(The Knight Life via GoComics.com)
As the saying goes, All I know is what I read in the papers on the internets. Will Leitch, in NYMag:
… Look, I know: Every four years, someone comes around telling you that this is the year, really, for real, that soccer breaks through in America. (Grantland’s popular Men in Blazers podcast’s motto is “Driven by the belief that soccer is America’s Sport of the Future. As it has been since 1972.”) But this time I mean it: Soccer is about to explode in America, and the U.S. soccer team is an indie band right before they break out. It’s hipster patriotism.
Seven years ago, two kids from Lincoln, Nebraska, who loved soccer, Korey Donahoo and Justin Brunken, realized that every time they went to a U.S. game, they had the darndest time finding, well, U.S. fans. Unlike fútbol boosters around the world, the U.S. men’s national team (USMNT) had no organized fan group, no established group of supporters that would follow them anywhere. So Donahoo and Brunken decided to start their own. They called themselves the American Outlaws.
Today, the American Outlaws have 127 chapters across the country—including American Outlaws Central Jersey and American Outlaws Bloomington-Normal—and more than 18,000 members. They have become among the most vocal, fastest-growing soccer-fan groups in the world, chartering two planes to the World Cup this year and playing a prominent role in ESPN’s promotion of both the U.S. team and the network’s mammoth, monthlong coverage of the event. The New York City chapter, one of the largest in the country, is based at Jack Demsey’s in midtown. The first U.S. game is June 16, against Ghana. It’d be wise to get in line outside right now…
And this might be the last time the U.S. team is less talented than the traditional soccer powers for a while. More and more U.S. players (like Tim Howard and Clint Dempsey) have proved themselves in England; still more have found great growth opportunities in lesser European leagues (Jozy Altidore and Aron Johannsson in Holland, Mix Diskerud in Norway), and the quality of play in the MLS has increased dramatically over the past decade. (There’s no better sign of how confident Klinsmann feels about the team’s future than his decision to leave American legend Landon Donovan off the World Cup roster; he’s cutting ties with the past to secure the more promising future.) Perhaps most encouraging: Through Klinsmann’s diligence, young players with U.S. citizenship, or a claim to it, are choosing to play for the U.S. rather than other nations. Just this year, Julian Green (Bayern Munich) has committed to the American side, and Gedion Zelalem (Arsenal) is rumored to be not far behind, a terrific sign and one that’s generally unprecedented on the world stage….
So, a question for those of you who actually understand soccer: “Hipster patriotism”, or yet another false Spring?…
***********
Apart from dreaming of Brazil, what’s on the agenda for the day?
tybee
soccer just ain’t it.
cool to watch when my kids played it but boring on de tube.
get rid of that “off sides” stuff and open up the scoring and maybe then you’d have something…
OzarkHillbilly
WTF????? Just shoot me. Please.
Joseph Nobles
The President’s in Poland, and he just announced he’s asking Congress for $1 billion to boost the US military presence in Europe.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ukraine-tops-agenda-obama-begins-european-trip
OzarkHillbilly
@tybee:
Hmmmm… That’s funny, I remember saying the exact same thing. About hockey.
Botsplainer
As I came to learn when drunkenly yammering with some Brit at a resort we were at while watching the World Cup a few years ago, it is an intensely defensive sport, and once you watch it with that in mind, you view it in a different light. As the game was running, I mentioned that for my AmericN tastes, the lack of scoring made it seem boring; he smirked and pointed out all the stuff going on.
NotMax
Thanks, but prefer to stick to the thrill of watching paint dry.
JMG
1. US defense too shaky to do much in Cup this year
2. Soccer haters (or ignorers) are forgetting its greatest quality — running time. Games end in two hours except when there’s overtime in playoff situations. Even then it’s only three. Compare that to the average Yankees-Red Sox game, or the last two (HA!) minutes of an NBA playoff game.
Schlemizel
I really tried 4 years ago. I watched games, if the US wasn’t playing I chose a side to root for, I listened to the commentary and analysis, I read the comments here on BJ. Nope, still don’t get it. Maybe just too old to change but I lost my love of US football (mostly) so maybe not.
Ultimately I think the US will have to win the cup to get real excitement about the game here. Even those who understand the game are not going to get very interested when the US loses to “one of those nations”. As for 18,000 fans nations-wide? Well on the average fall – winter and half of spring – Sunday 18 stadiums have 3 or more times that many fans.
OzarkHillbilly
I suppose I should come clean and admit the awful truth: I like watching soccer. There, I said it. I feel better now.
M.C. Simon Milligan
Just make every goal count for seven points and boom, “plenty” of scoring for American tastes.
More and more U.S. players (like Tim Howard and Clint Dempsey) have proved themselves in England;
Proved themselves to be middling journeymen on mid-table clubs. At best. Odd pair to mention since Bradley and Jones are the two that proved themselves, to a degree, at teams that are actually halfway decent (Roma and Schalke). And then left for more money and weaker competition elsewhere.
still more have found great growth opportunities in lesser European leagues (Jozy Altidore and Aron Johannsson in Holland, Mix Diskerud in Norway)
Jozy should have stayed in Holland. Let this be a lesson to you Aron and Mix.
and the quality of play in the MLS has increased dramatically over the past decade.
Ye gods man, it couldn’t have gotten worse. It’s still a tactical wasteland where power and stamina are in far greater supply than technique or skill.
We’re doomed until we revamp our youth system into something other than a means to discover the very best doctors’ and lawyers’ sons available. And we have to get rid of NCAA soccer as it is played now. It ruins decent players.
Derelict
Yep–they mean it this time. Can we put the “soccer is the next big thing” meme up on the shelf right next to “power too cheap to meter”?
Schlemizel
@M.C. Simon Milligan:
Help me out please, what exactly is the NCAA game doing wrong? I’m still trying to understand the game.
Betty Cracker
@Joseph Nobles: Well, it’s not like we could use that money at home to fix crumbling infrastructure or feed hungry kids or anything. Might as well piss it away in Europe.
p.a.
@M.C. Simon Milligan: as an interested but very occasional viewer, pls expand: what is wrong w/NCAA soccer and why?
I love watching World Cup and like the occasional Premier League games of various countries. Watching those makes watching MLS unbearable.
JPL
@Joseph Nobles: Oh no! What will John McCain say?
The President once again shirked his responsibility by not asking for two billion.
Frankensteinbeck
Forget it. Soccer doesn’t have the traditional tribal loyalties of football and basketball, and I guess baseball. In fact, the lack of baseball being popular where I am helps make the point. There’s no dedicated ‘our team’ sentiment. Without the tense ‘Will we win?’ excitement, popularity is an uphill battle.
@Betty Cracker:
It’s not like we could use it. There’s no way we can get funding passed for any of those things here. In fact, I doubt we can get it passed there. The money would probably be useful, since he hedges his bets, but this is Obama trolling the GOP again. ‘They won’t even vote for defense.’
Raven
Sunrise on the top of Stone Mountain
Raven
Sunrise on the top of Stone Mountain
Ben Cisco
@Frankensteinbeck:
DING DING DING!
thruppence
California primary election today.
With new open primaries the top two vote getters, regardless of party, compete in the general election.
Voooooooooooote!
debbie
Not until they lose the vuvuzelas.
Baud
This thread is slow.
Oh, that’s right, we’re talking about soccer. Never mind.
;-)
dino
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbn3rOPmR9w
It’s really a simple game and easy to follow, (just get worried/excited as the ball gets close to goal) and very hard to understand. I like it because it is one of the few sports where Americans are underdogs.
meninblazers.com is a national treasure. Typical query: In light of all the German nationals on the American team, which nation should the US invade next? Uruguay? Brazil? and where are our Iraqi and Afghani midfielders?
TS
@Joseph Nobles:
And some fool in the WHPC asked him – at a press conference in Poland – about bringing a POW home from Afghanistan. GOP mouthpieces
AxelFoley
Soccer’s one of those games that’s fun to play, but boring to watch. Same with tennis and hockey.
srv
Can’t have spring with climate change, ergo, Soccer will not take off.
Lee
This image is what you need to know about the future of soccer in the US.
It was taken at a moderately sized park by my house around 8:30am on a Saturday morning. The park looks like that all day every Saturday for 13 weeks. They estimate over a 1000 players are there over the course of the day. I’m standing in about the center of the park. What you see in the image is also behind me over both shoulders. There is also a lower portion of the park that you can’t really see in the image.
It has been like that for almost 10 years now.
Just One More Canuck
@NotMax: so baseball then?
Punchy
No offense Anne, but is BJ bringing back the resident soccer FPer, Rohidiho or something like that?
Someguy
Soccer. Sheesh. It turns out Qatar bribed FIFA somewhere between a cubic shit ton and a mettric assload of millions to situate the Cup in that desert wonderland.
Meanwhile, ESPN is running stories about how a number of the qualifiers were rigged by an Oceana crime syndicate, and that this has cast some doubt on the integrity of the round robin and knockout games…
If Soccer is America’s Sport of the Future, then Halliburton is America’s Company of the Future, and U.S. President Kwame Kilpatrick will be attending the US team’s games in 2022…
Someguy
And I know All Things Foreign are superior to All Things Amurrican, but soccer is the sport of drunken rock throwing mobs in much of the world. Sure, it’s only the bottom half of fans who give the other half a bad name. But still. Soccer fans in most of the world make the odious Philadelphia Eagles fan base seem like an effete pack of wine and cheese tasting Ivy League grads.
Chyron HR
@Someguy:
Leave us not forget the eurotrash riots that those effete cheese-swilling Marylanders throw when their college “futbol” team loses.
Or wins.
Someguy
Chyron, I will have you know that Sofa Burning is an ancient and honored tradition in The Most Reluctant of Union States, Maryland. Just as Injured Football Player Ambulance Tipping is one of the most highly respected activities for Athlete-Student-Bibulists in The Ol’ Inbred State, West-by-God Virginny.
Look, I didn’t say mid-Atlantic gridiron fans were good, just that world soccer fans are bad and the Copa Mondial is as crooked as a Republican senator.
NotMax
@Derelict
Also too, the paperless office.
@Just One More Canuck
Heh.
Baseball is a rash America inflicted upon the skin of humanity Anything which gets George Will excited cannot be good for you.
Suffern ACE
We hear about soccer as the next big thing every four years, then nothing. Our women’s team dominated in the 1990s. The men are still trying to figure out how to play.
Richard Mayhew
@M.C. Simon Milligan: Amen to that — and this is speaking as someone who has paid the mortgage more than once, the youth developmental system in most of the country is mostly a marker of wealth and flexible schedules more than skill. The clubs train in the suburbs, the coaches go to where the money is, and they train stupidly as the parents expect to win at U-12 when they should expect development. There is such a thing as good soccer and winning soccer at U-12 but it is rare in the US, while there is plenty of really bad tactical soccer at U-12 which is “good” enough to win at that level but produces players who can’t think and can’t handle a possession game.
big ole hound
@M.C. Simon Milligan: How does the NCAA ruin players?
Betty Cracker
@Someguy: Yet another sign of American decline, to be eclipsed even in hooliganism. I believe I’ve read about soccer fans assassinating and even decapitating refs. Sounds pretty hardcore to me.
RSA
Sometimes I’m surprised how hard it would be to make up names for a story that are better than people’s real names.
cmorenc
@Richard Mayhew:
Here in the Triangle area of N.C., there is a BU-12 team that has unquestionably been taught both great skills *and* thoughtful tactics amazingly well – they strongly resemble a miniature Spanish national team or FC Barcelona. They do win, regularly crushing opponents whose coaches have them playing the kind of “really bad tactical soccer” you refer to above, but do so the right way that hopefully will pay huge dividends as these kids age up through their teenage years. I had the pleasure of being CR for their games four different times this spring, and each one of them felt like a privilige to watch such well-coached talent-in-progress create genuine “beautiful game” skilled artwork.
Kylroy
@M.C. Simon Milligan: “Just make every goal count for seven points and boom, “plenty” of scoring for American tastes.”
Hate this every time I read it. Dredging up something I wrote in 2010:
“Here’s one set of match results:
4-2, 3-3, 2-2, 4-2, 3-1
Here’s another:
1-1, 2-0, 3-0, 0-0, 1-0
One of them is the results of the last 5 World Cup finals, one is the results of the last 5 Super Bowls divided by seven and rounded down (even if the remainder was 6). Can you guess which is which?”
Argue for the virtues of association football all you want, but pretending it isn’t noticeably lower scoring than any sport popular in the U.S. doesn’t help your case.
rikyrah
Rev. Al has been doing a great job finding different angles to point out the absurdity of the GOP going against the First Lady’s healthy food in schools program.
Did find out something interesting from Rev. Al’s segment yesterday. I had thought that the standards and everything they’ve been working on are already law. Facts are, the law gets re-authorized in 2015.
I did appreciate Rev. Al’s guest comparing this fight to the fight from the GOP about Obamacare. Love pointing out the parallel.
I also loved the example of comparing the plates. How ketchup was qualified as a ‘vegetable’- yes, thank you Ronald Reagan.
That this is about Big Food.
Celeb chef Tom Colicchio bashes GOP food plan
Republicans in the House have been pushing to roll back some of the healthy lunch standards that First Lady Michelle Obama has championed. Celebrity chef Tom Colicchio explains why he’s speaking out against those efforts, and what makes a balanced meal for American kids.
http://www.msnbc.com/politicsnation/watch/celeb-chef-bashes-gop-food-plan-272409155677
hoodie
Soccer is more interesting to watch if you played or were around it a significant amount growing up and can appreciate the motor skill level and the tactics. I love baseball but know people who find baseball excruciatingly boring. They’re mostly people who didn’t spend hours on sandlots and in little league playing it and don’t really get what it takes to throw a pinpoint curveball from 60 feet or hit a 95 mph fastball, and who don’t have enough familiarity with the game to get into the tactics and atmosphere. It is really difficult to play soccer well, as you’re using the parts of the human anatomy that are generally the least capable of fine motor control. The skill level of even MLS professional players is miles beyond your average weekend warrior, and the skill level of world-level players is unimaginable except to those pretty familiar with the game. Added to that, the whole culture of soccer is pretty foreign to most Americans. Growing up with weekend soccer leagues in the suburbs is not the same as endless pickup games on dirt lots and the adulation that soccer stars receive in Europe or South America. The US developmental league system will produce some good soccer players because the US is full of athletes perfectly capable of playing it well, but most of them are playing football or basketball instead. Soccer will never have the status of other sports in the US until underprivileged kids take it up in numbers and exhibit the same type of monomaniacal focus towards it that you see with, for example, basketball.
Betty Cracker
@hoodie: I never appreciated baseball until I started focusing on the pitching. I think HDTV helps in this regard. I can see why people find baseball boring; unless you notice the crazy, impossible things pitchers can make that ball do and start taking an interest in the strategy of the game, it is a bit like watching paint dry.
Morzer (0th of His PseudoName and Founder of the Walter Sobchak Peacekeepers)
@Kylroy:
By that argument, cricket, which regularly posts scores of 300+ in the longer formats, and 160+ in the shortest format ought to have swept the US by now.
Morzer (0th of His PseudoName and Founder of the Walter Sobchak Peacekeepers)
These days I tend to enjoy women’s soccer more than the men’s game: much less diving, fewer incidents of thuggish behavior, lots of skill. There was an amazing world cup final in 2011 between the US and Japan, which was easily one of the best games of any sport that I’ve ever seen.
Tripod
@p.a.:
Nothing. (Outside of the usual sins of the NCAA)
The basis of the argument is taking an athlete and drop them into the right environment and instant Pele’s and world cup victory. USA! USA!
It’s the soccer equivalent of chopping the tails off mice in the hopes of breeding tailless mice. The idea holds sway in echo chambers like bigsoccer. My fandom is pure, it must be SOMEBODIES fault the US hasn’t won the world cup. Let’s blame youth soccer, NCAA soocer and MLS.
Just One More Canuck
@Richard Mayhew:
Richard, my (9 yo) daughter is in her first year of competitive soccer up here in Canuckistan – as someone who never played the game except in phys ed classes, I’d like to know more about the different tactics you speak of so that I can understand what her coaches (all ex NCAA players and certified coaches) are telling her . Is there a direction you can point me – a “Soccer for dummy parents?”
Thx
LeeM
@Richard Mayhew: As a U-11 coach, I agree.Its frustrating to spend years coaching possession, playing out of the back, playing through the midfield, smart movement, etc, only to encounter teams that just kick and chase. Makes the game ugly and brutish. The upper levels of the youth game are getting better, as state & regional ODP programs seem to have adopted a broader national vision of worrying about form over scores, but at the league level it is based on win % so the youth clubs can attract paying customers.
Kylroy
@Betty Cracker: *sigh* The theory is that Americans don’t like low scoring games, not that they automatically love high scoring ones. Not like Arena Football took the country by storm either.
I just hate that “silly American, multiply the points by seven if it slakes your barbaric thirst for higher scores” because it’s a demonstrably false equivalence. There’s no reason a low scoring sport can’t be good, so argue why it’s good rather than taking (inaccurate) shots at other sports.
Kylroy
Last comment meant to reply to Morzer, not Betty. Sorry about that.
Morzer (0th of His PseudoName and Founder of the Walter Sobchak Peacekeepers)
@Kylroy:
I think we are in agreement about the silliness of the high-scoring argument. After all, golf hasn’t exactly suffered from players keeping their scores as low as possible.
Higgs Boson's Mate
For me, sports are like music: if I don’t enjoy what’s being played coming in then no amount of explaining the composition of the piece and the musicianship required to play it is going to make me like it any better.
shelley
Yeah, this is the year soccer breaks thru into the America mainstream, just like the metric system will finally take hold.
Kylroy
@Morzer (0th of His PseudoName and Founder of the Walter Sobchak Peacekeepers): Ehh…I think the low scoring issue is something of an issue for the game trying to get a broader following in the U.S. But not as big as, say, how much Americans hate tie games.
Personally, as a sports fan, “loss time” boggles my mind. Every American sport drama cliche revolves around the last second shot, the bottom of the ninth home run, desperately trying to form up to spike the ball before the clock runs out; the idea that you’ll just play an indeterminate amount of additional time until a ref decides you’re done seems weird.
hoodie
@Kylroy: Baseball certainly proves that scoring is not essential for popularity in American sports. People like home runs but, in fact, high scoring baseball games tend to be the most boring (American League games are notorious for that). The timing of the hit is more important, i.e., five home runs in the first inning generally signals a snoozer and time to go mow the grass, but a walkoff homer in the bottom of the 9th in a 1-run pitchers’ duel is near the apex.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Morzer (0th of His PseudoName and Founder of the Walter Sobchak Peacekeepers):
I’ll never forget the last golf tournament I attended. There must have been 80,000 White people in the stands. It took me 45 minutes to get a beer fer crissake.
hoodie
@Kylroy:
This is a good point. The way that soccer resolves ties with extra time when everyone is out of gas and/or penalty kicks absolutely sucks. They should use some metric like time of possession and/or shots on goal to resolve ties. That would punish teams that don’t build attacks and just boot the ball on defense. Same goes for hockey.
Morzer (0th of His PseudoName and Founder of the Walter Sobchak Peacekeepers)
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
My inability to take golf seriously derives from my father who, when we went on vacation, would take us to pitch and putt courses and proceed to inflict an hour or so of acute embarrassment on us. He had the odd habit of jumping in the air, both feet off the ground, when he hit his tee shot, with predictably disastrous results. If you ever wanted to see a loving family try desperately to look like trees and unconnected to the random lunatic who happened to be in close proximity to them…..
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Morzer (0th of His PseudoName and Founder of the Walter Sobchak Peacekeepers):
Brilliant imagery! I loves it. A good friend who was an avid golfer tried with might and main to get me interested in the sport. I quit after killing a flamingo, whose only crime was hanging around a water hazard, with a tee shot. Caught that bird right on the breast while my ball was still on the rise.
Kylroy
@hoodie: Yeah, but baseball still has noticeably more scoring than association football. A 2-1 baseball game is a pitcher’s duel, where in FIFA play it’s practically a shootout.
Morzer (0th of His PseudoName and Founder of the Walter Sobchak Peacekeepers)
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
My mother was utterly uninterested in golf, but she got so frustrated by my father’s antics that she would begin urging him to take the game seriously in polite, but increasingly vehement terms. Admittedly, she must have been used to his general demeanor when it came to sports. When they were young and courting, she loved tennis with a passion, and played it endlessly with her sisters on the small grass court her family had in the back garden. She refused to play with my father after a couple of attempts because he took an immense delight in hitting the ball as hard as he could, generally over the roof of the house.
How did you handle your involuntary flamingocide? Did you look round to make sure no-one else had seen you and then scurry discreetly off the course?
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Morzer (0th of His PseudoName and Founder of the Walter Sobchak Peacekeepers):
Nope, we threw the expired flamingo in the back of our cart and gave it to the starter on our way out.
cmorenc
@Kylroy:
“Stoppage time” at the end of soccer games is not nearly so indeterminate as you assume – typically as the end of regulation time in each half imminently approaches, the center referee will indicate (rounded to whole minutes) how much “stoppage time” is being added. You’d also be correct that FIFA-rules soccer games are without any precise zero-clock ending, which is why any visible clock traditionally counts UP rather than down, but you’d be wrong that this is sharply different than the last-play-continuation in American pointy football past expiration of time, including that if there is any penalty against the defensive team on said last-play, the attacking team gets another play. The difference is that soccer is a much more continuous game not broken up into discretely separate “plays” (except for corner kicks and free kicks following a foul) and instead, the informal prevailing practice is that the referee will choose a moment to end the game at a moment when the ball is positioned or at least heading in a direction where no imminent goal-scoring chance is possible.
I should also point out that there are no time-outs in soccer, and one of the wonderful blessings this adds is that a soccer match is overwhelmingly controlled by players (and dynamic player decisions) rather than being a plodding chess match controlled by coaches (most effective coaching is done in practices, not games). You will not see Jurgen Klinsman (US Men’s national team coach) wearing a headset during the game; at most, soccer coaches are constrained during games to shouting some tactical advice to players away from the ball, but are far more distraction than help to players dynamically engaged in play on the ball.
This less definite ending-moment seems to only bother some American sensibilities and no one else on the planet – knowledgeable fans can anticipate fairly closely when the referee will likely blow the final whistle. By contrast, high school and college soccer (which have somewhat Americanized rules) make a total butchery out of the ending moments of soccer by insisting on overlaying a countown-to-zero exact by-the-clock ending without also importing any sort of “last play” element incorporated into pointy football and even basketball (where a shot that’s left the hand of the shooter before 0:00 is still good even if it doesn’t actually go in until after the buzzer, and the court is small enough to make a last-second shot possible from anywhere on the court). The result is that the last 10-30 seconds of close high school or college soccer games are deadly dull far more often than thrillingly exciting.
Aditya
The enthusiasm and all might be there this time, but when you’re drawn in a group that includes Germany and Portugal with only two able to qualify, the true test will be if/when the US does not go through to the next round!
Captain C
@hoodie: The original NASL had a good way to resolve ties, similar to a hockey shootout. The ball would be placed at the 35-yard line (which the NASL used for offsides, instead of the midfield line), and starting from there, a player from one team would have 5 seconds to maneuver and get off a shot at the other team’s goal, while the opposing team’s goalie would try to stop them. Each team would get 5 tries (unless one went up by 3-0 or 4-1, in which case a victory was mathematically assured to the higher scoring team). These were actually pretty exciting, and not nearly as arbitrary as the penalty kick scenario.
Runt
Please stay away from football, America! If Americans dominated international football, it would probably be managed like you manage international boxing: Several competing World Cups and “world champions” all over the place. Not to mention that you probably would take away the qualifying matches to make sure the big teams always make it to the finals.
Sublime33
Soccer is generational. Few people over 50 played it, a significant number under 40 did. The more you understand a game, the more inclined you are to watch it.
As for the commenter who said hockey is boring, you obviously haven’t been watching this year’s Stanley Cup playoffs. Montreal – Boston; New York- Pittsburgh; Chicago – Los Angeles; Colorado – Minnesota have all posted killer series.
moderateindy
Soccer is dull not because of a lack of scoring, but because it lacks legitimate scoring chances. Even during a low scoring football game there are multiple plays that have an opportunity to turn into a score. Soccer has very little of that quick strike possibillity that makes a sport fun to watch.
Tripod
Leitch is wrong. It’s not that the sport isn’t growing in the US, but that it’s such a diffuse set of fandoms. Once every four year World Cup fans, immigrants who follow the home league, MLS fans, Eurowankers, youth participants. It can be highly profitable mix, but it’s not something that translates easily into a sports entertainment monolith. It’s hard to hook Joe Sixpack with complex tales of the global transfer market.
Lee
There is one more thing I put as a positive about attending a soccer game versus football, baseball & basketball. A regulation game will take 120 minutes from start to finish.
I live 5 minutes from a MLS soccer stadium. Leaving for the game to back home usually takes about 2.5 hours.
Lee
@moderateindy:
You have watched very little soccer.
Morzer (0th of His PseudoName and Founder of the Walter Sobchak Peacekeepers)
@moderateindy:
But you could argue that football tends to be very much a start/stop affair and five minutes in real time could easily be ~2 minutes of game time, with perhaps a field goal opportunity. Five minutes of soccer could easily see two shots on goal and teams going end to end multiple times.
Kylroy
@cmorenc: Yeah, I can see the parallels to last play in gridiron and buzzer shot in basketball, but two things:
1. Both those are matter of a few seconds. Loss time in association football can be significant fractions of a minute before the ref decides that things have calmed down. Which leads to:
2. The whole thing rests on a “gentleman’s agreement” of the kind that American sports rarely have. The ref won’t end the game if somebody’s threatening to score? So he’ll give a team more than the allotted amount of time as long as they’re keeping things interesting? American sports have things like replay review and the infield fly rule, because *fuck* if we are going to trust somebody with a judgement call if we don’t have to.
danimal
All the soccer naysayers are going to have to come up with some interesting explanations for the ever-increasing ratings, ever-increasing television exposure and ever-increasing attendance. You don’t have to like the sport, but denying the building wave of soccer enthusiasm just makes you look stupid.
Just watch the EPL and World Cup ratings. And MLS isn’t world-class yet, but they’re doing pretty well in attendance and in attracting talent.
tsquared2001
My love affair with soccer can be traced to 1982 when a tremendously good looking footballer named Paolo Rossi scored three times, beating a loaded Brazilian side en route to the World Cup title which included beating the hated Germans as the icing on the cake.
So, all you need to enjoy the World Cup is handsome, fit men (and soccer is full of handsome, fit men) and a hated country that you can root against (and the World Cup is chock full of hateful countries).
MCA1
@Lee: Don’t sound so defensive. I’m guessing moderateindy has watched plenty. So have I, and I’ve played some and have a brother who played collegiate soccer. This is one of the primary deficiencies of the sport, in my mind. You may think of every corner or free kick from 40 yards in, or any touch in space by a striker, as a “legitimate scoring chance” but that would be like classifying every pass through the high slot in a hockey game as such. If those opportunities turned into goals more often, then they might be thought of differently by casual fans. I get that for some afficionados, the difficulty of capitalizing on opportunities in soccer, and the rarity of turning chances into points, makes them more precious and therefore it’s more exciting when goals do happen. But you can’t argue that there’s an equivalent to the 70 yard touchdown pass or a grand slam when there just isn’t one. You can’t score from your own backfield in soccer, and you can’t get multiple goals on one shot. And you can’t argue that a game where the shots on goal over the course of 90 minutes is usually around a third of what you get in 60 minutes in a hockey game, produces a lot of “legitimate” scoring opportunities.
For me, this stems from the thing I can’t wrap my head around most about soccer, which hoodie celebrated upthread (and I understand, but just take the opposite side of it): it’s centered around depriving ourselves of our primary evolutionary advantage of hand-eye coordination. If we were meant to use only our feet, we’d be holding forks between our toes. It’s just illogical to me, in addition to making it so hard to actually execute the game that the moments during which I think “ooooh, here comes a real chance for a goal” are few and far between. Can soccer superfans just accept that, and not think everyone who doesn’t appreciate the shiny diamond of the one goal in a 1-0 game are Luddites?
Combined with a prevalence of the “lesser” team being able to win or force a tie more often than in any other team sport, through cynical tactics and relying on how hard it is to actually put the ball in the net even if you’re the superior team (again, I recognize that some people like this; I just don’t), and I just can’t love the game. I do like it, though.
Richard Mayhew
@cmorenc: Agreed — there is a a club in my area whose U-10/U-11/U-12 teams I love refereeing for multiple reasons (field near my house, nice parents, friendly coaches, nice kids) but the biggest reason is that they think the game as they should. There are times when they are trying to play a little triangle game and they don’t have the leg or the ball squirts funny, but they are seeing what they should be doing and playing as a cohesive team with a shared objective in mind. It is just pretty to watch, and a sixty minute game goes really quick because it is fun. One of their flights went through the local State Cup league like shit through a goose because they could play posession and shift the field despite the fact they were playing a year up. They opted to skip going to regionals as they are spending the summer playing the pre-DA teams within a 6 hour drive, but I would not be suprised if there are two MLS players and half a dozen D-1 scholarship players on that U-12 team in five years.
@Just One More Canuck: Look for whether or not the coaches are teaching possession and foot skills. Can you daughter, while at a full run, stop the ball that she is dribbling within a single step? Can she trap the ball off a pass? Is her head up when she is moving with the ball? Are the preferred passes 5-10 yards in length or does her team just want to dump the ball over the defense and send 7 players chasing it? Does her team go sideways, diaganol, backwards and forward to where there is space and softness or do they just go forward? Does her team practice rotating players off of fixed positions to where there is space/need for support or are they locked into static roles? Is there flow to a game, or is it herky jerky?
If there is flow and the ball is moving a lot in short connections, the coaches are doing a really good job of developping your daughter’s skills with the objective of making her a well rounded player in her mid-teens. If they are playing dump and run while counting on having one or two older/bigger/faster girls taking advantage of their temporary physical superiority, then it is ugly and counter-productive developmental soccer.
MCA1
@Morzer (0th of His PseudoName and Founder of the Walter Sobchak Peacekeepers): It could, or it could contain teams going end to end multiple times and 0 shots on goal. In any event, I think the point was that you can’t score when possessing the ball in midfield and building from the back – you’re building – whereas in American football there is a chance, on each and every snap, that a touchdown will occur. Likewise, there’s a chance that any given pitch in a baseball game will be driven over the left field fence. Doesn’t happen often, but the possibility is there.
Lee
@Kylroy:
It really is less vague as it seems. It is the same as in American football when the clock runs out the play will continue until the ball is dead.
Morzer (0th of His PseudoName and Founder of the Walter Sobchak Peacekeepers)
@MCA1:
It’s a pretty darn exiguous chance that you’ll see a touchdown much less a FG on plays from behind the 50 yard line, just as you rarely get shots at goal from that range in soccer. The reality of the situation is that if you want to see rapid end to end play, soccer is a better bet on a game by game basis. If you want a game with more defined ways of scoring points, plus a much bigger scoring zone, you’ll probably prefer football. Opinions differ, tastes vary and the world has room for both sports.
Richard Mayhew
@Lee: Disagree — for USSF/FIFA rules, it is a massive violation of the social contract and informal norms for a referee to blow the whistle to end the period/game when there is an imminent goal scoring opportunity… If there is an attack crossing at least the attacking team’s center circle where the attackers are at least even numbers with the defenders, and time has reached at least the 90th or the end of added time, the referee is strongly inclined to give the attacking team one last chance. It better be a quick chance, for as soon as a defender gets a good poke on the ball or the attackers just start to fuck around, the whistle will be blown, but a fast moving attack, or a corner kick will see the ball either in the back of the net or out of danger before the whistle is blown.
Blowing the whistle in this situation is a great way for a referee to destroy his future credibility and confidence with teams even if what he did is technically correct and well within the laws of the game.
pseudonymous in nc
@M.C. Simon Milligan:
Quoted for truth. You can understand Klinsmann’s attention towards German-Americans who’ve grown up in a country with a proper youth system, but that has to be seen as a transitional thing.
But that’ll involve having some kind of regional framework in place for recruitment, and it’ll also involve upsetting the comfortable world of recreational and semi-competitive youth clubs in the SUV suburbs.
@Kylroy:
I am a filthy foreigner, but I’ll offer counter-examples: the interminable last five minutes in a basketball game, where it’s either garbage time, or fouls and timeouts; the fourth quarter in a blowout NFL game; the fruitlessness of so many bottom of the ninths where there’s technically a chance of coming back but it doesn’t usually happen. The price that American sport pays for its final-second drama moments is an abundance of shitty going-through-the-motions endings where half the crowd have headed to the exits.
Football is fundamentally a game where direct control of the clock is out of the players’ hands, and I like that a lot.
@hoodie: Dear god no. Americans are too obsessed with generating bullshit stats from the game already. The Championship playoff in England had an injury-time equaliser against the run of play and an extra-time winner when the players were dead on their feet, and it was riveting to watch.
MCA1
@danimal: I don’t think people are denying increasing attendance for MLS games, or that the Outlaws is a real thing, or anything of the sort. I do think people are saying “18,000 fans organizing is not really a big number in a nation of 320M people.” And increased television time, in a world of exploding media options, is not dispositive of much. My sense is that the World Cup has always drawn a lot of casual and semi-casual fans in to go with the diehards, and then they don’t watch much afterwards (and they wouldn’t even if the USMNT made the semi’s, etc.). Clearly the EPL and Liga being on ESPN on Saturdays is a sign of some changes and growth in the soccer consumer base in the U.S., but we won’t see a true tipping point until people outside of the Pacific Northwest identify with their local MLS team to the same degree they do with their local MLB or NFL or NBA team. That may well happen some day, but that day is not likely 3-5 years away. My kids play, and more youth are participating than ever before, but they won’t each and every one of them grow up to be a serious soccer fan in a nation where the airwaves are saturated with other, much more established sports with a lot more money and exposure. I’ve not once been asked if we can turn on a Fire game on a Saturday afternoon. A large part of the large participation rates in youth soccer is the accessibility of the game to young bodies and minds; it actually resembles a game by the time they’re 6 or 7 even if they’re nowhere close to mastering it. At least they can grasp the sport, as opposed to baseball or basketball which are just too difficult from a skills (and rules) perspective to even comprehend, much less gain any proficiency, at that age. Every kid in our town plays soccer from ages 4 or 5 to about 7, but then 90% of them fall away. There’s building going on, but it’s not overnight or on the cusp of an explosion (my opinion only, of course).
MCA1
@Morzer (0th of His PseudoName and Founder of the Walter Sobchak Peacekeepers): I don’t disagree, I just think the original poster of the point was (I think) coming from a perspective that put great value in even that small likelihood of the lightning bolt, and someone else was arguing that the difference just didn’t exist, which I thought was silly and overly defensive. I think you and I are in agreement of celebrating the differences and realizing that there are legitimate reasons to favor one type of game over another. I do, however, think that there’s a tendency amongst some soccer fans to think of anyone who doesn’t appreciate their favorite sport to the degree they do as some idiot redneck SEC gridiron nut who’s never actually watched or taken any time to try and appreciate the game. Which is understandable, because for a long time jokes about 1-0 games were about as much depth as you’d get out of non-soccer afficionados if you asked them about it. But I think there are enough people who’ve been well exposed to the game and just find legitimate reasons not to fall head over heels in love with it that the defensive attitude of some soccer lovers rubs me the wrong way.
askew
The only thing I care about from the World Cup is the songs that come out. In 2010, we had Shakira’s Waka Waka and Waving Flags. This year we have Shakira’s La, La, La Brazil and the horrible “official” song by Pitbull and J-Lo.
MCA1
@Morzer (0th of His PseudoName and Founder of the Walter Sobchak Peacekeepers): Meant to add that I like your taxonomy there. I’m a huge fan of classifying different “types” of sports and games, and could spend hours on the barstool argument of what is and isn’t a sport, vs. athletic endeavor, etc. In the category of goal scoring sports, I think we have: soccer, lacrosse, field and ice hockey (and bandy), water polo, handball, and arguably basketball (although the differentiation between 1, 2 and 3 point shots, and other rules differences leading to a very high prevalence of scoring almost put it in a different category). I’d rank them from the top in terms of my own personal preference as a spectator as: ice hockey, basketball, soccer, indifference to/ignorance of most of the others, lacrosse.
Long Tooth
Soccer is already popular with U.S. kids, of course. But it will take a World Cup championship to sell the professional sport to Mr. & Mrs. Front Porch. Americans love a winner, and when (not if) it happens people will be coming out of the woodwork to jump on the bandwagon. But not until then.
Larv
@MCA1:
Sure, and soccer fans are frequently irritated by the defensive attitude of many non-fans who insist that this is due to some fundamental defiiciency of the game.
I love both soccer and American football, but I’m baffled by people who claim that the gridiron game is more “exciting”. You said above that in football a touchdown can occur on any snap. But considering that there’s only a snap every 1-2 minutes, that’s still not really that often. It can take much less time than that to move a soccer ball from midfield to the attack.The most common complaint I’ve heard from people from soccer countries about US football is that it’s boring, because so much time is spent between blows of the whistle.
Look, if you don’t like soccer that’s fine. But considering that many millions of people like it just fine, you may want to consider that the problem isn’t that there is some flaw in the game that needs fixing, but rather that there’s a flaw in your perception or knowledge of the game.
Kylroy
@pseudonymous in nc: I’d call stop – start finishes vs. indeterminate finishes a matter of personal taste, but I’ll concede it’s a tradeoff of occasional high drama vs. frequent garbage time. I’m amused that we both end up arguing that making something rare is what makes it valuable – scoring being rare in association football, close games being rare(r) in American sports.
Personally (and this I don’t believe this applies to other American sports fans), if my team is playing I like a nice decisive game, win or lose – I have enough tension in my life already.
Just One More Canuck
@Richard Mayhew: Thanks very much Richard – this does sound a lot like the approach her coach is using – lots of movement, looking for open space, etc.
Cpl Cam
@tybee: I’ve been saying this for years. If you are the defender and the offense gets behind you, fuck you, out shouldn’t be there job to stay in front of you. Friends who are aficionados always reply with something about how it’s needed for proper “spacing” on the field. To which I say: enjoy your nil-nil ties, suckers.
Stan Gable
@Long Tooth:
There was an article on 538 a few weeks back that noted that there’s a good argument America and CD Guadalajara (maybe some others) from Liga MX are bigger sports brands than ANY NHL team at the moment and were bigger brands than a decent number of lower tier NFL and NBA teams. Tijuana is trying to position itself as San Diego’s team to a certain degree.
So it depends on what you mean by “US” and “popular.”
Cpl Cam
Why does it always tell me my comment failed to be published? It didn’t fail, there it is. Anyway, sorry for the double…
MCA1
@Larv: Every sport has deficiencies and flaws [except baseball, which is perfect :^)], and every spectator will think more or less of those deficiencies based on their preferences. I said above that I liked soccer. I’ve never stated that it needs “fixing.” I just can’t come to love it and have given rational justifications, so please get off your high horse. Perhaps you haven’t actually read the entirety of the posts upthread. As to the football point about scoring, I have not advocated that the simple fact that a TD can occur on any snap overcomes the fact that 95% of a broadcast consists of people not running plays, although it’s obviously a factor for some – there was a technical argument above about “scoring chances” and I was rebutting someone who was making an apples to oranges argument comparing games with discrete “plays” to one with a continuous flow.
That I don’t love soccer is not tantamount to not understanding it or not liking it at all, and your suggestion that I just don’t get it is insulting and exactly the attitude I’ve been trying to caution against in this thread. I’ve spent plenty of hours watching, playing, and even coaching (but not ref’ing) soccer to settle on a well-informed opinion about it. There’s not a “problem” here at all, although I’m admittedly spending a lot of time arguing for a meh attitude – I guess I’m just overly sensitive to an element I perceive as pushing an “It’s obviously the greatest sport ever and you don’t appreciate nuance in sport” attitude. I think soccer would do better by being less defensive and dismissive of anyone who’s not drawn to it, and just celebrate it for what it is. The fact that the linked article and subject of the original post even exists is evidence of that defensiveness. Which, again, I understand after decades of having the sport belittled as not masculine enough, too Euro, etc., etc., but that’s not the prevailing wind anymore. The game’s reached a level of general acceptance that wasn’t there 25 years ago. I don’t think there have been a whole bunch of “Guffaw, look at the namby pamby soccer players. Let’s see someone get decleated! Yuk yuk” posts here.
Howlin Wolfe
@Punchy: Randinho (Portuguese diminutive of “Randy”) – presumably a name not a condition. I don’t know what the Portuguese word for “horny” is.
Howlin Wolfe
@NotMax: I’ve tried not to let George Will’s maunderings about the great game of baseball ruin it for me. But I’m hooked on it, and I like it for the action, such as it is. To me, each pitch is something to hang on.
Look, even basketball, that epitome of all action-all-the-time, is boring if you don’t know what’s going on. I didn’t appreciate the sport until my son started playing it. So when some random critic tears down baseball (“it’s like watching paint dry” is the usual cliche) and says OH NOEZ GEO EFFING WILL LIKES IT! Just because a known asshole likes jazz doesn’t mean I have to not like it in response.
I say, fine, you fine smart people don’t like baseball, maybe enough people will leave it so the sport will purge the money out of it and the players will play more for the love of the game, a la soccer.
That being said, there is a noticeable difference in the play between the Bigs (where the money draws the best players) and the minors and independent leagues. I do like good baseball, and the best athletes play it the best..
Lee
@Richard Mayhew:
I think I either wrote it wrong or you read it wrong. That is my point. In American Football under certain circumstances the play continues even if the clock runs out. In soccer, the play continues as well even if the clock runs out.
moderateindy
Not to be an elitist, but the reason that soccer is so popular worldwide has very little to do with how interesting it is, and everything to do with economics. Soccer is a poor man’s sport. It is accessible to everyone, in that it basically costs nothing to play. In fact, even a proper ball isn’t neccessary. I had an Egyptian friend that use to tell me how you didn’t want to be the last one out to the field, because the ball consisted of everyone’s socks stuffed into one another, so the last guy out ended up with stretched out dirty socks.
So the argument that soccer mus be great, because so many people love it wordwide is silly, because the reason they love it is that they literally had zero opportunities to participate in anything else.
mere mortal
“Perhaps most encouraging: Through Klinsmann’s diligence, young players with U.S. citizenship, or a claim to it, are choosing to play for the U.S. rather than other nations.”
This is insane. Having dual-citizen players choose your team is more likely a sign of your team’s weakness, not strength. If Green or Zelalem was good enough to take a spot on the German team, he would.
Chris Kaman played for the German Olympic basketball team, not because because the US team was on the decline, he did it because he wasn’t good enough to make the US squad.
Kylroy
@moderateindy: Eh, that theory doesn’t explain why western Europe is so in love with the sport, though. But I would argue it explains why basketball seems to be doing so much better abroad than baseball or gridiron football.
Aside – apparently gridiron football has enough of a following in Britain to pack Wembley for one game a year. They’ve been doing for almost half a decade now, so I have to assume people are coming for more than the novelty value. I’m stunned that anybody not raised with the sport can follow it – everything happens in six second bursts, and if you don’t have a lifetime experience of knowing what to look for I have to imagine it’s unbelievably confusing.
Stan Gable
@mere mortal:
De Rossi and Subotic both passed on the US a few years ago, so all things being equal, you should be happy that Klinsmann is locking up the new guys. I believe the Spanish squad is bringing a Brazilian along with them, so this is not restricted to the US.
pseudonymous in nc
@Stan Gable:
Not at all.
Klinsmann’s dealing with the facts on the ground: when you have German-Americans who’ve been scouted and developed their skills as part of a coherent infrastructure, they’re worth having on the squad.
There is almost certainly a group of young players good enough to win the 2022 World Cup for the US currently kicking balls around right now, just as there’s a group of German kids doing the same. In Germany most of those kids will have been scouted by clubs for years already and many will be affiliated to professional academies. In the US, not necessarily.
Brandon
It is empirically untrue that
.
I’ve been following the USMNT for years and “Sam’s Army” has been around a long, long time. And according to their website, they’ve been around since 1995.
Maybe these “American Outlaws” are the first to do a tifo at a match, but frankly no one is really impressed with their Turkey Leg. And frankly, tifo’s are not very common at national team matches for any country, unless you count the obligatory card displays.
By the way, that “American Outlaws” tifo is pretty lame compared to what the folks in Europe organize, particularly Dortmund. Even Sounders FC in the MLS have better.
Kylroy
@pseudonymous in nc: Actually, the problem is that those potential 2022 World Cup Champion U.S. kids may not be kicking balls around, but instead dribbling or carrying them.
beejeez
I don’t care if you’ve tried to get into it for years and just don’t dig it, or if you’ve glanced at it and decided it ain’t your cuppa vin blanc. Just spare us fans the assertion that the problem is with the world’s most popular sport and not you. Or is that being defensive?