because, like hockey, too much time and effort is spent trying to control the ball (or puck). We Americans like to get to the point, to get to the bottom line, to cut through the crap, and too much soccer is played at midfield fighting for possession of the ball. The ball is so difficult to control just with the feet that mounting an offense is difficult, just as controlling a fast moving puck with a hockey stick while on ice skates is difficult.
Also, soccer is difficult only because it is played without hands. Baseball is a better game because it is hard to play even with the best equipment and full use of one’s body. Like Ted Williams said, hitting a moving pitch at 100 mph (you soccer people can convert that to kilometers per hour if you prefer) is the most difficult thing in sports. I would add that pitching a baseball with control is almost as hard to do. These motions are involved in every play in baseball. Of course, a Pele bicycle soccer kick is difficult to do and a great crowd pleaser, and Mark McGuire is not agile enough to do it, but such spectacular plays are the great exception, not the norm.
I think soccer is less popular in America because there are no time outs, save for 1/2 time. With no breaks in the play, there is no time for commercials. Networks hate that. Without good coverage, it’s hard to build up a fan base.
Just my cynical WAG.
“I think it would be a great idea” Mohandas Ghandi’s answer when asked what he thought of Western civilization
Ok, HOLD ON. All you people who have all these fanciful notions as to why soccer isn’t popular in the US: WHY IS IT EVERYONE IN AMERICA THINKS THEY ARE SOMEHOW FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT FROM ALL THE REST OF THE WORLD?
It doesn’t take a lot of work to explain the difference between America and the soccer-mad countries. America had popular sports before soccer got here, America had reason to become more interested in gridiron football, and America at present has enough options during the year for sporting events, so people don’t really see a need to become soccer fans.
Amazingly enough, there ARE other countries in the world where the populace is NOT soccer mad. Venezuela is one of them - the poor Venezuelan national team is constantly slaughtered by the other national teams of that continent. Not coincidentally, Venezuela is VERY into baseball. Soccer in most of Asia is very underattended compared to, say, Africa. Reviewing these situations, one can conclude that America is not alone in placing soccer lower than other sporting pursuits on a fan interest continuum.
Soccer continues to be the second most popular children’s participation sport in the country. The popularity of soccer with kids makes it here makes it clear we do NOT have some inherent cultural difference that makes the sport un-interesting to us (e.g.: no use of hands, lack of breaks, lack of scoring, etc.). What we DO have is a lack of history of fandom, for reasons discussed earlier in the thread. Kids stop playing soccer in large part because other, more popular pursuits become available to them, and they are not converted into soccer fans by the simple fact of playing soccer. But soccer’s popularity is on a definite upswing, as the public becomes more used to the rhythym and difficulty of the game.
[[Amazingly enough, there ARE other countries in the world where the populace is NOT soccer mad. Venezuela is one of them - the poor Venezuelan national team is constantly slaughtered by the other national teams of that continent. Not coincidentally, Venezuela is VERY into baseball. Soccer in most of Asia is very underattended compared to, say, Africa. Reviewing these situations, one can conclude that America is not alone in placing soccer lower than other sporting pursuits on a fan interest continuum.]]
Exactly – the parts of the world where soccer is a relative afterthought contain the bulk of the world’s inhabitants (not to mention its real estate).
DSYoung & BobT left out just a couple of interesting things (incredibly great postings though!):
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Baseball is not the quintessential American invention cut from whole cloth some would have us believe–it’s essentially a variation of Rounders (also called Town Ball and, get this, Base Ball, back in “the day” last century in America).
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As an outgrowth of Cricket, Rounders players didn’t use gloves and as an outgrowth of Rounders, Baseball players used the equipment they “inherited” from the older sport.
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Since Baseball as we know it was developed much later than the other two sports, and this in an English-colonized land, one would hardly suspect that it would displace a similar sport such as Cricket already established in the other English-colonized lands, much less end up displacing a dissimilar sport such as Soccer!
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An excellent book to read if you’re interested in this aspect is The Tented Field: A History of Cricket in America.