One thing that really bothered me this cycle was how many guys didn't become fans of soccer until much later on in life. Landon Donovan said he didn't begin watching soccer until he was 16, which would be when he began his pro career in Germany. Jonathon Bornstein said he didn't begin watching the world cup until he was almost in college. These are just the two I noted while watching Studio 90 this year. I think this is a pretty big part of what's wrong with soccer in this country. Guys who played the game were just never that into it growing up. You need to be watching those games and be inspired from a young age. All the guys playing in the NBA or MLB were watching the games since they were tots pretending to shoot buzzer beaters and imitating magic johnson/michael jordan at the park.
May I ask your age because this comment sounds like it comes from someone who doesn't remember when there was practically no soccer to watch in the US.
I disagree with your assesment that athletes in other sports were all big fans of those sports when growing up... I know of plenty of pro athletes who kind of hate the sports they play. Barry Sanders is a famous example. And let's be real... if every kid who played soccer in this country was interested in watching it, it would be the king of American sports.
We take for granted today the easy access to watch soccer from all over the world. That did not exist 15-20 years ago when they were kids. We had no domestic league or players to get excited about. US soccer has taken some gigantic steps forward these last twenty years.
It's irrelevant to my point. But anyways take Bornsteins answer to a studio 90 question. He said there was no coverage of the 1998 world cup which is why he didn't watch it which is false. All the games were broadcast in 1998, he just never cared about soccer. And I'm 24 and am in the same boat as those guys but I'm not a player for the U.S. national team. I want my pro athletes bred with the game but we don't have that. I notice a lot of guys who play college soccer even don't even watch the sport. It seems like a travesty to me.
why would they watch soccer? they're busy playing it i bet college football players don't watch a lot of college football
I've heard many instances of Baseball players, like Don Matingly and Jorge Posada who said growing up they weren't watching baseball they were playing it. Like was said before, when I was growing up (i'm 27) there was literally no soccer on TV here. If you caught any soccer maybe it was highlights on a spanish channel. I played soccer my whole life and still do, but as a kid I rarely watched it on TV... only until 94+ did I see soccer on TV more and more.
I'd bet you more than anything they are watching NFL games on Sunday. Definitely watching NFL playoffs and 100% certainly watching the superbowl. While our soccer players aren't even watching the damn world cup final.
Michael Bradley was watching...but I'm not blaming them. I'm just saying that's a big problem I think. I think there's a major difference between playing a game and being completely in love with a game. They might have enjoyed playing the game but for me I think you need to be watching the worlds best play from a young age to really have a passion for it. That's why Michael Bradley is our most passionate player on the field imo.
Bradley was 8 when MLS started, and the son of Princeton's coach and an Asst. coach on the US Olympic soccer team. Landon was 14 and the son of a single parent whose family had no TV. What is your point other than to note that soccer was not on TV?
I know! Again, I'm not blaming any of these guys for not being fans of the game until a lot later on in life, I'm just pointing out that's a major flaw in the American psyche. I just wonder how much different our guys would be on the field had they been watching a Zidane, watching a Cantona etc etc growing up. As a player that gives you extra motivation to go out there and try new stuff and model your game after guys like that. If you're just seeing other youth players and never seeing how the game should actually be played I think it's a disadvantage.
Well I don’t know about US players, but in Germany anybody involved in football usually likes watching it, too. They grow up watching football on the TV and they often pick star players as their role models. If you ask any player in the Bundesliga about teams in another European Top-League (EPL, La Liga, Serie A) or even smaller leagues like the Dutch or Portuguese League most of them at least know their best players and most of them will admit watching one or more of these leagues regularly. Their lives circle around this sport and they get involved with it whenever and wherever they can.
bottom line today: loads of soccer on TV and our kids have a far better idea of how good soccer looks. WAY different today.
It is kind of looked over but I think the FIFA video game series is going to be very beneficial for the US.
Ya, EA does a great job making MLS teams rated 2 stars and the US 3 and a half (same as Northern freaking Ireland), ensuring casual fans stay away from those teams.
It is a very popular series that expands the scope of soccer in America. Kids are still being exposed to basic information regarding tactics and positions at a young age.
hmm I don't know about that. I remember I played soccer and played FIFA video games when I was a kid. Still didn't know one thing about soccer, never saw a game and had no idea what leagues even existed. I knew who Pele was, that was it.
yeah, so this files into the "can't win" category. in another thread, the reason we lost to ghana was given that we don't have any players coming out of the slums and therefore they don't develop the skills neccessary. prior to five or six years ago, if you didn't have satellite tv, you weren't watching much soccer if any at all. so you had to be rich in order to become a fan of international soccer. so in order for our nation to progress in this sport we have to recruit rich kids from the slums. got it. why doesn't sunil just get on this?
Every player on the roster except Marcus Hahnemann is younger than me, and I remember watching English league highlights on Sportschannel New England in the early 90s. The US National Team was always televised in those days too, plus MLS has been on TV since the beginning. Might not have been as omnipresent as pointyball all weekend, but for fans of the game it hasn't been difficult to find soccer on TV since the early 90s (I even remember seeing A-League games, or whatever league the "LA Salsa" played in, prior to the launch of MLS). I don't think that's really an excuse.
Thanks for that reality injection. Soccer Made in Germany, anyone? Remember the week's/month's/year's old compilation of condensed games from the Bundesliga on PBS? It was so rare, so out of the mainstream it was like you were screening stag or snuff flicks. To the dude talking about New England Sports channel, that was not typical of what was happening with the rest of the country. Before 2002, you had to hunt for soccer on TV in most of the US. Many times you were disappointed because the soccer game would be pre-empted or cut short for a lame-ass senior PGA tournament that ran long, a professional bowling tournament or, my favorite, an extra inning collegiate softball game. But wait, there's more...infomercials and for pay religious broadcasts would run over soccer games regularly until AFTER the 2002 WC. In Rochester (with a large soccer fanbase), the ABC affiliate ran a televangelist during the final--ABC affiliates could elect to not run the WC final. The response and outrage was so large, it was almost a civil rights moment. The gays have Stonewall, the African-Americans have Rosa Parks and soccer fans have WC2002. Besides, when you playing at an elite level and in your teen years, you are consumed by school, training, fitness building, games and travel. My daughter plays on a regional powerhouse and doesn't much time to watch soccer. She will watch when she has time, but it is tough.
That's not true at all. The core of the team was born around 82-83, and there was definitely soccer on TV from about 1990 onwards when they were kids. I grew up in the freakin woods of northern Maine and I had no trouble finding soccer on TV. You couldn't be all that choosy about what you'd watch, but it was definitely there. Whether this is a relevant issue or not I don't know, but it's false to say they wouldn't have been able to watch it even if they'd wanted to.