This is a multiple choice poll because there could be more than one possible way of summarizing your feelings towards soccer. And I’d like to restrict this poll to US Dopers only since there is such a range of opinions on the subject here.
I get pretty excited about the World Cup, although the qualifying process is IMHO a morasse of technicalities and what-ifs that go over my head, so I just ask the Dope to straighten it out for me! 
I’d like to be more into MLS, but the lack of media attention it gets stands in the way. Consider this: With maybe 5-7 exceptions over the course of a season, every single Chicago Cubs game is broadcast to my TV, and if it’s not on TV, I can pick it up on the radio (unless it’s a Friday during high school football season :rolleyes: , but that’s for another thread). But if I wanted to watch a Chicago Fire game, unless it’s on ESPN (unlikely) or I pay my cable company a premium for the Fox Soccer Channel (equally unlikely, until they start broadcasting in HD), I’m SOL. And damn sure my hometown rag isn’t going to cover their games; if it’s high school football season even the Cubs & Cardinals (the two most popular local MLB teams) get pushed to page 4.
So I want to be a soccer fan, but it’s rather difficult, at least in my media market.
My 12-year-old’s far more interested in soccer than me. We saw a U.S.-Venezuela exhibition game a few years back, and I have to say that the drama-queen antics of the players whenever they got “injured” were just laughable. That said, they sure could move the ball around the field, and some of the scores on headers were very impressive.
Far and away the single most boring game ever devised. I fully appreciate good athleticism in any form, but damn…I’ve never seen more than 10 or 15 seconds worth of watchable play in any soccer game.
But, those overseas folks live for it, so more power to ya if you like it. I just wish they’d stop trying to export it over here.
Yeah; I just.don’t.get it. A lot of forehead slapping and hand-wringing over some dude almost scoring.
I have gotten into the sport more and more the last few years, and I do love the World Cup, but I have no interest in the MLS (I’ll watch the Premier League when it’s available to me, though).
Nothing against soccer, just not really on my sports radar.
I appreciate the MLS, but it really is second tier, maybe third, to the Euro leagues.
I keep up with the EPL as much as I can through Fox Soccer Channel, but since my cable system gave me 70 HD channels (of which FSC isn’t one) I tend to skip it these days.
It was nice seeing ESPN show some games though, even if they are at crazy, crack of dawn, times.
I don’t want to start a My Sport Is Better Than Your Sport war, but I really don’t get how we Americans (in general) will state how boring soccer is, and then sit back for four hours of spitting and scratching broken up by brief moments of action that is Major League Baseball. If baseball isn’t a boring sport, then I don’t now what is.
And I love baseball, by the way.
Baseball is totally boring (and I say this as an avid baseball fan). I think the thing that turns off so many Americans about soccer is the lack of scoring. A 3-2 baseball game is considered a low-scoring game; a 3-2 soccer game is a rarity. A 1-0 baseball game is a rarity and is considered something of an accomplishment for the winning pitcher(s); a 1-0 soccer game is pretty much the norm, and 0-0 soccer games are not uncommon.
That’s not to mention that Americans also like golf, which is 7 times more slow and boring than baseball.
As to the goal thing. First, soccer is about more than just scoring goals, just like football is about more than the touchdowns. Second, the rarity of goals and the artistry required to score them makes them all the more exciting.
Great Gawd a’mighty, the only thing more boring than playing golf is watching it on TV. Well, OK, there’s also fishing.
I can understand what you’re saying, but I can’t really get into it enough to appreciate the nuances.
I’m a NASCAR fan and pretty much all the time I hear “it’s just driving around in circles”. But there’s a lot going on in a typical race besides the on-track action. I can explain what’s happening but the details and nuances are mostly lost on non-fans. Heck, same thing for F1. 
I am interested in the World Cup, but won’t really pay attention until the later rounds.
Regarding scoring: is watching a perfect game in progress exciting? The tension of wondering whether or no he’s going to hold on… one inning left, one out left, one strike left… One of the most exciting things ever in that sport and it has nothing to do with scoring.
There are two reasons Americans don’t generally like watching soccer:
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They don’t have an emotional investment in it, and
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They don’t have a true understanding of just how difficult a sport it is.
This is often true even of people who have played the sport as a youth in this country. Unless you form an emotional attachment to a team, watching a game in which the main object occurs roughly twice to three times in 90 min. of play can get tedious. But the whole concept that a game that finishes 1 - 0 (or even 0 - 0) is inherently boring can be laughed right out of the building by simply watching an Under-12 youth game with a bunch of soccer moms screaming from the sidelines every time the ball makes its way in the general direction of the opponents’ goal.
In short, what soccer lacks here is the emotional investment that manifests itself as a “cheesehead” in Green Bay, or a Philly fan, or … well, you get the idea. This sort of investment exists elsewhere (just listen to the passion at a Serie A match!!!), and where it does, soccer is quite the loved sport. But since most professional teams in this country have been imposed, so to speak, upon their fans, there usually is not a core of devoted hard-core followers of each team, ready to sell their souls for a trophy.
The closest I ever came was when I was the stadium announcer for the California Jaguars in the mid-90s (a second/third division team located near Monterey). That was local, and became quite emotional. It was fun introducing them the next year after they won the championship in the third division: “And now, introducing the starting lineup for your 1997 NATIONAL CHAMPION C A L I F O R N I A JAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGUARS!!!”
Here is my personal opinion: if the only reason you love watching a sport is to see the scoring, you are not a true fan of the sport. It’s not about scoring, it’s about the tension of not knowing the outcome.
One of the games that really hooked me was a 1-0 match where the losing team had a bunch of chances but couldn’t quite close the deal. Talk about edge of your seat. It was just like in baseball where one team has a small lead with three innings left and is just barely barely holding on and each pitch could be a disaster.
That’s just patently ridiculous. I get that it’s difficult and that there are some amazing athletes playing it. But it’s still really, really boring. I imagine being an actuary is fairly difficult – there’s a lot of math and such involved – but just because something is hard doesn’t mean it makes for good TV.
But that’s just it – I can tell you the outcome of… what, at least 50% of the games? >75% maybe? One team will fail to score, and the other will get a goal, maybe two. Thrillsville.
AND a significant portion of the scoring will occur during a “minigame” (penalty kick), not even during the overall constructs of the game itself. (And while I realize that one could call a field goal in American football a “minigame,” by my logic, that doesn’t change the fact that touchdowns are far, far more common than goals, even including penalty kick goals.)
I watched soccer as a type of methadone while hockey heroin was on it’s most recent [del]tantrum[/del] lockout. Obviously the lack of scoring was not an issue for me (though I think american football could be more honest about theirs. 21-14? That’s 3-2 ya dishonest so and so’s), and really soccer is remarkably similar. There’s more players and waaaaaaaay more space. Strategies and plays run along similar lines. It just takes a bit more time in soccer. It’s a fine sport, and I can understand the interest. It’s just not my type of sport.
I voted with the proviso that MLS does not terribly interest me. Give me the Premier League, Serie A or the Bundesliga anytime over MLS.
I guess I could see that, but there’s a far higher probability of the game-ending mistake pitch in baseball. In soccer, it seems to me that a guy with the ball could put on an astonishing move, just really make the defender look foolish… and it doesn’t matter, because they’re near midfield and there are still a half-dozen other opponents in the way. It really makes it difficult for me to appreciate the amazing but non-scoring plays because, while athletically impressive, there’s almost always no payoff. It just results in a player whaling the ball downfield, or getting swarmed by three other guys, or whatever. There’s just no impact on the game as a whole; the amazing feat might as well not have happened. Compare to the receiver in the NFL who makes a circus catch over the cornerback and then takes it to the house. THAT has a definite effect on the game.
This statement shows you don’t know what I’m talking about at all. :rolleyes: