I don’t mean those who are simply uninterested in the sport, I those who write anti-soccer articles whenever the World Cup rolls around or the masses who go to twitter to bash soccer whenever its shown on ESPN. Why are so many Americans against soccer becoming popular in the US?
/not a soccer fan
Bashing things that other people (especially foreigners) like makes you feel better about yourself.
If you ever visit the “conversation” for any ongoing game via the ESPN scoreboard feature, you’ll find that 90% of the conversation is juvenile bashing of the other team, teams in other sports that play in the same city as the opponent, the other city, random other cities which are also in the league, and the individual posters who support the opponent. Bashing is just is what is done on these things.
I think a lot of people are confused by the lack of commercial breaks.
“Soccer was invented by European ladies to keep them busy while their husbands did the cooking.”
-Hank Hill
I don’t hate it; I just think it’s silly that a very small group that does like soccer keeps trying to make it more popular.
They’ve been trying at least since the Pele (sp?) craze 30 years ago. Almost everyone I went to gradeshool with played soccer. Most little kids still play soccer, as far as I know.
Yet, soccer hasn’t progressed much. We can’t even produce enough players in the US to fill up our MLS teams.
So, super-yawn at soccer and pats on the head of anybody who thinks it’s the Next Great American Sport.
Got it in one.
In addition, those dang foreigners are always trying to steal the name “football” from our beloved national sport. Serious, they think a game played only with the feet (and a ball) should be called football. Snot, silly foreigners.
Plus, it’s a boring game to watch.
To me soccer is just boring, it has nothing to do with the foreign nature of it, I hate it about at the same level as I have Baseball. Because basically you can watch it for 2 hours and despite a lot of movement nothing technically happens.
There is a certain subset of American that thinks anything foreign is automatically better.
A lot of people find nothing inherently wrong with soccer, and even enjoyed playing it as children, but like to bash it just to jerk those people around.
This is my own opinion.
The level of scoring is too low. There is a lot of running, blocking, kicking the ball, etc., but you can watch a whole damn game that ends up with a final score of 1 to 0. This is boring.
With American style football each scoring event can change the strategy of the rest of the game. Are you going for an air passing game, a running game, do you need to go for kicking the field goal? In many respects these decisions change based upon the current score of the game. If the game is a close one there are strategies that can keep it interesting, and winning possible, right up until the last quarter. A complete turnaround can come with a few quick scores. And with each score the plan of attack changes.
Soccer has little of that. I am not going to spend a couple hours watching a game with such a low level of interesting action, scoring.
Running back and forth, running back and forth, kick and miss, running back and forth, it just is not interesting to me. Oh, look, they are running the other way again and…and…they kicked the ball! Nope. Running back the other direction.
It’s like a track event with a ball.
Low scores, compared to most of the popular American sports.
The players are shameless drama queens whenever they get hit or even touched. I went to a U.S.-Venezuela exhibition game a few years back, and you’d have thought everyone was going for an Academy Award. Then the ref makes a call, and hey presto! They’re fine again, running back down the field.
Moved to the Game Room.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
It makes us feel uneasy about the universe.
Take bowling as an example. It’s a perfectly fine activity, enjoyed by many as a sport and to watch. For many others, there is simply no interest. Live and let live, no one gets too excited. But if tomorrow bowling was by far the number one sport in the world, where bowling people did all those crazy things soccer fans did, and the whole world was telling you it’s such a fantastic thing if only you understood it, then perhaps you’d get a little angry. Perhaps you’d take every chance you got to say “look, bowling is a ridiculous thing to obsess about.”. Perhaps, over time, you’d just be pissed off enough over the misguided energy spent on such a silly passtime that you’d start saying you hate bowling. Which, of course, you don’t. You hate the hype, the fixation, the culture.
It’s because they have (gasp!) ties.
(Yes, we should call them draws.)
I suspect that if one actually watched a lot of soccer then you would find out that there are in fact different strategies and decisions being employed based on the score, game time, etc.
It reminds me of the glowing puck gimmick for US hockey TV audiences. Anyone who is familiar with hockey doesn’t even need to see the actual puck to know where it is; it’s all about reading how the play is developing.
Otherwise, yeah, I agree with you: low scores, little action, and not much else.
I think it was Dave Barry who once wrote “I’ve really learned to enjoy soccer. And can watch it for hours, right up to the time that somebody takes a shot on goal.”
People in the US hate soccer because they see it as an encroachment upon their sports. Baseball is American. Basketball is American. Football is American. Hockey is Canadian but we’ve taken it over. But soccer is European and so there’s a tribal aspect to its dislike. Its juvenile, but its how our lizard brain works, unfortunately
Vuvuzelas.
Nuff sed.
This, of course, includes the many “foreigners” who love to bash American Football as well.
I disagree about the lack of action being boring. PGA golf, bowling, billiards and even Hold Em poker all have a very loyal fan base. The NHL hockey games have very low scores and frequent ties but it’s much more popular in the US than soccer.
There’s just something about the whole concept of soccer that will never catch on in the US. It is popular among kids sports as it’s relativity safe activity. By high school most of the gifted athletes move on to football, basketball or baseball.
