One welcome development in the United States in recent years has been the slow death of anti-soccer rhetoric.
When I first arrived on these shores in 1989, it was quite common for columnists who otherwise rarely wrote about sports to let loose regular diatribes against the despised game. Soccer, they claimed, was un-American, it was a socialist if not a communist sport that perhaps might be relatively harmless for seven or eight-year-old kids but would never catch on among grown men and women.
What was amazing about these outbursts was the real venom -- I could even say hatred -- that was expressed toward what after all is only a sport. One doesn't have to like every sport. Personally, I have no strong feelings for or against golf and baseball doesn't excite me. But these commentators argued that soccer was not only boring (which it sometimes is) but unnatural, un-American and positively satanic.
If God had intended for athletes to kick a ball, He would never have given them arms with which to throw a ball, some argued.
You still see that kind of stuff on websites here and then but rarely in serious newspapers and other outlets. Now, only a few eccentric out-there die-hards bother to fight what has clearly become a lost war. For slowly but surely, soccer is conquering America as it already has the rest of the world.
A quick web trawl found a couple of such articles. For example, Matthew Philbin of the Media Research Center opines:
The liberal media have always been uncomfortable with "American exceptionalism" - the belief that the United States is unique among nations, a leader and a force for good. And they are no happier with America's rejection of soccer than with its rejection of socialism.
Gary Schmitt of the American Enterprise Institute echoes an often-repeated criticism of the "beautiful game" - there aren't enough goals and the inferior team sometimes gets lucky and wins which violates the fundamental American love of fairness.
As one Internet blogger who goes by the name Bconngemini put it:
,
Soccer reflects the euro-socialist beliefs in not rewarding effort with reward (scoring) and creating a deadlock without clear superiority of one team over another...There is no quantifiable advancement in soccer except for a goal and those are so rare and so miserly that soccer is in essence a game of starvation where the poor must wrangle for the tiny amount of satisfaction with expending more effort than in any other sport. Every sport Americans enjoy provides continual satisfaction for every action, a batter only needs to run a few yards to get to a new base, a running back could take only one step forward before being tackled and still accomplish something. In soccer, a player could run 10km and achieve absolutely nothing.
Steven Moore of the Cato Institute says the game is even harmful for kids:
I am convinced that the ordeal of soccer teaches our kids all the wrong lessons in life. "Soccer is the Marxist concept of the labor theory of value applied to sports -- which may explain why socialist nations dominate in the World Cup. The purpose of a capitalist economy is to produce the maximum output for the least amount of exertion. Soccer requires huge volumes of effort but produces no output... So the issue of the day is whether we Americans will muster the forces to take back our culture from the un-American soccer enthusiasts. We need to channel our kids' energies into more productive activities: baseball, football, tennis, MTV -- even smoking would be an improvement.
Actually, socialist countries, if such still exist, don't do that well in the World Cup. The last three winners were Italy, Brazil and France.
Fortunately such rants have become a rarity as Americans get to know and love this most healthy and democratic of games. It's a sport where you don't have to be a seven-footer or 300-pounder to excel, (Lionel Messi, the best player in the world is 5ft 7 ins), a game for which you don't have to spend thousands of dollars on fancy equipment, a game based on constant running and movement, on agility and grace, on vision and brainwork. It's a game for men and women, for young and not so young, a game for Africans, Australians, Koreans from both North and South, for Israelis and Palestinians, Iraqis and Iranians, for Brits, Italians, Slovenians and Slovakians - and yes, for Americans.
It's a Diving competition and Acting Workshop. I'm working on a scoring system for diving based on the actions of the Uruguayan and Italian teams, and I'll publish it soon if I can quit falling asleep.
Now of all the quasi-political criticisms of soccer, this is, as crazy as it sounds, one of the few that has some merit!
I've learned to like soccer and think it's a fine sport but if you had to choose as a society or a country, whether you wanted to develop high degrees of hand-eye coordination among your youth or high degrees of foot-eye coordination, which would you pick? Which would be conceivably more important to your nation? to your industry? to your military?
I'll stop here because I've never given this great thought, but I've wondered from time to time...
- Craig
Finally, overall, soccer is a fairly popular spectator sport in the U.S. For instance, combined the English-language and Spanish-language broadcasts of the Mexico-South Africa attracted about 7 million viewers. Here is a link:
http://tvbythenumbers.com/2010/06/13/record-breaking-2010-fifa-world-cup-opening-day-on-univision/53939
Also, the numbers are just starting to trickle out, but it looks like about 20 million people in the U.S. watched the U.S./England match -- when the number of people who watched the match on ABC are combined with the number of people who watched on Univision. If that is true, that is more than most NFL regular-season games in 2009.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/11/sports/soccer/11sandomir.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Also, overall, soccer is the most popular spectator sport among Latinos living in the U.S. Here is a link:
http://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/article/62347
Also, last season, MLS averaged about 16,000 fans per game over a 30-game regular season. And MLS is on pace to beat that number this season.
Finally, the 1999 Women’s World Cup got good TV ratings and sold out large stadiums in the U.S.
Who is “we?” Millions of people living in the U.S. care about soccer and think it is a good sport for men and women, boys and girls. I certainly do. Remember: This is a country of 309 million people. In fact, soccer is a fairly popular spectator sport in the U.S. For instance, combined the English and Spanish-language telecasts of the final match of the 2010 World Cup (between France and Italy) attracted an estimated 16.9 million viewers in the U.S., comparable to the average viewership of the 2005 World Series of Major League Baseball. Here is a link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/11/sports/soccer/11sandomir.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Also, there are 48 million Latinos living in the U.S. And soccer is, overall, the most popular spectator among Latinos living in the U.S. Here is a link:
http://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/article/62347
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Finally, when the Mexican national team plays in the U.S., they generally sell out large U.S. stadiums such as the New Meadowlands in New Jersey. Here is a link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/07/sports/soccer/07soccer.html
Great game today btw.
Let me throw some raw meat onto the HP fire: What if Sarah Palin came out as a soccer lover?
Chaos.
But plz dont link soccer with politics.
Even t errorists dont do that.
People dont like Americans dis-respecting The Beautiful Game!
On a different note, moionfire wrote: "...yet they are livid and snarky that the USA does not like soccer(oops- football) like them."
First, there are millions of people living in the U.S. that like soccer, as participation sport and/or as a spectator sport. The U.S. is a country of 309 million people, including 48 million Latinos.
In fact, soccer is a fairly popular spectator sport in the U.S. For instance, combined the English and Spanish-language telecasts of the final match of the 2006 World Cup (between France and Italy) attracted an estimated 16.9 million viewers in the U.S., comparable to the average viewership of the 2005 World Series of Major League Baseball. Here is a link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/11/sports/soccer/11sandomir.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Also, there are 48 million Latinos living in the U.S. And soccer is, overall, the most popular spectator among Latinos living in the U.S. Here is a link:
http://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/article/62347
There are always – or almost always – multiple causes for why thing X is more popular in society A than in society B. For instance, there are multiple causes for why certain foods are more popular in Italy than in Costa Rica. Apparently one cause of soccer not being as popular in the U.S. as American football is that an early version of American football was preferred over an early version of soccer by a group of students at Harvard. Specifically, in the early 1870s, a group of students at Harvard preferred a game with greater emphasis on carrying the ball (similar to rugby) and less emphasis on kicking the ball. They found the kicking game, which was more like soccer, to be slower. Apparently a word that was used was to describe the kicking game was “sleepy.” The carrying game got established at Harvard as essentially the official sport of the school. Harvard was the most prestigious university in the U.S. at the time and one of the most prestigious institutions in the entire country at the time. Apparently, this was an important event as far as American football being more popular than soccer in the U.S.
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However I agree it would be a better game if there was a little more scoring. Hockey is a low-scoring sport but the NHL has tinkered with the rules to get alittle more offense in the game. It seems to be working for them.
- Craig