What about American culture makes us dislike soccer?

[EllisDee]

@Sal Ammoniac

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.

Yeah, billions eat at McDonald’s; does that mean that greasy burgers and fries are the pinnacle of nuanced cuisine? Popularity is not necessarily related to quality. Also, you’re kidding with that 21-3 example, right? Nowhere did I say that all possible scores include the potential for a lead change in a single event. What I said was that in soccer and hockey, no possible scores include the chance for a single event lead change. It would be as if I said that you could watch all NFL games on free tv and you countered by saying “not if you are watching UPN.” In other words, what point was it you were trying to make that was relevant to the fact that at no time during any game, no matter what, soccer will never have a single score springboard a team from losing to winning?

Consider one of the seminole moments in NFL history: The Catch. What were the circumstances that made that catch so memorable? It was a high throw, sure. But its defining characteristic was that it vaulted the 49ers from losing and going home to winning a trip to the Superbowl. If instead of the win it forced overtime, I dare say it wouldn’t be nearly as iconic a play.

Also, relevant to my point is how that wiki article opens: “In a game where the lead shifted back and forth repeatedly…” How often does that happen in soccer?

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.

Uh, no, there is not “just as much strategy” in soccer. There may be equivalent tactical depth – though I’d debate even that – but strategy? Strategy is an elaborate and systematic plan of action. Do you seriously think anything in soccer rivals the elaborate and systematic plan of action represented by an NFL playbook with over a thousand plays, several hundred of which are activated for any given game? That’s not even getting into personnel packages, which are all but nonexistant in soccer? (That’s a question; is there much strategic substitution in soccer? That’s at least one thing hockey has going for it.)

To use table games as an analogy, there is considerably more strategic depth to pool than there is in foosball. The reason is the very nature of the games; one is in constant motion, which is anathema to strategy. The other resets between each shot, which opens up a world of strategic possibility. Unless you think foosball has just as much strategy as pool?

I forgot to point out in my first post why I think sports fans are drawn in by strategy. It’s a perfect example of the old army maxim: amateurs think about strategy, pros think about tactics, and generals think about logistics. Sports fans are, obviously, amateurs. Thus the attraction.

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.

Much of it comes down to culture and familiarity, but I think there are some fundamental reasons why soccer will likely never become a popular sport in the US. I could see it becoming more popular than hockey; maybe even on the level of golf or tennis. But it will never even rival NCAA basketball and football, much less the NBA, NFL or MLB.

[EllisDee]

@GorillaMan

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.

I found an interesting article that address this question.

Soccer’s problems all boil down to mismanagement and internal bickering, from what I could glean after skimming the article. Football was originally played by colleges, and when they decided to unify the rules they couldn’t reach a concensus, so they split into Association-style rules (becoming soccer) and rugby-style rules (becoming football.)

After that, most colleges picked the rugby-style rules, which led to football becoming the more popular game. Soccer still had some chances, but squandered them due to mismanagement and internal strife.

Of course, take this summary with a grain of salt, as I only skimmed, and who knows how accurate that cite is anyway. Still, fairly interesting.

[eponymous]

Ellis Dee,

Thanks for the link. Here’s another that you (and other’s) might find useful:

Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism

http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/titles/7084.html

[bic910]

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.

I’m not terribly familiar with soccer, but this comment reminds me of basketball players flopping around after a possible offensive foul. Isn’t it more or less the same thing? I assume some penalty is involved, no?

Personally, soccer bores me to tears. As does hockey. As do most sports. I can tolerate baseball and basketball when my teams are competitive, but that’s it. Nascar is a complete mystery to me.

Soap operas for men, if you ask me…

[EllisDee]

@bic910

I’m not terribly familiar with soccer, but this comment reminds me of basketball players flopping around after a possible offensive foul. Isn’t it more or less the same thing? I assume some penalty is involved, no?

Could very well be. I wouldn’t watch basketball if you paid me.

Soap operas for men, if you ask me…

That’s pro wrestling. Sports are the original reality show.

Get your pop culture-based denigrations right!

heh.

[Sal_Ammoniac]

@Ellis Dee

Also, you’re kidding with that 21-3 example, right?

Nah… it was just my way to get a dig in at the Giants. And I got you to repeat it! Now, that’s strategy.

FWIW, I think you’re probably right that soccer will never be as big as football or baseball. But that’s a different proposition from saying American sporting culture is basically inhospitable to soccer. I read your points about strategy with interest, but I don’t know how explanatory strategy is as to why our top sports are what they are. I think it’s coincidence, as much as anything. And I would go so far as to argue that our sports are formative of our culture, rather than the reverse. For example, I’ve always thought that it strange that baseball is considered our national game, when we’re a famously impatient people – giaven that baseball is one of the most langorous of sports, second only to cricket.

The other point to remember is that sports wax and wane in the public interest. The NFL is big now, and even mediocre teams fill their stadiums. It wasn’t always that way. The NBA in the Michael Jordan days was huge. Interest has fallen considerably. And hockey, now – they’ve taken a considerable slide. Soccer could easily displace it.

[NDP]

This has been touched on before but there are just too many well-established team sports in the U.S. competing for the fans’ attention for soccer to gain a foothold. Both European and North American preferences in team sports were formed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and reflected heavily on their places of origin. Europe (or at least Western Europe and the UK) was more crowded and more industrial so conditions there were more favorable for soccer to become popular. The U.S. during the 1800’s, on the other hand, was more pastoral so it was easier for baseball to become the “national pastime.” Also, sports are very season oriented in North America. Baseball is associated with spring and summer, football with autumn, and basketball and ice hockey are games you play during the winter. Where would we fit soccer in? It’s not like it is in Europe where where soccer is pretty much the only major team sport around and the season lasts for nine months. (BTW, is cricket still popular in the UK or has soccer’s dominance marginalized it?)

[Snooooopy]

@bic910

I’m not terribly familiar with soccer, but this comment reminds me of basketball players flopping around after a possible offensive foul. Isn’t it more or less the same thing? I assume some penalty is involved, no?

According to International Basketball Federation rules, the penalty is a technical foul.

In the NBA, I think the penalty is just snide remarks from the TV commentators.

[Sal_Ammoniac]

@NDP

Europe (or at least Western Europe and the UK) was more crowded and more industrial so conditions there were more favorable for soccer to become popular. The U.S. during the 1800’s, on the other hand, was more pastoral so it was easier for baseball to become the “national pastime.”

This doesn’t make any sense to me. A baseball field is not larger than a soccer field.

And it’s not like soccer hasn’t gained a foothold – it has. You can quibble with the U.S. team’s number 5 ranking in the world, but it’s still a very good team, competitive with the top teams in the world. And we do have professional soccer here, which has at least some following.

[Barbarian]

Let’s look at this the other way around.

Baseball is incredibly popular in the U.S. This is a hideously slow sport where all the action is tightly defined (i.e. one man faces another), and it’s extremely repetitive. It’s so dull they had to add math in order to make describing the game exciting.

Football is another massively popular sport. Every college has a team, high schools have teams, people are ruthlessly loyal. But the action? Again, tightly defined. From a dead stop, the ball gets hiked back, moved forward, and stops again. Then everyone takes a break. Repeat for 3 or 4 hours (and the game clock is only an hour, if you can believe that).

Basketball, arguably the most popular sport in America in terms of actual fandom (I know, I know, the media loves baseball, and the story behind baseball is quintessential Americana. But more people watch basketball. ) This is really the only consistently high scoring sport played in the U.S. (High scores in football? Only because some plays earn 6 or 3 pts. That’s just cheating.) The court is small, people constantly run up and down from one end to the other, and the only reason to stop is because someone’s been injured or fouled. Action action ACTION! Split into 4 quarters to allow for pee and beer breaks. That’s basketball.

Hockey. Like basketball, but with lower scores. And goons who like to fistfight, which polarizes the audience. Don Cherry aficionados love the fights, many do not. (Gimme faster-paced Olympic hockey any day of the week.) Split into 3 periods for beer and pee breaks.

What do all those have in common with soccer? Not too much. Soccer is two 45-minute halves. Guaranteed. The only reason to stop the clock is because someone is injured (which doesn’t happen that often unless you’re watching players from a romance-language country :P).

The play is constant and free flowing, but not defined at all. There is no clearly defined stop and starting point within a half, so you’ve got to watch the whole thing closely. Heck, even when the air commercials, they squeeze the game into the corner so you don’t miss anything.

Score? Low. The field is the same size as in a football game, and the ball can move around quickly, but not players. Seeing one guy run away from everyone is about as rare as it is in football. And unlike football, the only guy allowed to use his hands is waiting on the touch line!

So, no breaks, no ‘definition’, and a low score. Three strikes against soccer for the low attention span U.S. audience.

[roger_thornhill]

@Argent Towers

I’ll admit that I think American football is improperly named, and that what we know here as “soccer” invloves the foot far more than football does - however, my social conditioning is so strong that it’s just instinctive for me to call it soccer.

Besides, you wouldn’t say, “The Spanish love tauromaquia.” You’d say, “The Spanish love bullfighting.” Soccer is what we call football in American.

Whatever. It’s our obsession and we get to call it what WE want! And, sure, one day we may want to reclaim “soccer”, and call each other “soccer fans”, but that would be on OUR terms. As far as other people who don’t share our orientation are concerned, they should show us the respect of calling it what WE want it to be called.

[Argent_Towers]

Fine, then whenever you talk about American football, just call it “Football.” After all, it’s our obsession - and we just call it “football.”

[roger_thornhill]

@Argent Towers

Fine, then whenever you talk about American football, just call it “Football.” After all, it’s our obsession - and we just call it “football.”

Ah, that’s different, but you’ll be happy to know I never call it “American football”. Gridiron has a ring to it. Seems so perfect when you think of all those fellows on steroids hidden behind iron masks. Gridiron it is for me.

[Fern_Forest]

@Barbarian

… Repeat for 3 or 4 hours (and the game clock is only an hour, if you can believe that)…

This isn’t directed at you but the idea. I’ve never really cared how long a game played on if I was interested in it. Extra innings in baseball is incredibly exciting. It seems to me like it would the fan’s SO that wants the thing to end on time so that they can do stuff but if it takes the Braves 18 innings to win then I’ll be loving it.

[tiel0301]

@GorillaMan

I don’t see how any of this explains American kids ‘growing out’ of football while European ones don’t.

Because there are

@Case Sensitive

No pauses for ad breaks.

, our television markets don’t want to lose money and, ergo, American kids can not watch it on television and develop those viewing nuances that make the sport enjoyable to the rest of the world. It is a vicious cycle. The US side’s performance in this year’s Cup surely will not help matters.

The “not enough scoring!” argument is pathetic. The ONLY difference between a 66-68 basketball game and a 1-0 football match is ONE GOAL. Everything else is window dressing. I have always found basketball boring because team A gets the ball, gets to the other end, and scores. Then team B gets the ball, gets to the other end, and scores. Where is the drama in that? Football is inherently more exciting because one has no idea what is going to happen if any particular player gets a foot on the ball. What matters in football is the skill of the players, not whether a player puts a ball in a net. Americans are much more interested in the numbers than the dance, which is a pity.

[Fredescu]

No pauses for ad breaks? Delay the telecast slightly and make the pauses. It’s common for other sports.

show us the respect of calling it what WE want it to be called.

We already have three more popular sports that get called football: rugby league, rugby union, and aussie rules. On top of that, our team is nicknamed the Socceroos. Footballroos just doesn’t have the same ring to it. The term “soccer” isn’t going away any time soon

[roger_thornhill]

Romanian Fred, “WE” means “me and my family of fans” - the Barmy Army, mate, not the Aussie whingers!

[NDP]

@Sal Ammoniac

This doesn’t make any sense to me. A baseball field is not larger than a soccer field.

And it’s not like soccer hasn’t gained a foothold – it has. You can quibble with the U.S. team’s number 5 ranking in the world, but it’s still a very good team, competitive with the top teams in the world. And we do have professional soccer here, which has at least some following.

This is not about the sizes of modern baseball and soccer fields. I was just observing that the mostly rural nature of America and the generally industrial nature of Western Europe (especially the UK) in the 19th century seemed to influence the respective growth of both sports.

And it’s true soccer does have a foothold in the U.S.–it’s just a very small one. As was mentioned earlier in this thread, right now now in the U.S. and Canada, you have basketball’s premier event (the NBA finals), ice hockey’s premier event (the NHL Stanley Cup), and major league baseball all competing with the World Cup for sports fans’ attention. Since pro baseball, basketball, and ice hockey have larger established fan bases in the U.S. and Canada, news about the World Cup, while still making the front pages of American sports sections, is mostly going to be below the fold.

[eponymous]

Something else to add -

I tend to look to history with respect to the argument of why soccer isn’t more popular in the US as elsewhere. Keep in mind that soccer is but one version of several sports with a common origin (football/soccer, American football, rugby, etc.). For whatever reason, it’s the rugby-like version that eventually became commonplace in the US.

Not sure why exactly, but maybe it was because the rugby version was adopted and play by US universities, whereas the association version was seen as “lower class” (as it was popular with the common masses in the UK). Keep in mind also, that soccer isn’t the most popular sport in other former British colonies - most notably Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa where rugby has traditionally been more popular. I’d be curious to know how rugby became dominant in Australia, et al.; that is, was there some sort of class element involved?

Another angle brings in baseball. Everyone likes to talk about the pastoral nature of the game. But it shares a common trait with soccer in that, for whatever reason, it was adopted by the working classes as their sport. And it was as much an urban sport as soccer (baseball had it’s origins in the cities of the East Coast) and was populated by many from the lower socio-economic strata in the country.

So around the same time that soccer was becoming more and more popular in other parts of the world (among the working classes especialy), baseball in the US became the most popular sport. It wasn’t until much, much later that football (American football) supplanted baseball as the most popular American sport.

Also, people who follow US college football share similar traits with those who follow and support local soccer clubs, especially in Europe and South America. Does not the rivalry between Oklahoma and Texas share similarities with the Liverpool-Everton derby? OSU vs. Michigan with Real Madrid and Barcelona? USC vs. UCLA with Inter and Juventus? Florida St. vs. Florida with Boca Jrs. and River Plate?

Granted, the way in which the support is given may differ a bit - the US doesn’t have quite the history of hooliganism that is sometimes displayed in soccer elsewhere. But it doesn’t negate the passion and intensity felt by those who follow their favorite US college football teams.

[astorian]

I’ve made this argument before, so I apologize if it sounds very familiar to some.

Anyone who really wants to know why soccer has never caught on need only read the posts here, and see how ineffective soccer fans are at making the case for their game.

Fact: there’s only one goof reason for anybody to watch ANY sport, and that’s for fun. When you get right down to it, ALL sports are a silly (but, we hope, enjoyable) waste of time. NONE of them are important or worthy of reverence.

Regardless of your favorite game, can we all agree that neither Babe Ruth nor Pele cured cancer? That neither Magic Johnson nor Giorgio Chinaglia has brought peace to the Middle East? That neither David Beckham nor Joe Namath has been feeding the starving children of Somalia?

I mean no disrespect to any of those guys, but all of them were grown men who made a lot of money playing a freaking kids’ GAME!

Baseball, soccer, American football, basketball, hockey… they’re just silly games. And why anyone should care whether people in other countries like your favorite game is beyond me.

Do you see American Dopers asking why Europeans don’t like baseball? Do American Dopers fret about why NFL Europe isn’t drawing big crowds? No! Because we honestly don’t care whether you share our love for baseball or for the NFL. We Yanks are quite content to say, “We don’t like your sports, and you clearly don’t like ours. Oh well, that’s fine. You go ahead and enjoy your favorite silly games, and we’ll enjoy ours.”

But for some unfathomable reason, soccer fans are rarely content to leave it at that! Rather, foreign soccer fans seem to take it as a personal insult that Americans aren’t interested in their favorite game.

Now, soccer enthusiasts COULD try to persuade Americans that watching soccer is fun. Soccer leagues COULD try to tell skeptical American Dads, “Give soccer a try- bring your kids out to the stadium for an MLS game. We guarantee you’ll all have a great time!” Heck, that approach MIGHT even work.

Instead, soccer fans NAG us! They insult us. They try to shame us into embracing their game- NOT because it’s fun to watch but because, damn it, “It’s the world’s game!”

Well, here’s a news flash: NOBODY can be nagged into liking a game. So, stop trying. It’s time you grew up and understood that (horrors!) not everybody in the world likes the same things you do. Not everybody likes your favorite musician, not everybody likes your favorite book, not everybody likes your favorite food, not everybody likes your favorite game. and there’s nothing in the Bible that says they have to.

At any rate, you’ve tried for years to force soccer on us, and made only small inroads. How small? Well, so small that NOBODY is calling up sports radio stations in the USA and demanding that Bruce Arena be fired. Shoot, I’d be surprised if 1 in 100 Americans know who Bruce Arena is!

So, why not give up and concentrate on other countries. Start harassing the Canadians about why they prefer hockey. Heckle the Indians and Pakistanis and Cubans, who don’t seem to care, either. We’re not the only country that ignores soiccer. Go pester some of the others!