Sigh...yes. So I've been told by every left-wing globalist since at least the 1970's. Soccer is better the football! Why won't you jingoistic neanderthals realize that?!? The rest of the world loves soccer! We will never be apart of the world community until we embrace it! So even if you don't like it, at least put on a smile and pretend to for the sake of world peace!
But despite 40+ years of trying, Football is, if anything, more popular now that it was back then and Soccer's popularity (or lack thereof) is virtually unchanged. In fact if you want to put on the tinfoil hat, I wonder if a lot of the recent attempts to "neuter" Football through lawsuits and rules to reduce hits, is an attempt to destroy the sport with the though that then we won't have any choice but to watch Soccer.
Is that why fans of the NFL, for example, have such inferiority complexes about it?
It was the newest shiniest thing in the world of sports. Some people were even predicting it would surpass baseball as Japan's number one sport. But somewhere during that short-lived boom, the shine went off and the Japanese got back to baseball.
They were also giving away free soccer match tickets to all the elementary school kids to help fill the seats. It didn't work so well. I took my kids to one match with the free tickets. It was so boring, more than half of those of us who were half filling the stadium left before half-time.
Take a moment and take an unbiased look at some of the world's great rivalries, which make anything American sports can conjure look like nerdball by comparison. You'll find that they are about tribalism and tradition, not globalism. To use just one example -- Rangers/Celtic. British crown vs. Irish Republicanism. In short, The Troubles, and a manifestation of a struggle that has gone on since 1690.
Manchester and Leeds have hated each other since the War of the Roses and that carries over into Manchester United vs. Leeds United. That's not globalism.
"But despite 40+ years of trying, Football is, if anything, more popular now that it was back then and Soccer's popularity (or lack thereof) is virtually unchanged."
Since you don't like globalism, perhaps you could explain why the NFL spends so much of its marketing effort globally, an effort soccer mastered long ago. Meanwhile, you now have American networks bidding big bucks to show the English Premiership and Fox puts the UEFA Champions League on as a regular part of its programming. 112 million people watched at least part of the 2010 World Cup in the United States, a 22 percent increase from 2006.
Sure, the NFL is top dog domestically. Nobody disputes that, and MLS has a long way to go before it even comes close. But to simply dismiss soccer isn't correct. It's the wave of the future and you should get used to it.
And here's the other thing I don't get: with the understandable animus toward Mexico on certain parts of this board, why aren't people rooting for the United States to beat Mexico at its own game, the only high-profile sport besides baseball where the countries meet on more or less equal terms?
And the article leaves out the very best thing about soccer as opposed to American sports: promotion and relegation. You do well, you prosper and get promoted. If you don't, you get punished and dropped a league. That's actually a very conservative principle. In American sports, if you stink, don't worry. Just sell your best players and let your crony capitalist owner pocket the money while you try again next year in the same league.