I have come across a lot of soccer haters, but this guy takes the cake and runs with..He has some major issues with the game first of ,and than he goes out and attacks poor MLS .. Read on. Hassel: The problem with soccer DesMoinesRegister.com
I just posted this in his comments: Hassel: The problem with sports reporters What is sports reporters favorite thing to do? It's not reporting the plays of the Super Bowl. It's not number one draft picks. It's certainly not going out of their way to understand a sport beyond the sports they grew up playing. It's hating on soccer, which none of them seem to understand in the slightest. The final match of the previous world cup drew more t.v. viewers than any other sporting event. This was for good reason. Soccer (football, futbol, whatever you want to call it) is the only sport that is able to truly unite the world in the spirit of competition. Why? It allows for the common man to celebrate the greatness of his country through the physical and tactical conditioning of his fellow countrymen. This is just one of the many reasons. This time of year sports fans of all ages crowd around their televisions en masse to witness the greatest sporting event in the world. In one game I've seen grown men cry, complete strangers hug eachother in the ecstatic joy released in the frenzy when your team scores, and a sense of community and bonding form. Be careful, if you blink (in a game that you can be assured will be entirely done within two hours) you might miss a miracle or a robbery. See USA vs. Slovenia for both. Americans love having something to cheer for, and we have something to cheer for. An underdog team tying the nation that created the game and is still considered one of the best in the world, a team that was robbed of a victory by a referee's error, and a chance to move on to the next round of the tournament. Those are just the aspects of the Americans' story, let alone the play on the field. Perfect crosses into the box from Landon Donovan, heroic saves by Tim Howard, clinical finishes by Michael Bradley and defense shredding passes or dribbling tricks could come from anyone on the team, at any time. So why do people choose soccer over other professional American sports? The average baseball game takes just under three hours and the best performances are the ones where, by definition, nothing happens (a perfect game). The average American football game has the ball in play a mere 11 minutes... talk about nothing happening considering it takes over 3 hours to play the average game. The majority of basketball games don't see high intensity defense being played because the players can't be bothered to care about anything but their offensive production (see Kobe Bryant who would be one of the best defenders in the league if he only put the effort in). In 2007, David Beckham came to the MLS to play and soccer has increased in popularity. The current season's average attendance for MLS is 16,320. In 2005, average attendance was 15,108. This year's average attendance is less than 1,000 away from the NBA and NHL with projections about this number in the next few years showing further gain. The USA vs England match drew a higher t.v. Nielson rating than each of the first six games of the NBA finals. There are millions of Americans who are soccer fanatics that sports writers continue to alienate with their antiquated resistance to a sport that is rapidly growing in popularity. Put that in your leather football helmet and tackle it. (Or if you prefer, put that in your short basketball shorts and run with it.) America's current three most popular sports are American football, basketball and baseball. All three have one thing in common: soccer is rapidly gaining ground on their popularity. This is due to changing demographics, a generation of our youth has now played the sport so understanding of the game is much higher, strategic expansion by the MLS is making the highest level of play in America more widely available. The field requires true athleticism, the goals are more exciting than any grand slam, touch down, or windmill dunk. And America is giving the most popular sport in the world a chance to put old, ignorant sports reporters out of jobs because they aren't willing to see that soccer's popularity is on the rise and here to stay.
Couldn't have said better. I love to hear his reply though.Than again who cares, what bothers me is that one day this DBag becomes head of some sport programing somewhere in ESPN family. We fought so hard to to put the old soccer haters to pasture, but this is totally a new breed.
This says it all: Chris Hassel is a sports reporter and anchor for WHO-HD. Watch him on WHO newscasts
Who cares? Let him live in his hole. We all know how great a sport this is, and we all see the rise in popularity in america for the sport. The 60 year old delusional "reporters" can spin all they want. I'm not listening. And neither are a bunch of other people.
Oh....i get it. People like him enjoy sports that are easier to score in. I guess it doesn't bother him if he's at an american football game for 3 hours and, 2 hours and 45 minutes of it are stopages and commercials. Soccer really needs to widen the goals so we have more 7-5 games for our typical american mindset. And while we're at it,lets add tv time outs so we can make it more exciting. The rest of the world has got it all wrong! How dumb can they be?
TV timeouts will only make the overall experience more exciting. They allow for games and videos to be shown on the jumbotron and to pump up the crowd with some kickass music.
The soccer-haters always bring up the low scores, and I want to have a comebacker beyond the cliched response "you just don't get it." I could bring up that basketball has way more scoring than American football, so then why doesn't he like basketball more? Or I could say there's fewer commercials and less dead time in soccer, but that's only saying what's "wrong" with other sports, not what's right with soccer. It's one thing to say he doesn't get it, but then if I must explain how he doesn't get it, what's a good way to describe the game of soccer without being too wordy? How can I describe the game that explains why I like it? I can try myself, but I always get too wordy with it. I had a friend from Togo once, who described the "fight" for a goal, and somehow that one word sparked something in me to see the game in a different light, and it helped me become a soccer fan. Rather than just look at the ball being passed around, I came to understand it as part of a process by which a team probes another for possible openings, and the bigger strategy of possession and teamwork and wearing down the opponent, and whatnot. It's like a chess match. I like to look at it that way.
I've said it before, and i'll say it again: I've given up on people like this because I really don't give a crap. There aren't many out there like him anymore. We've seen soccer's progression. We know it is continuing to grow whether this dude likes to or not. And, I'm not hating on Iowa, it's probably a beautiful place. But, it doesn't EXACTLY have its finger on the pulse of american culture. If this joker wants to go jizz all over his copy of Field of Dreams whilst watching a wrestling match, he can go right ahead. Me and 90% of other American will watch the World Cup without him.
During the second half of the Portugal-North Korea match one of our "open minded" Sports Radio Hosts took calls on how soccer is boring because no one scores and asked for suggestions on how to increase goals. He started the program with ''....look at this game now. Portugal is winning 1-0 so you know we will see no more goals......" And then 2-nil ....... Portugal hits a post ........ 3-nil, 4-nil......... Ronaldo hits the crossbar.........5-nil, 6-nil etc all the while people are calling in saying things like 30% of the matches in the World Cup end in 0-0 (actually there have been 3 so far) and no way people in Toronto would ever support a professional soccer. Just making up crap.
Yes that was a good reply. What I genuinely do not understand (I get the rest of it - he hates soccer) is this comment. soccer is our planet's favorite game, which is one of the reasons why it isn't our favorite game. What does that mean? Is he appealing to something in the American psyche? Is America not on the same planet? I think the reason that more Americans are open to Soccer now and indeed other cultural influences from around the World is that they are more secure in their own cultural identity and so feel less threatened by foreign influences but then I am not an American so I guess you guys are better placed to answer such questions.
what i find is funny is that the scores of lameball aka boringball aka baseball are almost the same as soccer....but there is only 20 minutes of action in a four hour game of baseball. 40 minutes in a double header.....zzzzzzz give me soccer anyday! Timbers over beavers anyday of the week!
Yes I've heard similar comments. I think there's an element of "us against the world" in many holdouts to what they think is NA sports vs the world's game. What more and more are learning is how common that feeling or element is in every country around the world supporting their national squad. Who could deny there isn't new American fans right now thinking "that's right, we're beating them at their own game"? Bit silly but I'm not turning away any new footie brethren.
I was just curious because it seemed like a strange contradiction or idea that he would want to be apart from the rest of the planet and that somehow that was superior in some way. Anyway (sarcasm detectors at the ready.) He has proved his point after today's game with only 1 goal and that was only scored in the 91st minute. That must have been incredibly boring to sit through and no doubt many turned off before the goal. If only it was more like baseball with higher scoring. Sarcasm off, sorry. As Gary Linker x England striker and now of the BBC said; "If the Americans don't fall in love with football after that, they never will" Well done US and congratulations. Good luck in the last 16. EDIT I think the BS server is in melt down, taking a long time to get this posted.