It seems to be more than just a cliché or stereotype. What’s the fuss over soccer? It was my favorite game in high school but seems to be low on the list of popular sports in this country. I can’t remember the last time I was flipping through the channels and happened upon a soccer game.
So how do kids get caught up in it? Do the dads take the kids outside and toss the soccer ball around? Do moms need something to do with their SUVs?
One percent? Did anyone check the closets?
I think it has to do with that among all of the organized sports that kids can play, only soccer is truly unisex. It’s also less likely for kid to wind up in a cast than most other sports.
Hell, maybe oranges are just really cheap and they love getting the orange slices when it’s their turn…
Yer pal,
Satan
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The reason our school gave was that in soccer every child gets exercise and can feel included.
In baseball, there’s a lot less activity for the poor players.
In football, the parents get so wrapped up they razz the coach whenever a weak player is put in.
For basketball, you can only play one or two games at a time in the standard gym, and most kids are sitting out at any point.
Soccer Mom, Pizza, Bridge, and not in that order. Detroiter. No handicap bowler. Former teamster. You got a problem with that?
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It’s a good first team sport because it’s easy to learn. It’s easy to participate. Even if you’re not very good you’ll have some good play like an “awsome block” just because you happened to have tripped over the ball. Stuff like that.
Don’t forget-it’s cheap, too. Pair of shoes and shinguards. Leaves more money for those ridiculously titanic SUV’s they need to drive everywhere for some reason.
-sb
“This is going to take a special blend of psychology and extreme violence.”
My sister has 4 kids under 11yrs. They all play soccer, and the reason, over and above those mentioned already, the games are all held in the same spot. Imagine 4 kids, one plays basketball over here, one plays football over there, etc. You see the problem? It will happen soon enough and unavoidably when they get older, so for now it’s soccer for everyone. Did I mention she’s a single mother with a total deadbeat Dad as a partner?
Wisdom is the boobie prize,they give you when you’ve been --unwise!
Soccer is a game that anyone can play. No talent needed. This is according to Tom Leykis. I don’t have any yard apes so I don’t personally know that to be true.
Soccer is not popular in the U.S. Probably never will be. Turn on ESPN2 and at 3:00 a.m. if a soccer game is on, you will see row upon row of empty seats.
lindsay
Lindsay? When you have absolutely no knowledge of a subject, it is quite OK to shut the hell up.
Satan? Soccer is truely unisex - I’m sure you mean at the very basic amateur level (young kids). That, I can agree with.
The differences between the sexes become more apparent later on: There is nothing funnier than watching women’s soccer matches - even at world cup level 
Defect borg:
“Refutile is sistance. Your ass will be simulated”.
WallyM7 on Coldfire:
"Yeah, he knows a little about everything because they have a good prison library."
I am too old to have been part of a little-kids soccer league, and I don’t have any kids, so I have never been a part of the soccer-moms phenomenon.
But I will agree that it is a great sport for people with no talent at all.
I am horrible at any sport that invoves a ball. I hate volleyball, softball, ping-pong, pool, and pinball. It may be a spatial-relations thing. I just can’t manage to get a ball to go where I want it to, and I can’t catch one either. I like Frisbee, so I know that it is not that I hate team sports.
Anyway, soccer is one of the few ball sports I can actually play. I can play defense. I’m not good at it of course, but I can usually get the ball away from the offense and kick it in the general direction of the other end of the field, or roll it towards the goalie, who can do something reasonable with it. This seems to please my teammates well enough.
If the kid was as klutzy as I am, I might hesitate to get him/her involved in softball or some other sport where individual players are put “on the spot.” I wouldn’t hesitate to get my kids involved with soccer, though.
Oh, and so Coldfire doesn’t yell at me–In my previous post, I was referring only to gym-class soccer and low-level amateur recreational soccer.
Coldfire, I afraid I’m going to have to differ with you. I went to see the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team play when they were in town. It was very exciting. Well…it would have been more exciting if the other team was any good, but still the kids loved it. Watching Hamm with her fancy footwork and Scurry in goal. Well…actually we didn’t get to see Scurry in action in goal because the other team hardly made it past the U.S. defense, but in warm-ups she was great. Ok, I give up.
It was still exciting to be there! 
I did come off a bit harsh back there eh?
Women’s soccer is fine. It’s just that I don’t find it particularly thrilling.
I’m going out on a limb here. The US Men’s Soccer team can be described as mediocre, on a worldwide scale - and have little media coverage in the US and abroad. The US Women’s Team has won the World Cup - and consequently became the target of all US media. Thesis: Americans only get excited about a sport when they’re competitive at it.
The sport is still the same. The US men’s team has much better players (in terms of talent and skills) than the women’s team. It’s just that the competition is more fierce.
But then, this was never meant as a debate about soccer… I’m sorry for my intervention, carry on. And pray that Krispy Original doesn’t spot this thread and tells us all what a stupid third world loser game soccer really is :rolleyes:
Defect borg:
“Refutile is sistance. Your ass will be simulated”.
WallyM7 on Coldfire:
"Yeah, he knows a little about everything because they have a good prison library."
Allright, first let’s wipe away the silly assertions about soccer, then let’s go back to the OP and answer it with some actual facts. (Disclaimer: any opinions here are really facts disguised as beliefs if you agree; if you don’t, the opposite will seem true )
Silly Assertion #1: Soccer is easy to play with no skill.
Patently untrue. The ‘soccer’ that is played between unskilled kids on thousands of fields Saturday mornings bears as little resemblance to real soccer as T-ball does to actual baseball. A horde of kids following a round ball around, attempting to kick it in no particular direction other than ‘forward’ (if the child doesn’t have a brain lapse and make a mistake as to which direction the team needs to go to score) is not soccer. Only Americans with their total failure to understand the sport (understandably the result of never seeing it on television) would consider it soccer.
True football (get a grip on this; we are the ONLY country in the world that doesn’t call this game football) is a game that involves a significant level of skill to make that round ball go where you want it to when you want it to. Failing to know how to do that correctly eventually frustrates the hell out of kids who aren’t coached properly at a young age. If you want an education in what is possible at a young age, go to a local soccer tournament for travelling teams and watch some Under-10 soccer.
Silly Assertion #2: Soccer is cheap.
One wishes this were true, but it ain’t. Actually, soccer is more expensive to equip a child for than most games. In American football, you usually equip a small child with one item: a football. All the rest is provided for you by the league. Baseball? Ball and glove (bats are available at batting cages and provided by the leagues). Basketball? Ball. Soccer? Ball, shinguards. To be more expensive for equipment, I’d say you have to get to hockey or golf (or tennis) among major sports.
THEN there’s the cost of the league. Here is where it really starts to get bad. Most soccer leagues require at least $30 a kid to cover basic expenses of playing, despite the fact that soccer requires less equipment than football or baseball. Yes, there are some leagues that run on shoestring budgets, but the league my kids played in was pretty typical: after shelling out $30 for each kid, there was a fund-raiser during which each was expected to raise another $30. Total expenditure per child: $60. This is NOT an inexpensive sport (sigh).
Silly Assertion #3: Women’s soccer isn’t exciting.
Stupid assertion, made by someone who doesn’t appreciate the game. No, they can’t kick it as far, they don’t kick it as hard, they don’t run as fast. They would be eaten alive by the English Premiership or the Italian Serie A. Still, they are quite skilled with the ball, they tend to eschew the stupid long-ball tactics of teams like Norway or Ireland, and it is, after all, still soccer, which on its own is quite thrilling, if you know what to look for.
Now, let’s look at the reasons to have kids play soccer:
Reason #1: It’s an equal opportunity sport.
This is perhaps the most compelling argument for choosing soccer. Unlike baseball and football, there isn’t any position on the soccer field where you can stick a less-athletic child and have him/her be out of the way. No matter whether you are playing 3 on 3 or 5-a-side or a full 11 per side, the nature of the game is that the ball will consistently end up where a given player who wants to can attempt to play it. For comparison, watch a little league right fielder some day.
In addition, unlike basketball, the vast majority of the players are on the field at any given time, usually. Most recreational youth leagues ensure this by limiting the number of players per team so that the number of substitutes is significantly less than the number of players on the field, and/or by mandating the amount of time each player must play (as an example, the American Youth Soccer Organization, or AYSO, requires every child play at least one-half of a game). Riding the pine is a rare experience for a soccer kid.
Thirdly, and unfortunately, at the early stages, most kids are equally skilled at soccer, since most kids haven’t ever played around with a soccer ball. This does NOT mean that each kid is equally talented; an athletically gifted child will run rings around the opposition with the soccer ball even before they have acquired some real skill with it. But your child will not be behind in the learning curve from the get-go (unless you live where ethnic demographics places a number of youths in your league who spent their days teething on soccer balls).
Reason #2: The sport’s rules emphasize ‘fairness’.
The rules of soccer were developed in the mid-1800’s to allow English public schools (those are private schools in our way of thinking) to teach young gentlemen how to BE young gentlemen. Now, admittedly that emphasis has been lost over the years since, but the laws still have at their root the enforcement of fairness and sportsmanship. Indeed, one of the ways you can get sent off a soccer field for the rest of the game is to commit two acts of ‘unsporting conduct’ or one act of ‘serious foul play’. Compare that to what they learn in American football… (shudder)
Reason #3: There are more opportunities for girls to play than many other sports
No one in America for the last 40 years running a youth soccer league has questioned providing an equal opportunity for girls to play. Contrast the situation in baseball, where the girls get weeded out very early and sent off to play ‘softball’, or American football, where they simply have no alternative. When I grew up in the 60’s, we had no girls basketball league; many places today still don’t. Kudos to soccer.
Soccer Myth #1: Soccer is safer.
Soccer is less injurious to youths than American football, it is true. But compared to baseball and even basketball, soccer has more injuries per 1000 participants, including troublesome ankle, knee and head injuries (and that’s not including the worries over excessive heading of the ball causing brain damage). But, let’s face it, if injuries are your concern, teach them golf.
Soccer Myth #2: Soccer isn’t popular.
Total nonsense. No, it doesn’t measure up to the big four of team sports here, but the MLS currently averages about 15,000 per game, and there are three lower leagues with something like 90 teams participating professionally, some of which manage in excess of 5,000 per game attendance.
Also, soccer IS available on the TV, you just have to hunt it down. Look for Fox Sports (either a local version like Fox Sports Detroit or the national version, Fox Sports World), which has soccer on usually without much interruption from noon Eastern to about 4 am. Also, don’t forget the spanish language channels, Univision and Telemundo. I watched all of the '82, '86 and most of the '90 World Cup Finals on Univision; you get pretty good at recognizing terms like tiro de esquina (corner kick) and sacre de banda (goal kick). And no one needs to interpret Andres Cantor yelling “GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!!”
I have coached and refereed soccer for 11 years. In that time, I can say quite cheerfully that I have never seen happier faces on children as when having fun on the soccer field. Manchester United v. Arsenal it ain’t, but it’s still lots of fun.
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Have you seen the soccer dance page? Why no girls on there?
http://home.earthlink.net/~crutsd2/dance.htm
I saw it in the news some time ago… I think it was in Italy but I am not sure… Female naked soccer While I am not a soccer fan,I think I’d go for that