Why did “Soccer” not catch on in the U.S./Canada

Great Debates
1

Asking more for the past rather than now, when we essentially have our “set” of familiar sports. While the rest of the World was taking up Soccer, how come that didn’t happen in the U.S./Canada?

I get that this has probably been discussed on the SDMB before, but I searched within 1 year for all threads with “Soccer” in the title and didn’t see it. So I apologize if it duplicates. I also guess it COULD be a GQ, but it would (probably) be here inside of an hour anyway so I decided to make it easier on the Moderators.

2

I’m not all that sure that it hasn’t ‘caught on’. Every school I know of has a soccer program, and there are so many after-school leagues that they spawned a cliche: The ‘Soccer Mom’.

3

There are numerous home-grown sports like Hockey, Baseball, Basketball and (American rules) Football as competition. All of these were invented or re-invented in the Americas. Soccer is catching on slowly, but you may as well ask why none of the four sports I’ve listed above is (especially) popular in Europe. Regional differences and inertia, mostly.

4

back in the days you’re talking about, soccer was a summer sport and little league baseball was (and still is) very organised. Baseball was the national pasttime and boys aged 7-14 were more expected to play baseball than soccer and it was difficult to do both. Soccer was very disorganised for the most part in this country then, too.

Beyond that, soccer was seen as boring, a bunch of guys running their butts off and primarily for nothing. Good soccer is a defensive-dominated, low scoring sport, although kiddie soccer sure had some high scoring games.

Perhaps if other countries had had dominant national kid sports prior to soccer, they too would have resisted.

5

Soccer is actually one of the most popular kids sports in the US. The thing is you have to go abroad to find professional fame, as the best pro coaches are in Europe and South America. There are no equivalents to a Mike Keenan, a Phil Jackson, a Phil Parcells, a Bill Bellechek, a Felipe Alou (yeah he managed the Expos, and did a damn good job of it) or a Joe Torre among native US/Canadian soccer coaches.

Game structure works against it. No other regular program, other than a chess tournament, require a segment longer than about 15 minutes. How is advertising to be done?

6

It’s my understanding that football has caught on in the US: Isn’t it by far the largest and most popular sport for kids ? I think maybe the biggest team game for women also ? Plus, I’m pretty sure just about every Latin American in the US will be tuned to a satellite or cable for most of June.

The best explanations I’ve come across as to why it’s not on network teevee in the US (and therefore not getting the media attention any sport needs) is the dynamic between teevee itself, the beer sponsors (etc) and the vested interests of those sports already heavily involved with teevee.

So, if it is the vested interests {$Billions) of baseball, American football, basketball and hockey combined with where to put beer commercials (without a long enough break for 45 minutes) that prevents the networks from getting involved – you, maybe, have to think it’s more to do with the leverage those other sports have given the fact that just about every other country gets by for 45 minutes (one has to think those sports need the US market or they’re financially finished so it’s, presumably, a hard ball deal).

7

Most schools will have a school football team. They may even have two varsity and junior varsity. Most schools in California and New Mexico (you can tell where I have lived now) have both a soccer team and a football team where the students must try out for. Most colleges have a football team they you try out for. So football is a popular pro and I would call semi pro, college football in the states is pretty much semi pro except at small colleges.

Soccer on the other hand is the non-winter sport for the City and YMCA leagues with base ball either leading or trailing soccer depending on where you are. There is very little in the way of city league football in comparison to either soccer or baseball. Maybe a little bit of pee wee league football but no adult leagues or even teenage leagues outside of playing on the school team.

8

There’s a sample student essay about half-way down this page that offers some insight. (I have no interest in soccer or any other team sport, really, but I teach composition classes. I ran across this while preparing lessons.)

9

I think that rather than looking at what’s played by children now, the answer lies in the sports that were most popular in winter around 100 - 120 years ago. Most English speaking places played either rugby or “soccer”; the American colleges preferred rugby and then changed that into American football in the 1890s. American football then became the most popular winter spectator sport.

So the question becomes; why was rugby more popular than “soccer”. In this respect North America is similar to South Africa, Australia and New Zealand where rugby has always been much more popular than “soccer” (at least with white people).

Another related question concerns the reason rugby never caught on in non-English speaking countries, other than France. My guess is that it’s much easier to show people how to play “soccer”; there are dozens of varieties that can be played in a lunchbreak, jumpers for goalposts, marvellous.

10

On the rugby vs. soccer issue

You can learn to play soccer anywhere. Indeed poverty might even help - if you can control a home-made ball on a slag-heap, a real ball on a soccer pitch is easy. But rugby requires space and soft ground.

Rugby is an outlet for repressed homosexuality.

11

Guess it really depends what you mean by “caught on”.

Canada has large ethnocultural populations (including many Brits) who love soccer in Canada as dearly as they did elsewhere. It’s a very popular sport for growing kids. There are a lot of soccer playing kids and, (sigh) “soccer moms”. Having refereed soccer (at the provincial level) for many years, many of the kids who do play have parents who come from countries where soccer is popular (Italy, Nigeria, what have you) and many do not.

Soccer has not caught on in terms of a highly profitable professional league. Canadians who want to watch soccer can see better quality games on Sports Network broadcasts; only a few Canadian cities have the population to support a team given the limited interest (Vancouver Whitecaps, Toronto Blizzard). The reason the interest is limited at this level is partly because there a few excellent Canadian players at the international level, partly because none of these players would stay close to Canada since they could earn far more elsewhere, partly because ethnocultural fans who enjoy watching their kids play are generally attached to other teams. Lots of Canadians follow English soccer leagues closely, though. Can’t get my dad away from the TV for FIFA “Soccer Sunday”. The World Cup games are avidly followed by some folks: my mom generally watches ALL 92 games. (“And at the end of ninety minutes, Morocco and Cyprus have fought to a 0-0 draw”).

12

G. Odoreida I hate to disagree with you but actually Rugby is a very poular game in for example Italy and Argentina.
In fact we are good at it an improving every year.
I think football (your soccer) is not so popular in U.S.A because it is still an sport for kids. Wait till they get bigger and you’ll see.

13

Yeah, sorry, I was generalising for the sake of brevity. I am a rugby fan and know that my country have lost to both Argentina and Italy. What I was talking about was the most popular sport in any given area or country; I don’t think the rugby teams in Italy or Argentina will ever get as much media coverage as the football teams. Similarly there are parts of France, England, Wales, Australia and Scotland where rugby is the most popular sport. I think that these popular allegiances tend to go back for many decades.

14

I watched a fascinating programme a couple months ago about the history of soccer in various different countries - including the U.S. Apparently, it was very popular there up until WW2, at which point for some reason the country turned to more home-grown games instead.

The (former?) doper DSYoungEsq has posted some very interesting historical details about the popularity of soccer in America - I’m sure an archive search will turn them up.

15

resisted? you make it sound like footbal is a bad thing.

it didnt succeed in the US because it is impossible for the game to be played properly and still make time for Budweiser to tell you about their great product every 3 minutes.

Football flows, and dosent take well to being interupted.
i think its bad that people would rather want a high scoring game instead of a good game.

16

I agree, but I’m in a small minority over here. Same thing with hockey. The hockey in the Olympics was sport, over here it’s just a brawl.

17

Catching Soccer on Telemundo or Univision, I can assure that products get advertised. They are on the back of players jerseys. Lined around the field. Every replay gets an ad banner, and the “goooooooooooool” gets an endorsement.

18

A big advantage baseball had when it was developing was publicity. Baseball had a journalist like Henry Chadwick who wrote about the game extensively in widely read publications in New York City in the mid-19th Century.

Soccer never had that in the U.S. Soccer was popular with recent immigrants to the U.S. from England and Scotland in the 19th Century, but the lower middle class has never been a big seller in the U.S.

The U.S. has had a competition similar to the FA Cup for a long time. It is presently called the Lamar Hunt Open Cup I believe. The L.A. Galaxy won last year, but in its history it’s been won by teams of Greeks, Croatians, Scots, etc.

That has created the impression in the minds of Americans that soccer is a sport for recent immigrants and not as “all-American” as baseball (which has players from many countries now) or football (almost entirely American) or basketball (which is becoming more international now).

19

In some Latin American countries soccer doesn’t seem to be that big. Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic seem to be baseball territory. Do they have any significant soccer teams?
I can’t think of one player from that whole region.

I thnk while people compare soccer to American football, rugby, basketball, or hockey - I think baseball is the sport that more than any other fills the cultural niche that soccer occupies among other people.

20

Major League Soccer’s web site, in its youth section, says “Soccer is the most popular participation sport in the United States, with millions of children playing every day.”

That makes sense to me. Soccer is the easiest of organized sports for young children to play. Certainly youth soccer leagues in my area are thriving, with many, many more teams than Little League baseball.

The success of the U.S. women’s team speaks for itself, in terms of the sport’s popularity among girls in this country.

On the men’s side, while the Americans remain far from the upper echelon in world soccer, each new generation coming along on the team seems more athletic, capable and better at play-making than the ones in years past.

What seems to happen, however, is that as American kids get older, they turn to other, more mainstream U.S. sports, or away from sports entirely.

It’s my prediction that the teen-age ranks will slowly begin to catch up with the youth soccer programs. There will be more opportunities for older kids to play, both in and out of school.

I don’t see soccer ever surpassing the “big four” sports in the USA. But it could become a lot closer fifth in years to come. In fact, it’s sure to.

But we have a LONG way to go to ever match the degree of passion other parts of the world have for the sport. I’ve spent a little time in Brazil, where they live and die with futébol. In both the most urbanized cities and the rural areas, you are never more than a block or two away from a group of kids kicking a ball around in a pick-up game, or some organized league play. They play soccer like we play pick-up basketball games.