Soccer is a fine sport and the reason that most Americans don’t like it is the same reason that most Europeans don’t like baseball and most Africans don’t like Alpine Skiing. There is little or no history. Baseball is just as boring and just as exciting as soccer. It depends on the person’s knowledge and prejudice.
One thing that has been getting my goat lately though about soccer is the insistence that they use that silly upward moving clock. I’m not bashing the sport. I’m talking as a fan, perhaps as an American sports fan. I’m saying this as a fan who’d like to see the darn thing move backward and stop, for crying out loud. We’re in the 21st century after all, aren’t we?
And ties (or draws). These aren’t so bad really, but they don’t have to happen so often, do they?
This discussion crops up about every three months, and it's never resolved. The reasons the American public do not go for "soccer" in a big way are many and varied and valid.
However, they are never enough for those who refuse to understand our disdain for a game the rest of the world holds in the highest regard.
Preference for one game over another is a matter of personal opinion, hence this thread more properly belongs in Great Deabtes. I'm moving it there.
Please, continue.
Not any more, Tom. This season they’ve don away with that (silly) rule, as part of an effort to pull MLS a little more into line with the rest of the world. Other changes include running the clock from 0:00 to 45:00 (instead of the other way 'round) and official time being kept on field.
As an advert for soccer,
Have a go all you need is a ball .
You don’t have to be 8’tall or weigh 250 pounds,every size has it’s own plusses and minusses.
It is accessible to any age or sex or income.
One reason the US TV channels are not keen is the lack of natural breaks for advertising.Seems that US inc is dictating to you the citizen what it wants you to watch-make your own mind up about why.
Funny, this is exactly why I like hockey. And hockey has the added excitement of being on ice, which requires the athletes to have both grace and endurance. Plus, they have to handle a stick, which means the full-body control of a soccer player plus the ability to control an inanimate object as if it’s another appendage. Therefore, I think the skill involved in hockey is quite a bit more difficult than that in hockey. Any four-year-old can kick a ball around, but you don’t see many preschoolers out on the ice.
Soccer, to me, is just a slow version of hockey without all the cool sliding around on ice and wall checks. Yawn.
When I hear things like this, I really have to laugh about the perceptions of Americans as being ignorant. To address this statement:
A) You don’t have to be big to play (American) football, you just have to work really really hard (it helps if you have some natural talent). The average size of players in the NFL is probably about 6’1", 205 lbs. Certainly bigger than average, but by no means huge. Defensive backs, recievers, and running backs typically go about 5’8, 185 lbs. Most can run a 40 yard dash in 4.6 seconds (not far off olympic pace), carry about 5% body fat, and could run half a marathon without any real preparation. Granted, linemen are huge and usually pretty fat, but you’d be surprised how fast those guys can move – and they’re strong as hell. The difference between futbol and Football is that the American game is one of extreme specialization.
B) All you need to play a pickup game of American football is – guess what – a football. You don’t have to have the pads and stuff. I play in pickup games all the time, on a weekly basis. You have everything except the linemen smashing into each other, although if you’re feeling tough you can do that too. Furthermore, no one is excluded from these games. Girls and young kids play all the time. We just play “two-hand touch” instead of full-speed tackling, and make them recievers or cornerbacks. No problem.
This was not any sort of attempt to belittle Americans in any way whatsoever.
It was what it was ,merely a way of saying try it out.
By the way ,what percentage of basketball players are under 6’5?
Thought so
What percentage of football players weigh less than 250 pounds?
Why do you think I equate size with low intelligence? I do not.
Do you think I am attacking your nationhood because I think some Americans might actually enjoy playing soccer?
So a linebacker can run really quick far such a large person-a soccer player does that time after time and is on the field of play for the full 90mins 2*45mins continuously.
We could get into a childish discussion about which is the better and not say anything meaningful or we could say-try lots of differant activities-see which you enjoy.
That’s what I’ve been wondering. Personally, I never understood the appeal of watching a bunch of cars turn left for 500 miles.
Okay, there’s a difference between playing a sport and watching it. There are a hell of a lot of kids playing soccer in the U.S. I played it for a couple years myself. Nobody in the U.S. seems to want to watch other people playing it, though. Count me in with the others who think it’s boring. I’ll take good old American college football any day.
It’s hard for me to get excited about either playing or watching a sport where you can’t use your hands. That seems awfully unnatural. A huge part of our evolutionary background is the development of hand/eye coordination. (From rock-throwing, to spear throwing, and on down the line. The human arm has evolved as a throwing device.) Personally, I enjoy sports that test not only an athlete’s strength and stamina, but his hand/eye coordination as well.
Understood. Personally, I have tried it out. I played in various leagues for about 8 years. I never enjoyed it as much as American football.
Who said anything about basketball? I don’t like the game myself, so I agree with you here.
If you don’t count the linemen, the vast majority of them, with the possible exceptions of Jerome Bettis and Ron Dayne. Even if you do look at the linemen, the trend of really massive men is something very recent. When the Chicago Bears won the Superbowl back in '85, with what was considered one of the best offensive lines in recent history, the 5 starting linemen for the Bears averaged about 250 – and they were the biggest in the league.
I don’t recall suggesting that you did think so. The question of intelligence never entered into the discussion.
I know many Americans who enjoy playing soccer. I didn’t take offense at anything you said. I merely felt that you had an inaccurate impression of certain sports popular in the US.
You’re absolutely right, any such further discussion would be childish. My only point in saying anything in the first place was to knock down any stereotypes out there.
Soccer and football are two different games, and both have their strong and weak points. They place different demands on the participants, and to say that one is “better” than the other is silly (that goes for all sports, for that matter).
When I was in school (late 70s) soccer was the sport the kids who couldn’t make any “REAL” team went out for. Thus it had a bad rep. Also since all the good athletes went out for Basketball, Football etc. it left only the lousy kids (who wanted a letter) to play and of course the games were awful.
Also remember Basketball at one time was endanger of dying out till they invented the shot clock to make it a quicker higher scoring game.
I don’t really buy the argument that americans don’t like soccer because it’s low scoring. American football is low scoring too. A football game that is 21-14 is really just a 3-2 game, its just that each score is worth more than 1 point.
Gee, I don’t think any of us expected him to say that.
For me, that’s part of the appeal. Any 6th grader can dribble a basketball through his legs, but it takes years to master even the basics of juggling and shooting a soccer ball.
At my school www.paly.net the soccer team is probably the hardest to make. Everyone has been playing their whole lives, and we could probably keep up with the track team. Of course, my school might be the exception.
Soccer leaves no time for commercials. The major networks cannot sell sufficient advertising time, therefore they don’t televise it. If it ain’t on TV, it ain’t a real sport, at least not in America. Most other countries do not depend as heavily on advertising, therefore they can afford to televise soccer.
The action stops in hockey often enough to run commercials. In addition hockey adds that all-too-necessary element of violent fights.
Goals in ice hockey are rarely spectacular or, at the very least, pleasing to watch unless you are supporting a team. This is turning into a ridiculous argument about who is the better athlete and it’s not really what I was asking in the first place. But anyway, I can skate, fast, and it’s nowhere near as demanding as running. Point about the stick noted but, well, as long as we’re trying to compete her, gimme shinty: they run around a field as big as New York City with a stick, swinging it golf stylee with little or no thought for safety. And they don’t (usually) wear protective padding
Maybe football (that’s soccer to you, bucko) has developed as some sort of evolutionary aid to our eye-FOOT co-ordination. Just a theory. Ahem. Seriously though, it’s only unnatural to ya because you’ve never played it (like, duh). having played footie all my life there is nothing more natural than juggling a ball with my feet.
A few people have suggested that football is only interesting if you support one of the teams. I disagree, but I would be interested to know why you think this is the case and why it is not the case for other sports.
andros, Thanks. I didn’t know that about the clock. How did they deal with injury time / time added on?
