Perception of Football fans

Take it up with these guys

You might also want to go bother the Italians for calling it Calcio. Or if you want to stick with places where English is the dominant language, you should discuss this with Irish and Australians as well.

 

You do realize that the only reason we call it soccer is to piss off the English.

 

Just a quick note about us calling it soccer, it has more to do with us already having a football than anything else. If you consider that FIFA didn't put on a world cup until 1930, soccer (ahem) didn't become a worldwide passion until after american football was already very popular over here. Many of the leagues you look at, like La Liga, didn't get fully organized and competitive until after well American Football was the # 2 sport in the country (in the early 1900's). (incidentally, # 1 was boxing until Babe Ruth came along and put baseball on top of the charts). So, by the mid-1920s or so when College Football was a bigger sport than pro football, it was too late to go back on the soccer/football thing. Then the pro leagues joined/died off into the NFL and became more serious in the late 1920's and throughout the 30s, and even then it really took until the mid fifties until Pro football passed College football in national popularity. By 1955, Pro football was king thanks to television, and they haven't looked back.

So, that's why we don't call it football, we already had one. (duh).

The sport (soccer) is played by tons of people (boys and girls) who begin as kids. Problem is, most stop playing around the age of 10 or so. It is still the # 1 most played youth sport, but for every 20 that played as kids only 1 will still play as an adult (or so). Might be worse. So, by the time kids hit that 10-15 age when sports are their world (before puberty and school get serious), soccer gets forgotten. It's getting better, but soccer is still pretty well ignored by most Americans. It is seen as a foriegn sport by the majority of Americans (BS excuse as this is, we didn't invent Golf either...). It's seen as a sport that kids play because it's relatively easier for kids to play than baseball or basketball (trying have a team of 5 year olds turn a 5-4-3 double play or make a free throw).

I was at a softball game and one of the guys from my company asked if the runners could still run if the fielder caught a ball, I looked at him like he'd just walked off the face of the sun. How could an American man in his late 20's not know that? So, without thinking him to be a homosexual, we do have some of the same levels of devotion and saturation with baseball and football, but it's nothing like Soccer in England. Of the sports we have, American Football comes closest, but again most fans have a football team, a baseball team and a basketball team they all follow to varying degrees. Those in the northeast also have a Hockey team, usually. So, we're splitting our passion up into a number of different sports, whereas in England it's Football, Football and Football, with the Rugby/tennis/F1 thrown in on the side.

 

I would point out, first, that soccer was very popular in Europe and South America, not to mention the US (where American Soccer League crowds rivaled those of the fledgling NFL, and where salaries topped those of the English leagues), before 1930. Secondly, if you look at the news reports from ASL matches, in the 20s, it wasn't uncommon to see the word "football" or "soccer football" in the headlines, depending on how much space the editor had to fill. Also, last year, while working in the library from which I draw my paycheck, I came across a set of old football programs from the 20s through the 50s. The programs would have the dates and the teams, and across the bottom in big red letters would be the phrase "American Football." I've checked a couple other archives since then, including the one at Penn State, and that was pretty common, though not universal, in those days. I haven't seen one any later than the late 1930s saying "American" football, though.

So anyway the definitions weren't so cut-and-dried -- at least in the Northeast -- until the 1940s, by which time the USFF became the USSFF, on the way to becoming the USSF.

So we call it soccer here while what the Italians call "rugby Americano" gets called football. Whether we would call soccer "football" and gridiron football "rugby" if soccer's governing body in the US wasn't so adept at shooting itself in the foot is a moot point. Right now, the bottom line is, "who cares what British posters think, especially when THEY ARE THE ONES WHO COINED THE NAME SOCCER in the first place!"

 

Football fans in the U.S. generally fall into one of two categories: middle-class whites, who are normally linked to the sport through their children's participation, and Hispanics. These groups account for 90% of the attendance at most MLS games. The teams that may have a special "gimmick", like Hong Myung Bo with the Galaxy, can attract a broader group.
(Bo is only a gimmick because a huge part of his appeal to the Galaxy was taht he would bring Koreans to the HDC, many of whom fly from Korea. He is actually one of the most accomplished MLS players).
And about Britain, I have seen many a British social commentary film that paints characters as common folk by using football support as one of the identifying traits of such social status.

 

Re: Re: Perception of Football fans

And the Latin Americans which use "Fútbol" or "Fútbol Soccer" depending on weather they need to diferentiate from "Fútbol Americano".