1) Successful Americans emphasize short-term, measurable goals. Unsuccessful, or less successful, Americans do not. Soccer has no short-term goals to achieve, no metrics, no report cards. Therefore those who like it are emphasizing unsuccessful tendencies. 2) One can become successful at the "big 3" US sports in many different ways. In football, one can be a good thrower, rusher, blocker, quick, etc. In soccer there is only one way: good foot skills. When you're 8 or 9 and not blessed with good foot skills you really get pissed off when some kid weaves his way around the field and scores time after time.
almost all 0-0 soccer games are boring, i really cant stand them. then its a tie too i hate ties its stupid... most euro leagues dont really value trying to win game games they play the points game. when they are too far behind or they are too exhausted or whatever they intentially go for the tie for that 1 lousy point instead of three WTF!!!.. keep it simple go for full points dont half azz me.!!
Yep. Plenty of 0-0 draws are boring. Teams them play cagey, and run the clock out. However, there have been some HUGELY entertaining 0-0 draws. Though, they tend to be in games with something to fight for. Usually toward the end of the season, when points begin to matter.
Another thing I notice is that the soccer haters in the US seem to be strongly conservative, which makes sense because they want to protect the domestic sports culture from being encroached by a foreign sport. While articles like this are mind-numbingly ridiculous and ignorant, they still are regularly published in the America. http://www.rantrave.com/Rant/Soccer-As-A-Metaphor-For-Liberalism.aspx
that has to be the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen written. Are we sure it wasn't an entrant in a "worst essay" contest or some kind of over-the-top sarcastic contrarian thing? If not, I must think that it was written by an escaped mental patient.
Wow, just wow. Talk about pure ignorance. I don't know about the rest of you but, I'll take Rugby any day of the week instead of NFL Football.
i like rugby (mainly because it seems like a prehistoric NFL) but the complexity involved thanks to the stoppage of play as well as the forward pass and the tackling rules make the NFL trumps IMO. It's possible I just don't know enough about rugby to appreciate it's nuances, but right now, to me, it's like the difference between blackjack and craps.
I thought apart from the guy who chucks the thing, that it was the same in the NFL? Lateral passes only? And the NFL stops way more than Rugby! Except that a sudden explosion from someone out of a ruck allways looks cool because its more of a surprise. Still. Tried to read the article. Got bored. Gave up. Was rubbish. Soccer is a liberal sport? Really? I thought that the right wing in the US value the power of the dollar. In which case, given that surely they should respect soccer, given that the most valuable sports club is Manchester United? Manchester United $1.8 billion New York Yankeees $1.3 billion New York Nicks $0.6 billion Dallas Cowboys $1.6 billion Toronto Maple Leafs $0.45 billion (All figs taken from Forbes) I know Real is now "richer" but apparently, they only held on to that slot because the Euro has depreciated slower than the pound. If the value of the respective currencies where used at the beginning of last year, United would be top of the pile. And they have just opened a new "Manchester United experience" In Macau. As far as I am aware, its the only sports club that has opened what amounts to its own theme park.
I read the whole thing, and I still can't decide if it was a put-on or not. On the one hand, the author makes some declarations which are stunningly wrong--such as, only forwards are "allowed" to score. Yet at the same time, he refers to the field as a "pitch" which means he's at least a little familiar with soccer lingo. So...it's hard to say. It's a very long article, it's premised entirely on fallacies about how the game is played and what the role of Midfielders is, and yet it occassionally betrays just enough knowledge of the game to suggest that the author, unlike so many soccer-bashers who only know the sport through rec-league youth soccer (and he does make reference to those, indirectly--he completely ignores that in the higher levels of youth soccer, there are tournaments and league in which the winner gets a trophy and everybody else...doesn't) actually knows a little about the sport...enough to where he should actually know better. So...it's an odd article.
Pretty baseless generalization, there. I've met people of literally all political stripes who actively hate soccer, and many more who are completely indifferent to it. I think you also fail to recognize that there are some batshit insane cons on BigSoccer. Not as many as batshit insane leftists of various sorts, but I think that's a function of the Internet as a left-leaning medium in the aggregate. This really is an overblown argument. It really has little bearing in reality, the-guy-you-quoted's article notwithstanding. Agree that this was an absolutely atrocious article. It was so bad (and ********ing long!) that I did something I never do. I registered for a low-volume site simply to post a rebuttal to the asshat. Disagree that these are a "regular" occurrance. They may seem so since every idiot with a keyboard and internet access can get his opinions out to the world and by extension they are more visible than ever. But if you think that it's "regular" in the traditional print media, you're pretty much searching for things that enrage you and finding them.
Nah. The tone was way too earnest and self-aggrandizing to be merely an elaborate hoax. I mean, it really betrays a fundamental lack of understanding of both of the subjects of the post: soccer and political philosophy. 0 for 2! What a douche.
They say that it's a game for sissy's and gays!! But why?? I mean....is it the shorts that soccer players wear? Cant be...coz even basket ball players wear shorts......What could it be? The Americans play a game called football, whereas they use hands to play it for most of the game. I think they are just plain dumb!! No offense though....
hah! ok i honestly think that they say that because they don't understand the sport, the physical exertion entailed, and how much it hurts to be running full speed and have someone kick your ankle. that said, it doesn't help when you turn around and call them dumb. it's called football because it originated from rugby football - the handling codes - just like aussie rules did and GFL.
You're an idiot. No offense, though... The game is called "soccer" because some Royal Subjects back in the mid-1800's abbreviated "Association Football" in that quaintly Victorian English way. The game we call "football" evolved from essentially the same root as every other football code, including association football, Rugby football, Aussie Rules football, and Gaelic football. I believe most of those use the hands significantly. It's called football because the game is played on foot as opposed to on a horse as many other sports were played at that time. Of course this has been hashed and re-hashed on BigSoccer since before it was even called BigSoccer, and still there's a regular procession of people who continue to argue differently. Hell, there are probably a few threads on this very Business and Media forum and others from the last couple of weeks that say the same.
Hmmm...No prizes for guessing that you are an American.... That is why you took it personally!! Hihihi....
What the devil are you talking about? You issued an insult, then said "no offense". Since you aren't much for reading, my reply was meant to make you aware of how unintentionally ironic (and how gigantic of a prick) you were being. You give yourself far too much credit.
I was responding to the original poster's wondering why gridiron football is simply called "football" in america even though it's played by hand: which is why I say it evolved from Rugby Football: are you saying that NFL/CFL style football was called football to differentiate it from sports played on horse in America? It was my underatanding that even though the first football game played between Rutgers and Princeton was mainly the non-handling codes with marks, the NFL style game evolved from the handling codes (rugby) played at Harvard (and I've also read in Canada) and debuted to those schools that were playing the Princeton/Rutgers version. And, of course, it eventually underwent several "revolutions" along the way including the Walter Camp changes and the forward pass.
Well, soccer (almost certainly called "football") has been around in the US at least as long as football has, so in a sense, yeah - to differentiate from polo and whatnot.
If you look on this forum, the disproportionate amount of posters are liberal. Here is a poll for proof: https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showthread.php?t=962088 Its a generalization sure, but one based on the reality of the anti-soccer sentiment in the US, and it makes sense if you stop to think about it. Conservatives are all about conserving the status quo (hence the conservative name) and protecting national culture (sport is a part of culture) from foreign influence. Hence we have the endless soccer bashing from the conservative media. Here is a example from TV that just happened recently on Fox: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyR-huKWmqw"]YouTube - RedEye: Soccer players are terrorist.[/ame] There are endless other examples, just a quick google search away. It does. The people who bash soccer in the US generally tend to be fans of domestic sport. US sports journalists are notorious for it. I've lived in Australia, and 10 years ago it was pretty similar there as it is here. Australian football fans, journalists...etc often have a strong disdain for soccer, the foreign code of football that's encroaching into their culture. Same issue that the US based soccer bashers have. Its gotten a lot better there last time I went over the summer. In no small part to the Socceroos (woot woot!) and also the A-League is doing decent for such a new league. Was pleasently surprised to hear that 50,000 plus fans were in attendance for the A-League final. Pretty good for a league that's younger than the socks I'm wearing You shouldn't have responded, it just sends the message to the author that their arguement is legitimate and worth debating. It isn't. He doesn't have a grasp of even the basics like what a midfielder is and what a midfielder does. As someone whose seen similar bashing of soccer in Australia (not as common anymore there though), the only explaination I can sum up for the visceral, irrational anti-soccer sentiment that some feel in America is that its foreign and encroaching into their culture. Hence many baseball and US football (NFL) fans have a disdain for soccer. Many Aussie Rules (AFL) fans in Australia do too. I don't have to look far to find endless examples of this. Every World Cup we're treated here in Canada to US. based articles bashing soccer. You can't seem to mention soccer or anything to do with soccer on the Internet on a site with a US readership without some NFL or MLB fans from the US coming in and posting anti-soccer comments. From my personal experience, I wrote an article for Volokh Conspiracy during the last world cup about player labour relations in soccer leagues, and the majority of the comments on the articles were to the tune of " Soc-cer? Isn't that a eurofag sport for women and foreigners?" and "Soccer sucks, America ftw". The mear mention of soccer brought the anti-soccer brigade out, and it was all conservative US posters. They actively tried to ridicule those who actually had to defend the sport, telling them to watch real sports if they wanted to be respected and be real men. And I guess as long as soccer is equated with foreign culture, foreign players and foreigners, it will never be popular in the US. In fact, it will be the exact opposite, unpopular...at best met with condescension and belittlement like in the peyton manning ad, at worst outright irrational hatred and insults like the clip above. But then again, this is the view from a Canadian looking from outside in. Perphaps I'm wrong, but its the feeling I've gotten as a soccer fan living in N.America and being exposed to the US sports media. I'm after all a huge NBA and NFL fan as well. Most NFL fans have a very negative opinion of soccer though, even here in Canada. I have one of my friends here (born in Green Bay, big Packers fan obviously) who gives me endless flack for being a soccer fan and wearing Barca jerseys. Such is life. But all that is changing fortunately. The bashers are becoming older and older, replaced by a younger generation who thinks having a black president is normal and soccer isn't "for communists and foreign ************s". Eventually, the bashers will die out and what they fear the most, soccer becoming a part of American sporting landscape, will become a reality.
Its direct primary sourced proof. You wanted to know whether the majority of people on BigSoccer are liberal or conservative. I showed you a poll which asked BigSoccer posters directly "are you conservative or liberal". The majority were shown to be liberal. Unless you can show me any proof whatsoever otherwise, you should keep quiet because its obvious: Soccer haters in general tend to be conservative. Not saying ALL conservatives hate soccer. Or that ALL soccer-bashers are conservative. But the generalization holds because its generally true and is commonly accepted. Good thing is some conservatives like soccer: [/FONT] http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-ziegler053102.asp
It's a self-selected, user-created internet poll. Suffice to say, it's a wee bit unscientific. I made no such request. Re-read my posts. The poll asked whether the person was a Democrat, Republican, Other, or None. I hope I don't have to explain how Democrat != liberal and Republican != conservative. As a libertarian, but not belonging to the LP, I didn't vote, as neither "other" nor "none" would have been terribly accurate. A slim majority of those responding self-identified as Democrat. Re-read my arguments. I don't argue that 50% + 1 of soccer enthusiasts are "conservative" or that the split is somewhere around 50/50 or any such thing. You are taking the position by implication that that is what I was saying. I even allow for the original argument to be technically true but say that it is "overblown". This argument essentially is meaningless. I mean, no kidding. Groundbreaking observation. Guess what else? The people who love soccer in the US generally tend to be fans of domestic sport. The people who are apathetic toward soccer tend not to be fans of sport at all, domestic or otherwise. That's as useful an observation as yours.
nwave ''Soccer haters in general tend to be conservative.'' That may be true, I have no idea. From my own experience living in the US, those who disliked soccer the most were those who were the most fanatical about another sport (often American football). Maybe political views do have something to do with it; soccer is seen as the worlds game, yet American football, baseball etc are clearly American sports, and as such symbols of American individualism. But then who knows - I don't.