Any other Americans tired of foreigners here (not ILX -- in America!) explaining that the world cup is the "most popular sporting event in the world"?

Cultural Napoleon complex is just as annoying in a bar as cultural superiority complex.

I really wish America had a Eurovision-esque contest for all 50 states.

(Wait - are we talking about commercials advertising the Super Bowl, or the commercials broadcast during the Super Bowl?)

1) GERMAN/TURKISH PIZZA PLACE OWNER (TOTAL BRO)
2) MEXICAN HIPSTERS WHO ALSO KEPT ON ASKING ME WHICH GIRLS I THOUGHT WOULD SLEEP WITH THEM

Your contributions please, non-caring Americans!

Is there an iconic Nike ad this year. Joga seems a bit rubbidge.

Best ad so far is for the cross of St George ironing board cover. SUPPORT OUR LADS, WHILE IRONING!

Kingfish OTM
-- Holy makkara, Toivo! (thedanmarti...), June 6th, 2006 10:54 AM. (OutDatWay) (later) (link)

Fucking Michiganders.

You Americans know nought of Pickles

recent super bowls where the commercials actually lived up to the oh-god-the-commercials-are-so-the-reason-to-watch-the-super-bowl hype: zero, because once usa today starts doing articles about that it's all over

number of world cup matches I will watch this year, while drunk, and while seeing comforting americanski-style commercials because all the games are going to be shown on the very exotic channel ESPN: about 20

xpost,

Haikunym, FUCK OFF EUROPHILE.

XPOST
M. White, fuck off to an actual World Cup thread.

xpost Sadly, Michael, I don't think the day America cares about soccer is forthcoming. I don't know what it is but they just can't get a foothold. Think of how great the women's team did, and still no one cared! It's odd.

plus FUCK YOU RIGHT BACK for suggesting I am a Europhile

I really think there should be more sporting-event related music, period.

not for nothing but in the US sports related songs are by and for dorks, retards, and spazzes.

ORLY

Also baseball exists in America and oftentimes does not get into double digits so that's incorrect. I think Americans have just deemed soccer as too euro.

this is not to rub American's faces in it, but because if you're in one of the many World Cup loving countries there is a huge buzz when the World Cup is on (just once every 4 years remember). And if your country is participating well then that buzz (the one you are missing cos of being in America) is ten times bigger.

When Ireland are in the World Cup the city practically shuts down the day they're playing. I assume it's the same in loads of other countries.

This is all pretty obvious.

of the Dud genre. Slightly better than that wrestling album that came out in the 80s. Maybe.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/miramax/onceinalifetime/

au contraire:

http://images.usatoday.com/sports/nfl/_photos3/2002-09-04-williams.jpg

i wouldn't want to go to France and tell them how much cooler Nascar (better car commercial logos!) is than their grand prix, but i might want to share my enthusiasm for stuff from my country with foreigners who might nbot get much exposure to it (if i were an extrovert)

RONAN I'M SORRY YOUR MOM IS THE WORLD CUP BUT SERIOUSLY ANSWER JON'S QUESTION ABOUT HOW MANY AMERICANS HAVE CORNERED YOU IN A BAR TO TELL YOU ALL ABOUT THE SUPERIORITY OF THEIR SPORT OF CHOICE, WHILE DENIGRATING YOURS BECAUSE, I DUNNO, IT ISN'T AS PROFITABLE OR SOME RIDICULOUS SHIT?

Why should it? After all most of the immigrants to the US in the 20th century came from countries where football was the main sport and they didn't bring it with them. I suppose the thinking is that when you become an American then you embrace American culture/sports etc and "soccer" is not and never will be (I reckon) considered sufficiently American.

(Just in case someone gets bothered by my hypothetical equivalent, I actually like soccer)

-- Jessie the Monster (scarymonsterrr...), June 6th, 2006.

This is staggeringly OTM.

I love NFL but tend to find the superbowl mostly meh (in my whole three years experience of caring), mostly just 'cos it's such a non-event in the country I'm actually in? Also last year when the Pats went out I quite liked every team left but didn't really like any so uh whatever.

xpost the Superbowl is usually kind of meh, for every exciting, tight or controversial one there's a Dallas-Buffalo.

huh?

soccer is the international language os sports

right. we're not a very international country.

Um that sounds awesome?

lol @ conspiracies!

roll eyes @ old man hun+

that would be awesome! (xpost)

xpost

same with FA Cup final...and Champions League and World Cup finals for that matter.

xpost the finals of any sport are almost always disappointing.

I think the "Super Bowl commercials are better" line of approach is pretty weak.

That was JOEK.

I would love it if there was, like, an MLS draft and combine and shit.

xpost the Superbowl was controversial this past year! People complained for quite some time about what happened. The game itself wasn't very exciting.

xpost

I happen to live very close to one of the premier soccer-watching pubs in SF. It also shows American professional and college football games, hockey, baseball, rugby, and when I'm really lucky, women's beach volleyball. Most of the regular patrons are very ecumenical about their sport; some follow soccer, others less so. Even some of the English patrons have taken to other sports. I have one friend who is a dedicated hockey fan, and several others who have taken to baseball and even if there are some lingering whingers about American football compared to rugby, they still watch the bowl games and the playoffs/Super Bowl. My neighborhood is moderately excited about the World Cup, some for England, others Brazil, or Mexico, etc... which I like as I've been abroad for prior ones and the carnival atmosphere is fun.

Anyway, this should be pretty obvious - you're AMERICANS. The rest of the world LIKES getting one up on you in the same way they do on the British. Except with us its our food they slag off, not our sports.

they had a lot more pressure to assimilate, and a lot less leisure time (and was sport really the social phenomenon in 1910-20 that it is today?)

and there are greater latino numbers - immigration to the US from the Americas from 1951-2002 exceeds immigration to the US from Europe from 1921-2002

YOU WANT ME TO QUIT ILX?

Jon, while I do post on soccer threads, I don't see why you have to get all bitchy simply becuase I don't agree with you

NO I GOT BITCHY BECAUSE YOU WERE DISCUSSING THE WORLD CUP ON A META SPORTS THREAD, U GAYWAD.

(Doesn't look very Irish either to be fair).

But yes, watching football with beer at 8am = classic. Especially during the last World Cup.

God forfend, that I should discuss any specifics on a meta thread! I will make an immediate effort to conform.

By 'the Americas' do you mean Mexico? Because football is massive in South America.

Oddly enough, hardly anyone in Australia gives a fuck about football (this might be changing now, but it was certainly true when I went there). Given that the majority of the population is descended from people from Britain and Ireland, and given that this happened later than the exodus to the USA from those countries, it's strange that they're big on cricket and rugby (which are ignored by most of the rest of the world), but not football.

gabbneb, I'm going to say this to you as clearly as I possibly can: the Latino nationalities that make the largest majority of those immigrants DO NOT GIVE A SHIT ABOUT FOOTBALL. Unless you are expecting a mass exodus from Brazil, please shut the fuck up about what you know about Latinos already.

xpost no, those groups would be included as the greater group of Hispanics tho.

tell that to oprah.

http://www.grandiose.com/resources/fisticuffs.gif

Surely one of the innumerable books about baseball must talk about this stuff, Tracer. It would be interesting to learn about how sport evolved.

America is agog with World Cup fever. OK, let me refine that slightly. The vibrant slice of America that spends every weekend coaching or "scrimmaging" or glued to the Fox Soccer Channel or GolTV is agog with World Cup fever. The rest of the nation is dimly aware that something slightly bigger (but no less alien) than the Eurovision Song Contest is on the way.

Meanwhile, respected US sports journalists - having ignored the sport for the past four years - will Google like fury and emerge as venerable soccer experts, shoving aside those junior hacks who spend their entire working lives trying to squeeze a mention of the game into a monolithically monocultural sports press.

Long-time soccer bashers like Frank DeFord will dust off their tired complaints about how their beloved "American" sports fail to generate one tenth of the passion of international soccer. They might point to this year's hilariously spatchcocked International Baseball Competition and the sad fact that - as the US's Olympic basketball tournament proved - American sports have become so insular that US national teams can't even dominate those games that they (more or less) invented and which no other bugger really plays.

Meanwhile America's soccer partisans - like my team-mate who visited Highbury on vacation and now turns up to play every Saturday in a pristine Arsenal kit - will engage me in earnest debate about the merits of Theo Walcott, but I will have more conversations with my neighbours along the lines of: "Wait, so these teams are made up of people born in a country? So what are Liverpool then?"

The big US sports story this week isn't Wayne Rooney's metatarsal. It's not even alleged steroid user Barry Bonds passing Babe Ruth's 714 home runs. It's a horse, actually a super-horse - Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro - which broke a leg and (if you believe the TV news) in doing so won the heart of the entire nation. This is, of course, hype. The tons of Diana-style polythened flora dumped outside the horse hospital come almost exclusively from America's horsey set - one tiny piece of America's sporting jigsaw. But the reason it makes the national TV news night after night is that Barbaro the wonder-horse was a bore. But Barbaro the underdog - now that's a story. And that really tells us something about America and about America's World Cup.

We US soccer-bubbleheads are currently awash in Nike's Fatty Cantona-fronted "Joga Bonito" TV ads - and frankly, we're disappointed. And so we should be. Nike's previous US campaign was simply stunning.

It consisted of a TV ad where a droning anti-soccer radio shock-jock was drowned out by a go-go anthem called Tell It To The World and the screen rejoiced in shots of street kids and meat-packers and spindle-legged teens doing amazing things with soccer balls on basketball courts, tennis courts and baseball fields. It closed with the shot of the US team smashing home a goal against England in Chicago. And it felt good, dammit, it felt evangelical.

But there was more - a print ad that bordered on genius. Using the angry, relentless and irresistible diction of Thomas Paine's war-winning pamphlets and invoking the revolutionary image of the spitting rattlesnake with the 'Don't Tread On Me' logo, Nike's 'So Says This AMERICAN Game' manifesto pitted players plucked from "Texas trailer parks" and "Florida projects" against the snobby French, supercilious Brazilians and arrogant English.

Every time I saw these ads my jaded British heart pounded with pride. Why? Because some bright spark in Nike marketing had managed to hit an Anglo-American emotional nail smack on the head. Both cultures revel in inverse snobbery. We like underdogs. Give us a super-horse and we'll cheer. Cripple the bugger and we'll cry 'till Christmas. Invincible super-cyclist Lance Armstrong was a bit of yawn until he got cancer. America's endless legions of hypertrained Kryptonian super-sprinters and swimmers are forgotten almost as soon as they leave the winner's podium, but the 1980 'Miracle on Ice' - when a rag-bag US ice hockey team scored a Rocky-style famous victory over the allegedly invincible USSR - still brings a tear to American eyes.

More importantly, despite the fact that we've taken turns to run the world via vastly superior firepower, both Brits and Yanks desperately need to portray themselves as outnumbered and outgunned. We've got Rorke's Drift, Dunkirk and Arnhem. They've got the Alamo, Guadalcanal and dogfaces firing rifles at Tiger tanks during the Battle of the Bulge. Given the chance to be neutral in any sporting event, septics and limeys alike automatically try to sniff out the underdog. Which made the US v Mexico game (in which the US qualified for the World Cup) somewhat confusing for this citizen of the so-called anglosphere.

After the game the US players, the crowd and the commentators quite rightly went jingo-mental. And my stomach turned. I had really wanted the US to qualify - I intensely and passionately want this underdog sport to eclipse its lumbering, overblown and increasingly unwatchable inbred 'native' rivals.

But then came the sight of the slightly balding US player Landon Donovan effetely punching the air à la Tim Henman. Ticker-tape rained down and the air filled with that horribly familiar shrill American patriotism that makes us Europeans squirm so. And suddenly this seemed to be more about the US team's desperate search for a stadium where the gringos outnumber the Latinos; and the sight of armed vigilante "minutemen" patrolling the US-Mexican border. Through the grunting and the chants of "USA! USA!" I found myself humming Woodie Guthrie's Which Side Are You On? (the Billy Bragg version, naturally).

Sooner or later the US will get spanked in this World Cup. But we are not talking here about New Zealand or Australia. Or even Cameroon or Nigeria. The US men's team is an overdog in embryo. A glance at the stats (pro-soccer in the US is already better attended than in most European countries while the grassroots game continues to explode) tells you that the US will soon be a soccer superpower.

And when that happens this intensely patriotic country will - for the first time ever - have a men's sports team that can consistently kick international ass (the US women's soccer team has been doing it for years). And that's not going to be pretty. There'll be nothing 'plucky' about it. Just the brutal application of raw demographic power.

In the 1760s Britain emerged atop the imperial dogpile as the world's undisputed heavyweight champion. And it felt kinda odd. The seeds of arrogant, triumphalist jingoism existed alongside a gnawing nostalgia (among intellectuals and writers at least) for the cocky, outgunned but ingenious little England of Drake and Raleigh. Of course this reverie was rudely interrupted shortly after when the cocky, outgunned but ingenious citizens of a new country called the United States of America pluckily kicked Britain's enormous new imperial nadgers clean off - but for a while the sudden loss of underdog status caused real pain.

I suggest US soccer fans enjoy being underestimated, derided, mocked and written off while they still can. It won't get any better than this.

Which, I think, just about sums up my reaction, too.

"World Cup? What the fuck is that?"

-- Gravel Puzzleworth (mostlyconnec...), June 6th, 2006 12:28 PM. (Gregory Henry) (later) (link)

Let's go start a hypothetical AMERIVISION thread k, especially sense this thread has fast descended into...I dunno. People are flipping out over the popularity of certain sports and it is frightening me.

Maybe break it down using a COLBERT-method? ;)

Euro-eurovision has some pretty divergent state pops and it doesn't seem to be an issue - you're not allowed to vote for your own country, so size wld only really be an issue in terms of candidate quality which whatevs.

(x-post)

THE LOSERS WILL BE SHOT.

It'd be best if someone could convince already popular acts to do it, then we wouldn't have to worry about, say, ALL OF TEXAS VOTING FOR TOBEY KEITH. or wherever he's from.

Apart from Britain and the Scandinavians everyone else seems to take Eurovision very seriously!

As a side note, it has been my experience that Europeans often do not understand when we Americans are being ironic in our love of our culture.

Also, "In Sweeden, groceries buy you!" flew completely over her head which made me feel superior (and yes, I am aware of what I just said).

Yes, especially if it was a state-v-state contest.

Oh, it's true.

-- Dom Passantino (juror...), June 6th, 2006. (later)

And apparently, in the United Kingdom, Dom is considered an insightful and witty person.

otm

Hasn't there already been a thread for this?

NBC is looking for America's next great song and performer by partnering with Reveille in a new live, multimedia performance talent competition series based on the legendary "Eurovision Song Contest" series that has been a monster hit in Europe for 50 years and helped launch the careers of Celine Dion, ABBA and Olivia Newton-John. The announcement was made by Kevin Reilly, President, NBC Entertainment.

" 'Eurovision' is an upbeat and entertaining series that has consistently proven its strong appeal across Europe," said Reilly. "It's a winning formula and Reveille will adapt it to include a more uniquely American flavor that will build to a dramatic crescendo in the season finale."

" 'Eurovision' is the granddaddy of all talent shows and the Super Bowl of singing," said Reveille CEO Ben Silverman, who will also serve as executive producer. "I can't wait to tap into America's multicultural heritage and see our regional flavor come to life. This will be the first talent show to also tap into the new digital landscape. With the multi-platform success of 'The Office' and 'The Biggest Loser,' NBC is the perfect partner."

While more details on the American version of the series are currently in development, the new version will employ a multimedia format, combining both online and televised components. All 50 states and the District of Columbia will be represented after each state completes an online competition that will also feature a digital platform to help site-users select each representative. The state-level winners will then advance to the broadcast series to perform for the title.

http://img.sheezyart.com/art/medium/61/619203.jpg

-- Allyzay Rofflesbot (allyza...), June 6th, 2006 11:09 AM. (allyzay) (link)

Yeah, I think the biggest buzz about the women's team had something to do with sports bras. Which is sad, because they were incredible.

-- Tracey Hand (tracerhan...), June 6th, 2006. (tracerhand) (later)

Is this like when 37 year old Argentinians turn up in the Qatar leagues for a £3million a week salary or are these guys still at the top of their game?

"And another!"

Congrats on winning this thread.

They figure they can make more catering to soccer moms and dads and families up there, but I have a hard time seeing it.

Most popular sport in America - football. Stops and starts. Easy to follow, there's a minutes-long narrative of the drive. Each play is a distinct event.

Second-most popular sport - baseball. Stops and starts. Easy to follow, each pitch is a distinct event, drama builds.

Third-most popular sport - basketball. Okay, we're getting away from clearly defined stops and starts, but possessions are generally uninterrupted until a shot misses/is made or there's a steal. Then you get a possession for the other team.

Least-popular pro sports - hockey and soccer. Possessions can be disrupted at any time, drama comes in extremely short bursts, only gets really exciting for us in the last minutes of a close game. There's no story - no drives, no at-bats, just the ball moving back and forth so that American fans (raised on football and baseball) don't know when it's going to get legitimately interesting.

I don't know how NASCAR fits into it. Maybe it isn't a sport in the same way, I think fans get into because everyone else is. If IRL or CART had made the leap ten years ago, they'd be in NASCAR's place.

MLS may even have a better cable deal than the NHL at this moment. I know I've seen soccer on ESPN/2, while the first two games of the Stanley Cup have been relegated to OLN, the "How's it goin', eh?" channel.

Cricket fans to thread.

stops and starts = on and off pit road
events = lead/position changes

Maybe the Yanks would like footy if the players all wore crash helmets and had a mattress stuffed up their shirts, and it was all more overtly macho.

Basketball has nothing to do with soccer.

Then there's the other weird pre-histories about the US being in the running with New Zealand to be the next test-playing nation, and losing the vote, despite having (by all accounts) the world's best cricketer at the time.

My only thought is that whilst football was established in the Uk, it was still a new-ish thing at the time when the waves of immigration happened which set the patterns. It was something people had started doing, rather than something people did, so when they arrived in their new countries, the understandable desire to get with what was there overrode the desire to do your own sports, and where the point was to forget what was, and concentrate on what is.

It's also the case that whilst football was big in places that lost a lot of people to the US, they weren't football countries at that time. So, even though now they are, by the time people left those countries for the US and might have been able to bring football with them, the US scene is dominated by the big four sports already.

xpost - cricket shares with baseball the obsession with stats and records, and the something happens-something doesn't happen-something happens vibe. Basketball is too frequent with its scoring; is that a consistent part of its development (I assume so). It's much easier to say Hockey is ice, given the vast minority of passages of play end up with no score, like football. But then since field hockey is football with sticks, then that's no surprise.

You're so fucking wrong!

xpost alrighty then.

xoxoxoox,

http://www.theonion.com/content/files/images/onion_imagearticle1411.frontpage_thumbnail.jpg

My thought:

Pop Warner football has been around since 1929.
Little League has been around since 1938.

AYSO has been around since 1964, and with only 8 teams the first year.

moreover:

Generally, baseball & football have been broadcast nationally, free, and during prime listening/viewing hours since the 1920s

Generally, soccer has been broadcast sporadically, as 'filler' programming, and on cable since the 1980s.

etc., etc., etc.,

Our continued indifference to the sport worshipped around the world can be easily explained in two parts. First, as a nation of loony but determined inventors, we prefer things we thought of ourselves. The most popular sports in America are those we conceived and developed on our own: [American] football, baseball, basketball. If we can claim at least part of the credit for something, as with tennis or the radio, we are willing to be passively interested. But we did not invent soccer, and so we are suspicious of it.

The second and greatest, by far, obstacle to the popularity of the World Cup, and of professional soccer in general, is the element of diving. Americans may generally be arrogant, but there is one stance I stand behind, and that is the intense loathing of penalty-fakers. There are few examples of American sports where diving is part of the game, much less accepted as such. Things are too complicated and dangerous in American football to do much faking. Baseball? It's not possible, really - you can't fake getting hit by a baseball, and it's impossible to fake catching one. The only one of the big three sports that has a dive factor is basketball, where players can and do occasionally exaggerate a foul against them, but get this: the biggest diver in the NBA is not an American at all. He's Argentinian! (Manu Ginobili, a phony to end all phonies, but otherwise a very good player.)

I'm not buying this. The first reason is obviously bullshit. Get one history of baseball (although there is perhaps a kernel of contrary national pride in what he's talking about). As for the second reason, people everywhere are opposed to diving in all sports. But diving has, for whatever reason, become part of football. That being said, good luck finding someone to call it anything other than cheating (Ian Wright notwithstanding).

I think people who like one team sport are capable of enjoying any other if they're immersed in its culture, lore, strategy, etc. I'm not opposed to American Football in principle. I just know nothing about it. Maybe a succesful US team (which is inevitably going to happen in no more than a few World Cups) will help, but the real problem is there's no demand for a new sport. They're happy with what they've got, and while they might like football if they put the time in, really, who cares? Which is fair enough.

And telling the US they must like football is a really good way to get them (or anyone) not to. You come across as the kind of person who would write a patronising, impertinent letter to a registered voter in a swing state whose address you got from the Guardian.

Ben Rice's chapter on Australia is reasonably wise about "wogball". The one on Portugal is great too. It's by William Finnegan (who hates/knows nothing about football). He spent a couple of summers there surfing and was suitably baffled.

Ice Hockey.

??? Hands are used. Not directly on the puck, I'll grant you. I'm counting things like golf and tennis where the hands are used with an implement.

Soccer is also the only sport in which the goal is 8yds by 8ft and which painted lines on the pitch must be no wider than 5". There are plenty of things that make soccer unique. You need a plausible causal link between US culture and the use of hands.

Re: Ice Hockey, using the stick makes it indirect, right, which is the crux of your argument for why hand use. It's not the hands per se. Regardless, that reasoning fails on Occam's Razor, IMHO.

why not psychoanalyze the countries who DO like it?

Because they all like it. What's different about the US. (Answer: nothing. It's a fluke of history.)

xpost

cake otm

Well, it's my theory, and I stand by it. I'd say it makes a lot more sense than Egger's diatribe about some "dive" rule that I'd bet 99% of Americans don't even know about so how could it be the reason.

Re: Ice Hockey, using the stick makes it indirect

There's nothing indirect about how it feels. Just like hitting a baseball with a bat - that moment of connection is very instinctively satisfying. Soccer is about denying those instincts.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/images/38077000/jpg/_38077683_rio_beck_afp_200.jpg http://images.art.com/images/-/David-Beckham-Arm--C10289030.jpeg http://leblogdesbeauxgosses.m6blog.m6.fr/images/medium_david_beckham.jpg

I am totally taking my ball and making my own thread. :c

Sure, everyone likes directness, but America is about doing everything in the most direct way and to hell with tradition, manners, and what have you. To us, the sight of grown men trying to jostle for control of a ball using only their feet just looks a bit silly.

I stick by my theories on sports popularity, the psychoanalyis/hands/etc. stuff sounds like nonsense. Eggers may have a point about invention to some degree, but golf and car racing are relatively huge and we invented neither.

I think it is because many people in the US are obsessed with cars and speed. What I think is funny is that Nascar still calls them Fords, Pontiacs, GM, etc. when there is nothing more than the shape of the skin on the cars that are anything remotely like a street vehicle.

They have been racing the Indianapolis 500 since 1911, it may not have been the first auto race, but that has to be one of the oldest in the world.

If there is a crazy end of the game scenario in soccer that is equivalent to US football's long bomb, buzzer beater shot in basketball or big hit in the bottom of the ninth in baseball, I have not seen it happen.

Homer: [shouting] Boring!
Krusty: Come on, you schnorers, do something!
Brockman: [calling plays from booth listlessly] Halfback passes
to the center. Back to the wing. Back to the center.
Center holds it. Holds it. [rolls eyes] Holds it...
Mexican Announcer: [excitedly] Halfback passes to center, back to wing, back
to center, center holds it! Holds it! Holds it!

golf no, but stock car racing, which is way way way more popular here than any other form of racing, was "invented" here. (i'm guessing drag racing is the next most popular?) golf doesn't count because it's a sport for unathletic people!

I hate to be the one to break this to you, Dada, but Scotland haven't ever really been that good either ;-\

There are a lot of reasons why soccer hasn't become a popular American sport, but I think this is simply the strongest and simplest explaination, and strikes me as OBVIOUS.

Occam's razor and all that.

People are creatures of habit and I watch the Vikings for a lot of the same reasons that I once believed that grace trumps works for the golden ticket and the transubstantiation is figurative, not literal. This is largely a matter of accident.

On the Tee Vee:

football>>basketball>>track and field (olympics, iron man, etc.)>>nascar>>baseball>>soccer>>hockey>>paint drying>>golf

In practice:

driving fast>>kickball>>dodgeball>>basketball>>baseball>>mini golf>>slicing golfballs into expensive houses of the golf course and absolutely refusing to ever learn how to play

Poohsticks kicks the shit out of all of the above.

Hey, now. Would Eggers whimp out like that? No. He'd pick himself up, dust himself off, and get back in the game. GO CHAMP!

(BTW, I didn't actually read your complete theory until just now. I didn't go far enough up thread. I was reacting only to "immediacy, instant gratification, tactile sensation and direct engagement" as referenced again further downthread.)

Reprinted for re-examination:

I think the real reason Americans don't like football is because you can't use your hands in it (yeah, I know there are exceptions - like the goalie and throwing the ball into play - but, by and large, hands are off limits). The ban on the use of hands goes directly against the American need for immediacy, instant gratification, tactile sensation, direct engagement - there's something ascetic about it - it reminds us of the "Look but don't touch" strictures of our sexually frustrated adolescence. Okay, maybe I'm generalizing too much from personal experience, but I can't think of any popular American sport in which the hands are not used. Using feet to do a job that could be more easily accomplished with the hands is all about indirect action, social code, protocol, manners, self-control, grace - ie., all the things that Americans aren't very good at.
-- o. nate (syne_wav...), June 6th, 2006 7:14 PM. (onate) (link)

Actually, that's an interesting way of looking at it. (srsly). Although, I am still convinced Perpetua zeroed in on the most basic reason for soccer's lack of stickiness in the USA.

Now, Madge, the boy's gotta take a few knocks or he'll turn into a nancy boy.

Soccer's not foreign to Americans (like cricket or curling)--it's popular throughout kids' lives--through high school--and sometimes beyond--it's just that the professional infrastructure doesn't exist. Seems Americans like to play the game, but aren't that interested in watching it. My problem with watching soccer is that I find it hard to see the ball. Maybe they should color it red or put lights on it or something?

I was in Japan pre-2000 and they had a somewhat similar situation toward soccer as we do here in America. They had a relatively new league that was growing and had its pockets of supporters, but soccer was still seen as a sort of new, suspect sport, not entrenched like baseball. Then they hosted the World Cup with Korea in 2004, which must have helped with promotions.

What style of soccer does the U.S. play?

This *another* problem of assumptions again.

The Japan thing is interesting. Bear in mind France actually won the thing on their home turf eight years ago and there was still a bit of international snobbery towards their footballing culture. Like, a general feeling that the French didn't *get* football, that they couldn't really appreciate what it was to have won the World Cup.

We've been accused of being defensively naive but what we essentially play is 4-4-2, sometimes 4-3-3, positive and attacking play due to a lack of sparkling individual skills. Recently, however, we've been sluggish and utterly lacking in finishing though our defending is somewhat better, especially with Oguchi Onyewu in the back. The team mostly consists of Championship (old English First Division) players and MLS players with an odd Premier League player (Howard, O'Brien) and a smattering of players for middling European teams. We have too much of a tendency to play the old English game, kicking long balls upfield and hoping someone can hold them long enough for the team to run on to them. On a good day, Faced with the Italians who, if recent scandals haven't demoralized them too much and the Czechs, we will be doing very well indeed to get out of the groups stage. I'd say to look for Onyewu and Convey to shine if anyone does, though McBride, Donovan, Ching or Reyna might show up too. If anything, our biggest asset is the lack of interest/expectation at home and a sometimes confidence that comes from being underestimated or ignored.

We've been accused of being defensively naive but what we essentially play is 4-4-2, sometimes 4-3-3, positive and attacking play due to a lack of sparkling individual skills. Recently, however, we've been sluggish and utterly lacking in finishing though our defending is somewhat better, especially with Oguchi Onyewu in the back. The team mostly consists of Championship (old English First Division) players and MLS players with an odd Premier League player (Howard, O'Brien) and a smattering of players for middling European teams. We have too much of a tendency to play the old English game, kicking long balls upfield and hoping someone can hold them long enough for the team to run on to them. Faced with the Italians who, if recent scandals haven't demoralized them too much and the Czechs, we will be doing very well indeed to get out of the groups stage. I'd say to look for Onyewu and Convey to shine if anyone does, though McBride, Donovan, Ching or Reyna might show up too. If anything, our biggest asset is the lack of interest/expectation at home and a sometimes confidence that comes from being underestimated or ignored.

you're just tired of being reminded of it. oops sorry!

"urban myth" = "lie devised by the NFL and propagated by the US government"

http://voanews.com/english/2006-02-03-voa5.cfm

The only way this can be true is if they mean "people watching even a short excerpt on the game on their local news channel."

hey did you guys know the holy roman empire wasn't holy or roman or an empire? i know stuff.

But clearly, it's propaganda by the US govt, not a simply explained mistake that has been grossly overstated by always accurate Wikipedia. Riiiiiiiiiiight.

True, but there's a 100 million of them and 5 million of us AND they get to qualify for every World Cup by dint of never having to play anyone difficult to get there AND they've already, for no apparent reason, hosted TWO World Cups!

But the argument has nothing to do with sports, it's usually pointed out (by furriners and Americans alike) to say something about American feelings of superiority and exceptionalism. It's a less-obvious complaint about American distrust in the UN or something.

Actually, almost everyone who's pointed this out to me (and defended the sacred honor of soccer) has been a liberal, Democrat-voting American who wishes they were European.

This is disappointing to hear. Today's Wash Post front-page story marked him as a paragon of goalkeeping and vaunted his magesterial saves against Brazil in '98. (There was also a front page story in the New York Times story about the possibility of World Cup betting scandals.)

It also appears that three British soccer hooligans have slipped into Germany.

Japan, not surprisingly, seems to play a very cautious, methodical version of soccer. They ploddingly pass the ball back and forth and back and forth and advance at a very slow rate.

One of my co-workers if from Ghana: he is so excited.

I don't think I know a single person who fits that description

Looking at the TV schedule brings to mind another reason the World Cup might not take off here--the matches are on weekday mornings, when most Americans are at work or asleep. Once they can synchronize it to our prime time like the Olympics and make the games at weird hours of the day of and night to fit our schedules, we may give it a chance.

9am Englishes vs Paraguay
Noon Trindads/Tobago vs Sweden

Sunday on ABC
Mexico vs Iran for the undisputed champion of the world

The abandonment of soccer is attributable, in part, to the fact that people of influence in America long believed that soccer was the chosen sport of Communists. When I was 13—this was 1983, long before glasnost, let alone the fall of the wall—I had a gym teacher, who for now we'll call Moron McCheeby, who made a very compelling link between soccer and the architects of the Iron Curtain. I remember once asking him why there were no days of soccer in his gym units. His face darkened. He took me aside. He explained with quivering, barely mastered rage, that he preferred decent, honest American sports where you used your hands. Sports where one's hands were not used, he said, were commie sports played by Russians, Poles, Germans, and other commies. To use one's hands in sports was American, to use one's feet was the purview of the followers of Marx and Lenin. I believe McCheeby went on to lecture widely on the subject.

from http://www.slate.com/id/2142554/

Bad officiating is the lifeblood of American sports.

Not our table manners!

This is the most boring shit I've ever seen passed off as a sporting contest. Jesus.

I said it upthread! Interestingly enough, many of the best American players are goalkeepers.

Reportedly, Sylvester Stallone insisted that his character score the game-winning goal in the film, as he felt he was the biggest star in the film. The non-American crew was finally able to convince him of the absurdity of the goalkeeper scoring the winning goal, and the penalty shot was specifically written to placate his ego.

I haven't seen the movie since I was a kid, but the only part of the game I remember is Pelé's bicycle kick.