It goes back to the days when the players were local and represented their city/town/borough/factory. In fact it goes back even further when all the men of one town would take on all the men of another town at some sort of game once a year. No-one watches school sports, even parents. https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/...otball-englands-ancient-and-chaotic-ball-game
Soccer in America needs to tap into the alpha male culture we see in the NFL and NBA. That’s the cultural piece we are missing. The beta wannabe euro hyperpolitical thing is a rate limiting factor because it runs counter to our athlete culture. Its not even the political direction of the culture, its that by nature aligning yourself with 0.0005% of the country (hyperpolitical euro wannabes who say things like “lad”, “boots”, and “footy”) makes you an outsider to the athletic boys who want to fit in in high school, which is where the commitment is made to the sport. I’m not saying that’s right or good, I’m simply pointing out an obvious fact. This won’t be popular to the social engineers who depend on rigging society to put “toxic masculinity” in its place, but the “toxic” masculine are the guys who kick ass in sports across the world. Look at the top soccer players in the world. They’re, for the most part, egotistical, brash, forceful assholes who dominate the other men on the field. That’s what naturally manifests in competition. It is the true animal state of man. I am not making a value statement about it, I am just saying that it is the reality of human behavior. Even folks like Kaka, who is known to be a nice guy off the field, turn into marauding domineers between the chalk lines. We see similar things in American Football where folks like Tim Tebow (who is about as great of a human being as you will find on the planet), or Barry Sanders (a legendary great guy) turn into marauding domineers in competition. By the way, both Tebow and Barry Sanders are the exact type of athletes who would fill prototypical roles as successful soccer players. To compete in soccer with other “toxically masculine” nations with players like Mbappe, Messi, Ronaldo, Ibrahimovic, etc, etc, we need to have a truly American soccer culture filled with our masculine athletes. We got off to a good start, but MLS kind of took us in the wrong direction in the last fifteen years.
I spent some time living in a decent-sized west Texas town. The entire town was shut down on Friday night for the game. The stadium holds 20K and has a half-a-million dollar Jumbotron. There are many such places in Texas alone.
My Alma Mater lost a title game to such a community three years after I graduated. I quit laughing at schools and towns like that after that. Yeah, Barry Sanders' skillset and build translates well to the Beautiful Game. Tebow's does not. Best he'd ever be is a klutzy defender. MLS hasn't done anything wrong. They're getting the best athletes they can get. Look, you can't just spray some deer urine on a soccer shirt and get millions of single-celled rednecks to buy it. They're not stup- okay, they ARE stupid but they're not stupid in this instance. They're very, very, well-trained/conditioned to spot things like sports that both sexes play. Soccer's out of consideration right there. These people's heads are on a very specific and focused swivel, making sure to avoid anything that smacks of culture. They know it's soccer, they know it's fern, and they don't want anything to do with it. MLS can't do anything to attract people whose dislike of both culture and civilization is hardwired into their DNA since the Southern Strategy. Announcing their refusal to, say, acknowledge the work of Dr. King during the month of February isn't going to bring mainstream Americans to MLS games. And challenging his masculinity is... just weird. He probably slept with more women than you have.
“Look, you can't just spray some deer urine on a soccer shirt and get millions of single-celled rednecks to buy it”. Nice.
Not that I care about this or make me think it makes me any different than anyone else, but people like you do care about it and think it makes someone better than others: I have four degrees, two of which are advanced degrees, one advanced degree is from one of the top academic schools on the planet. According to statistics, I am in the top percentile of folks in the world in regard to education. As someone you think is important, I would choose to spend time with the “single-celled rednecks” I got to know Texas over people like you who are filled with hatred and darkness 10/10 times. Welcome to the ignore list.
Well, yeah, I'm filled with darkness, fer shore. It's melanin. I'm cool with that. I don't have time to hate. I just observe and report. I'll sling a bit of snot one day about getting on your list. Glad you didn't dissent on Tebow
I say “boots” because I was following the boot scene a while back—which has largely been defined by American company Nike in modern times. “Cleats” just seems out of date, it’s not a matter of Euro wannabes.
I'm sorry I have to say this but your 'image' and understanding of England is wide of the mark. Every time you make 'claims' about English football and English culture you're about as wrong as you can get.
It is the "Andy Capp" view of the English people. While the cartoon is often funny I do not really think most or even many English folks behave in the self abusive manner we see in the cartoon. I know when i lived over there (On the wrong side of the big pond) I did not see even one bar brawl with the exception of my visit to Ireland where I did see and even participated in one good brawl. Those Irish lads have VERY hard heads weather you are talking about the jaws or the head itself.
Where did you live? Andy Capp is from Harrlepool, which has a unique culture. They once hung a monkey because the thought he was French.
Niche sport. Rugby league is a working- class sport in the north of England and rugby union in south Wales, otherwise it's gentrified. "Football is a game for gentlemen played by hooligans, and rugby is a game for hooligans played by gentlemen" - Arthur Tedder (often falsely attributed to Oscar Wilde, Winston Churchill and Noel Coward among others).
Not for the last 25 years or so it hasn't been, true about rugby league though, that is still centred in the North of the country
By the way, Rugby Union is now professional in the USA: https://www.majorleague.rugby/ ESPN will show MLR's final in June. Rugby League is still amateur.
This is some weird shit. Have you been to an MLS game? It might be too lowbrow for your advanced degrees, but you'd clear up some misconceptions if you did.
I have been going to games since MLS’s inaugural season and went to whatever pro/semi-pro incarnations there were before that into the mid 1980’s. I am a multi-sport athlete who knows why the alpha guys tend to leave soccer in high school, because they were all on my club teams with me. You have to be a stubborn guy who loves the sport to resist the social pressure from your friends. Our great athletes don’t come from the elitist Washington D.C. suburbs. They come from Georgia, Alabama, Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Louisiana, the Carolinas, etc, etc. There are exceptions, but that’s generally the rule.
You can get riled up about culture war nonsense as much as you'd like, I guess. As always, though, it's just a distraction that doesn't factor into the real world. Even if it did, there's no amount of marketing that will change the minds of people who you imagine consider ignoring soccer as part of their core personalities. A bunch of "Only soy boy cucks ignore MLS" adverts on OAN wouldn't bring a single additional viewer to the next MLS Cup final.