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Why isn't Soccer popular in America?

  • Too many other sports to watch

    Votes: 46 19.8%
  • The best players play in Europe

    Votes: 23 9.9%
  • Most American's don't understand the game

    Votes: 76 32.8%
  • Most games aren't played during prime time on TV

    Votes: 12 5.2%
  • Other

    Votes: 75 32.3%

  • Total voters
    232
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A tie? What the hell kind of sport can end in a TIE??? Why even show up?
 
American football and soccer would have to complete in the eyes of Americans, and Americans are interested in the violence and seemingly faster pace of American football. Soccer is growing considerably with the American youth though, I noticed that many of them are only soccer fans or at least they have very little interest in American football. I think you could ask why American football has not caught on over seas and many of your answers would be the same.

I don' think you can compare soccer's popularity to American football's popularity around the world because unlike soccer, American football is not a global game that is popular and played in pretty much ever country around the world. Would it be fair to say that the U.S. is the one country where soccer is not a premier sport?
 
I think you could ask why American football has not caught on over seas and many of your answers would be the same.
From a european perspective, it's totally non-sense to distinct defense phase and teams and attack phase and teams.
It's totyally non-sense to stop the game when the defense team caught the bal fro the attck team. They should be allowed to try to counter-attack !
 

PlasmaTwa2

The Second-Hottest Man in my Mother's Basement
I don' think you can compare soccer's popularity to American football's popularity around the world because unlike soccer, American football is not a global game that is popular and played in pretty much ever country around the world. Would it be fair to say that the U.S. is the one country where soccer is not a premier sport?

The United States and Canada are really the only two countries that show such hostility to soccer. It's not a major sport in either country and it is never going to be until the immigrants outnumber the Americans and Canadians. :2 cents:
 
A tie? What the hell kind of sport can end in a TIE??? Why even show up?

Sigh.

There are ties in the NFL too. What happens in OT if nobody kicks a FG after the coin toss and the OT runs out? Game ends in a tie.

There is nothing stupider in the world of Pro Sport than the overtime setup in the NFL. What about the BCS? Is that a fair and accurate system to decide the college champ?

Americans don't understand soccer. If they could see how much better Soccer is, the NFL would make a bunch of changes to its game. There is nothing worse than a 4 hr snorefest NFL game (like St Louis v Cleveland :sleep:)
 
noisy horns. Drunk unemployed fans that beat the shit out of each other and innocent people around them (again, a symptom of the boredom they experience whilst spectating the game i.e. nothing better to do). collapsing stadiums. Players that whine like sissies every time they get touched in an underhanded effort to draw a yellow card. Players disrobing in the unlikely event they score. Diluted pool of talent - far too many teams. Low scores.

and all those fucking horns.

There are myriad reasons soccer still sucks.
 
Americans don't understand soccer.

Why do people keep saying that? what is it that we don't understand? Are we still perplexed why nobody uses their hands? No. Are we still unsure of how a goal is scored because nothing ever goes in those nets at either end? No. Are we wondering why the referee keeps giving the players yellow parking tickets when he doesn't even know where they parked? No. Are we wondering why every time a guy gets slide tackled he writhes in agony with the corner of his eye on the referee, hoping to extract an unwarranted call? No, we understand the ragged poverty of such ungamely angle shooting.

Please, make an effort and tell me and my dumb fellow Americans just what it is that we don't "understand"

If they could see how much better Soccer is, the NFL would make a bunch of changes to its game.

Yes, they would. Because the changes they've made over the last 15 years that have brought the game unprecedented popularity have been "unsucessful" :dunno:???


There is nothing worse than a 4 hr snorefest NFL game (like St Louis v Cleveland :sleep:)

I'd rather bet on the spread that shitty game than get 3 to 1 that the game will end in a "draw".

What am I not understanding?
 
Where's the option "Because it sucks" at?



Seriously (well actually I was being semi-serious because I do think it sucking is most of what people here don't like about it.) just off the top of my head.

1. Like others have said it's low scoring. In fact, it's low scoring to the point where luck and random chance plays a significantly greater role than any other major sport in the world. The actual skill of the players doesn't mean that much compared to other in single games, and the only real way to find the best team is through regression to the mean after playing a ton of games to see who wins the most over a long period. The best teams are rightly supposed to win most of the time, but it's just way too easy for significantly inferior teams to beat or tie a better one. Even when they lose it's usually not by that much.

2. There are ties in it, and AMERICANS HATE TIES IN SPORTS, and rightly so. A big part of the spirit and essence of competition is one side wins and one side loses. It's not an uncommon occurrence either unlike say American football where technically there can be a tie but it happens once ever 5 or 6 years out of over a thousand games. Instead it happens a little under half the games. I mean who doesn't like the possibility of a mighty 0-0 tie? Even in hockey ties are rather rare, and in baseball the games designed to be impossible to end in a tie.

3. It's pretty much the only sport I can think of where the same team moves the object they need to score with backwards almost as much as they do forward. After about the second consecutive backwards pass I can't take it seriously. I also can't express how dumb I think being allowed to pass back to your own goalie is. It's just so blatantly cheap.

4. Relatively low physical contact with some of the weakest professional players in the world. Sure players have to have a lot of endurance to do well in the sport, but there is a reason things like MMA, American football, hockey ect ect...are a lot better than watching marathon running. I also can't say I like the fact that a huge portion of everyday people would be able to kick the asses of players that play soccer. That just doesn’t happen with most other sports. A good sport deals with all or at least multiple aspects of physical fitness, not just endurance.

5. It has more floppers in than any other sports I have ever seen...combined. My God, I and thought basketball players were bad. Some people can go down at the slightest breeze hitting them.

6. Because of the low scoring, the fact ties can happen, and the way you can move the ball it leads to way too many bullshit strategies that would not only embarrass me if I was a player, but are actually successful. It makes a mockery of the spirit of competition. Half the time I wonder if the teams even give a damn or if they are even trying to win. One of my least favorite things to watch is when one team that inferior gets lucky and scores early and pretty much just shuts it down and plays defense the rest of the game, and they will, sadly, probably win. An American football team winding it down in the closing minutes of a game where they lead 35-10 or a basketball team when leading 90-70 is one thing. A soccer team winding it down near the beginning when they have a 1-0 or 2-1 lead something else.

7. The offsides rule in it is to be blunt, pretty stupid. It's like they put it in because somebody at some time was afraid a team might score more than two or three goals often. At the very least they should make it a static line like in hockey, not some nonsensical system where the opposing team gets to create the line by where they want to stand.

8. The fact that despite there being an even number of players on a team the rules position people so there are more defenders than there are attackers baring people getting red carded. Again it's like they are scared of what might happen if they actually let scoring happen in it.

9. The way that time is keep, especially extra time at the end. It's stupid that there is no definitive clock people can look at to know how much time is left.

10. The fact that soccer teams have sunk to the level of putting advertising on their uniforms. As bad as our sports have gotten and have become commercialized we haven't gotten that bad,...yet at least.

11. Soccer fans suck at cheering. I like the ebb and flow of the crowds of other sports. You know good action is going on just by listening to them. In soccer it's just one big cacophony.

I can think of a few rule changes it could do to at least make it bearable watching the would be:

1. You can't make more than two backwards pass consecutively (and I might even consider limiting it to one). If you do the other team gets possession.

2. The goalkeeper isn't allowed to receive a pass from his own teammates under any circumstances. To make it easier it might just be easier to have it where the goalkeeper isn't allowed to touch the ball unless it's last touched by the opposing team. A violation of this rule results in the other team getting a penalty shot and possession of the ball if the penalty shot misses. When the goalkeeper has possession of the ball he must get rid of it in 2 or 3 seconds or possession goes to the other team.

(If for some reason those two above rule aren't enough I would also think about instituting a "non-aggressive" penalty to the team that's not trying to advance the wall or is time wasting.

3. There are no offsides, or at the very least make it like hockey where it's determined by a static line on the field.

4. Any player can go to any spot on the field any time the want.

5. More physical contact should be allowed. Normal penalties for chances of possession would just be considered incidental contact and ignored as long as the person was trying to go for the ball. Only things that would bring out the yellow card now would function as a normal penalty that would change possession, and yellow and red card would only be given out for the most flagrant of acts. Things like intentional tripping, holding, or using ones arms to hinder the movement of opposing players would not be allowed.

6. I would also think about reducing the number of people on the field. Combined with some of the above rules it would open up more space and allow more scoring. I might also allow unlimited substitutions where players could leave and return to the game as often as they wanted at times they are allowed to substitute now to keep people fresher and the action up.

Maybe if they did all that, or at least most of it soccer might be bearable.
 
I don't really watch because I don't really understand the game. I used other in the poll as I'm not American.

Ok. Well, there's this ball you see and then there's a field with big nets at each end. Two teams consisting of eleven players each try to kick the aforementioned ball into the other team's net.

As D-Rock mentioned, offsides is the dumbest fucking sports rule ever mentioned and that's probably the part you don't understand. Don't worry about it, it's a fucking lame sport that's not worth understanding anyway. Go spend the two hours you would have spent snoozing through a SOCCER game and volunteer at an animal shelter or something productive.
 

roronoa3000

Banned
Sigh.

There are ties in the NFL too. What happens in OT if nobody kicks a FG after the coin toss and the OT runs out? Game ends in a tie.
In the last 3 years I believe there has been I believe 2 ties in the entire NFL. Soccer matches frequently end in ties. Americas generally don't want to watch a sport with no winner. In sports winning is everything.

0-0 ties in soccer? I'd rather have to watch a marathon of Kate plus 8.

Football, Basketball and Baseball were created in America so we play our own sports. Keep your soccer, rugby and cricket.

Americans don't understand soccer.
Kick a round ball into a large net as the other team attempts to stop us. Is that about it? :lmao:
 

Legzman

what the fuck you lookin at?
it's not popular because it's fuckin boring. Though, thats why I don't watch sports period. So I can't really say.
 
4 words, "football", "baseball", "basketball" and "golf".:2 cents:
 
Would it be fair to say that the U.S. is the one country where soccer is not a premier sport?
In South Africa, and Australia, Rugby is much more popular than Soccer. And I don't even mention New Zealand...
 

nightwanker

Proud first owner of FreeOnes Playing Cards
In South Africa, and Australia, Rugby is much more popular than Soccer. And I don't even mention New Zealand...

Yes true but soccer is also popular in these countries. It might not be the number one sport but it is definitely one of the top sports.
 
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