WORLD CUP 2010 IS HERE ........Snore....
Tshabalala's strike? that was a helluva goal. my outburst at the office scared the snot out of several coworkers within earshot.
France was largely uninspiring. We've been hearing about it for a while, that they lack coehesiveness and such, but you could really tell out there. It was uninspiring. We'll see some fireworks soon.
they kinda greece'd the game to the tie. france looked better with henry. anelka was getting out of position a lot.
The Vince Carter of soccer.
Greatest ratio of skill:utility to the team in the game.
Yeah, but as opposed to Vince Carter, Nicolas Anelka won a league title with his club this year.
But put Vince Carter on the Lakers and he might win a ring too. It's not like Anelka was the primary or even secondary scoring threat.
I'm upset that I missed the Mexico/South Africa game :(
if you're in the Detroit area, it's being replied on CBC (channel 9) at midnight.
I enjoy soccer as much as the next game (went to all the World Cup Qualifiers in Chicago, go to Chi Fire games occasionally), but I'm gonna go slightly with the OP on this one. I had the day off to watch these games. Total bore. Everyone in Group A has 1 point? Fucking exciting!!! My bracket has not moved, nor anyone else in my pool. I should have gone to work.
USA 3 - 0 England
I'm counting the days till July 11th when all you soccer queers will get off these boards and go play footsie with each other. Soccer... just another reason to riot like my buddy Jim Rome says.
but are there any Wolverines in the World Cup?
If not, I'm out.
...later then.
easy to understand why soccer hasn't picked up here? Are you suggesting it's a naturally boring sport and Americans are the only ones clever enough to realize this? Or are you suggesting that Americans are so over-bombarded with stimuli that they don't have the patience for soccer?
I personally have no idea why it never became big here. I'd say it has something to do with a lot of the good stuff (e.g. UEFA league) being on in the middle of the day but then that hasn't stopped soccer in Latin American countries.
and this shows how big of a dork i am, i considered doing my dissertation on this.
my "thesis" is that it never took off because of urbanization. while European, South American and African countries have made sure to actively include parks and open expanses of recreational areas, the U.S. never has. while baseball can be played in a "sand lot" and basketball courts are EVERYWHERE, soccer fields are not. in the same vein, it's perfectly easy to play football in a backyard but soccer requires guessing as to what "the goal" is, etc. as a result, kids only grew up doing soccer as an activity their parents signed them up for. then they go home and every OTHER sport is on tv. then they have kids, etc.
meh.
i could not disagree more. if you needed a fields everywhere to play soccer then the poorest of the poor in africa/south america would never play. the majority of the world plays in backyards/sandlots random streets. the ball could be anything round, the nets can be two trees, two back packs, two garbage cans etc. the appeal for soccer around the world is you can get a game almost anywhere as long as you have something round to kick. if you honestly believe that soccer fields are necessary for the game to be popular then you are way off base. hell, i grew up in the suburbs where fields were readily available and we still played in the streets because you didn't have to walk to the park. less parks and recretation areas in the cities (which i'm not sure is even true) have nothing to do w/ the lack of soccer popularity in the US. IMHO i think the better argument is your last sentence, other sports are on TV. if you grow up watching/listening on the radio to a sport then that's who you idolize and the sport you want to play. how many people here grew up watching the pistons/tigers/red wings/wolverines? how many people in europe/south america grew up watching/listening to soccer?
the current popularity of the sport provides a good reason why kids grow up today idolizing Tom Brady instead of Landon Donovan, but that doesn't explain why football became popular and soccer didn't.
If I had to guess i would say a combination of media presence (radio, followed eventually by TV), the NFL (started in 1920) creating a source of identity for people (your city/region battling other cities/regions) much like the european leagues do now, soccer being seen as a foreign game where as football was more american (a huge deal during WWI/WWII generations), lack of success on the world stage (hurting soccer directly). once again just a few guesses, and i'm sure there have been studies done and books written on the history of soccer in america that explain it much better than I ever could.
the best athletes tend to come out of population centers. in the case of america, population centers are intrinsically crowded with little to no room to play. in America, IMO, there's just no room to play a sport that, to play properly, requires open space. other countries with less urban clutter are able to do this. or areas like Europe that inherently create small pitches enclosed in cages to provide the opportunity.
soccer was lost on the Americans before WW2, let alone the 60s and 70s.
i understand the argument but disagree. if you have room to play football then you have room to play soccer. if you have room to play baseball, then you have room to play soccer. basketball is probably the least space intensive, but it's harder to have a make-shift basketball net than bases/endzones/soccer goals. you don't need anything created/made especially to play soccer, you need space and a ball, just like football. you say "to play properly" you need all this space, yet to play football "properly" you need 100+ yards of open space, and to play baseball "properly" you need a field in a diamond shape with a huge crescent outfield on top. no one as a kid ever plays "properly", you play pickup/half court/small sided games wherever you have space. that's true for every sport soccer included. last i checked the vast majority of kids playing football are using mississippi's as their offensive line and never kick field goals.
i can see where the argument could be made today with regards to soccer not being popular in the cities/urban environments, but that imo has nothing to do w/ the structure of the landscape and everything to do with pre-existing preferences of the populations.
i do tend to agree that soccer was lost by the time WWII came around but not to football...if i remember history well enough baseball dominated the early 20th century with football picking up popularity huge post WWII.
My theory is two-fold:
1) Most American's don't understand the game and are afraid of things they don't understand
2) The National team is not world dominant and therefore it is not worth paying attention to. Just like most Olympic sports, we only care when we are sweet
I don't like this question because it assumes the US is the only place in the world where soccer isn't the most important sport. Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland and Wales are all places where soccer takes a backseat to one or more codes of rugby.
But, my thoeries on why soccer never caught on are thus:
1. Spirit of '76 -- In the late 19th and early 20th century, America was imbued with a renewed sense of patriotism and it showed in all aspects of life in, including sports. This is the spirit that lead Walter Camp to butcher the rules of rugby and create American football; the spirit that lead the Mills commission to create the myth of Abner Doubleday inventing baseball to dispel rumors of the games (now proven) British origins. In this enviroment, Americans had little time for the latest imported sport from across the pond.
2. Lack of a high level league -- The only reason that hockey is considered a major sport and soccer isn't is because there was a major hockey league in this country 40 years before there was a soccer league. If someone had founded such a league in the 20's and kept it profitable, things would be a lot different for the sport now.
3. Basketball -- Look at basketball players both physically and from a socio-economic point of view. In any other country in the world, LeBron James would have grown up kicking a ball and looking at soccer as his only way out of a bad neighborhood. Basketball is just as easy to play as soccer, but it's distinctly American and was already becoming big at a college level when the US Soccer Federation was just forming. Without it, I have a feeling that a lot of blacktops in this country would have become soccer fields.
I think the big thing is that there is a limit to how many big-time sports a country can follow. We have four pro leagues, plus college football and basketball, plus NASCAR, plus some regional sports (like college baseball/hockey). That's more than most countries. England, for instance, really only follows soccer and rugby. Canada is mostly focused on hockey. The Indian subcontinent is mostly focused on cricket. Latin America sticks to soccer and baseball. And so on.
The main issue with soccer is that it just was a little late to the party here, and other sports had become established by the time it arrived. Nevertheless, it has achieved a good level of growth over the past decade.
... and they are just amazing events. Even though we lost 3-2, the spectacle leaves you feeling satisfied.
Also, the fact that a game can change with the slightest mistake or an instance of athletic genius fills each moment with a certain exhilaration I find only in playoff hockey.
while in vienna to go to two matches, one for each of their clubs. it was surreal. so much fun.
That was an exciting game even on TV, especially the last 10 min. What is up with the Sounders this year?
... They can't put the ball in the net at all. It's enfuriating how talented they are up the wings only to botch everything once they get the ball in scoring position.
We actually left with 5 minutes left when it was 3-0 (yeah, I know, I'm an idiot), and missed the two Sounders goals.
...DC United!
La Barra Brava,
La Barra Puta,
Los que no saltan,
Son hijos de puta!
Yes, that was fucking amazing.
I like to say Seattle Sounders FC every time I mention them. Makes it sound more like a real soccer name.
I guess in an attempt to remain pertinent to the thread I will state that I love watching soccer (although France-Uruguay was a snoozefest). On another note, I hate those damn horns. They are ruining part of the entertainment for me. I hate them. I hate them so much.
I like watching international soccer, but I'll grant that the sport has some systemic flaws that can be frustrating. In France-Uruguay, Uruguay was perfectly content to load up its own box, play defense, and kill 90 minutes to get the tie. Maybe they shouldn't even have ties in the group stages.
Ties are already discouraged by the fact that you get only 1/3 as many points for a tie as you do for a win. Frankly, I think that's a huge strategic error on Uruguay's part to play for the tie; neither of the other games are going to be all that easy to pick up three points from, so you take your chances where you can. 1-1-1 scores 4 points, but three draws gets only 3. And France isn't so intimidating this year that a win is out of the question, or even particularly unlikely, if they play balanced tactically.
The Uruguay-France match was almost as bad as watching a Mourinho team at its "anti-football" finest, but the rest have been pretty solid games thus far, with only Greece really failing to generate chances.