we US fans know how the MMA midfield can dominate against most good teams, and is an equal to almost literally any midfield in the world. I suspect that trio has done the most to open up the eyes of the world. The fullbacks have been excellent, too. Our over reliance on crosses is less impressive. Adam Carolla, I think. He and Jimmy Kimmel started out together. Their career trajectories since then have, um, let’s go with diverged.
A couple of days ago I inadvertently ran into my first "soccer is like communism" editorial in years. I almost thought we had grown past such stuff. Not so, apparently, at least for a few die-hards. Our Iran match drew 12 million on a Tuesday afternoon. Those poor bastards must've been pissed...
As a politically progressive adult with no kids living in Northern California, that is the rest of the world to me!
As a Nashville resident, people probably aren't very aware there are some decidedly progressive pockets in the South, my town being one of them (despite the best efforts of the Tennessee legislature). There's a solid immigrant population in the city and, like many cities, a white suburbia which has a strong soccer following. Plus, Nashville has a ton of hipsters, a good soccer market. So, once you get to these cities, Charlotte, Atlanta, Nashville, and, say, if they ever want to move there, a Birmingham and Louisville, too.
The opposite is also true; here in NJ there are counties that are deep red; Ocean county for example. I could go into why, but this isn't the forum. And up in ME, where I visit a lot, there are a lot of gun-totin Rod Paige supporters. But guess what? There is also a Somali population in Lewiston, and a book was written about the HS soccer team there, made up of a number of Somali kids. They went on to put up with a lot of racism but had SKILLS and won a lot of games, prompting the book about them. The coach said he'd show up in the morning and it wasn't the American kids who were shoveling the snow off the pitch....
I think that is Corolla. Damn, looks weird. Girls bouncing on trampolines. Those were the days! I will admit to enjoying a good Corolla rant. Sorry.
That’s the thing, in any state there are both very conservative areas and very progressive areas no matter the overall political lean of the state itself.
Ironically the network that provides each of these two with a job...paid a poo ton of money for the right to broadcast said "boring" game.... We've all watched FAR more Basketball, Baseball (especially), and American Football games that are coma inducing bad, and all last longer than 90 minutes......
The thing is Nashville <> Tennessee and Atlanta <> Georgia etc. Though I am shocked how irrelevant soccer is in key suburbs of Dallas like Highland Park. I guess that partially explains FC Dallas though.
My go-to retort to those types is, "There's nothing more American than beating the rest of the world at their own game."
Soccer is super bad for advertising vs American football. They get to blast the audience with an add every 5 or 10 minutes for line 3 to 4 hours. Soccer they get 15 minutes in the middle of the game when everyone is taking a piss and getting some food/drink. Soccer has to be boring because the major media outlets make a ******** ton off of all those ad spots for football. I am convinced this is one of the biggest drivers of soccer’s lack of popularity
Even up here where I'm at and it's almost nothing but football, soccer has made inroads. An image like this would have felt surreal even five years ago
That’s exactly it. However, soccer is immensely popular on Spanish-language TV here, so it could be possible to elevate it further on English language TV. It’s really important for the USSF to avoid disenfranchising fans by not alienating any cultures here…whether they are Spanish-speaking or in the south. Canning the divisive political nonsense is critical in growing the sport. That’s part of the reason they are distancing themselves from divisive political topics. Something like 93% of people who view sports not only dislike politicization of sports, but they strongly dislike it.
Those places are full of great people who get hate from people who know as little about them as they know about people from Mars.
Girls on Trampolines are great, as I'm sure both Kimmel and Carolla will still agree. The difference is that Kimmel can now talk seriously about serious things with a not of empathy and Carolla spends a lot of time worrying about people not being manly enough or something or posting openly racist shit and then pretending it's a joke. It's strange to me how many people can't seem to live in the middle.
I'm not backing Carrola (or Kimmel). Just saying I like a good Carolla rant. I'm old. I'm not that old but old enough to be the get off my lawn guy from time to time given the way of the world. It's funny. Politics aside. Also. Kimmel is funny. COMEDY.. ENJOY the GAME more.
Australia is a lot better and more impressive than the US, especially when you compare the 2 rosters.
Yeah I gotta say that's surprising since most of their roster is domestic-based. Was their generation of Cahill/Kewell/Schwarzer/Bresciano/Neill simply a blip?