I do watch football, and the commentators do discuss the subtleties and the strategies. In fact, I quite often tape the Redskins game and re-watch it later on Sunday night to go back and watch for these things which are easy to miss with kids running around, etc.
The same is true with baseball. Earl Weaver, the former manager of the Baltimore Orioles, wrote an entire book about the decisions he made during one average game years ago. Every pitch is different depending on whether its a 3-1 count or a 3-2 count, fielders are shaded constantly one way or another, etc. And any decent commentator is going to tell you more than you'll ever remember about each move.
Soccer is not special or unique in this regard. In fact, with its lack of structured plays, I would argue that it lacks much of the strategy required to be successful in football.
Owl_Eagle
”Guns Before Butter.”
They don't discuss the subtleties at all in football coverage. What they discuss is only the most minor aspects of strategy, and only the broadest discussion of individual action. When was the last time you heard a commentator talk about the importance of the plant foot in a block, squaring the shoulders for a hit, tapping a cornerback to get him to go the wrong direction in his coverage, how to get away with a pick? They aren't discussing these things, you know why? Too subtle. They spend like three minutes a game talking about using the run to setup the pass, maybe 1 minute a game talking about throwing bombs to stretch out the field and keep the defense from crowding the line, you'll get 2 minute on picking up the blitz but nothing on what they actually do when protecting the QB. The subtleties of the game are completely ignored, the audience doesn't want to hear it, and the commentators don't want to bore them.
A "good" commentator might tell you stuff about baseball decisions, but most don't. You get a little bit about pitch selection, but really not much. of course in the end there really isn't much subtlety in baseball to discuss, 90% of the players aren't doing anything 90% of the time, I guess the could discuss a player's sunflower eating technique.
And you just proved you don't know anything about soccer. There are structured plays, there are lots of structured plays, most of the time when a team advances the ball into the box it's a structured play. It actually requires a lot more strategy than football because the players need to figure out which plays they can get to from the position they're in and which one has the better chance of succeeding. That's EXACTLY what I'm talking about when I say Americans aren't interested in the subtlety of a game. You decided that since eveybody doesn't start from a predetermined position that means there are no structured plays in soccer, and you would be 100% wrong in that regard, but because the get to those plays subtly through motion you'll never notice it.