Speaking as someone who isn’t from America I’ve never considered the nationality of a message board when I participate in a discussion and I doubt if most people do.
Seriously, i’ve only ever seen the “it’s an American Message board” argument in a soccer context.
The number of crossover fans appears to be on the increase. At one of the most popular fantasy football boards, a soccer thread has been ongoing since 2007 and has 55,000+ posts with the posting frequency only increasing. TV ratings keep going up, adolescent participation continues to increase – the number of American high school soccer players went up last year while the number of football players declined – and most sports fans in this country are very accustomed to following more than one sport. So we don’t really lose gridiron fans whenever we gain footy fans.
I’m glad we have a summer alternative other than baseball.
I’m sorry, but I think you’re both wrong. This board is a spinoff from an American newspaper column and I would dare say the populace here is at least 75% North American.
So? Fighting ignorance is not an exclusively american idea. Every board originates somewhere, but this is the Internet, not a country. Should, say, 4chan adhere exclusively to Japanese customs? If Brits take over the majority of the SD memberships, should all Americans be forced to spell “color” with a “u”?
Er, I get your point, but 4chan has always been an American board, made by an American person. Its name is a reference to Futaba(2) Chan in Japan, yes, but it’s American made and based.
Is it based in the US, though? I say that because servers for most webpages nowadays are mostly in Godklnowswhereistan, and the name is not just a reference, 4chan was a direct copy of that Japanese image board, a spin off, if you must.
But neither 4chan nor most boards in the net are supposed to be “from a country” or “about one country”, they are international boards for everybody in the world, not asking to comply with the customs of any one place.
Americans dislike soccer because they can’t call the winners of their domestic league “World Champions” of that sport.
Why care about the recent Spanish dominance of international soccer when you can easily dismiss its relevance by pointing out that the Green Bay Lakers won the most recent “World” Series?
Perhaps this needs its own thread, but this is just wrong. Hell, the Elections forum was created as a direct result of US political talk overwhelming Great Debates.
Sounds like we could use a little more diversity here then.
I’m not saying it never happens. I’m saying it’s one of those things where the outraged discussion of it happening far outweighs the actual happening… kind of like a few years back when you’d far more often hear people say “umm, well, gee, now because of PC I guess we have to call short people vertically challenged Americans, yuk yuk” than you would actually hear people seriously request terminology of that sort. In this thread alone I’m sure there are more people who have claimed they hate soccer because of foreigners being jerks than there are foreigners being jerks. (Not to mention, of course, that “I hate this sport because of what some foreign person says about my taste” is a monumentally stupid reason, not to mention a bizarrely self-fulfilling prophecy… Joe Sixpack starts out mildly disliking soccer just due to unfamiliarity. Joe Sixpack hears Frenchy McThong say that Americans are ignorant and stupid for not liking soccer. Now Joe Sixpack really HATES soccer because of what Frenchy McThong said. And, ironically, Joe Sixpack’s opinion actually now IS ignorant and stupid.)
We’re veering away from the my original point which was that Canadians/Australians/insert-non-soccer-country-here don’t make a big deal about the terminology. If there’s a “mislabeled” thread about football, they see the mistake, hit the back button and move on. They don’t assume it’s an affront to their national pride.
Are there people who deliberately do it to antagonize Americans? Sure, the guy who started this thread looks like one* but it’s a massive leap to assume that anyone who uses football in a general message board that happened to be American is being purposely antagonistic.
*Notice how he used the term soccer instead of football? 
Never. 
If by ‘troll’ you mean a 13+ year member & almost daily contributor to this board, then sure. Like I said, I don’t particularly follow sports, never have. I can watch a Superbowl or World Series game and enjoy the suspense and build-up and drama that comes from the complex gameplay and short term vs. long term strategies etc. that are (usually) an intrinsic part of these games. But I don’t really give two shits who wins. I don’t identify with any professional team. Don’t know these guys, don’t know anyone who knows them, never, ever will, so why should I care?
And I feel my complete lack of any emotional baggage with regard to sports allows me to be truly objective about them. And it’s just painfully obvious common sense that soccer is not nearly as sophisticated a game as baseball or (American) football (or cricket or rugby for that matter). American football came about because soccer (original football) came to this country from the old world like everything else. Except middle and upper middle class American college kids took one look at it and said, ‘This is a kid’s game, lets make it better’. Hence American football evolved. That’s why it’s called football even though 99% of the time the ball is in player’s hands.
As I said before, even though basketball was also developed primarily in US colleges I find it as boring & pointless as soccer (it’s just shrunk down & sped up). What are you waiting to see happen in these sports? Where are the exciting parts? US football & baseball are a slow, difficult, complex build-up to try and score, and when you do it’s deservedly a big deal. You score in basketball every 8 seconds, and in soccer, well, seems like never! How many different ways can a group of guys run back & forth bouncing or kicking a ball towards each others goals?! Where’s the excitement in a game in which the ball (and players) are nearly constantly in just a monotonous form of movement over & over?! And where, after hours of this back & forth drone, the scores wind up being either 102 to 101 (basketball) or 1 to 0 (soccer)?!
Same goes for hockey, which is just soccer on ice. Plus hockey (at least in the US) has so much fighting as to keep its fans mired in the realm of white trash, more like roller derby than soccer.
It’s checkers vs chess. Which is more developed, adult, sophisticated, and harder earned: Saying “King me!” or “Checkmate”? You wanna dwell on the snobbery of this, fine, I can’t stop you. Like I said I really don’t care about any pro sport at all. But snobbery or not the facts are there. Do they matter to the fans of any of these sports? Not one bit. But they’re still there…
Oh, and it’s about time somebody linked to this!!
(old ladies & fairies indeed!) 
Err, no. American football descends from rugby, the full name of which is rugby football (rugby itself is a derivation of football (soccer). In the 1820s, a young school kid called William Webb Ellis picked up a football and ran with it during a game, at the famous English public school called, wait for it, Rugby School).
Then you’ll not be surprised that those of us with a rather wider and more sophisticated palette are somewhat disdainful of your opinion.
What you are doing, as a non-sports fan, is confusing complication with sophistication.
Just because a game is complicated does not magically rubber stamp it as a valid adult sport. Were that the case then “Escape from Colditz” would be as revered as chess.
That you can’t appreciate the tactical and strategic nuances of football where hundreds of millions can is your personal problem alone. Rest assured, it has them. They are just expressed in different ways, within a different framework and over different timescales.
The tactical battle of every “down” is analogous to each game, half-game of a football season. Different set-ups, different team orders. All intended to combat and nullify what your opponent is doing and maximise your own strengths.
Let me ask you, when the ball is in motion after the snap does everything play out as intended? or do the players have to make quick decisions on the fly in order to deal with the unexpected?
If so then that is no different to a single period of play in football but with the offence and defence resetting in a fluid, dynamic manner and with the rules designed to help that happen.
Age and postings are irrelevant, I meant someone who intentionally posts fallacious arguments for the purposes of inflaming debate.
That said, I’m open to the possibility I could be wrong and that you genuinely believe what you posted. If so, let me apologise for trying to shut you down and discuss this properly.
So, going back to the original discussion:
I’m still coming from the loathing-soccer stance (and I hate playing devil’s advocate) but consider this:
The reason you think that [soccer] “is simplistic with very few rules or strategies or scenarios and therefore specifically meant for children” is because you don’t know them?
Believe me, every time I go to the pub someone wants to talk about the complex, layered strategies, the pro’s and con’s of so-and-so’s positioning vs joe blogg’s spacial awareness, or if x as a formation is better vs y formation or z formation. It makes me want to lay someone out!
As for few rules, there are so many debates about them it makes my head spin - the FIFA rulebook (a quick google search tells me) is 150 pages long!
As for the comparison to baseball: Soccer requires an equally diverse list of equipment. Sure you can play it with a ball and 4 piles of something for goals.. in the same way you can play baseball with a stick, a ball and 4 piles of something for bases. Most sports can be scaled down/up. And professional soccer has more officials then a foreign embassy.
I personally agree with you that its boring when you said: ‘Where are the exciting parts? US football & baseball are a slow, difficult, complex build-up to try and score, and when you do it’s deservedly a big deal’ [assuming you meant UK instead of US there] though there’s many who would disagree.
But even so I would argue this makes it less of a ‘kids game’ - in general adult games are slower more thoughtful, whereas it is the kids that need a quick reward for effort spent, in order to maintain interest.
Oh damn, I’ve been defending football. :smack: Now I feel dirty.
Soccer is better than American football. FACT!
Well you’ve put as much thought into your argument as Hail Ants has!
There is build up in soccer though? Just because they didn’t stop and give the play a complicated code-name doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Heck, they have named set offenses in Basketball and you didn’t seem to notice them too. That tells us more about you than about these sports.
I was in the same boat as you 15 years ago. I thought I was so smart and thought that the world’s love affair with football was just “cultural inertia”. You really need to watch a lot of soccer before figuring out tactics becomes second nature to you. Especially if you come from a non-soccer culture like me.
Warhammer 40k is more complicated than chess, clearly the more adult game. 
And just so we can spare davidklk from actually discussing tactics;) I’ll link to couple of writers who focus more on the strategy side of soccer.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/writers/jonathan_wilson/archive/
and here’s one analysing a soccer “quarterback”
http://www.haugstadfootball.net/2013/04/07/real-madrid-tactics-analysing-xabi-alonso/
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Ok, points taken. I still think I’m right about some things but most of this comes down to what you are and are not a fan/follower of. But to comment on the OP’s idea that Americans ‘hate’ soccer, I don’t think that’s true. Regardless of my previous comments I don’t hate it, but like I said I don’t really hate or love *any *sport all that much. What I do think that we Americans (rightfully) hate is when the rest of the world’s attitude seems like: “You ignorant Americans are too selfish & bourgeois to accept soccer”. And that can trigger emotional feelings like mine of “Screw you Euro-trash, you’re just too dumb to comprehend our sports!” 
I grew up in the 70s when soccer finally started gaining a foothold here. But as a spectator sport it’s hard for it to compete with established American pro sports. Not the least important reason being the billions & billions of dollars that they all command & control.