OT - How many former non-soccer fans are now soccer fans?
I've read a few articles saying that the U.S.-Algeria match, and all the excitement surrounding the U.S. team in the World Cup, will increase the popularity of soccer as a spectator sport here. I've also read articles saying the opposite. This made me curious. How many people here, as a result of watching this World Cup, now count themselves as soccer fans?
Fan of world cup. I'm sure my fandom will wane as time passes until the next one. Where can you even watch any other soccer games? That's a huge problem. I am, however, gonna buy a new Fifa soccer game now probably, for my PS3. Soccer video games are very underrated and some of the most fun to play. I had FIFA 2003 for PS2 so now it's time for an upgrade.
Where can you even watch any other soccer games?
ABC/ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN3, FSC for EPL, Bundesliga, La Liga, Serie A, MLS. If you live near an MLS team there's local coverage of MLS in addition to what's on ESPN and FSC. There are tons of opportunities to watch quality soccer on channels that are on basic cable and the typical sports tier.
I also get Bundsliga and La Liga through GolTV on DirecTV. It's sort of odd... all the production is in Spanish (graphics, guide info, etc.) but the audio is English. Helps me get my Stuttgart/Valencia fixes. They also have random Latin American leagues (like Colombia!).
I guess since I didn't watch them before I didn't really notice that they were on. I kind of EPL was on locally.
I'm going to sincerely try and watch the Barclay's Premier League (mainly) and other European soccer leagues after this world cup. Granted, I'll only be watching the top teams, but I'd say that's a step up from not caring before. Same thing happened when I watched the Winter Olympics with hockey, although that's a lot more accessible. Although, if ESPN3 doesn't carry the games, then i have no idea how I'll watch it. So possible convert here.
I love soccer but I'm also Eurotrash
you read the opposite? someone actually wrote an article stating that exciting win will make soccer less popular in the US? Please post the link to this article.
I still dislike soccer as mcuh as I ever did.
Once every four years is good for me.
And that seems to be the consensus here. Soccer is like the Olympics. Americans don't, and won't love the sports. They just love rooting for America over everyone else. And International competition in these sports. There's no shame in it. The fact that we're getting better at the World Cup and people are interested in that more is a victory. But the reason soccer seems to get more backlash than other sports for "it suck..hur hurr" is that we get these articles every four years on how America will see the light and become a soccer nation following the rest of the world, and crazy defense of the sport. We did great in skiing this year, and I didn't hear anyone say "NOW Americans will love skiing the 3 years inbetween!" Heck, we had the greatest Olympic performance of all time at the last summer Olympics, and when people wrote "will swimming now be more popular year around?" the conclusion was mostly "probably not".
But soccer in the US has been making huge strides in the US for the last 20 years, both in terms of performance and the infrastructure to support it as well as in overall public interest. Unlike your Olympic examples, this trend isn't speculative. And I don't think soccer will truly arrive in the US for a long time, maybe thirty years from now, but I think that time frame will be tied to when the MLS arrives as a world class league.
...there are demographic trends that will inevitably support soccer's continued increased popularity. Specifically the increase in the Latino population and the spread of that population throughout the US.
I'm inclined to agree, but soccer needs more than just the Latino population (and African/Caribbean black immigrants) to support it to become mainstream. If it's not garnering major headlines, you may see American-born Latinos (who are going to be more assimilated than their parents) lose interest. The key now is that it is, in fact, seeming to gain momentum among whites.
...in our country we tend to incorporate the traditions and passions of our minority populations into the mainstream. It's a gradual process, but things that once seemed exotic, foreign and scary are in many cases no longer perceived that way.
And in 20 years time, soccer has gone from a sport with no pro league and no TV presence to one that has the 13th most attended league in the world and a mjor TV presence.
I was talking about the sport, not MLS. Although, all things considered, MLS has about the same presence as the NHL in spite of not even approaching their ratings. So that's kind of a win for them.
The US has plenty of cash and HUGE youth participation. I think the missing link right now is that there aren't nearly enough serious coaches for these kids. From the ages of seven til ten I lived in and played youth soccer in Bavaria and I was one of the worst kids on my team. But the guy who coached my team taught us seriously, he drilled us on tactics, positioning and our technique. On top of that we'd always watch Bayern on TV and we'd play ourselves most days, on our own. When I moved to the States and played in a town league it was pretty appalling to see the difference in the quality of games. Kids would just swarm around the ball like greyhounds chasing a piece of meat. It was weird going from being one of the worst kids on my team to the best.
I think this will start to change as more kids who have played at higher levels of youth soccer and take it seriously begin to teach kids.
You really need to ask this question some time after the WC is over. Anytime the U.S. has a chance to win some international competition (or at least, make a run at it) that's on TV, people get into it. Remember how fired up everyone was about the Olympic hockey tournament? There was actually a thread here asking which was more painful, the Spartan Bob game or the Olympic hockey gold medal game. That seems silly now.
I never cared about watching the World Cup until this year, and that's only because I realized how in the minority I was when I went out with a group of co-workers three weeks ago and the conversation turned to the World Cup.
Everyone but me seemed to know player names, which teams were good, how the match was structured, etc. Even the women in my group knew this stuff, which led me to wonder why I didn't get the "soccer is now cool in America" memo and when exactly it got sent out.
So I tuned in for a couple of the USA matches, and after watching the Donovan goal live, I'm now looking forward to a soccer match for the first time in my life.
Suppose I am more of a USA fan than a soccer fan...so I am totally into it.
Still feels pretty much like the Olympics - something to get into every four years or so.
I like to root for our fellow Americans vs the rest of the world in any sporting competition. That's as far as my fandom goes. If I see a Premier League game on Fox Sports or an MLS game on ESPN 2, I'm pressing the "channel up" buttom immediately. Investing myself for 2 hours in soccer game that doesn't involve people with faces painted with the red, white, & blue...I just can't get into that.
The same "soccer is going to take off" argument was pretty popular around the '94 World Cup. It comes up every 4 years. It will never touch football or basketball.
No, nobody was converted. Threads like this pop up every 4 years and the answers are always the same.
Soccer's growth has not and will not come from one off boosts like the World Cup. It comes from kids who have grown up playing the sport coming of age and deciding to follow it. It comes from people who catch a match and fall in love with the game. No amount of artifical patriotic cheerleading will make soccer the fifth major sport in the US, only natural development.
And it's getting there, give it time.
I will watch World Cup USA for the pure Schadenfruede(sp) factor. Something about a sport that is perhaps our 6th or 7th National sport and we can still deystroy the National hopes of a country that lives and dies the Foosball brings me some satisfaction.
I'm a Man U / England Fan, have been since high school. I won't root for USA Soccer internationally until they become a viable team, which would mean that MLS would have to become a viable league internationally, which will take... decades.
We're just as viable as England, except that we don't convince ourselves that we're an elite team every 4 years and then go back to crying about 1966 every time the inevitable happens.
I'm similar to a lot of people here - I liked watching the US during the WC, as well as a few of the other good games, but I don't see me watching another soccer game for another 4 years. I won't watch MLS and I won't watch some foreign teams I know nothing about.
As a sport, soccer is on about the same plane as curling or swimming - I'll watch it, cheer for the US, maybe even follow it a bit once every 4 years. Anything that happens in between is meaningless to me.
Is the world cup really the biggest sporting event in soccer loving countries? What I mean is, would the typical English Chelsea fan easily trade England sucking at the World Cup for Chelsea winning a championship just as all of us would easily trade the U.S. sucking at the Olympics for a UM bball championship? Whenever I watch the World cup coverage I get the feeling that ESPN tries to hype up the world cup as THE BIGGEST SPORTING EVENT IN EVERY OTHER COUNTRY IN THE WORLD to try to get more viewers. However, in reality although it is a very big sporting event in many countries, for most people it is not the biggest sporting event of their year.
It's pretty big dude.
Yes, I think the average Chelsea fan would trade their club titles for an England World Cup win.
You can't compare American attitudes about Olympic basketball or hockey... those sports are barely competitive at the international level with maybe 5 teams actually having a shot at winning anything. International soccer is a much bigger deal and it's a lot more important to people than club soccer. The proof is in the pudding... why would accomplished managers like Fabio Capello or Luiz Felipe Scolari give up their club careers to manage national teams if it wasn't considered the highest possible form of employment? Can you imagine Phil Jackson leaving the Lakers for the opportunity to coach the US national team?
I like soccer, and I like watching the U.S. play every four years, but there's something about picking a European team to root for that just seems kind of artificial to me. Which means I don't watch much soccer.
That said, it's not really four years between international soccer events. I remember watching World Cup qualifiers back in the summer of '08, so there's international soccer if you like it.
Also, I find reading about soccer really frustrating every time it involves Americans, because I see a lot of the same attitudes: a) Americans know nothing about soccer, so they have no right to dislike anything about it, up to and including silliness like diving and b) look at the pathetic U.S., 300 million people and infinite resources and they still can't make it into the quarterfinals. The second in particular displays a breathtaking lack of understanding of sports as a whole in the United States.
In general, there seems to be a lot of resentment directed at Americans for not loving soccer as much as the rest of the world, which doesn't make me inclined to get more involved, or to root for anyone other than the States.
There doesn't have to be anything artificial about it. Watch because the games are fun, pick a team to cheer for in each game... it can be a lot like college football. Or you can cheer on Americans in other leagues, that's always fun. And, after you watch and learn you'll probably form a natural affinity for one particular club. I, for example, have fallen hard for QPR even though I never get to see them play and their the definition of mediocrity in the English second division. I watch the EPL and cheer for whoever strikes my fancy. It's fun.
If anyone is interested in following international club soccer. Yahoo's Dirty Tackle blog (just a click away from Dr. Saturday) is entertaining and good place to start.
I still find soccer to be uninteresting.
....anyone who wasn't a prior FUTBOL fan will most likely stop watching.
This doesn't really make sense, but okay.
I really hate soccer, not because it is such a bad game to watch, but because every speedy soccer player is one less athlete who could be playing football. College football is itself being stretched, because many, including Brian, want more conference games. Meanwhile, how can this be done with the current talent pool and a scholarship limit of 85? If Bo were still around, he'd certainly agree. He thought team sizes were already reduced to the point where teams couldn't have enough scrimmages with pads.
I know many think the 85 scholarship limit was intended just to save money, and it was. However, it also added competitive balance. How good would Boise State be without it? Before the limit, a school like that would have been hopeless. I think years ago at its height Nebraska had 215 players (including walk-ons).
To have a longer college football season, we need more players on scholarship, because of the number of injuries. We also need to recognize that this means there will be less good teams. Now many teams don't even even have enough players to have a realistic spring game. Soccer just makes everything worse. The last thing we need is too many players going out for another sport, especially a non-contact (except flops) sport with a lot of people running around in which speed is emphasized.
There aren't enough good football players now, and the more that people play soccer, the less that they will play football, so I hope the USA never succeeds in soccer.
Note that football doesn't conflict as much with basketball, which requires height, or even baseball, because those that don't have enough eye hand coordination to hit or a strong enough arm to pitch are quickly eliminated. In neither sport is speed so important. Perhaps only hockey really conflicts with football, but the investment required and the lack of ice time limits the number of hockey players. I would like the number of potential soccer players limited as well, not encouraged.
This comment was rude so I'll just say I vehemently disagree
Yeah, because when I see Landon Donovan the first thing I think is "Wow, that's a linebacker".
I can see Jozy Altidore, Charlie Davie, Jay DeMerit, Oguchi Onyewu and maybe even Michael Bradley having a significant impact on the football field
And so would LeBron James, Dwight Howard, and pretty much every power forward in the NBA.
you must be a bundle of fun at parties
America being good at World Cup soccer = fewer football games in the NCAA .... now that is something that redefinies the very existence of leaps of logic.
I don't know if I fully agree, but I think this is a reasonably argued point. You don't deserve the negbanging and ridicule you've received. There are a limited number of top-flight athletes and if soccer gains popularity, it will have to come at the expense of some other sport. Football might be the biggest casualty, because in many states (including Michigan) their high school seasons coincide. Jozy Altidore, for one, seems like he could have made a good skill-position player.
it's so rad that every time soccer comes on some TOUGH GUY AMURICAN has to make sure everyone knows exactly how he feels about the sport
there's nothing cooler than having a good time with some beers and then having to spend thirty minutes debate the merits of a sport with macho man jones instead of like, having fun. so rad. it's especially awesome that it can never just be a one time thing, you get to have the same boring argument every. single. time. someone even whispers "soccer"
In this thread it seems fair, since the question was asked. You can't have a poll where the answers are "yes" and "maybe."
On the other hand, that one dude who talks more soccer than any of us only because he mentions how much he hates it in every soccer thread and some threads that aren't even soccer? Flame away at him.
i get it in this thread, but this thread also seemed like the most appropriate place to make that point rather than add to the infinite loop of jackassery with a new topic about how much i hate people that hate soccer, ya now?