I was born and raised in America to an Irish father, so I know a bit about both sides of this discussion. Ask any American their opinion about rugby, cricket, team handball or any of a number of other sports, and the answer will typically be something along the lines of “I don’t care.” Ask that same man (and it is usually sports-loving, red-blooded American males we’re talking about here) about soccer and he’ll say, “I hate it.” It is this active hate, not simple disregard for soccer that is the cause of all this hand-wringing. No one asks why Americans don’t “get” rugby. We aren’t particularly interested, the end. The question is why do we HATE soccer. Why does Jim Rome rant about his loathing for it? Why did my high school football coach (upon seeing some kids playing soccer on the football field) scream at the top of his lungs, “Would you homos get that third-world communist sport of my field right now?!?”
I’ve always thought the answer is that no other sport riles up our xenophobia like soccer. Rugby and cricket are just weird and British. We don’t play Aussie Rules, but it looks kinda fun. Soccer, however, is the sport of Brazilians and Mexicans and minorities who come to America and refuse to speak English. And despite what anyone tries to tell you, soccer is extremely popular in America. It’s not football or baseball, but it’s way more popular than hockey (and I love hockey). You can find a soccer game on TV more often than any other sport - as long as you’re willing to watch it in Spanish. Anytime pundits and haters talk about the TV ratings of soccer, they always casually fail to mention any of the broadcasts from Telemundo and Univision. The truth is that there are probably around 30 million devoted soccer fans in this country - they just don’t happen to speak much English, so their opinion on the subject is rarely, if ever, heard. In my opinion, the only way to change the tone of the discussion will be the increased popularity of MLS. We may have foreigners playing in our league, but at least it will be OUR league that people - eventually - are watching.
I suspect that the “problem” with soccer in America is the lack of actually hitting stuff.
Baseball hits the ball all the time.
Football has people hitting all the time.
Hockey has people hitting all the time.
Golf (is not a “major” sport but has a lot of older and richer clients, so the advertising money is there. Other than that, I don’t get it, sort of.)
Basketball is cock-full of great leaps and dives.
Soccer is accused of guys whining about being fouled (and it does happen), and I’m sorry, personally, it looks unorganized and three steps down in toughness from basketball. I guess I’m too American (and I’m basically a wuss).
As TheBoltEater notes, a lot of televised soccer here in the US is televised in Spanish. For that reason alone, many American sports fans would never watch those games.
The World Cup is one month out of every four years (if you’re not counting qualifying games). It might be better to compare it to the Olympics. Just because a lot of Americans watch swimming and gymnastics during the Olympics, that doesn’t mean they’re big fans of those sports during the other 47 months.
The 2006 World Series (which seems to be the comparison you’re making) happened to be the lowest-rated World Series in history. It pitted two Midwestern teams (Tigers and Cardinals), which likely limited some of the appeal among more casual baseball fans. And, 2006 was when the steroids scandal in baseball really blew up, which may have also turned off fans.
Seattle seems to be turning into a soccer town. The Sounders have sold out a ton of games this season, and their playoff run is drawing a lot of attention.
That said, I don’t really follow any team professional sports anymore. I used to be a huge baseball fan, but I’ve since stopped caring about which group of mercenaries beats the other. Takes way too much time to keep up with for what, in the end, amounts to very little payoff, at least for me.
Are people under the impression that to Canadians “football” means “soccer”?
I’m quite certain “footbal” means “game played with oblong ball between teams of heavily-padded individuals expecting full-contact.” It’s the rare wanker who calls soccer football.
Relevant Corner Gas episode, quoted from memory:
Davis: So, who do you like in football?
Brent: The Riders, duh.
Davis: No, not Canadian football.
Brent: Well, I guess maybe the Minnesota Vikings…
Davis: No, out on the pitch.
Brent: You mean soccer?
Davis: Yes.
Brent: Well, I guess it’s a tie between the London I-Don’t-Give-a-Craps and the Manchester Not-a-Real-Sports.
I don’t think you can over-estimate the impact that diving in football (soccer) has on initial fans. It is a major put-off for people who haven’t grown up with quality pro soccer.
I’m from the US, living in London. Big football (i.e., soccer) fan (Go Spurs!). But I have to say - and my British friends agree with me on this - the ridiculous dives by these prima donna players when someone so much as brushes against them makes me want to go Pulp Fiction at the TV sometimes. To be totally fair, I’m starting to feel that way everytime a wide receiver in US football throws up his hand after every single incompletion complaining about not getting a flag for interference. Bunch of friggen’ whiners.
Now, the Premier League diving antics are really really annoying - but STILL infinitely preferable to the Italians and the Spanish, where you’d swear they are given acting lessons as part of their weekly practice sessions.
I think the problem is made worse because there is only one real referee on the pitch making calls. I think they need at least one, maybe two more refs on the actual pitch (not line judges, which they already have), and should start expanding the use of instant replay. You can’t tell me it would 'interrupt the flow of play; they have interruptions all the time everytime a player dives and rolls around like he’s going to need an amputation, only to hop up and start running around again.
If you want to see decent quality football without the stupid diving, watch football from the Coca-Cola Championship or League One leagues (one or two leagues below the Premier League).
I think from this thread and the OP’s other posts that he/she is way too sensitive about criticism directed at Americans. It’s just a few people on message boards, man. It’s not like everybody in Europe sits around discussing things they don’t like about America. I devote no more than an hour per day to such activity. Anyway, you should be flattered. Nobody slags off Belgium, because… well, who cares?
(sorry to Belgians for trotting out the “Belgium is boring” stereotype - just using it to make a point).
What they need is to throw up a yellow card every time someone dives. After a few suspensions and/or dismissals on the primadonnas, I can assure you that they’ll stop doing it.
I’m an American living overseas and I don’t hear this all that much. Every once in a while there will be some good natured teasing, but the fact that American soccer teams have done pretty well in the past couple of years has changed things. I think it’s more a generational thing, just like the Americans who say “soccer sucks;” you don’t hear that so much in people under 45.
With great power, comes great insecurity. At least it certainly seems that way some times – it’s true that while American’s getting shit over not liking football is probably overstated, you don’t hear weak-ass anti association football sentiment in other multi-football code countries such as Ireland or Australia.
From the non-American POV, any shit directed towards Americans for not liking football usually stems from not understanding American football, and considering it as something of a sport for pussies. This is the real dichotomy. It perhaps links to the popular myth that the school bully is really a pussy. Underneath the bluster and bravado, if you could just get him on his own, you’d soon find out that he’s soft. This doesn’t tend to actually be true very often, but we’re all familiar with the general idea. Well, you couldn’t do a better job of making eleven big, strong, hard men look like pussies then have them play American football. Let’s see – we’ll dress them in spandex and body armour and have them go out and posture on the field of play. Scoring touchdowns is an element of the game, but the real order of business is to try and fondle as many men’s arses as possible in 60 minutes. Except it’s not 60 minutes, it’s all fucking day whilst we stop the game every 10 seconds and make a huge production over every, tiny, little, thing. Oh, and do you fancy a game of American football after work? Can’t mate, we don’t have the equipment, and we couldn’t play it properly because we might get hurt so we’d have to water down the rules. Shame, because you do have a nice arse.
You get the picture, it’s easy to project anti-American prejudice onto the game of American football, as there are a lot of cosmetic features to it that are diametrically opposed to association football and prevent yr average no-nothing non-US sports fan from understanding the real game. These features tie in with typical anti-American prejudices concerning American bombast, posturing, making a big deal out of fuck-all etc etc. They then in turn reinforce the perceived qualities of association football.
I like American football a lot btw – I consider myself a huge sports fan and ‘hating’ one particular sport doesn’t compute to me. Even sports I don’t really enjoy watching, say tennis for example, I can still find something to like about. It is interesting, though, to contrast the structure of American football and something like rugby league. If you were to watch a State of Origin game of Aussie RL and an American football game back to back you’d really see the contrast in approach between two sports that have very similar themes in macrocosm – big, strong, fast men trying to break through and score touchdowns (tries).
I think this is true. I’ve never experienced people actually truly hate certain sports. That concept is wholly bizarre to me. But I always considered it good natured teasing. We both call a very different sport ‘football’ so there’s bound to be slight culture clashes there, but it’s never actual hate. The same banter occurs between Brits and Aussies (There doesn’t seem to be too many American immigrants in Australia, but I imagine it would happen there too).
I think the biggest reason that soccer has taken as long as it has to catch on among NFL, MLB and NBA-fan Americans is that Americans in general are reluctant to embrace anything they themselves did not invent (or can plausibly claim to have invented). It’s a similar reason as to why hockey has never truly caught on there.
Americans watch American sports and they don’t see the need to follow some sport someone in a foreign country came up with. Without trying to turn the thread in another direction, it’s the same sentiment as to why you get people saying “well that would never work here” when you mention something that works in another country. Americans want to have come up with the answer themselves. They want to lead, not follow. And becoming fans of soccer, for a certain demographic, is following.
Interesting series of posts. Should be read carefully to highlight the relevant issue:
The rest of the world doesn’t generally “bash” Americans for not liking soccer. They may find it indicative of our general lack of <insert favorite adjective here>, but they really don’t care that we don’t like it.
What does regularly happen is that Americans will bash soccer. There are numerous reasons for this, which we have discussed in threads on this Board almost ad infinitum. But when an American starts bashing soccer, non-Americans (and some Americans, such as yours truly) will stand up for the game. In the process, the reasons for Americans not embracing the game get discussed. Oftentimes, in the process, a reason that seems to an American like a valid point gets assailed as silly or invalid by a non-American. An example would be the lack of scoring, which many Americans find off-putting, and which non-Americans consider a vital element of the game.
Now, why is it that the love or lack of love from Canadians for soccer isn’t bandied about as much? Probably because Canadians, unlike Americans, don’t run around ridiculing things they don’t like. That seems to be a peculiarly American trait.
In short, the OP makes a false assumption, and puts the cart before the horse. :smack:
This is much easier said than done. And they have tried to do it, but often what happens is that someone booked for “diving” turns out to have actually been tripped or pushed or what not, and the booking ends up rescinded after the fact. From experience (quite a lot of it, actually), I can tell you that determining that a person has actually been fouled, or has fallen down as part of an act, can be very, very difficult, and even the best tend to get it wrong.
The genesis of the “dive” or the “elaboration” (the ridiculous rolling around in pain on the ground as if poleaxed when something less injurious has happened) is the refusal of referees to whistle for fouls in situations where the player with the ball has been fouled, but fights through the foul in an attempt to continue playing the ball. If the referee would properly whistle such fouls, regardless of whether the fouled player falls down, players would not feel it necessary to fall down to attract the referee’s attention. In that case, the simulated foul (dive) would be very apparent, because the person who goes down without trying to stay up would be either quite obviously fouled, or simulating.
As a fellow soccer (and Spurs) fan, I completely agree with your assessment. The diving is absurd. Every week in the NFL you can watch players have all their knee ligaments torn or receive grade 3 concussions, and yet they don’t engage in a fraction of the histrionics that some striker who just got his foot stepped on does.
