Kids play Soccer in America mostly as they get excerise running back & forth, even if they have no skill whatsoever at the game. That’s why I don’t like it.
Low scoring is not necessarily a bad thing. In baseball, for example, you will rarely see a more exciting game than a no-hitter or (very rare) a perfect game. For the uninitiated the latter is where NOBODY on the opposite team even reaches first base – no runs, no hits, no errors, no walks. The difference is that in baseball, there are at least 3 *chances * to score every half inning. Every time a batter sees a pitch there is the potential for hitting it out of the park.
Yeah, maybe ‘growing out’ wasn’t the best words, but I just think when it comes to choices between it and some of the other options, I felt (personally) that I’d already developed my appreciation for soccer to its maximum, where the other sports had more to offer (in terms of interest/learning/fun). Thus the growing out of analogy.
I really don’t dislike soccer… actually, I enjoy playing it. I just wish my non-baseball-type friends (which are fewer than more) would be more open to learning the game more thoroughly.
I think that’s impossible to do though really, unless there’s something on the line (regarding the game) for the learner. Even so, it would still take years to probably develop if they didn’t grow up with it (I’m talking about some of my non-US friends).
I agree! - If you’re actually following along closely enough, the 1-0 games are much better. Every at bat becomes a situation. Every situation leads to another. And so on.
No. Dude: motorcycles.
Sorry, I forgot to post a real response.
In addition to the number of other sports competing for airtime on ESPN2, there is also the hostility of a lot of the sports press. Not many of the sport columnists will write about soccer, and some are openly disdainful of it. In both cases, I think this has to do with the the ignorance of the media. Since they don’t know more about it than their readers, they either keep quiet about it or make fun of it.
Also, let’s face it, we’re oversaturated with sports. Here’s what I could have watched this weekend (besides soccer) without even having cable (off the top of my head):
Stanley Cup finals
NBA finals
French Open finals
Pocono 500
Arena League football Arena Bowl
Golf
A Formula One race
And I’ve got XM, so I could’ve listened to any baseball game I wanted. If I had cable, I would have even more choices–even the things on ESPN2 that really shouldn’t be considered a sport.
You’re not the only country to have a wealth of sports to choose from as a spectator. Half of your list is equally available in Europe, and we have equivalents to replace the others. This doesn’t stop football dominating.
I am going to lean towards a generational difference on this issue. At 22 years old, most of my friends grew up playing soccer. Even those of us who only played for a few years continue to watch international matches and some even follow European leagues. In about 10 to 20 years, I think that the market for soccer in the U.S. will increase dramatically.
Another factor is our professional soccer league. MLS is not a very competitive league and as a result, it fails to draw the top players of the world. The most famous players compete in European clubs. We do not even have televised access to the vast majority of these matches.
One interesting thing to consider is the popularity of women’s soccer in America. Now my evidence may be skewed because I live in a soccer-obsessed state (New Jersey), but women’s soccer seems to be extremely popular. Last year I would have doubted that most people could have named any of the men on the last US world cup team. Most people, however, would be able to name at least two of the women on our last world cup team; those being, Mia Hamm and Brandi Chastain.
I think that a lot of the disinterest is the lack of media coverage. Media coverage in the rest of the world creates interest in particular teams and particular players, and fans develop more interest for the game as they get to know the individuals playing it. I have never seen any coverage of soccer in my local newspaper or the local sports news, and I couldn’t name a single individual in the USA soccer team. Maybe if I knew who they were, I’d watch them.
It’s a Catch-22: we don’t care, so the media doesn’t cover it, and the media doesn’t cover it so we never develop an interest.
The scoring is problematic, much the same way it is in hockey. Because of the way it’s set up, you can never go from behind to ahead in a single score like you can in basketball, baseball and football. This leads to many fewer lead changes, and lead changes are the mark of a dramatic game. It also leads to too many ties. What is the point of a tie? It’s the least satisfactory result in sport, and they plague soccer. Hockey was smart to ditch the ties altogether.
The scoring is also infrequent, and there’s no way to tell when a score is imminent. In baseball, football and basketball you can tell when a situation is set up to become a score. 1st & goal? Bases loaded? Is the ball in play? With soccer and hockey, it’s just back and forth, back and forth, oh hey, they scored while I looked away for a second!
That’s not really fair, as it’s an overstatement. When the ball or puck is in the offensive zone, pay closer attention. But there is seemingly no reward for the vast amount of quality play in both soccer and hockey. Scoring chances are great and all, but it’s extremely off-putting to see your team get multiple good scoring chances and walk away with nothing for their trouble.
That’s the brilliance of the field goal in football; a consolation score not only reduces ties and increases lead changes, but also manages to reward virtually all good play. Sports are pretty basic in that good play should earn you tangible benefit. Tennis, golf, baseball, football, basketball, lacrosse; in all these sports, the number of times good play earns a tangible benefit vastly outweighs the number of times good play results in nothing. In hockey and soccer, the reverse is true. The vast majority of good play results in absolutely nothing.
The scoring also makes it less gambling-friendly. Just because people gamble on it doesn’t mean it’s well suited for gambling. Baseball isn’t particularly well suited for betting either. Football and basketball are really the most tailor-made sports for handicapping, orders of magnitude better suited for it than all others.
Other than scoring – which may be the main reason – I think soccer isn’t particularly popular in America because Americans seem fixated on strategy. It’s no coincidence that baseball and football – the most heavily strategy-oriented sports in existance – are the big dogs in the US. Soccer and hockey certainly have some strategic depth, but in comparison they’re very shallow. I think this might be what TheBoneyKingofNowhere is getting at. I’m not sure why Americans are so into strategy, but the big ratings that televised poker gets should be ample evidence for the phenomenon.
Even with all of this, possibly the biggest killer for soccer is the lame diving. Sports are supposed to be played by tough guys. Manly men. Soccer players? Okay, I don’t watch MLS, but I did watch the US-Czech Republic game, and I have to say it seemed pretty clear to me that the Americans generally downplayed when they were hurt whereas the Czechs played it up bigtime whenever they got touched.
Take that big guy that hurt his hamstring toward the end of the game as an example. I don’t know what the deal was; for all I know his hamstring could have snapped in two and rolled up his leg like a windowshade. But the thing is, his reaction to it seemed to be conveying that that’s exactly what happened, but I’d be stunned if it was more than a minor injury.
He, and many many other players who only sustain minor injury, consistently roll around displaying the exact same level of agony that I’ve seen only a handful of times by Americans playing American sports. Two examples:
Daunte Culpepper, after tearing his ACL, PCL, and MCL all in the same knee. Was that Czech guy’s injury as severe? His reaction was. Koy Detmer, completely dislocating his elbow, flopping around like a fish out of water. That was fucking gruesome.
But these soccer guys just come across as such ninnies that it’s hard for Americans to buy into them as being worthy of adulation.
Well, those are my thoughts anyway.
I participated in four high school sports growing up; Baseball (my passion), soccer, track and field (a requirement of playing soccer), and basketball. One thing I noticed is most superior atheletes were “cheery picked” into the more popular sports programs (sometimes at very early ages). It was almost like soccer was an afterthought. If one was really good at any of the “Big” sports, there was no way in hell that the coach was going to let you play soccer without letting you know how he felt about it (which wasn’t all that pleasant).
Women’s soccer is the opposite of extremely popular, considering that WUSA folded five days before the last women’s world cup.
Generally speaking, when the premiere league of a sport closes its doors days before the sport’s premiere event, that’s not a good sign regarding its popularity.
But this is a purely tendentious view. Three billion people across the world find plenty of drama in soccer. It’s safer to say that we’ve been conditioned as Americans to think that sports where you can leap ahead in a single score (which, by the way, is an overstatement – if the Giants are down 21 to 3, they’re not going to leap ahead with one score) – are the dramatic ones.
And your point about strategy reflects again that fact that we as Americans are intensely familiar with the strategy in football and baseball, but largely unfamiliar with the strategy in soccer – which is not to say that there isn’t one. There’s just as much strategy in soccer – what there isn’t is time to talk about it between plays, which is where baseball and football really shine. They’re sports with built-in discussion periods.
It all comes down to familiarity and culture, in the end. And the way to develop familiarity and culture is just to sit down and watch, and put our prejudices behind us.
That is true, but I still think that our women’s world cup team is more popular than the men’s team. Honestly, I love soccer and I have not watched an MLS game since I was in 8th grade ('98). At least Americans will watch the world cup games in which we are competing. Most people could not even name their local MLS team.
In defense of those of us in the US who really couldn’t care less about soccer or what the rest of the planet thinks about it:
“Sometimes the majority just means that all of the fools are on the same side.”
–Will Rogers
Take that however you want. 
More or less “strategy” in soccer vs. baseball is its own debate, I suppose, but I don’t think anyone can argue the difference is the much greater combination of different/random situations in baseball (or US football) than in soccer - which creates much more different/random results - which translates more easily into more marketable drama. ??
I’m all for soccer becoming bigger here. I am a bit biased as I like soccer anyway, however it seems to me that the NHL has self-destructed by moving to OLN, and the NBA is falling apart from a team sport to something almost unwatchable for me. Something needs to take the place of these sports. What else do we have Golf? Tennis? NASCAR? God I sure hope not.
Soccer can potentially fill the sports gap that I feel is coming in America soon. Actually I think we’d love rugby even more, but we have to take small baby steps to that.
Yup, the voice of unfamiliarity. Draws can be scintilating matches - for an underdog who’s expected to lose, for a team desperate to clinche that single league point, or for the team behind who can earn a replay in a cup match.
Not unless you, errrr, are watching the match.
Media coverage in the ‘rest of world’ reflects longstanding public interest in the game above all others. You’re right that there’s a catch-22, but it doesn’t explain the divide existing in the first place.
…because soccer is so gay… 
