I still can’t figure out how soccer is such a popular sport . . . 90 minutes of continual loss of possessions (if this happened in football, no one would watch), and every so often, some lucky guy in some position in some place on the field has the dumb luck of kicking the ball past a skinny player in front of a 50 foot wide goal and scores, at which time 65,000 fans go nuts and the guy who scored the half-assed goal runs around the field like he won the Super Bowl. And, if you’re lucky, after 90 minutes, the score might be 1 to 0 (excuse me . . ) 1 to nil.
1 to nil or 3 to 2 after 90 minutes and everyone is singing and chanting and swaying and acting like fools.
Good God-Almighty, what the hell’s the attraction? If they’re ginning up the game to . . . say . . . 4 to nil . . . then may God bless ‘em.
I don’t get it. They say the reason there’s so many people playing soccer is so that they don’t have to watch it.
And we cant understand why baseball and gridiron are so popular with Americans. To us, they are boring sports that take half a day to complete and stop all the time. And the latter is a poor man’s rugby.
What a load of drivel.
Soccer is a game of skill, like any sport. Its top players are brilliantly talented athletes with incredible skill.
Its not 90 mins of tedium (sometimes it is, just like any other sport), at its best it is a great game of pace and skill. Goals are created by moments of great skill, not lucky randomness. BTW, who told you the goals are 50ft wide?.
And the fans sing and dance just like any other sports fans, because they follow their team with passion and pride and love.
Soccer can be boring, but it can also be a great game of falir, skill, excitement and passion.
Oh, and congrats to the Ravens of being ‘World Champions’ (snigger snigger). There’s another thing that makes us Limeys/Euros laugh: the insistence on your teams being ‘World Champs’ when you play in national leagues and only you play the game. Do you grasp just how ludicrous/arrogant that sounds to us?.
Dont you grasp just how dull and boring we find baseball, gridiron or does the fact that your sports might be equally as tedious to others never enter American heads?.......
Because it's about more than sports, especially in Europe.
There, you have rivalries between cities, towns and countries that have gone on for hundreds of years before we became independent.
The great rivalries of the world have social and political undertones as well. Rangers/Celtic (Glasgow) has its roots in The Troubles. Manchester United/Liverpool goes back to the War of the Roses. Real Madrid/Barcelona is Franco versus Basque separatism played on a field. That means something to people over there.
It's got nothing to do with how many goals are scored, though some people do like games where scoring actually means something because it's very difficult to do. It has everything to do with history, tradition, politics and in some cases, religion.
well, you should just leave it at “I don’t get it”. Your characterizations are off, every sport can be perceived this way. Baseball? ...I can’t stand it, yet the fans just tell me all of it’s nuances make it great, funny too....many are the same people that don’t like soccer.
I think the problem is that you don’t appreciate many aspects, probably because you never played (seriously at least). The game is very difficult, try making an accurate pass over 50 yards to somebody in-stride. There are many things the fans are appreciating during the game, not just goals. ...also, in what major sport do players not celebrate “like they won the superbowl”? Football players act like they did something special each time they just do their job!!! ...if you check out soccer highlight shows (English Premier League for example), you’ll see plenty of incredibly skillful goals, certainly not “half-assed”.
Let’s break down the scoring in American Football to only 1 point per touchdown. Let’s look at the scores for the World Champion Ravens this last season:
vs. CIN 5 - 1 Win
vs. PHL 2 - 3 Loss
vs. NE 4 - 3 Win
vs. CLE 3 - 1 Win
vs. KC 0 - 0 Tie
vs. DAL 4 - 3 Win
vs. HOU 1 - 5 Loss
vs. CLE 3 - 0 Win
vs. OAK 7 - 2 Win
vs. PIT 1 - 1 Tie
vs. SD 1 - 1 Tie
vs. PIT 2 - 2 Tie
vs. WAS 4 - 3 Win
vs. DEN 2 - 4 Loss
vs. NYG 3 - 2 Win
vs. CIN 2 - 2 Tie
That would have resulted in the Ravens having an 8-3-5 record. Not a lot of high scoring games there either.
Maybe if soccer had different points for each type of goal? Like 5 points for an open field goal, 4 points for a goal off a corner kick and 2 points for a penalty kick? Would that help? Then you could see things like “Manchester beats Arsenal 10 to 0” instead of 2 to 0. Would the extra points really help?
Or have you not actually taken time to watch the game? Remember, only 3 substitutions for the whole game. Of the 11 players who take the field, at least 8 have to be running for the entire 45 minutes half. No timeouts, no clock stoppage, and if a player commits 2 fouls in a game that the ref considers significant enough, he gets ejected and cannot play in the next game as well. A single very serious offense can result in the same penalty.
Honestly, though, the rest of the world should be glad most Americans think like you do about soccer. If we ever became serious about it, we would dominate.