Why American's Love NFL Football and dislike Soccer.

I have posted about this before and I guess I really shouldn't say that American's dislike soccer but rather after watching the Patriots beat the Cowboys 30-6 today...I should say that American's are indifferent to Soccer as a whole.

In the United States soccer is played in every one of the thousands of towns and cities in Elementary, Middle, High School and College Levels.

There is even a Soccer League as in Massachusetts the New England Revolution is owned by the Kraft Family....the Kraft's owning the Patriots so the Revolution plays in the state of the art Gillette Stadium...home of the New England Patriots.

But again....after watching the Patriots play today it is quite apparent WHY American's are so indifferent to soccer.

An NFL Football Game showcases some of the fastest, strongest and smartest athletes on the planet as the sheer number of plays a NFL player has to memorize is daunting in the extreme.

Football games are rigidly timed and have a large number of rules.

There are three teams within a single team as an NFL Team has Offense, Defense, and Special Teams Units comprised of a total of 53 players.

Each player is SPECIALIZED in the extreme in the same way a Chess Piece is specialized and has it's own special capabilities.

Football is a highly technical game and is not a game that is easy for just about anyone to play.

Then there is soccer.

I have played soccer and enjoyed playing it as a Goal Keeper but I have also been a Quarterback and a Tight End and I can tell European Members that playing Quarterback takes an enormous amount of time studying plays and watching film.

Playing a Goal Keeper in a soccer game is fun but watching a soccer game is kind of like watching a CLOTHS DRYER!! LOL!!

American's like the contact/combat action in a Football Game and just about everyone I know when watching some FIFA Soccer Game when a player takes a FLOP and holds his leg hoping to get a Yellow or Red Card called upon an apposing player...well....American's in general when we see this just CRINGE and say...."What the HELL is that guy crying about!!?? He was barely touched!!"

AboveAlpha

 

I would say that was a good synopsis. I never cared for soccer but it has made great inwards during the last 20 years or so. You even have major league soccer. But I couldn't tell you the name of any of them or where they are located. But the younger folks seems to be more interested in it than us old foggies.

 

Soccer suffers from some very poor rules.

The Clock rules in particular.

Penalty Time is kept on the field so fans watching a game that is say either tied or is 1-0 have no idea just how much added penalty time will be added on the clock.

Another rule American's have issue on is there is no clock as far as getting a ball over mid-field.

A team that is up a goal with 5 minutes left can just keep passing the soccer ball back and forth wasting time which some purists might say is part of the game but it makes the game dull.

Hockey made things more interesting when the NHL removed one of the off sides lines and perhaps that could be done for soccer.

FIFA has a long history of payoffs and corruption and as long as a ref can keep penalty add on time secret until 90 minutes is played there will always be questions of payoffs.

AboveAlpha

 

I love soccer, but I whole-heartedly agree with that sentiment. Nobody likes flopping, period.
You try this in a street game, you will be declared a sissy and the opposing players will make sure that the next time you have an actual reason to fall down and hold your leg.
Unfortunately young players learn in clubs that anything that helps you win gets you a pat on the back and in the professional leagues... well, the more money's involved, the harder it seems for player to run 10 steps without falling.

 

Most of what you stated I was unaware of mainly because soccer is like watching grass grow. Ice Hockey is another game I never understood or even attempted to understand. When I grew up there was only 6 NHL teams and they were all located in the land of the frigid North.

Soccer as you state seems to be a game of hidden facts. It would be like the homeplate umpire keeping track of balls and strikes in his head and not telling the pitcher or the batter or the fans in the stand the count.

 

Football: Players kill themselves to play through hurt
Soccer: Players find creative ways to play hurt

 

Soccer and American Football are much alike in that phenomenon that you have to get engaged in it for a certain time before you really understand its appeal.

 

We have gone over this nonsense enough times on this forum: Americans do NOT dislike soccer nor are they indifferent to it.


There are more registered youth soccer players in the USA than in any other country in the world, including China. And now the sport will embrace the concept of small sided games (called futsal) such as 7 v 7 or 9 v 9:

http://www.usyouthsoccer.org/changes_coming_to_youth_soccer_in_2016/


With over 13 million Americans playing soccer in the United States, soccer is the third most played team sport in the U.S., behind only basketball and baseball/softball.[7]

Over 24 million Americans play soccer as of 2006. There are 4.2 million players (2.5 million men and 1.7 million women) registered with U.S. Soccer.[26] Thirty percent of American households contain someone playing soccer, a figure second only to baseball.[27]


source: wiki






The World Cup matches had more viewers than the baseball's World Series. On that basis. how can anyone say Americans are indifferent to soccer??

 

I believe that most Americans realize that our best athletes at the professional level don't compete it soccer and tend to gravitate towards football and basketball.

 

Football is manly, a display of strength, speed, endurance of pain. It features extraordinary athleticism as well as brute strength. Many different skills need to be utilized. It can have small fast guys, huge slow guys, and everything in between. Everybody is on the move doing SOMETHING on every play.

Soccer is androgynous. All the players seem to be about the same size and build. While it does require a certain degree of athleticism, all the combinations of types of athletic abililty are not on display. Its boring. Soccer is being played by so many today because the country is being feminized. PC requires the image of "equal opportunities", It doesn't require the expensive equipment, coaching, facilities that football does. Its boring. Soccer is not thought of as dangerous so attracts timorous men and moms. Small people can play soccer, whereas much larger athletes get the most opportunity in football. Its boring - lots of times of some people standing around while others fiddle with the ball. It looks like it moves slowly. Ball goes ten yards, gets stopped, back the other way thirty yards, stopped, twenty yards in the other direction. Yawnnnnn!

Over the weekend I watched TCU play Kansas State in a football game that was close, exciting, and displayed all kinds of incredible skills and amazing athletic plays all over the field. Afterword, I happened to catch part of the Texas/TCU women's soccer game. The football game had the third largest crowd ever for a Kansas State game, huge energy throughout a close game. Thrilling experience (Froggies pulled it out in the end, so I may have had more interest than the casual fan.) The soccer game didn't seem to have more than a few hundred fans. Cute, athletic girls playing. I am a TCU alum and rooter. BO-RING, even though I had a rooting interest. Couldn't take more than 10 minutes. Don't care. Would rather watch volleyball.

 

It's funny. Every time an American tells me soccer is boring / feminine / for sissies etc. it turns out that his source is some obscure league women's match they have seen at some time in the past. Then he compares it to NFL games.

Watch a couple of Champions League games, then we can talk about soccer. It's okay to dislike the game, but don't pretend you know what it's all about when it's obvious you don't have the slightest clue.

It's too bad that overcautious soccer moms and timorous men turn soccer into an equal opportunity fest in the US, but that kind of travesty doesn't change what real soccer is. Your national team is on a good way, though.

 

I hate that soccer has been force fed to the US masses that really didn't want it.

 

The distinction is play versus watching. I played soccer and I enjoyed it. However, it is one of the most boring (*)(*)(*)(*)ing sports to watch and as someone already mentioned their clock management is utter crap. No other sport is as tactical as American football and even in the UK where soccer is the national past time outside of tea and crumputs, the NFL holds three games a year that are sellouts in Wembly. They even want a London NFL team although the logistics would be pretty difficult to overcome. Pretty good for a foreign sport.

That being said the absolute most fun sport to watch in my opinion is Australian rules football which is just insane.

 

''force fed''


Soccer was popular in the Northeast prior to the Civil War. It remains very popular there to this day.

Its popularity has spread throughout the States especially with international success by our national team in 1950. St Louis University had a major role in popularizing it in the Midwest and it has spread through there. Crowds of over 100,000 have watched games in the Rose Bowl and we had crowds of 78,000 in Giants Stadium in New Jersey back in the 1970s and early 80s.


Therefore, the sport has not been forced fed upon anyone. It is the people (especially America's youth) that have popularized the sport today.

 

First, I agree that Aussie rules is boring (to me) but to each his own.


Second, I agree with you that soccer is far more entertaining when you are watching it live rather than on tv.


I suggest that those who dislike the sport go out to a high school match and see for yourself how intense and tactical it is.

 

I quit reading at Civil War.

 

Oh, brother.

 

I think our definitions of the word "intense" differs, at least in the sporting sense. Soccer is about as intense as a ping pong match.

 

Not so, Brotha.

Here in St Paul we have a wicked rivalry between Humboldt and Como Park high schools ~ both teams largely comprised of South East Asians who come from rival tribes. These guys have about as intense a rivalry as you would find in any sport.

That may sound like an exaggeration to you but, trust me, it's for real.




In pro sports the greatest rivalry I ever saw was the Rangers-Celtics soccer war. Both teams from Glasgow and it surpasses the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry by a 100 miles. Sadly, the rivalry was suspended because of a tax fraud committed by the Rangers ownership. However, it will commence in another year or so.

 

I think you misunderstoodified. I actually like Aussie football. Much more interesting than standard soccer.

American football is about 1000 times more tactical than soccer which is basically played on the fly. With soccer the play is determined by the location of the ball. It is the exact opposite with American football. The location of the ball is determined by the play with the exception of kick offs and punts which are more random.

 

that's a new term for me and I kinda like it


while soccer is strategic enough, its simplicity is what makes it the world's # 1 team sport

 

I understand, there are rivals in every sport and at every school or program, and every participant from those schools thinks it's the biggest rivalry of all time...But from the outside looking in, a few Asian kids playing a sport where high levels of physicality between participants is prohibited hardly seems like anything to get worked up over.

Watch an Ohio State / Michigan football game. Thats what I would refer to as a intense rivalry. Several million people watching a game where blood is left on the field. Where two states turn enemies for a day. Real men, who embrace controlled violence, not a few feminine horse jockeys kicking a ball around hoping someone touches them so they can fall to the ground as if they took a bullet.

[video=youtube;rkdT8vAThtI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&persist_app=1&v=rkdT8vAThtI[/video]

 

As I said I played Goal Keeper and I played Quarterback and I also played Hockey and was a Goalie and played Defense.

When we played Soccer we NEVER...and I mean...NEVER took a FLOP!!!

Of course the Ref's would call yellow or red cards on players but we just never tried to draw one as I seemed just TOO PANSY of a thing to do!!

This is one of the reasons I dislike the Brazilian Team as they FLOP way too much.

The United States Women have dominated over the years in World Cup Play and I think the time is ripe for the U.S. Men's Team to do the same.

AboveAlpha

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Yeah...FIFA Soccer needs some rule changes.

There is too great of a possibility of fixing games.

AboveAlpha

 

The NFL has gone out of it's way to develop Football to recreate the days of games in the Roman Colosseum.

Even the Super Bowl uses Roman Numerals to designate which one it is and this season it will be Super Bowl L.

L being the Roman Numeral for 50.

Soccer is popular around the world but the United States has a favorite game and it is NFL Football.

AboveAlpha

 

I am aware of this as I was a Goal Keeper.

Soccer is played upon every level and at every school in thousands upon thousands of town and cities in the United States.

But when it comes to WATCHING GAMES....Soccer is last after Football, Baseball, Basketball and Hockey.

In fact NASCAR is watched more than Soccer.

AboveAlpha

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Why play Soccer for peanuts when you can sign Multi-million Dollar contracts to play other sports?

AboveAlpha