Why the World Cup? Why Soccer?
by KevinJune 12th, 2006
I am going to be busy this week, so, taking the advice of regular Ted, I am going to do a series of discussion posts. And to start, hopefully someone can answer this burning question for me: why does the entire world except the United States love soccer, or, in honor of the World Cup, football? I have heard the standard explanations and none of them seem to make sense. The notion that Americans want instant gratification doesn’t fly. Baseball and golf are two of our favorite sports. It cannot just be that there are more sports options because that is true of the entire industrialized world. It cannot be because no generation of Americans have grown up with the sport, because soccer was huge among kids even when I was young, and I am in my early thirties.
So why soccer? Why does the entire rest of the world so passionately follow a sport that one of the larger countries on the planet simply ignores?
The biggest reason is probably that kids can participate with practically no specialized equipment. You can play in your bare feet using anything mostly round that will roll as a ball. A couple of rocks for goal posts, and you’re ready. And unlike baseball, everybody who shows up is playing all the time, rather than half of them sitting on the sidelines waiting their turn.
This is an interesting question, why has soccer not caught on here at the pro level. It certainly has at the junior level, and it’s pretty popular at college, although not as a spectator sport.
I don’t think soccer’s lack of appeal here has anything to do with personality traits intrinsic to Americans. I think it is partly due to baseball crowding it out at the pro level, plus a self-perpetuating cycle of lack of media coverage/fan support/professional teams.
Look at baseball. It’s popular in the US, Latin America, Japan and Korea. One would be hard pressed to come up with traits exclusive to that subset of the human race. Or consider lacrosse. Why is it wildly popular in the mid-Atlantic and the Ivies, but unheard of across most of America?
In the end, I guess it comes down to tradition. At the risk of sounding like Yogi, if soccer were popular here, it would be popular here.
Why Americans don’t like soccer:
- It is too slow-moving. Baseball and golf overcome this because in the case of the former, there’s an ingrained cultural tradition that soccer lacks here, and in the latter case because lots of people actually play the game.
- There’s too much to keep track of. Even in NFL football, there’s only a few places you have to keep an eye on at any given time. Not true in soccer, where the 22 players on the field are spread all over the place.
- It’s too complicated to learn the rules. Who the hell can figure out the offsides rule, anyway? (Actually, I finally DID figure it out, just in time to figure out that it’s an incredibly stupid rule…)
- In team sports, Americans like scoring chances, and in soccer there just aren’t that many. Even in baseball, every at-bat is a scoring chance. But a 90-minute soccer match may have only four or five scoring chances the entire way. In a way, soccer is like late-1990’s/early-2000’s hockey, with too much of the time spent at mid-ice/mid-field and not enough attacking. (This brings up a side note, the common misconception that Americans like scoring; that’s not exactly true. Americans like lots of scroing chances, which is an entirely different thing.)
- Americans don’t care about sports at which Americans suck. Take a look at the Olympics if you want further evidence of this.
Tgirsch,
I’m not buying most of your reasons. Soccer rules are much, much fewer than football or baseball. And football, with 22 players actively involved in most plays, has a lot more to watch (wideouts and dbs, tight ends and linebackers, O and D lines, quarterback, running backs - you could spend ten minutes dissecting each play.
I agree with the scoring chances observation - to a point. It is a valid description of soccer, but I have a hard time coming up with a sociological backing for “Americans like scoring chances” - especially when it gets qualified by team sports.
How about this: Americans like stats. Baseball, basketball, and football all generate reams of stats. Soccer has a couple. Which means American sports are highly quantitative, whereas soccer is much more qualitative. You might be able to tie that into our collective psychological makeup easier than scoring chances.
Or maybe specialization. American sports require high degree of specialization, not so in soccer. Or maybe organization. American sports are very organized, tightly choreographed, highly coached. Soccer is much more free form and improvisational.
But I still say it is lack of tradition. If it were played more, it would be more popular.
Ted:
It’s true that American football has the same number of players (excepting the goalies) as soccer, but that doesn’t mean there’s more to keep track of. In American football, each play is discrete, there are only a finite number of players allowed to advance the ball, and they’re generally moving in just one direction. And most of those players are bunched together much of the time, making them easier to track. In soccer, on the other hand, they’re all over the goddamned place, and the players often don’t seem to have a rhyme or reason as to where they’re sending the ball. (In about ten minutes of the Germany/Costa Rica match, I saw a player lazily kick the ball directly to a player from the opposing team at least three times, and when I asked my soccer-fan friend from Argentina why they did this, he shrugged.)
As to your stats argument, I don’t buy that, either. I don’t see why hockey wouldn’t have just as many stats as, say, Hockey.
I do agree with you that it would be more popular if it were played more, but that can’t be all of it. Really, of the four major team sports in the US, only two of them (baseball and basketball) are played by a large percentage of the population. Hockey is nowhere near as popular as the other three, but among its fans, a large percentage (like Kevin and I) have never set foot on skates.
But getting back to the scoring chances thing, for a proof of concept, watch the highlights of any game (irrespective of sport) on ESPN. They’ll show the scores, and the good scoring chances that were denied. (In football, you have the added bonus of the “big play,” even though that play might not result in any points. They’ll show those, too. There’s no such thing, though, in the other sports we’re talking about.)
In soccer, however, I’d wager that better than 3/4 of a typical 90 minute match is played with the ball closer to midfield than to either of the goals. And to an American, that’s plum boring. (True also in football, where a game in which both teams trade punts and never drive deep into their opponents’ territory is widely considered a bad game.)
But the bottom line is that all of those other reasons are secondary. We (the USA) don’t like it because we suck at it. If we started to dominate for a few years, it would start to get a following. Just look at what Lance Armstrong’s dominance has done for the Tour de France in America. Like anyone gave a shit about cycling before an American started winning it every year. I’m not saying I’m proud of that, but that’s the way we are.
Couple of things. I was unclear when I claimed soccer would be more popular if it were played more. I didn’t mean played by more people, as in pickup games, clubs, etc. I meant played more at a level that was of potential interest to the masses. And over a longer duration. So a critical mass of interest could be established, which would lead to more media coverage, which would lead to more interest, which would lead to sponsors using soccer players in adverts, which would lead to soccer movies, which would lead to soccer players as media stars, which would lead to soccer players behaving like rich, spoiled punks, which would put them at parity with the three ball sports in the US (hockey is closer to soccer than the others IMO - closely followed by a few, ignored by most).
As for scoring plays, what are the real highlight moments in football? Big hits and acrobatic catches. I think your perception of football action is colored by the way it is covered on TV. Players don’t all bunch together, they don’t all move in the same direction, and there are vastly different objectives to be achieved on each play: get open to receive pass, cover receiver; run block or pass block; defeat the blocker and tackle runner or sack qb; throw pass or hand off; run with ball. And then there’s 4th down, PAT, and kickoffs. Soccer is extraordinarily simplistic by comparison: advance ball towards net, attempt to score. Repeat until everyone grows bored and leaves the field.
As for stats, you will have to show me some soccer stats to convince me there are any other than the obvious two or three. As proof, I offer the TV coverage of a soccer game. The only stats ever shown on the screen are the score and the time elapsed (which in and of itself is silly. Why force me to do subtraction to arrive at the info I want? Why not show me the time remaining? I’m surprised scoring isn’t also backwards - each team starts at 10 and a point is deducted each time a goal is scored.). The announcers basically sit back until a shot on goal or an actual goal, at which time they attempt to fill the dead air by stretching out the word goal for five minutes. My point is, if the dudes covering a soccer match don’t have anything to talk about while it is going on, how can fans have anything to talk about after it is over. (I realize I have moved away from the original topic and am letting my anti-soccer bias show.)
Ted:
I think you’ve hit on something here; my statement about what Americans like was a bit too simplistic. Americans like scoring chances and big plays. Soccer generally has neither. Though I still contend that the former is more important than the latter. A 3-0 football game in which neither team gets inside the opponent’s 30, but which has four or five hard hits and/or great tackles is still likely to be viewed as a lousy game.
Soccer is extraordinarily simplistic by comparison: advance ball towards net, attempt to score. Repeat until everyone grows bored and leaves the field.
I think that about nails it!
As for stats, the fact that they don’t keep them doesn’t mean that they’re not inherent to the game. You could track an equivalent to shots on goal; you could track the number of saves each goalie has made (and from these two, you could track save percentage); you could track how many quality scoring chances each team has had; you could track (legal) tackles, you could track fouls; you could track goals and assists for each player; you could track time of possession; etc. There are lots of stats you could track, if anyone cared to. But since soccer is so mind-numbingly boring, nobody cares to.
As to the count-up timer, that really doesn’t bother me all that much. And in any case, the subtraction doesn’t help because you have no way of knowing how much “stoppage time” there’s going to be. So [bigot]as with much of Europe and Latin America[/bigot], the clock doesn’t seem to be terribly important in soccer.
It’s worth noting that hockey shows time remaining, but lists stats according to an ascending timer, which requires even more math. So if a player takes a penalty with 17:30 remaining in the first period, that penalty is listed as having occured “at 2:30 of the first.”
Finally, while I agree with you that hockey has a more concentrated fan base than soccer in the US, it has a much better fan base. Most hockey games in most NHL cities are sellouts or close to it, despite some of the highest average ticket prices in pro sports, and despite a 41 game home schedule. I’m not aware of anywhere in the US that soccer can claim this. In fact, I’d be willing to be that only football can beat hockey in terms of average crowd, when expressed as a percentage of capacity. And now that I look at it, I see that I’m right. According to the New York Times, the NHL played to 91.7% capacity, an average of 16,995 per game (according to ESPN, it’s closer to 92.0%. Only four MLB teams out of 30 are beating that percentage, and MLB’s average capacity is in the 60’s; the NFL is the clear winner, at 96.1% average capacity. The NBA, which is widely considered more popular, loses out to the NHL, coming in at 90.6% capacity. Hockey is a great in-person draw, just not a very good TV draw, unfortunately. Hockey is very much a gate-driven sport.
To comment on the above reference to statitics. They are important in many respects, with baseball leading the way with some of the most arcane stats one could imagine. Hockey and soccer, not so much. Time of possesion, shots on goal, goals, assists. Not a whole lot to talk about, certainly when comparing different players. Not much argument about Pele being the greatest ever, after him though, everyone has their own choice. Hockey and soccer are very similar in rules, not too many, with offsides and penalty shots being almost identical. Our other 3 sports have quite a lot of rules, some that only rarely come into play. My personal favorite is Australian Rules Football. Nice combination of soccer size field and lots of long passing, football style hitting and higher scoring than most NBA games. But the rules are confusing to say the least, until someone explains them. It’s also played in huge stadiums, 100K crowds not uncommon.
tgirsch,
I was a hockey fan back in the Booby Orr days. Back then, time elapsed was used for timing, and I believe it still is for official recording of events (could be wrong here). If time remaining is used on TV or even at the games, this is clearly a recognition of American taste.
Another observation on stats. When I “watch” a Red Sox game on ESPN.com, I have immediate access to tens of thousands of statistics - specific to the players and two teams I am watching! Pitcher’s batting average against by left-handers in day games. Or hitter’s RBIs in close games for plate appearances seventh inning or later. It’s insane, but that’s what I like, and the availability of data to analyze is a perfect match for baseball’s state-oriented paradigm. Proper action by manager, coaches, pitcher, batter, and fielders is dictated by inning, score, count, number and location of baserunners (and their abilities), strength of opposing pitcher, what games are coming up in next few days, etc. It is quant geek heaven, and the more you know the more you can analyze. Baseball really isn’t about the action, it’s about the pauses between the action. Watching a baseball game is an intellectual experience. Hockey and soccer are almost stateless, excepting score, time remaining, and penalty situation. By the time one grasps the current situation, it no longer exists. Spectating devolves into the visceral experience of simply watching the action (bias acknowledged).
Given the above, it seems counter-intuitive that baseball would be so popular in the US. Which reinforces the supposition that a sport’s popularity is not a reflection of culture but rather an extension of tradition.
Mikefromtexas:
Sorry, but the offsides rule in Hockey is nothing at all like soccer’s offsides rule. In the latter, it’s virtually always illegal for you to get behind the defense, making breakaways nearly impossible.
Ted:
I see your point about baseball, but also note that it’s the exception among American sports, not the rule. I think what this demonstrates is that tradition allows a sport (like baseball) to overcome the fact that it’s not the type of sport Americans typically would like. In other words, tradition isn’t why we like the sports we like; it’s why we like baseball.
But I think you raise an excellent point about the stoppages. Americans like them. They give us a break from having to pay attention, they allow us to go “hit the head” or pick up a beer or hot dog or whatever, etc. Soccer just doesn’t have that many.
That said, I still contend that one of the biggest reasons Americans dislike soccer (besides the fact that we suck at it) is that so little time is spent in a match even attempting to score. Too much of the game is spent simply jockeying for position at midfield, with neither team truly attacking or defending. Even in baseball, one team is always actively trying to attack. In soccer, there are long stretches where neither team can be said to truly be in an offensive posture.
tgirsch,
In light of your last paragraph above, care to take a stab at the popularity of NASCAR?
Not as a live spectator sport - clearly that is about the party - but the devoted fans who watch it on TV.
Did anyone think about the point there are no place to put commercials? There would be no commercial drive to “invest” in the sport. No Time outs to get beer! How could networks make money? You could just cut away but who would want to miss the only score and have to see it on rerun!?
Ted:
What can I say, America has a lot of white rednecks.
But in racing, at least, it’s clear what the drivers are tryig to do. Unlike the players in soccer. And I suspect the crashes have a lot to do with driving the popularity of NASCAR. Personally, I’d much rather watch an open-wheel race on a road course, rather than watching a bunch of white guys named “Bubba” drive in circles in a car that has frickin’ stickers to make it look like there are headlights on the front.
I’m perfectly happy about the fact that americans don’t care about this game. With greater american interest it will only be a matter of time before the came gets compromised by commercials. I can imagine a two minute time-out every 15 minutes, for excample. What a nightmare!
And what a load of crap to say that football (and now I mean real football played with your feet!) is too complicated and hard to keep track of. Keep you eyes on the ball, that’s what matters! The offside rule is the only slightly complicated thing, and although much discussed and hated, it is also probably the most fascinating thing about the game.
Which leads to another factor, the human one. Football does not allow the use of video in refereeing. I think the room for human error, and the discussions it creates, has led to the status the game has today. A goal allowed by the use of video in american football or ice hockey, not so in football.
Statistics do have a part in football too, but not in the totally anal way of the americans. Believe me, commentaries have loads to talk about. Leave it to the latinos the scream out “Goooooooooooooooooooooooool” for several minutes of the game. And for highlights and good plays, take a look at Argentina’s second goal against Serbia in yesterdays match in the WC. An attack that started on their own half, passes between almost every player before the ball hit the net! That’s team play!
“An attack that started on their own half, passes between almost every player before the ball hit the net! That’s team play!”
For sure. You can go an entire two or three minutes without seeing that level of teamwork at a basketball game. Of course in basketball, the rules don’t prevent the players from using their upper limbs. To simulate the restrictions soccer places on human ability, maybe American football could be played with all players in potato sacks, basketball players with an arm tied behind their backs, and baseball players could be blindfolded. This would cut down on the meaningfull action and randomize events and outsomes, thus turning each sport into “a beautiful game”. (Only kidding here, soccer is a fine sport. …for toddlers.)
I think there’s another thing we’re missing here: the rest of the world likes boring sports. In much of the world, they’ll play cricket matches that take days. And F1 racing, where passing is rare and where it seems that the polesitter virtually always wins unless he makes a major mistake, is wildly popular outside the US.
Trond:
I’ve watched a few World Cup matches so far this year, and most of them have been quite dull. The exception was the second half of the Czech/Ghana match, where Ghana was on the attack non-stop, it seemed. But when neither team attacks for lengthy periods of time, and when most would-be-exciting attacks get called back on an offside, Americans yawn.
But you’re right that Americans would probably ruin the game. We might change it into something exciting, and then the rest of the world would stop caring!
I’ve also been wondering: Is it just the US that doesn’t care about soccer, or are the Candians lethargic about it, too?
Jeez!!! You guys don’t get the game at all!! To to call the offside rule in soccer (I mean proper football of course) idiotic…that’s just lame…If you’ve ever got the chance, visit Inter vs. Milan, Barca-Madrid, Arsenal-Tottenham, Borussia-Schalke, Boca-River, Lazio-AS Roma, Marseille-PSG or whatever, and you’ll know what it’s all about…to experience American sports is nothing in comparison, watching US sports is nothing in comparison…scream your heart out, sing your heart out! No wonder you guys don’t fight over a sporting event: YOU ALL SIT ON YOUR ARSES ‘BEING ENTERTAINED’…
player
good manufacture Alsace beer
Why do americans not like soccer?
Why do germans/english/brazilians/italians/indonesians/nigerians/INSERT ANY NATIONALITY OTHER THAN AMERICAN not like america football?
Its the culture stupid.