Is soccer in the USA too much a child's game?

[Knave]

Maybe it's just my perception but it seems to me that the real divide between American soccer culture and soccer culture in all (most?) other countries is that in the USA soccer is by and large thought of as a child's game. I mean this in two ways.

First, it's something that kids play. But that's true everywhere so it's not the significant thing.

Second, it's geared and marketed towards kids.

I recently started attending PDL matches. One of the things that struck me about these matches is how geared they are towards children. But then I thought about it a bit more. There's a whole league (WUSA) that's geared for children. The WNT was all about appealing to pre-adolescent girls. Even MLS often seems made for children. (Think about those horns, Nickelodeon's "Games and Sports" segment.) Some of this is perhaps left over from the misguided marketing back before 1996 but that doesn't account for all of it. And it doesn't account for the fact that soccer seems to me - by and large - geared towards the child consumer in the US.

To me soccer is a grown-up's game. Indeed, I don't think I really appreciated the game until I was into my 20s. (That's another thread, I suppose.) The problem is that as I get older I'm actually increasingly put off by how much the game is geared towards children in this country.

I tell myself that as these kids mature they'll become more like me and they'll want a brand of soccer that's geared towards more mature tastes. But then again, I'm not sure. It could just as well be that they reject soccer as they get older because it's so geared towards children.

I have a few questions to get started ...

Do you think my perceptions of the various leagues - from MLS to WUSA to PDL - are accurate? Are the soccer leagues really gearing themselves towards children? If so how and do you consider that - as I do - a bad thing for soccer in the USA in the long run?

If soccer is a child's game in the US is that unique to this country's soccer culture? My sense is that it's an adult's game abroad. Is that yours too?

And does it bother anyone else that it's a child's game here? Should there be an effort to change this?

[SueB]

I think the main reason it's a "child's" game here is because there just isn't the tradition. Most adults in this country did not grow up watching soccer (we fanatics who did are in the minority). I also attend PDL games, and you're right, a lot of kids are there, the teams market to them. "Cheap family entertainment", blah blah.

But, while many of those kids play soccer behind the stands or chat with their friends ("game? what game?") I've noticed an encouraging trend in which there are more and more kids who ACTUALLY WATCH and CARE who wins! That's the important part of it. There was a kid with his mother and sister - he was 9 or 10 years old, I'd guess - two rows in front of me at the last playoff game and he a) answered every half-time trivia giveaway question related to team stats quickly and correctly and b) was practically shaking with the nervousness and intensity as the game unfolded, and first our team fell behind, then came back for a dramatic win.

And he'll grow up.

PS when did most people start following sports with any intensity. For me, it was when I was about 10.

[Dr. Wankler]

Originally posted by SueB
PS when did most people start following sports with any intensity. For me, it was when I was about 10.

6 for me. High school basketball and St. Louis Cardinal baseball especially (my mom recently dug out my old scrap books from those days). It helped that I had an older brother who 1) went to the high school and was friends with the players and 2) was (and still is) a huge Cardinals fans.

I didn't play soccer until I was 16, on a men's team in my west-central Illinois town. I didn't watch much of it, as there wasn't much on TV: just "Soccer Made in Germany" on the Peoria PBS station (Thank you, German-Americans in Peoria) and the occasional NASL match. We would go to a couple Sting games each year, once we got access to cars.

Now, it would be interesting to be able to confirm or refute this, but I get the impression that an 8 year-old sports fan wouldn't have as many friends to talk to about their teams as I did. I still work with kids occasionally, and several of my friends have them, and none of them care about watching sports at all. This would be great if more of them were playing sports as often as my friends were, but they're not. I think this will eventually have some impact on all sports, with the NFL being a prime beneficiary (since it doesn't really take much commitment to watch 18 games a year on the same day of the week compared to say, baseball), and probably basketball, which lends itself to highlight reel coverage on Sportscenter and its facsimiles.

What I'm saying is that fewer people seem to be committing to being sports fans in the US at early ages. I don't think it's just something that soccer has to worry about. The gap between the number of kids who play soccer and the number of kids who watch/follow soccer has less to do with the sport, and more to do with how kids spend their time these days. In my experience, there's a similar problem for baseball, too (my neighbor coaches a little league team: 4 of his 16 players know who Barry Bonds is -- he was appalled).

Pardon the rambling.

[GersMan]

good points here. Another reason about the "child's game bit" is that youth soccer here is this hyper-organized activity, all the way up to the elite levels that I cover. Very few players though, spend much time on their own. You don't see pickup games played.

Of course you don't see pickup baseball anymore either. I have a stereotype of pickup basketball being played in the inner city. I'm not sure if that is accurate anymore.

If we get to the point where kids are playing on their own, without parents pushing them into some "activity" called soccer, then I'll feel like we are getting close to being a soccer nation.

btw - toby charles and soccer made in germany was my introduction to the international game as well. I used to love Beckenbauer and I still remember even my mom getting excited about what must have been a long tape delay of the two teams fighting for the title on goal difference at the end of the season. Was it FC Cologne and Frankfurt, or Bayern and one of those two. I could look it up, but I bet someone recalls it, on eteam ended up scoring, I think, 11 goals.

[Real Ray]

Originally posted by GersMan
good points here. Another reason about the "child's game bit" is that youth soccer here is this hyper-organized activity, all the way up to the elite levels that I cover. Very few players though, spend much time on their own. You don't see pickup games played.

Of course you don't see pickup baseball anymore either. I have a stereotype of pickup basketball being played in the inner city. I'm not sure if that is accurate anymore.

This was the point I was going to make-but with one wrinkle: here in NYC on many summer days in Central Park, you do see pickup games. But they are played by men in there late teens and up. Rarely do I see children playing in the games, and the teams are polyglot ensembles; not really American guys.

One good sign though was something I saw walking down 10th Ave. in the 50's: there was an elementary school playground with kids playing during lunch. The blacktop had soccer lines painted on it and the kids were playing. I don't have kids, but it would be interesting to know how many schools now have soccer lines painted on their playgrounds.

I suppose I'm an NASL baby; the game's been a part of my life pre-teens. I can even remember the first ball I got from my dad: it was a rubberized "Pele Model" Spalding ball, that he got so we could play in the streets. It came with a poster of Pele as well. Awful to head though. We even had little five-a-side nets in our backyard.

"Soccer Made In Germany," I watched as well, but in LA (KCET) we got the English matches as well. Mario Machado used to do the p-b-p. We had the Aztecs plus the Skyhawks of the ASL, who bounced around different parts of the Valley. All in all, it was good time/place to be for a kid who liked soccer. There was also a magazine I used to buy a lot-"Soccer Corner," or "Corner Kick," anyone remember that magazine?

[seahawkdad]

Originally posted by SueB
PS when did most people start following sports with any intensity. For me, it was when I was about 10.

Very, very early teens for me. To sort of give away my age, the greatest sports day of my life was when the Brooklyn Dodgers won their first World Series. Soccer didn't come into my life until about 20 years ago, and now it's taken over.

I think there is a difference between being geared to kids and being kid-friendly. Kids become fans by being taken to games (any sport) by their parents (for me, my grandfather and AA baseball on summer afternoons). If the sport, therefore, doesn't attract adults, the kids won't be there, and future fans won't be built. I think the MLS is trying to be kid-friendly, not geared to kids. Adults will come with or without kids.

I fear the WUSA is geared to kids who bring their parents along. What happens when those little girls grow up? Will they keep going to the stadiums? I'll bet their parents won't.

My daughter, being a player herself, never seems to have fallen into the USWNT hero worship ranks. She isn't interested in attending WUSA games. She likes the men's game. United games, yes. Freedom, no.
Originally posted by GersMan
...Another reason about the "child's game bit" is that youth soccer here is this hyper-organized activity, all the way up to the elite levels that I cover. Very few players though, spend much time on their own. You don't see pickup games played.
I see signs of change here in Northern Virginia. Recess time at schools features soccer balls. Not organized by adults, just kids kicking it around. When kids around here get old enough to drive, they organize pick-up games. I remember my son coming back from one grinning and saying "Just because someone speaks Spanish doesn't mean they can play soccer." They'd been playing on a local field and found a team of Latinos who wanted a game. So there were two groups of kids organizing themselves.

I think our largely suburban society has hurt the pick-up opportunity for our kids. They don't live close enough to each other. This, coupled with parents feeling they have to get their kids into organized sports at the age of 3 or 4 (honest-to-God...my daughter has made money this summer being a soccer-tots coach of this age group) drives us (literally and figuratively) to keep up this organization and kid-carting to the detriment of kids organizing themselves.

[Dr. Wankler]

Good points about childhood activities being hyper-organized these days. In my day (the Dodgers and Giants had already moved out west ;)), we would play little league baseball, but we would also play on our own during the day. As has already been pointed out, that doesn't happen as much. So I don't think kids aren't playing pick-up soccer because they don't like the sport, they're not playing pick-up sports period, in many places. Basketball in many places being a common exception.

An aside for you older people (say, 30+): How far were you allowed to wander away from parental supervision at the ages of, say, 10-12? In the early 70s when I was a wee lad, we would think nothing of riding our bikes 3-4 miles away to find a baseball, basketball, or football game. We'd tell our parents where we were going and head out, but if we didn't find a game, we'd go elsewhere. I now live in a town slightly smaller than the town I grew up in, and kids tend not to get that far away from their yards until they get their drivers licences. I think that parents pay more attention than they used too, largely because they're more afraid of abductions, and at the risk of indulging in a Frank DeFord-like vapid generalization, I think that might be why childhood seems a lot more hyper-organized these days, and it's going to affect all sports, not just soccer, but baseball, football, and possibly basketball as well. Or I might be a pinhead, I don't know.

[evilcrossbar]

Originally posted by seahawkdad
I think our largely suburban society has hurt the pick-up opportunity for our kids. They don't live close enough to each other. This, coupled with parents feeling they have to get their kids into organized sports at the age of 3 or 4 (honest-to-God...my daughter has made money this summer being a soccer-tots coach of this age group) drives us (literally and figuratively) to keep up this organization and kid-carting to the detriment of kids organizing themselves.

Long post:

This is the reason why so many children (I'd say the majority) in the US who play organized youth soccer will never show any appreciation for the game when they become young adults. To them it's like piano lessons, gymnastics class, or scouts; they generally have little to no choice its the parents decsion.

To the parents (the omnipresent Soccer Moms- and dads- that the MLS seems hellbent in attracting), soccer is an activity that serves as exercise, as a useful after school day care for working parents, or as a status symbol of having 'arrived' in the suburbs.

While some of these kids will play in highschool and beyond, most will not. Having been born and raised in Spain, I experienced both systems (pickup games of futbol in the street and organized suburban youth soccer).

I credit/blame organized youth soccer for destroying my interest in playing the game (although having been exposed to it at a young age, I love watching it). Running around for hours doing drills is NOT fun for kids. Especially for the little tykes, it would about as fun making run around the perimeter of your yard until they tire.

I preferred playing 5 on 5 in the streets of Madrid. There were no coaches, you got time on the ball, and the older kids you played with would let you know when you sucked. When you put adults in charge of organizing things you tend to take the fun out of the game.

What my experience also shows is that you don't have to play the game to become a fan. You first get exposed to the game and becoming a fan, then you play it. That's how it is in the US with football, basketball, etc. How many gridiron and basketball fans actually played in Jr. high or highschool? most never did, yet they are still hardcore fans.

In fact, it might be better to NOT to emphasize youth soccer if you want soccer fans in the future since many people don't exactly have fond memories of doing drills all afternoon. The key is exposing the children to the game at an early age.

Many people ask the question, "when will soccer have 'arrived' in the US" WC victory, financially successful league, etc. In my opinion soccer will have 'arrived' in this country when you go to the inner city and see black kids playing pickup games of 5 on 5 on the blacktop rather than basketball. Or when you go to rural midwestern America and see soccer nets rather than basketball hoops along the driveways.

After all, relative or absolute poverty is where most of the great players of the game originated (Pele, Eusebio, Maradonna, George Best, etc.) as it is for many professional sports.

The MLS marketing itself toward children is problematic, yes the kiddies might like the experience but once they get into puberty and become young adults the atmosphere will no longer appeal to them.

As an example, one just has look at the struggle McDonald's corp. is having now. They based most of their strategy (highly successful) in the 70s and 80s on attracting children (who brought their parents). Well, guess what those kids grew up and no longer cared for the kiddy atmosphere and the happy meals, hence the continuing decline in market share to its immediate competitors.

[whip]

Originally posted by SueB
I think the main reason it's a "child's" game here is because there just isn't the tradition. Most adults in this country did not grow up watching soccer (we fanatics who did are in the minority). I also attend PDL games, and you're right, a lot of kids are there, the teams market to them. "Cheap family entertainment", blah blah.

The childish part of soccer in USA is not really play by the children, is play by the soccer administrators and so call directives on some of the leagues and organization, just for a token check this one out: USA/BRASIL on south Florida ! ....For many years organizational soccer on MIAMI have been a di$$$aster, but why they keep doing it? simple: childish stupidity !!

[Fulminante]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by evilcrossbar
Many people ask the question, "when will soccer have 'arrived' in the US" WC victory, financially successful league, etc. In my opinion soccer will have 'arrived' in this country when you go to the inner city and see black kids playing pickup games of 5 on 5 on the blacktop rather than basketball. Or when you go to rural midwestern America and see soccer nets rather than basketball hoops along the driveways.

After all, relative or absolute poverty is where most of the great players of the game originated (Pele, Eusebio, Maradonna, George Best, etc.) as it is for many professional sports.
[QUOTE]

Futbol and poverty:
In many countries futbol (The most popular sport)is the chance to reach a good future, for many, a way to survive and that´s the big difference with US that plays for exersise and hobby, excluding the examples given above.
In Argentina and Brasil futbol is a passion and to be better:a profession and the best way sport people have to make money for their families and reach a international career ,while, rich people can use their money to study in schools and universities. That´s why you see Pele, Maradona, Ronaldo and many many other skillfull players were born in the 3ª world and poverty of these countries, futbol´s skills don´t need to have money to pay for a special ball, school or another instrument, futbol skills comes from passionate people and gives then money cause is the most popular sport in the world and marked is big.

In an interview Verón explained the difference he see between 1º World futbol and Southamerican futbol: We learn to play for surviving, they learn to play by hobby and schools.


Futbol It´s very different from US sport culture, and nowhere is considered futbol as a child game because kids plays futbol. All kids plays sport to learn and develope skills, for everything you have to start learning at an early age to be really good.

[ussoccer1001]

It is kind of like the saying you can't teach an old dog new tricks.

It is much easier to make children insterested in the game to become customers in the present and future then it is to get adults who have grown up with baseball and football and basketball into the game.

[evilcrossbar]

Originally posted by ussoccer1001
It is kind of like the saying you can't teach an old dog new tricks.

It is much easier to make children insterested in the game to become customers in the present and future then it is to get adults who have grown up with baseball and football and basketball into the game.

Yes, I agree that socialization to soccer must begin in childhood. However, one can be socialized to like a sport without having to play in an organized youth program.

Look at football and basketball, the vast majority of those fans did not play in organized leagues or in high school. They were socialized by watching it on TV with their parents and going to games. They later might have played with their friends in the neighborhood.

I just don't see this need that many soccer fans in this country have to make their young children play youth soccer. Because for every one kid that falls in love with soccer, there are probably two that will always hate it and maybe four more who will never care about soccer one way or the other.

I've seen many little kids (some as young as 4 years old) enrolled in pee wee soccer camps and soccer clinics. These kids are way too young to understand the game and they are already being forced to do drills. That's got to be the most effective killer of enthusiasm for the sport I could imagine.

I wonder what the results would be if someone confidentially asked the kids whether they actually liked the game.

I suspect, (based on my observations when I was enrolled as a kid) that many - if not most - would rather be doing something else.

[Dr. Wankler]

Originally posted by evilcrossbar
I've seen many little kids (some as young as 4 years old) enrolled in pee wee soccer camps and soccer clinics. These kids are way too young to understand the game and they are already being forced to do drills. That's got to be the most effective killer of enthusiasm for the sport I could imagine.

I've seen that, too, and it's unbelievable. It looks like a plot to make sure kids DON'T like soccer when they grow up, because they'll think of it more like a Little League version of Army basic training, and not a game. Luckily, I'm also seeing smarter versions of kids games nearly everywhere. When I first moved into this area 10 years ago, the under-9 leagues played 11 a side on a full field. Now they play seven a side on the small field, and it actually looks like soccer.

[Auriaprottu]

Originally posted by Knave
I recently started attending PDL matches. One of the things that struck me about these matches is how geared they are towards children. But then I thought about it a bit more. There's a whole league (WUSA) that's geared for children. The WNT was all about appealing to pre-adolescent girls. Even MLS often seems made for children. (Think about those horns, Nickelodeon's "Games and Sports" segment.) Some of this is perhaps left over from the misguided marketing back before 1996 but that doesn't account for all of it. And it doesn't account for the fact that soccer seems to me - by and large - geared towards the child consumer in the US.

I think (and this has been said before) that the idea is to gain the interest of a generation that hasn't yet been conditioned to another sport. Might backfire, tho- kids are known not to stick with activities that are so regulated by adults once they're old enough to create their own fun.

To me soccer is a grown-up's game. Indeed, I don't think I really appreciated the game until I was into my 20s. (That's another thread, I suppose.) The problem is that as I get older I'm actually increasingly put off by how much the game is geared towards children in this country.

I feel your pain. I'd like to see the Game here adopt a more mature approach. It's a double-edged sword. You introduce the Game to the young in the hopes of creating a future for it, and the old continue to dismiss it as something for kids to do once they've finished their schoolwork.

Do you think my perceptions of the various leagues - from MLS to WUSA to PDL - are accurate? Are the soccer leagues really gearing themselves towards children? If so how and do you consider that - as I do - a bad thing for soccer in the USA in the long run?

Yes, yes, and not necessarily. If enough kids stay with the Game to help it grow, that's obviously a good thing.

If soccer is a child's game in the US is that unique to this country's soccer culture? My sense is that it's an adult's game abroad. Is that yours too?

Yes and yes.

And does it bother anyone else that it's a child's game here?

Yes. But I'm hoping it grows with those children. If it does, it'll be worth the agony.

Should there be an effort to change this?

If the goal is international success (as opposed to a safe haven for mildly athletic future white-collar professionals), yes. Soccer as played/watched by Americans of several generations is the new darling of the upper and upper-middle class. Sorta the team golf/tennis on a big field. But that may change on its own. If the group that needs sport to escape or temporarily forget its position in the food chain (think urban b-ball, rural high school and SEC football worship from the trailer park) ever becomes interested in soccer, the present-day soccermoms will take it upon themselves to seek other outlets for their brats.

[XYZ]

I doubt that organized youth soccer creates many soccer fans. In fact, forcing kids to play may work against them growing up to be fans - kind of like forcing kids to take music lessons. Many kids are happy when they outgrow youth soccer.

I played organized baseball for more years than I'd care to count, and I'm sure that's one reason I'm a soccer fan and not a baseball fan today.

[whip]

Originally posted by XYZ
I doubt that organized youth soccer creates many soccer fans. In fact, forcing kids to play may work against them growing up to be fans - kind of like forcing kids to take music lessons. Many kids are happy when they outgrow youth soccer.
.

Numbers and statistics shed a light on this subject; Are people outgrowing soccer? and the answer is: NO! If anybody with a average common sense look at soccer in the last 6 years soccer is growing on a geometrical proportion while many others sports are showing a slow decline another phenomena on soccer is the inception of players under 17 on a professional soccer league, or could somebody tell me what league in USA could hire a 16 years old....

[Knave]

... bump ...

I saw this article and thought I should post it on this thread. One of the points of the article is that one of WUSA's problems was that it marketed itself too much as a child's game.
An inexperienced W.U.S.A. staff, Chung said, violated a cardinal rule of youth marketing: you do not advertise yourself to the age of your core audience, but to the age your core audience aspires to be.

In other words, if the league had played down "sugar and spice" wholesomeness campaigns meant to attract 8- to 12-year-olds, and sold the concept of the players as strong women, the W.U.S.A. could have kept the youth audience and also made itself relevant to a much wider group of adolescent girls and young women.

"If you speak solely to that 'tween' audience of 8- to 12-year-olds," Chung said, "you almost guarantee the teenage audience will run away from you."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/28/sports/soccer/28WUSA.html

[Chicago1871]

Soccer to Americans is in essence the following: run, kick, pass...(maybe with a 'shoot') in there. Those who come down on soccer tend to do so because they look at it as the run and kick game that you see millions of kids playing everyday. But these tend to be close minded individuals who don't see that baseball could be seen as the tee-ball game some of learned in our early youth (or as 'swing, run, throw, catch). Basketball, in the same manner can be seen as run, pass, shoot.
Hockey: skate, pass, shoot.
Football: throw, run, tackle.

Obviously this is not how the games are after a certain level. The media (I know, they take the brunt of the blame for soccer's pain) are greatly responsible for the lack of general popularity in the sport in the US. The media influences everyone, especially the average American. While there are thousands of sports writers and editors out there who care little for the sport and tote the crunching hits by Urlacher and brilliant pitching performances by Mark Prior, there are few who will ever write about the beauty of Woly's goal last week, or the amazing play of Preki this season. The nuances that are discussed to death about baseball in every sports section in the country are largely ignored when it comes to soccer.

Joe Sportsguy might be able to read about the details of a pitching duel between Kerry Wood and Greg Maddox in a 1-0 game (Cubs Win), but very few writers out there besides some of our beloved at MLSnet and a few other places understand the game and would take the time if given a chance to write about the the defensive skills of Carlos Bocanegra, the emegence of Damni Ralph, the 'tenacity' of Carlos Ruiz, the passing of Preki, the netminding skills of Tim Howard, or the general goal scoring prowess of Taylor Twellman.

It's a cycle, because since very few writers actually write about the game, the average American will never learn the nuances of the sport of soccer and come to love a perfectly weighted pass from Preki through defenders to an streaking forward who is *just* beaten to the ball by the onrushing goalkeeper...and since the average American will not learn to love it, the average sportswriter will not write about it.

[mpruitt]

I think that article is right on point Knave. I do agree that it seems like a bit of a put off that it's geared towards kids so much. Me myself, and maybe you too. I just started really getting into soccer intensly recently. I had followed it before in my teams, but I'm 23 years old right now, and the type of entertainment I want is anything but wholesome. I've argued for a while that MLS, especially the Revs should do their most to try to snag the college aged quotent. Get a few hundred drunken rowdies like me and you'll see some atmosphere at MLS games.

Part of the problem though is developing a fan culture. Too much of MLS, even within the hard core ranks is still white gloved suburbia. You see it on these boards a lot. Any time someone has to deal with someone a little too rowdy they come on these boards bitching ready to abandon MLS. Whether it be an extreme case like someone getting burnt by a flare, or a case of someone getting beer spilled on them or verbally harrased, you get things on here where people are crying their eyes out. For example, I didn't see what happend last night in NY but people crying and screaming about how crazy the two supporters groups were, and that there was almost *gasp* a fight?!

I think that some of this might be a knee jerk reaction to the horiable stuff that has gone on with hooliganism. But I'll tell ya that part of the fun for me at least of going to a sox game is the absolute insane rowdyness of sitting in the bleachers. That to me is atmosphere.

Support for supporters groups has been discussed a lot around here. But the sooner that MLS developes a two pronged marketing approach in terms of attracting a less family/kid oriented crowd the better. I know that might be a tough two pronged approach to pull off, but if you can seperate the rowdies from the families in england, and keep designated 'supporters sections' like we already have here. Then there's no reason why it can't be done.

[FlashMan]

That NY Times article is a great article. Shows how organizing from "the top down" is fraught with peril.

I found myself in a car this morning in the very wee hours with a friend and a total stranger (on a long drive to the airport). We immediately started talking sports as men often tend to do and the stranger said he "reached sports consciousness" in Germany and that's when he became a Houston Astro fan. I couldn't resist and said, "If you reached 'sports consciousness' in Germany, then you must be a soccer fan too." He of course scoffed at this, and said soccer didn't reach the military base in Germany.

He went on to add, "No one in the States likes soccer unless you're under 16."

It was 5:15 in the morning and I hadn't had my coffee yet, so I let this comment go. But as an anecdote it shows how some people anyway still think of the sport in this country.