Translation help needed . . . what does it mean for “fixtures” to be “building up”?
Essentially, it’s a problem only the successful clubs tend to face. If a team is active in several cup competitions, as well as playing important league games, draws in cup games can lead to a congested fixture list.
Fixtures = forthcoming match dates
‘Building up’: On busy days, you might find that the emails you haven’t dealt with are ‘building up’, for example.
Looking back at my post, the answer I gave seems to explain some of the popularity problem. Out of all my friends, I cannot name a single one who watches MLS. The only time I have ever been to an MLS match is when they host a friendly against a European team. Matches are shown on TV but I personally ignore them because of the low level of play. If all I knew was MLS I would think that soccer is boring as well.
Uh, rugby?
(Are there any American rugby leagues?)
This aspiration for absolute perfection is something I find puzzling. Minor league baseball manages to get some decent crowds. The Championship, perhaps the English league most comparable to MLS in standard, had nearly 200,000 attending last Saturday’s matches.
Lower quality doesn’t make it boring, lack of competitiveness does. Every team everywhere in the English football league has something real to play for in (almost) every match of the season, be it a title, a place in Europe, a promotion, a play-off place, or avoiding relegation. Or simply pride. MLS only has two of these.
My theory is in this country Basketball takes over the ‘inner city rags to world renowned riches’ stories.
Soccer here is just something middle class families do to pass the time in the burbs.
I have tried and tried to get into watching MLS and I just can’t do it. Part of it is the lack of a team in my city, but there are teams in other US sports that I follow that aren’t from Detroit, so that’s not the whole story. I don’t know what it is but I just can’t get into it. I love World Cup soccer and watch european leagues whenever I can, but sorry MLS, you just don’t do it for me.
Soccer has been around a long time. But no soccer LEAGUE has been around a long time.
Someone’s going to have to struggle through a few decades of crap attendance, or more, for the sport to have any chance to take hold.
I don’t like soccer’s chances, for my other stated reasons, but the perception of permanence is an absolute prerequisite.
This is exactly what has taken MLS into a policy of purpose-built stadiums. With the additional factor that this allows them to put the crowd as close to the pitch as possible, which is always desirable in a football stadium both for the view and also for the athmosphere.
That and it’s impossible to not lose millions of dollars a year if you’re paying rent on a football stadium.
Ok, since rugby players can touch the ball with their hand, any sport where you can’t is a sissy sport? If it was legal in soccer to punch your opponent in the face, but they still couldn’t handle the ball it would still be a sissy sport. Your assertion makes no sense.
That doesn’t bother me (it’s part of the game, after all.) What drives me nuts during the few times I’ve tried watching soccer is all the diving. It’s enough to make an NBA player blush.
I guess what you miss is the 50% of occassions on which you can be vocally partisan about it. 
That’s because Americans aren’t interested in soccer.
At some point that will have to be conceded. It’s not like there has never been any legitimate attempt to get professional soccer going in America, and it’s not like every popular sport just happened to start their leagues perfectly and without mistakes so of course they caught on.
I find it unfair to blame America’s lack of interest in soccer on not having a league with history because I blame not having a league with history on America’s lack of interest.
The thing that gets me about soccer is all the flopping that goes on. It’s an absolute embarrassment. And I played soccer and I never fell to the ground like these guys, however, I am a huge (by physical size) soccer player. Any little toe tap from a defender and they fall to the ground writhing in pain until an official comes and licks their wounds and then 2 minutes later whips out some kind of a card. Then suddenly the player feels better and is running around like nothing happened.
But when you contrast that pervasive flopping (read gives the impression of the guys being wimps) combined with the fact that by typical football and basketball standards these guys are tiny it just gives an overall impression of wimps playing a child’s game. And I think that matters to a lot of people.
However, I will occasionally watch MLS soccer on Thursdays and will watch the World Cup. I have even attended US Men’s World Cup friendlies and enjoyed it. But if I had to choose watching my favorite football team versus watching my favorite soccer team, it’s football hands down. It’s no contest. Maybe I am not trained enough in soccer to recognize all the nuances, but there’s just more going on in football that excites me. I like watching guys who are bigger, faster, and stronger than me doing things I can only dream of. Only a handful of times a game in soccer am I really left with that impression. In football it’s almost every play.
I think you meant to say billions.
Football isn’t popular in the US because they have no taste. 
So is NCAA football, but this hasn’t done anything to keep it from being immensely popular.
12 million people tuned into the USC beatdown of Ohio State, for example. And either of those teams would almost certainly get crushed by any of the winless NFL teams.
EDIT: I’m just picturing the best offensive line in college trying to block the worst defensive line in the NFL and getting their jocks handed to them as their QB gets pounded into paste. Meanwhile their receivers can’t even get off the line of scrimmage much less get open.
You’re taking each individual point and treating it as if it alone needs to be the entire explanation. That wasn’t what I was trying to get across.
You’re absolutely right, although I believe flopping is more prevalent in some cultures more than others. I’ve never noticed American soccer players do this but the Italians excel at it. And watching it in slow mo makes it look all the more despicable.
The problem is that FIFA are a bunch of imbeciles when it comes to changing rules to improve the game. I don’t mean wholesale changes like getting rid of offsides or making goals scored in certain parts of the field count double. But every sport changes from year to year to compensate for changes in tactics and athletic abilities. I’ve read some scorelines from past world cups where eight or nine goals were scored a game. The strategies have changed but the rules have for the most part remained static. And so when some “wimp” (justifiably called I believe) wants to take a dive because he may just get away with it, why not try it. And why not try it again and again and again?
The rules need to, as I believe an earlier post in this thread mentioned, to have reviews after the game of potential dives. Divers should be punished from anywhere to having to wear a scarlet letter W (for wimp) for the next game or more seriously to be suspended for a game or two.
Also, the nonsense of kicking the ball out because an opponent is “injured” needs to stop. This would be akin to a football team seeing a limping player trying to get off the field and saying, “Oh dear, mustn’t snap the ball or that poor fellow shall be penalized for having 12 men on the field.” Screw that. This is a big time competition among grown men (and women) not a charity.
ETA: Oops, I thought this was the thread on “rules changes you’d like to see in sports.” I don’t know if this has anything to do with why soccer is or isn’t popular in this country, though. Again, flopping is not something that American soccer players do (I can say with pride). And if you like the sport and can’t stand flopping, it’s just one of the things you have to suffer through, like you would in any other sport.
And when an opponent is injured? Leave them, and medical personnel, in the middle of the field of play, and try to skirt around them somehow? Plus, to preempt any suggestion that the referee should make the call about whether they’re faking it, that would make it a bit tricky for him to pay attention to the game.