06-13-2010, 01:56 PM
Riz Wrote:Well, since 90% of the kids are playing soccer these days, it's bound to become more popular.Yeah, I dunno. Soccer was normal when I was a kid, 20+ years ago. We had high school and middle school soccer teams, and this was just po-dunk N.C.
It's not like soccer is new to America. It just never seems to catch on the way it has in Europe.
I think the fact that it's low scoring is headed in the right direction. Technically football is low scoring too. I mean the score may be 14-0 but that's really just 2-0 -- two touchdowns were made. But football is broken up into lots of little victories and defeats. Every hike of the ball is like a mini-game with easily measured results, which soccer doesn't really have. Baseball is similar to football in that every pitch is like its own little game, so there's lots of easily measured action going on.
Soccer, tennis and golf seem to be games that people prefer to play rather than watch. Soccer is popular in America in the sense that lots of people grow up playing it and are at least basically familiar with the game but they don't tend to watch it.
Maybe there's a strong rivalry component, too, that America is missing? I don't even know what a good example would be but there seem to be a lot of international soccer rivalries that people get up in arms about (sometimes literally) and Americans just don't have that same level of caring. If we'd beat England 3-0 in soccer, the English would probably march single file into the ocean to drown themselves but Americans would just be like, "Oh really? That's great!" and then they'd go on about their day.