Posted on 08/08/2005 11:22:35 AM PDT by onja
mods-If this isn't in the right place please move or cut it.
Why do most Americans hate soccer? It's not just that they don't like it. They are actively against it.
Soccer takes more skill and endurance than the other sports. In middle and high school you take a beating.(Elbowed, tripped, kicked, tackled- All done fairly or behind the ref's back and without body armor) There are many tactics decided by the players(unlike football and baseball). It's a sport many different people can do. Not just people who are huge or work out daily at the gym. Fast people, skilled people, strong people(fullbacks), tall people(goaly), small people, smart people. Footballers don't need much skill. Mainly strength. baseball doesn't need too much skill. Mainly the basics(throwing and catching) and strength. And, seriously, why does everyone think soccer players are gay, weak, etc? They aren't. In middle school half the team played another school sport. All of the highschoolers could easily have played school football or basketball. Out of the hundreds of players I've played I've never seen one who was even acted at all gay.
Reforming "offsides" will help a bit here, as would getting the referee and the assistants to call more fouls, especially closer to the goal.
no.
And I'm sorry I forgot pitchers. That is pretty hard.
And linemen....
Hated? Perhaps out of an overly-defensive concern that sissy sports will spread to the US.
Well I remeber in junior high school playing something like soccer but you could use your hands, pick up the ball and run with it etc. Can't remember what we called it but it was pretty fun.
I can't even remember the last time I saw a 0-0 soccer match.
My son was a varsity goalkeeper (note: I said goalkeeper, not goalie. Soccer people prefer that and I'm trying to be sensitive.) in high school, and loves the game. Personally, I think it is BORING. The offside rule prevents either side from mounting an effective, sustained offense, and the timekeeping is just insane (Stoppage time? Come on!). I agree that it is a very athletic game, but personally, I'm just not interested.
So I guess it's gay.
Hockey is much more skillful than most any sport. There are big fundamental reasons why Americans don't like soccer and won't for at least several generations. Maybe I'll post them.
They're a bunch of skinny little Third Worlders named Renaldo or Ronaldo or Prekki or something.
Or Eurotrash.
2 minutes? Sounds kind of generous to me...
(All kidding aside, I love football [both kinds] and baseball)
Are soccer players the worst crybabies in sport? Tell it to John McEnroe. Soccer players don't have anything on him.
If you want more respect for soccer, give the players bats or sticks. That seems to work for other "gay" sports like baseball and lacrosse. And if it doesn't work, you're kids will be ready for what the others dish out.
I don't think it's hated at all: many many kids play soccer, for example, and have a great time doing it and enjoy the suppoirt of their schools, youth groups, and parents.
I'll give one small, anecdotal tale to explain it. When I was in high school, the soccer program there was created, and as it had been around in non-school leagues for younger kids for years, there were enough players for a team, albeit a bad one.
One of the players had these annoying bumper-stickers that read "Men Play Football, Intelligent Men Play Soccer" and "Soccer Players do it for 90 Minutes."
Now, maybe it was just meant as a light-hearted joke, but it came across as obnoxious and insulting.
I'm not saying this is an attitude commonly held by soccer proponents, but the last thing you should do when trying to build up a less popular sport is to attack what is (sorry, Baseball) the king of American sports -- football. Baseball and basketball fight for second place, while all others are not even in the same tier. Well, maybe NASCAR is now.
When the Hockey players were still trying to salvage the last season several months ago, one of their stars was on some ESPN show talking up his sport (I think it was that same guy who caused a stink recently by saying he didn't want ungrateful hockey fans to come back, Roenick or Zelnick maybe???), and sure enough, he couldn't prop up Hockey w/o tearing down the other big sports; i.e. the ones that Americans actually care about. I was wondering to myself what this guy was thinking. Did he really think someone out there was going to say to themselves "he's right, baseball sucks compared to hockey!" The guy was clueless.
As to the sport of soccer itself: I think it has to do with the lack of scoring, and the fact that you can't use your arms and hands. And there is simply no legacy or tradition of it here. Did you ever see that episode of The Simpsons where they spoofed it? They had the American crowd and commentators quickly bored, while the Hispanic commentators were very excited over the same action.
Just as I don't think our football will ever catch on big in Europe, I don't think soccer ever will in the United States.
If you've never played baseball -- even slow-pitch softball -- you have no idea how miraculous Willie Mays' backwards basket catch was. I can't think of any more brilliant athletic play in all of sport.
We like the WNBA?
Sorry for the mistyping but I'm trying to read and type quckly.
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