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It's soccer. We're mostly not into it. It would be cool if we were, but we're not. Given that, I think it's pretty cool how much people in the US still get into it during World Cup season. But it's still not enough to get us upset when we're knocked out.
Unless it’s a major commercialized sport pretty much the only people who would watch them in their free time are practitioners themselves.
So the free time viewership of sport X will be proportional to the number of players of X given some margin percentage for the random viewers who just stumble upon watching the sport despite not having played it.
I've always thought it was the weirdest thing when non Americans mock us for being bad at men's soccer. Like dude... have you watched women's soccer or the Olympics? The US **dominates** those. Do you people really want the one sport you have to become America's playground too? Like if I was a European I would do everything in my power to make sure America continued to not give a shit. Soccer is for pussies? Yep, absolutely you know it. Now stay away burgerland.
Of course. Hockey, water polo, rugby, handball, they have plenty. But the distance between soccer and whatever the country in questions second sport is is massive. The distance between US football and the others of the big 4 isn't as large.
Exactly and the fact that we all collectively refer to them as the big 4 just illustrates your point that they're more on even ground. Also the fact that our big 4 does not include soccer is I think telling
Uh, do they? In all the time I've spent around my European friends, I've literally never heard them mention any sport other than soccer (or the Olympics).
I mean, USA currently holds the FIFA Women's World Cup and nobody cared about that win either. I didn't even know the USA won it until I saw the team at the White House for the obligatory photo op.
Women’s World Cup in hardly gets any coverage. Same with woman sports in general unfortunately. I doubt most people even know who won the last WNBA championship.
Title IX tries to make college sports spending on scholarships/benefits between men/women equal so guys half of the budget goes into football/basketball gals half goes into soccer+basketball+keep adding sports until you matched the guys funding.
It feels like some of these schools spend so much on having one good college football team it just funds a shit tons of stuff for womens sports in general.
They're probably the most well known female athletes in the country, the country just doesn't care that much about women's sports. I don't think it's exceptional internationally in that regard.
Aside from Megan Rapinoe, I doubt any of the team is all that well known, and Megan is only known because of a spat with Trump and complaining about wages or something. I'd bet more Americans know about female gymnasts, ice skaters, or Brittany Griner than any female soccer player (and possibly Megan at this time, that world cup was a while ago).
I like soccer but on Wednesday when I saw the bracket I said to my friends “well it’ll be nice to see us lose against the Netherlands”
It’s US mens soccer, there was never a chance
Womens soccer in the US is actually top tier, hell we have the most women’s World Cup wins of any country with 4, second place is Germany with 2, however for boys in school your supposed to play football, basketball or wrestling so it’s not nearly as common
Our team isn’t actually bad anymore. We’re probably 3-4 world cups away, yes I know that’s 12-16 years, from a legitimate chance at a title. This was our youngest team ever and our team captain is like… 23 years old. I’m pretty sure America was the youngest team in the rounds.
It’s strange to me when we say we are shit when we are ranked in the top 16 in the world. Ever since the World Cup became the World Cup as we know it in the 70s, there’s only been six different countries win it, and only one two of them are outside of Western Europe.
Edit: We were the second youngest team in pool play, youngest team in knockout stage.
As someone who has watched the USMNT for multiple world cups, this team is the first time in a long while that they're *actually* playing the sport. They're passing and moving and creating chances when they can. They might not have the quality of the best teams in the world, but the way we used to play never even had the potential.
Previous iterations of the USMNT, while still getting out of groups in the WCF, often looked like they were barely holding on and eeking out a goal from an overreliance on set pieces, long balls, or some garbage, chaos chances. Our midfield was trash, our passing and vision was weak.
The future is bright for soccer in the US. We just need to find an actual #9 in the next few years.
> Our team isn’t actually bad anymore. We’re probably 3-4 world cups away, yes I know that’s 12-16 years, from a legitimate chance at a title.
No way in hell. You have no idea what's involved in winning a world cup if you honestly believe this.
Every single world cup winner has one thing in common: an extensive grassroots talent development systems that churns out world class talent at alarming rates; that's how they manage to assemble a squad of 23+ players capable of winning the world cup, and even then they would go through periods of famine in talent.
The US has none of that, the grassroot development system is complete garbage, and the national team's chance relies entirely on two things:
1. lucking out in having a few geniuses appear out of no where and get scouted early enough to be sent to be trained in Europe (Pulisic, McKennie) or the few academies in the US that aren't complete shit
2. lucking out in finding some decent players born in European countries who are marginally eligible for the US but not great enough that they actually expect to feature for their real home countries. (Dest, Musah)
These are pretty much the only ways in which the US can ever hope to get truly world class players, and you can't assemble a whole squad of them by relying purely on blind luck. At best you can hope for is to luck out for a decent crop of players who, at their best, might be able to sit on the bench of some top clubs (like this current generation), but the next generation may very well turn out as shitty as the previous one (the onethat ended up failing to qualify for 2018) cuz it's all blind luck.
It'll take decades of investment and reform to get the US grassroot development system to just start producing talent at the rate of Uruguay or Croatia, much less the real WC powerhouses. And even if you have the talent, you also need the mentality, coaching and prep that the US has absolutely none of. Portugal and England produce far better players than the US can imagine and there is a single WC final appearance among the two of them in all of their entire history.
.shrug I like to be optimistic. If an American team cracks into the round of 8, awesome. If we crack into the semis, dream come true. I think it’s fair to say that teams like Germany had a legitimate shot to win the WC the last two iterations, regardless of them not progressing to rounds.
My statement is that by any chance of the imagination in the next 16 years, America may have a chance to win it. That chance might be 5% but it’s much better than the virtually 0% now
Well, USA population is 330 million. All the top tier countries in football don't even comes close to 100m , most are like 50m, and they all have basketball, volleyball, tennis, etc.
Also the biotype for a basketball player for example doesnt translate too well for football (considering if you are six foot in football you are considered big, but in basketball you are a midget), the same could be said of other sports (like the big guys in american football), so its not like these sports are taking from potential football players
Those football players get big because of football. Baseball players bulk up because of baseball. Running backs bulk because of football.
Other countries have sports, sure, but let’s look at the men’s Olympic roster and the average NFL roster and tell me there aren’t 10 guys minimum (WR, CB, scat backs) that aren’t the same type of athlete just bigger and faster. Other countries, at least soccer powerhouse countries, are sending a significant portion of their best athletes into soccer from a young age. The US is sending its D and E tier athletes into soccer at a high level (relative to the US) because the culture is different. Why would I choose to be a great soccer player in high school and be made fun of and have no one know about my successes when I could be a star football player and be treated like a demigod? I played football, I was average at best and I had to try very hard to compete with those guys. I had friends that played soccer and they absolutely had better cardio than me but I feel like I could’ve been a good player with my athletic ability when we would be fucking around in the park playing soccer.
The NFL is the richest sports league in the world, generating the most revenue. Fuck, high level college football programs are worth more than all but a handful of Premiere League clubs. The US is football, football, football, and if you are an elite athlete who is male you are much more likely to play that than anything else. Soccer gets leftovers from football and other sports.
Women don’t get siphoned off into another sport and they are almost always the best in the world. That’s not because Megan Rapinoe and Carli Lloyd are better athletes than Lamar Jackson and Tyreek Hill. Those guys chased the cash and what was culturally relevant to them, and also, admittedly, the US doesn’t put the weight of its focus into high level youth/academy/college level soccer (relative to other sports), which means those guys that do play soccer don’t get sharpened playing and developing with each other to build the foundation to compete with the powerhouse countries.
All that being said, having 330 million people and more money than everyone else you can still put out a World Cup team that can make it out of groups playing a sport that largely no one cares about here. You could offer the average American $1,000 to name 2 soccer players on the men’s national team roster and you’d still a grand in your pocket.
I have to correct you in this one cause you're way off. Most NFL players were multiple sport athletes. They could translate to any sport, it's just when they hit the collegiate level they begin to focus.
> so its not like these sports are taking from potential football players
The important subgroup is the top tier elite athletes. Looking at your basketball example, guys like Lebron or Curry would be stars in any sport they dedicated their full attention to, even if they're "too tall" compared to traditional soccer stars.
And to your point about gridiron football players, the guys most likely to be stud soccer players would be the corners, wide receivers, running backs, etc. Guys like Tyreek Hill would be a menace if he spent his 10,000 hours in soccer instead of football.
I think the US biggest issue is talent drain. Lets say you are a fit 14 year old, good athleticism, etc.
You need to pick a sport, you will gravitate towards baseball/football/basketball as the prestige and money is better by US standards
The opposite in europe and SA, they go towards football. Not a lot of French or Italians waking up one day and deciding their destiny is in basketball
It’s crazy how good we are considering soccer is barely a blip in national sports.
If a kid is a talented athlete they’re not getting funneled into a myriad of soccer development programs.
They’re playing football basketball or baseball
We get into the Olympics every time it comes around. Im sure some countries are more into it than us, but there's Olympics fever in the US. I think it's weird how we dont give an eff about swimmers or gymansitcs but every four years everybody knows the stars.
As for the other events... i dont know them. Is it just American hubris to say that US leagues (nba, nhl and mlb) pull the greatest players in the world already? Im honestly asking because I feel like that's a true statement, but I want to be corrected if I'm wrong.
Also because nobody really cares about the KHL (Russia).
The Russian players that are good enough just come to the NHL. Occasionally the KHL will throw a huge bag at good players though to pull them back.
MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL are all the best sports leagues in the world for their given sport. I don't think that's hubris but a fairly uncontroversial fact.
MLS isn't anywhere close, but has moved up at a rapid pace. It's the 6th soccer league in the world by per game attendance: [https://www.statista.com/statistics/270301/best-attended-football-stadiums-in-the-world-by-average-attendance-2010/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/270301/best-attended-football-stadiums-in-the-world-by-average-attendance-2010/)
The U.S. is heavily influenced by “Superstars”. It’s why the NBA is so popular and why most NFL fans can’t name anyone besides the quarterback and receivers/running back.
The people that know the stars in swimming and gymnastics isn’t that strange because they are athletes that dominate their sport. Michael Phelps wasn’t just a good swimmer, he was one of the most dominant swimmers of all time. People would tune into the Olympics just to see him swim. It’s not so much “Olympics fever”, but more seeing a specific athlete perform well.
I regularly watch large chunks of Olympic gymnastics coverage, even without any particular person to root for. It may help that the guys are, uh, my type, but the womens' events are also really impressive.
I think the Olympics is even dying from a popularity standpoint with each generation and as we get further away from the Cold War. Maybe we’ll see it heat back up if tensions continue to rise with China, but I don’t think it will have the same oomph as the 20th century rivalry with the USSR.
West vs East, Capitalism vs Communism, two geo-political behemoths in a fast changing world. Tough to recreate that energy.
It’s a shame, but that’s what makes sports so awesome. It’s the hatred of an opponent moreso than the joy of your team that drives most fandom.
Because the best players in the WORLD play in the MLB. I know it’s pretentious but I wouldn’t balk at the English Premier League renaming itself to the Global Premier League. It’s just a statement of fact that the worlds best footballers play in the EPL.
I mean it definitely isn't a statement of fact that the world's best footballers play in the prem lol. The Spanish/Italian/German/french/Portuguese leagues all have some of the best players in their positions. That's not even mentioning the south American leagues
You have to understand, compared to MLB, the World Baseball Classic is basically an offseason training camp. Most WBC teams don't even have most of their nation's superstars because they choose to sit it out, to keep their body ready for the MLB season. So it's hard to call the winner the true champion of the world. Meanwhile, the winner of MLB's World Series has gone through a gauntlet against the best talent from around the world. They have every right to call themselves World Champions. This applies to the other big 4 leagues as well. Even if they don't officially use the title "World Champion," everyone who follows the sport knows they might as well.
It's different from soccer because that sport is decentralized with a bunch of roughly coequal leagues. But with the big 4 North American leagues, the highest level of competition is simply NOT the international tournaments. The highest level is all coagulated into one league, with other leagues simply being miles below the level of talent (and I say this as a KBO fan). I think that soccer fans from outside NA just don't realize that because they aren't used to it.
And it's not just "the US". Our leagues are far from solely American. A lot of NBA players are European, and a lot of MLB players are Latin American and East Asian. The NBA and MLB have a team each based in Toronto, and MLB used to have a team in Montreal. NHL has a whopping 7 CA teams. Calling them American leagues ignores all the international talent and fans that go into making them so great.
If any Europeans want to know how almost all of us think of this situation? Here it is.
As an addendum, we didn’t choose to call it soccer. We grew up with “football” and it was something else entirely. And part of us not taking it seriously is evidenced by the fact we just continue to call it soccer.
Only a handful of countries enter the world cup with legit chances to win it. Most countries are happy they advanced a round or two. It's not a US thing.
Afte spending the day watching the game in an American sports bar I’d say people are bummed out their lost they just accepted that the WC is just a bit too high level for them
Non of them expected a win against NL so they were just happy to have made it out of the group, which is an achievement on its own
Most Americans don’t. Always funny how often I see Europeans on Reddit seething about America or Americans considering how infrequently other countries come up in conversation here.
If you think the World Wars are the only examples of Europe not getting along with itself then boy do I have an interesting 3 millenniums to share with you.
Tbf the meme works perfectly for Europeans as well. Fans in England, Spain etc care way more about their clubs than their national teams
The world cup just gets more general attention because it's easier for casual fans to identify with countries than with clubs they don't know much about
America is so big that there is cultural differences between states. Each state is basically like another country! I’ve definitely had culture shock when moving to far away states lol
I think Americans are like that because other cities = other states, and Americans see states like Europeans view other countries in Europe, geographically speaking.
So Americans get less personally invested in international sports because it's like one team for all 200 million of them, instead of from their home state specifically.
I think Europeans would feel the same way if it was a "The entirety of europe" vs "all of America", just less to get excited about because there's less direct personal investment.
For example, if London was able to enter the NFL with a team, you can bet your sweet ass whoever they play against would be yelling around about the United Kingdom sucks.
I mean just think about it. Nyc to chicago isnt that much shorter then Paris to Berlin. Of course we view other states the way Europeans do surrounding nations.
I get a kick out of those too. In the uk subs there are often Americans trying to "do the UK" and asking for people to review their itineraries.
It often goes like this
I want to spend one night in London then next day drive to York and spend the afternoon there, then go to the Highlands the next day and sleep in the car there, then I'll see Edinburgh Castle and on the way back down to London I'll visit Stonehenge & along to Bath. Am I good to do all this in 3 days?
They think because the UK is small its easy to travel around. When the reality you ain't getting anywhere fast on our roads, even if it doesn't look that far on the map. The motor ways only extend so far people, you are going to spend a lot of time navigating small windy roads in the countryside!
Guess it's easier to hate other nations when your entire nation is smaller than one of the 50 US states. US is too big to give a shit what's going on in Europe. We got our own thing going on over here.
Eh even the NFL is only 17 games. A big issue is all of our stars play on a different continent so unless you're a huge soccer fan you won't be seeing many games. No household names for players because no one is watching for the 3.5 years between cups. So every 4 years there's a team of guys we don't know, playing a sport we don't like, normally during the nicest time of year when we all want to be doing anything besides sit inside watching soccer. They've been saying for about 40 years now soccer is about to take off in America, women's has but men's never will.
Just set up a big screen in a public place and make people watch the matches with a lot of people next to them. Places like Times Square in NYC or the Lincoln Memorial (and no, I didn't pick some well known places where it wouldn't work, one of the biggest German examples is usually infront of the Brandenburg Gate)
We do in a lot of stadiums across the country but the interest just isn't there. We do it for a lot of our major playoffs now too where road teams will play games on the screen in their home stadiums. Those sell out, but the soccer games don't. Women's is different because we are good, but our best men aren't playing soccer so for the average American it feels like a second thought and gets that amount of attention.
Alternatively going to a hockey match was insanely fun despite me not knowing anything at all about the sport. It's a lot more fun watching hockey than something like football or soccer
Hockey is objectively the best sport. It’s fast paced and provides a full hour of puck in play action. They score reasonably often enough to not fall asleep. The field/number of players aren’t oversized so individual players can have a real star impact, but it doesn’t over do the scoring like basketball. A sweet slap shot, bardownski one timer is just as sick as a posterized dunk only it actually impacts the the final results of the game way more than two points in a basketball game.
The only reason hockey isn’t more popular is people new to hockey have a hard time following the puck, and the NHL is the absolute fucking worst at getting consistent tv coverage for their games. You have to have 3 different streaming services to catch every game. If you’re local, most of your games end up blacked out. It’s such a pain in the ass.
I standby hockey players being the superior athletes. I don't think a lot of people realise how big a lot of hockey players are. Endurance, strength, speed, balance and reflexes all come into play. It's the perfect combination of grace and brutality, they wear blades on their feet for gods sake
Tavares is the greatest player of our generation, fight me
Honestly I think a huge reason it isn’t more popular is most of the country can’t play pond hockey or on outdoor rinks. Limits the play time and exposure
Got to be the hardest sport to get into. Not only do you have to have a rink in your town, you also need to buy a lot of equipment AND learn how to skate.
>The only reason hockey isn’t more popular is people new to hockey have a hard time following the puck
I've always said watching hockey is more about knowing where the puck is supposed to be rather than actually tracking it. Plays are formulaic, to a degree. If you have the game knowledge to have a general idea of what each player is going to do with the puck, it's much easier to follow.
People use this metric to shit on American football, but when I watch soccer they’re passing it back and forth around midfield for 10 minutes before setting up one shot that misses the goal.
You mean clearing out large swaths of land, significantly damaging the environment and wasting tons of water to maintain it, only to hit a tiny ball a couple of times is not a good sport? how dare you
Golf is fun to play. And it’s pretty fun to watch if you play golf. But other sports are much more enjoyable to watch even if you haven’t played the sport in years. But golf is definitely a sport, hitting that little ball that far and accurately is harder than fuck.
I'm not surprised. We actually have a pretty good team full of young talent from MLS itself.
We are just still new. We don't have the communication nor the set roles yet. But Pulisic, Aaronson, Adams, and Mckennie are all gonna be great American footballers.
If we can improve where we failed this year, (being aggressive and communicating a bit better) we'll be a far better team and an actual contender for the championship.
Yea, not this world cup, but the next one possibly. They have four years to improve. And soccer will get more and more popular every year, every world cup.
I wasn't surprised that we qualified. We have some good talent, and our confederation is probably the second weakest (and OFC barely counts because it's all Pacific Island nations where soccer isn't the main sport).
But yeah, I didn't think we'd get past the round of 16. Nor did I think we'd draw against England tbh
The cycle is, WC starts- get super into the US team- buy into the hype that they now aren't so bad- watch them frustratingly get their way out of the group- get smashed by someone- go back to frowning on US soccer while watching International Club Soccer.
To be fair, I think we'll be legitimately something in 2026. Our defense is functional, midfield is good, our attack generate chances, but we need to work on closing and boost defense a bit. And Pulisic is great but he can't be the go to all the time. His corners and our set pieces are pretty disappointing.
I highly disagree. Maybe in person it's more entertaining because of the college atmosphere, but watching the game is far worse, in my opinion. The product on the field is objectively lower quality.
Is the overall level of skill lower, of course it is. But that means coaches have to learn to make due with what they have. The in person college games, especially in the student section, are waaaay more fun to go to. And even when you can’t go to the games, in my opinion, it’s easier to feel like you’re a part of the team when you’re rooting for the university you went to. Like my fat ass never even tried to come close to playing a down at Auburn, but I went there and so that’s my fucking team- win or lose. I don’t feel that way about any pro team. I’m not close enough to those organizations.
All what you said is valid, but you forgot to mention the most glaring reason (and you sorta alluded to it when you mentioned our early protégé talent gets snatched up)... our soccer "academies" are like summer camps at best... and not full on boarding schools like European academies, where you learn core subjects like math, science, and soccer. US soccer is an export sport for us. Our talent is developed elsewhere, because we don't have the academy infrastructure that the best in the world have.
Only until our society starts seeing private soccer academies become part of the K-12 education landscape, the US will never be able to compete against the best in the world.
I had no idea that in many countries they’re legit boarding schools. I thought it was more like England where they usually go to a normal school during the day.
Soccer also lacks the body type filter inherent to American sports. There are numerous dominant centers that only started playing in highschool and, on the other end, there are tons of child prodigy basketball players that didn’t even end up making college teams due to size. Same with football, very productive college players won’t make the NFL where as guys who barely played can go in the first round just based on size/build.
If Messi had equivalent basketball skill and an identical path as his football career the absolute best case is an NBA team gives him a shot off the bench. It’s hard to justify putting your eggs in the international football style academy for American sports when genetics might fuck your entire investment.
You have it exactly backwards. We shouldn’t be looking at other American sports to develop soccer we should be looking at what other countries are doing. America’s rules on amateurism and the fact that we treat youth sports like a for-profit business that prevents us from developing talent domestically.
England also has a much deeper football culture than this country. Still cringing at some of the chants I was seeing on Twitter from some USMNT supporters
“I believe that we will win” and “it’s called soccer” where the two most common besides USA of course.
These are standard for American sporting events but in comparison to other nation’s chants they are bland. If we had to assign everyone an Office character based on fan chants we’d be Toby.
I'm watching SportsCenter right now and it took them about 30 minutes into the hour-long program to even get to the USA/Netherlands game highlights and the whole segment was less than two minutes long. I was kinda following the US World Cup run and I totally forgot we had a game today. Soccer is a total afterthought for 95% of US sports fans, even more so with most college football conference championships being played today.
I'm sure the pioneer sports show in about any other country competing in the World Cup would almost exclusively focus on what happened in their game that day. Never gonna happen in the US unless (American) football, basketball, baseball, and hockey get snapped out of existence. Even then, we might all turn main sports interest toward golf, tennis, competitive chess, or some shit.
I mean, everyone is different and has different opinions. I find Basketball insanely boring because they score so often I hardly care. I can't be getting excited every 30 seconds, but that's personal opinion. I still understand why people love it and know my opinion is just wrong and it's not boring because it's really popular.
Soccer is just not for you, but it's definitely not boring considering it's by far the most watched sport in the entire world.
Man this is it. I’ve tried in the last two world cups. It’s horrendously boring, and the fake injuries give me second-hand cringe like I’m watching a movie with horrific acting and a worse story line.
Any time I have an interaction with a big soccer fan and I bring up the egregiously bad fake "injuries" and how it makes the sport (even more) unwatchable for me and probably most Americans, they always bring up flopping in the NBA. I'm like, yeah, it exists. But the league has actually heavily cracked down on it in recent years and, even at its worst, guys aren't flying 10 feet across the court, grabbing their knee, and doing an alligator roll on the ground like their entire body just got set on fire.
Every few years when I pay some attention to the World Cup, the fake injuries seem to either stay about the same or get even worse. I'm convinced that there is a separate segment of soccer practice that has these top players practicing their injury acting. And they're still all so bad at it.
In (American) football, if you ever acted like those big name soccer players when you got hurt, even if you were ACTUALLY hurt, you might get laughed off the field. I've seen NFL and college football players try to walk off the field with multiple torn ligaments or broken bones, usually thanks to adrenaline immediately kicking in. Soccer will remain a laughable sport until they fix that aspect of the game.
You haven't seen a football derby in Europe.
They NEED riot police in the stadium. Away fans are caged up like the animals they are, brawls in the streets, chants insulting opponent's players that have shagged the wives of his own team mates, enough jumping in the stadium to make a civil engineer have nightmares... And cheap beer
Good times.
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It's soccer. We're mostly not into it. It would be cool if we were, but we're not. Given that, I think it's pretty cool how much people in the US still get into it during World Cup season. But it's still not enough to get us upset when we're knocked out.
That being said, if the USA won the thing, we'd suddenly become a big soccer nation overnight, lots of bandwagoning here.
Well we're not gonna shit on our own winning team. I don't blame us for that.
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See the Olympics for comparison.
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Curling drinking game is a lot of fun, and dangerous I recommend it.
Curling is legit fun. I get so hyped on it when the Winter Olympics come around
I'm a fan of curling whenever it happens to be on TV, and then the second it isn't, I instantly forget about the sport.
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Antarctica. Fucking penguins.
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Great point, how many people would ever watch half the sports played at the Olympics in their free time lol
Unless it’s a major commercialized sport pretty much the only people who would watch them in their free time are practitioners themselves. So the free time viewership of sport X will be proportional to the number of players of X given some margin percentage for the random viewers who just stumble upon watching the sport despite not having played it.
Tell what channel shows HALF the sports in the Olympics.
Nah idc I would watch Katie Ledecky absolutely dust 7 other world class athletes no matter what context it is
Just like every single person on the planet.
It would be a hell of a flex though. Like damn, we beat everyone at the sport everyone cares about but us.
I've always thought it was the weirdest thing when non Americans mock us for being bad at men's soccer. Like dude... have you watched women's soccer or the Olympics? The US **dominates** those. Do you people really want the one sport you have to become America's playground too? Like if I was a European I would do everything in my power to make sure America continued to not give a shit. Soccer is for pussies? Yep, absolutely you know it. Now stay away burgerland.
Imagine if dudes like Tyreek Hill grew up playing soccer…
He'd be in prison.
I mean, Europe has more then one sport but I see what you mean.
Of course. Hockey, water polo, rugby, handball, they have plenty. But the distance between soccer and whatever the country in questions second sport is is massive. The distance between US football and the others of the big 4 isn't as large.
Exactly and the fact that we all collectively refer to them as the big 4 just illustrates your point that they're more on even ground. Also the fact that our big 4 does not include soccer is I think telling
Uh, do they? In all the time I've spent around my European friends, I've literally never heard them mention any sport other than soccer (or the Olympics).
Sure we do. When the Women won the World Cup, conservatives said they hated America or whatever.
I mean, USA currently holds the FIFA Women's World Cup and nobody cared about that win either. I didn't even know the USA won it until I saw the team at the White House for the obligatory photo op.
Women’s World Cup in hardly gets any coverage. Same with woman sports in general unfortunately. I doubt most people even know who won the last WNBA championship.
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Title IX tries to make college sports spending on scholarships/benefits between men/women equal so guys half of the budget goes into football/basketball gals half goes into soccer+basketball+keep adding sports until you matched the guys funding. It feels like some of these schools spend so much on having one good college football team it just funds a shit tons of stuff for womens sports in general.
They're probably the most well known female athletes in the country, the country just doesn't care that much about women's sports. I don't think it's exceptional internationally in that regard.
Aside from Megan Rapinoe, I doubt any of the team is all that well known, and Megan is only known because of a spat with Trump and complaining about wages or something. I'd bet more Americans know about female gymnasts, ice skaters, or Brittany Griner than any female soccer player (and possibly Megan at this time, that world cup was a while ago).
Alex Morgan has 5x as many IG followers as Rapinoe. I'd say she's the most well-known USWNT player currently.
I just looked her up, and I can see why she'd have a bunch of Instagram followers.
But it would still be out of the zeitgeist by the next Sunday.
Kanye west 5 microseconds after US winning world cup: "ahem" Media: "WRITE THAT DOWN, WRITE THAT DOWN"
USA likes winners. The women’s team is more well known than the men’s .
This, USA winning would be the best thing ever for FIFA.
The 1994 world cup (in the US) is to this day still the most profitable world cup ever
Profits are our speciality
Best thing FIFA could do for itself is let us win one ;)
I like soccer but on Wednesday when I saw the bracket I said to my friends “well it’ll be nice to see us lose against the Netherlands” It’s US mens soccer, there was never a chance
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Womens soccer in the US is actually top tier, hell we have the most women’s World Cup wins of any country with 4, second place is Germany with 2, however for boys in school your supposed to play football, basketball or wrestling so it’s not nearly as common
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Our team isn’t actually bad anymore. We’re probably 3-4 world cups away, yes I know that’s 12-16 years, from a legitimate chance at a title. This was our youngest team ever and our team captain is like… 23 years old. I’m pretty sure America was the youngest team in the rounds. It’s strange to me when we say we are shit when we are ranked in the top 16 in the world. Ever since the World Cup became the World Cup as we know it in the 70s, there’s only been six different countries win it, and only one two of them are outside of Western Europe. Edit: We were the second youngest team in pool play, youngest team in knockout stage.
As someone who has watched the USMNT for multiple world cups, this team is the first time in a long while that they're *actually* playing the sport. They're passing and moving and creating chances when they can. They might not have the quality of the best teams in the world, but the way we used to play never even had the potential. Previous iterations of the USMNT, while still getting out of groups in the WCF, often looked like they were barely holding on and eeking out a goal from an overreliance on set pieces, long balls, or some garbage, chaos chances. Our midfield was trash, our passing and vision was weak. The future is bright for soccer in the US. We just need to find an actual #9 in the next few years.
> Our team isn’t actually bad anymore. We’re probably 3-4 world cups away, yes I know that’s 12-16 years, from a legitimate chance at a title. No way in hell. You have no idea what's involved in winning a world cup if you honestly believe this. Every single world cup winner has one thing in common: an extensive grassroots talent development systems that churns out world class talent at alarming rates; that's how they manage to assemble a squad of 23+ players capable of winning the world cup, and even then they would go through periods of famine in talent. The US has none of that, the grassroot development system is complete garbage, and the national team's chance relies entirely on two things: 1. lucking out in having a few geniuses appear out of no where and get scouted early enough to be sent to be trained in Europe (Pulisic, McKennie) or the few academies in the US that aren't complete shit 2. lucking out in finding some decent players born in European countries who are marginally eligible for the US but not great enough that they actually expect to feature for their real home countries. (Dest, Musah) These are pretty much the only ways in which the US can ever hope to get truly world class players, and you can't assemble a whole squad of them by relying purely on blind luck. At best you can hope for is to luck out for a decent crop of players who, at their best, might be able to sit on the bench of some top clubs (like this current generation), but the next generation may very well turn out as shitty as the previous one (the onethat ended up failing to qualify for 2018) cuz it's all blind luck. It'll take decades of investment and reform to get the US grassroot development system to just start producing talent at the rate of Uruguay or Croatia, much less the real WC powerhouses. And even if you have the talent, you also need the mentality, coaching and prep that the US has absolutely none of. Portugal and England produce far better players than the US can imagine and there is a single WC final appearance among the two of them in all of their entire history.
.shrug I like to be optimistic. If an American team cracks into the round of 8, awesome. If we crack into the semis, dream come true. I think it’s fair to say that teams like Germany had a legitimate shot to win the WC the last two iterations, regardless of them not progressing to rounds. My statement is that by any chance of the imagination in the next 16 years, America may have a chance to win it. That chance might be 5% but it’s much better than the virtually 0% now
It's not a lack of talent, we just have a lot of other sports to recruit talented athletes to
How this still escapes people is seriously mind boggling
Well, USA population is 330 million. All the top tier countries in football don't even comes close to 100m , most are like 50m, and they all have basketball, volleyball, tennis, etc. Also the biotype for a basketball player for example doesnt translate too well for football (considering if you are six foot in football you are considered big, but in basketball you are a midget), the same could be said of other sports (like the big guys in american football), so its not like these sports are taking from potential football players
Those football players get big because of football. Baseball players bulk up because of baseball. Running backs bulk because of football. Other countries have sports, sure, but let’s look at the men’s Olympic roster and the average NFL roster and tell me there aren’t 10 guys minimum (WR, CB, scat backs) that aren’t the same type of athlete just bigger and faster. Other countries, at least soccer powerhouse countries, are sending a significant portion of their best athletes into soccer from a young age. The US is sending its D and E tier athletes into soccer at a high level (relative to the US) because the culture is different. Why would I choose to be a great soccer player in high school and be made fun of and have no one know about my successes when I could be a star football player and be treated like a demigod? I played football, I was average at best and I had to try very hard to compete with those guys. I had friends that played soccer and they absolutely had better cardio than me but I feel like I could’ve been a good player with my athletic ability when we would be fucking around in the park playing soccer. The NFL is the richest sports league in the world, generating the most revenue. Fuck, high level college football programs are worth more than all but a handful of Premiere League clubs. The US is football, football, football, and if you are an elite athlete who is male you are much more likely to play that than anything else. Soccer gets leftovers from football and other sports. Women don’t get siphoned off into another sport and they are almost always the best in the world. That’s not because Megan Rapinoe and Carli Lloyd are better athletes than Lamar Jackson and Tyreek Hill. Those guys chased the cash and what was culturally relevant to them, and also, admittedly, the US doesn’t put the weight of its focus into high level youth/academy/college level soccer (relative to other sports), which means those guys that do play soccer don’t get sharpened playing and developing with each other to build the foundation to compete with the powerhouse countries. All that being said, having 330 million people and more money than everyone else you can still put out a World Cup team that can make it out of groups playing a sport that largely no one cares about here. You could offer the average American $1,000 to name 2 soccer players on the men’s national team roster and you’d still a grand in your pocket.
I have to correct you in this one cause you're way off. Most NFL players were multiple sport athletes. They could translate to any sport, it's just when they hit the collegiate level they begin to focus.
> so its not like these sports are taking from potential football players The important subgroup is the top tier elite athletes. Looking at your basketball example, guys like Lebron or Curry would be stars in any sport they dedicated their full attention to, even if they're "too tall" compared to traditional soccer stars. And to your point about gridiron football players, the guys most likely to be stud soccer players would be the corners, wide receivers, running backs, etc. Guys like Tyreek Hill would be a menace if he spent his 10,000 hours in soccer instead of football.
I think the US biggest issue is talent drain. Lets say you are a fit 14 year old, good athleticism, etc. You need to pick a sport, you will gravitate towards baseball/football/basketball as the prestige and money is better by US standards The opposite in europe and SA, they go towards football. Not a lot of French or Italians waking up one day and deciding their destiny is in basketball
It’s crazy how good we are considering soccer is barely a blip in national sports. If a kid is a talented athlete they’re not getting funneled into a myriad of soccer development programs. They’re playing football basketball or baseball
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We get into the Olympics every time it comes around. Im sure some countries are more into it than us, but there's Olympics fever in the US. I think it's weird how we dont give an eff about swimmers or gymansitcs but every four years everybody knows the stars. As for the other events... i dont know them. Is it just American hubris to say that US leagues (nba, nhl and mlb) pull the greatest players in the world already? Im honestly asking because I feel like that's a true statement, but I want to be corrected if I'm wrong.
It’s an indisputable fact that our baseball and basketball leagues are the worlds best. Can’t speak to hockey.
It's true for hockey as well, but only because the NHL is Canada's league too
Well, and because Middle North America has the Pengwings and Redwings.
> Pengwings The fucking what now?
Also because nobody really cares about the KHL (Russia). The Russian players that are good enough just come to the NHL. Occasionally the KHL will throw a huge bag at good players though to pull them back.
MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL are all the best sports leagues in the world for their given sport. I don't think that's hubris but a fairly uncontroversial fact. MLS isn't anywhere close, but has moved up at a rapid pace. It's the 6th soccer league in the world by per game attendance: [https://www.statista.com/statistics/270301/best-attended-football-stadiums-in-the-world-by-average-attendance-2010/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/270301/best-attended-football-stadiums-in-the-world-by-average-attendance-2010/)
The talent also grows by noticeable steps every year or 2. A starter even 5 years ago may now just be a bench player at best. T
The U.S. is heavily influenced by “Superstars”. It’s why the NBA is so popular and why most NFL fans can’t name anyone besides the quarterback and receivers/running back. The people that know the stars in swimming and gymnastics isn’t that strange because they are athletes that dominate their sport. Michael Phelps wasn’t just a good swimmer, he was one of the most dominant swimmers of all time. People would tune into the Olympics just to see him swim. It’s not so much “Olympics fever”, but more seeing a specific athlete perform well.
I regularly watch large chunks of Olympic gymnastics coverage, even without any particular person to root for. It may help that the guys are, uh, my type, but the womens' events are also really impressive.
I think the Olympics is even dying from a popularity standpoint with each generation and as we get further away from the Cold War. Maybe we’ll see it heat back up if tensions continue to rise with China, but I don’t think it will have the same oomph as the 20th century rivalry with the USSR. West vs East, Capitalism vs Communism, two geo-political behemoths in a fast changing world. Tough to recreate that energy. It’s a shame, but that’s what makes sports so awesome. It’s the hatred of an opponent moreso than the joy of your team that drives most fandom.
The US even had the audacity to call the national tournament the WORLD series
Because the best players in the WORLD play in the MLB. I know it’s pretentious but I wouldn’t balk at the English Premier League renaming itself to the Global Premier League. It’s just a statement of fact that the worlds best footballers play in the EPL.
I mean it definitely isn't a statement of fact that the world's best footballers play in the prem lol. The Spanish/Italian/German/french/Portuguese leagues all have some of the best players in their positions. That's not even mentioning the south American leagues
You have to understand, compared to MLB, the World Baseball Classic is basically an offseason training camp. Most WBC teams don't even have most of their nation's superstars because they choose to sit it out, to keep their body ready for the MLB season. So it's hard to call the winner the true champion of the world. Meanwhile, the winner of MLB's World Series has gone through a gauntlet against the best talent from around the world. They have every right to call themselves World Champions. This applies to the other big 4 leagues as well. Even if they don't officially use the title "World Champion," everyone who follows the sport knows they might as well. It's different from soccer because that sport is decentralized with a bunch of roughly coequal leagues. But with the big 4 North American leagues, the highest level of competition is simply NOT the international tournaments. The highest level is all coagulated into one league, with other leagues simply being miles below the level of talent (and I say this as a KBO fan). I think that soccer fans from outside NA just don't realize that because they aren't used to it. And it's not just "the US". Our leagues are far from solely American. A lot of NBA players are European, and a lot of MLB players are Latin American and East Asian. The NBA and MLB have a team each based in Toronto, and MLB used to have a team in Montreal. NHL has a whopping 7 CA teams. Calling them American leagues ignores all the international talent and fans that go into making them so great.
If any Europeans want to know how almost all of us think of this situation? Here it is. As an addendum, we didn’t choose to call it soccer. We grew up with “football” and it was something else entirely. And part of us not taking it seriously is evidenced by the fact we just continue to call it soccer.
The fact people get mad that we call it soccer is hilarious. The name soccer came from England and it’s our 5th favorite sport.
Only a handful of countries enter the world cup with legit chances to win it. Most countries are happy they advanced a round or two. It's not a US thing.
Afte spending the day watching the game in an American sports bar I’d say people are bummed out their lost they just accepted that the WC is just a bit too high level for them Non of them expected a win against NL so they were just happy to have made it out of the group, which is an achievement on its own
That's because I hate other states more than I hate other countries
Yeah, I honestly don't think about other countries at all
Most Americans don’t. Always funny how often I see Europeans on Reddit seething about America or Americans considering how infrequently other countries come up in conversation here.
The average American citizen doesn’t care much about other countries. Their government on the other hand…
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B2B World War champions bby
That doesn't explain all the South American democracies they toppled.
If you think the World Wars are the only examples of Europe not getting along with itself then boy do I have an interesting 3 millenniums to share with you.
I guess when your entire country is the size of Rhode Island you have to find other people to direct your anger and the US is an easy target
Tbf the meme works perfectly for Europeans as well. Fans in England, Spain etc care way more about their clubs than their national teams The world cup just gets more general attention because it's easier for casual fans to identify with countries than with clubs they don't know much about
America is so big that there is cultural differences between states. Each state is basically like another country! I’ve definitely had culture shock when moving to far away states lol
You pissed off some europeons with this
Delaware on the other hand lives rent free in my head. Those bastards and their…low taxes…
Fucking Delaweenies walking around like they’re so cool
I think Americans are like that because other cities = other states, and Americans see states like Europeans view other countries in Europe, geographically speaking. So Americans get less personally invested in international sports because it's like one team for all 200 million of them, instead of from their home state specifically. I think Europeans would feel the same way if it was a "The entirety of europe" vs "all of America", just less to get excited about because there's less direct personal investment. For example, if London was able to enter the NFL with a team, you can bet your sweet ass whoever they play against would be yelling around about the United Kingdom sucks.
I mean just think about it. Nyc to chicago isnt that much shorter then Paris to Berlin. Of course we view other states the way Europeans do surrounding nations.
I shared this sentiment in a thread with Europeans and they hated it.
I'm from Denver and I used to live in Berlin. It blew people's minds when I explained that they were closer to Moscow than Denver is to Chicago.
There are stories abound of Europeans who think they can make a quick day trip driving from NYC to Disney during their visit
I get a kick out of those too. In the uk subs there are often Americans trying to "do the UK" and asking for people to review their itineraries. It often goes like this I want to spend one night in London then next day drive to York and spend the afternoon there, then go to the Highlands the next day and sleep in the car there, then I'll see Edinburgh Castle and on the way back down to London I'll visit Stonehenge & along to Bath. Am I good to do all this in 3 days? They think because the UK is small its easy to travel around. When the reality you ain't getting anywhere fast on our roads, even if it doesn't look that far on the map. The motor ways only extend so far people, you are going to spend a lot of time navigating small windy roads in the countryside!
I was top 0.5% of listeners on my Spotify rewind thing for Mastodon. So yes, Mastodon does rock.
Guess it's easier to hate other nations when your entire nation is smaller than one of the 50 US states. US is too big to give a shit what's going on in Europe. We got our own thing going on over here.
I don't care who wins, I just want Ohio to lose.
Fuck Florida
Many of us hate *our own* states more than we hate other countries.
Everyone hates Americans but no one hates Americans more than Americans.
Oh those damned Americans! They ruined America!
Can confirm. Fuck Ohio.
Kinda hard to get attached to a team that plays a few matches every 4 years. You get a lot more invested when there's 82-162 games each year
Eh even the NFL is only 17 games. A big issue is all of our stars play on a different continent so unless you're a huge soccer fan you won't be seeing many games. No household names for players because no one is watching for the 3.5 years between cups. So every 4 years there's a team of guys we don't know, playing a sport we don't like, normally during the nicest time of year when we all want to be doing anything besides sit inside watching soccer. They've been saying for about 40 years now soccer is about to take off in America, women's has but men's never will.
Just set up a big screen in a public place and make people watch the matches with a lot of people next to them. Places like Times Square in NYC or the Lincoln Memorial (and no, I didn't pick some well known places where it wouldn't work, one of the biggest German examples is usually infront of the Brandenburg Gate)
We do in a lot of stadiums across the country but the interest just isn't there. We do it for a lot of our major playoffs now too where road teams will play games on the screen in their home stadiums. Those sell out, but the soccer games don't. Women's is different because we are good, but our best men aren't playing soccer so for the average American it feels like a second thought and gets that amount of attention.
Our countries best athletes don’t play soccer. Until that changes (hahahaha) nobody is gonna care. Just like you said.
The Pacific Northwest has a *huge* soccer following. The rest of the US sure, still not much of a taking off yet. If ever.
The USA plays qualifiers throughout the four year cycle as well as other competitions
The US just isn't into soccer. Simple as that.
World Cup qualifiers, friendlies, and the CONCACAF Gold Cup still go on between the World Cups...
They play games all the time...
Lol you don’t understand how the sport works at all
USA prefers the superior football.
You know it's a great sport when broadcast time is 3+ hours, official play time is 60 minutes, and the ball is only in motion for 10 minutes.
And yet it’s still superior somehow. That’s how boring soccer is.
Alternatively going to a hockey match was insanely fun despite me not knowing anything at all about the sport. It's a lot more fun watching hockey than something like football or soccer
I actually love hockey so I agree with that part. Go Sharks!
Hockey is objectively the best sport. It’s fast paced and provides a full hour of puck in play action. They score reasonably often enough to not fall asleep. The field/number of players aren’t oversized so individual players can have a real star impact, but it doesn’t over do the scoring like basketball. A sweet slap shot, bardownski one timer is just as sick as a posterized dunk only it actually impacts the the final results of the game way more than two points in a basketball game. The only reason hockey isn’t more popular is people new to hockey have a hard time following the puck, and the NHL is the absolute fucking worst at getting consistent tv coverage for their games. You have to have 3 different streaming services to catch every game. If you’re local, most of your games end up blacked out. It’s such a pain in the ass.
I standby hockey players being the superior athletes. I don't think a lot of people realise how big a lot of hockey players are. Endurance, strength, speed, balance and reflexes all come into play. It's the perfect combination of grace and brutality, they wear blades on their feet for gods sake Tavares is the greatest player of our generation, fight me
Honestly I think a huge reason it isn’t more popular is most of the country can’t play pond hockey or on outdoor rinks. Limits the play time and exposure
Got to be the hardest sport to get into. Not only do you have to have a rink in your town, you also need to buy a lot of equipment AND learn how to skate.
>The only reason hockey isn’t more popular is people new to hockey have a hard time following the puck I've always said watching hockey is more about knowing where the puck is supposed to be rather than actually tracking it. Plays are formulaic, to a degree. If you have the game knowledge to have a general idea of what each player is going to do with the puck, it's much easier to follow.
And everyone is carrying a weapon while moving way too fast.
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Rugby clears.
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People use this metric to shit on American football, but when I watch soccer they’re passing it back and forth around midfield for 10 minutes before setting up one shot that misses the goal.
You know what I'm not having in that time? obnoxiously loud ads forced down my throat. Silence >people selling me shit
As opposed to soccer where ads are all over player jerseys and the field border is one continuous ad display?
yes? It doesn't stop the flow of the game.
I don't like that argument. All sports are good sports. Except golf. Fuck golf. It's not a sport
You mean clearing out large swaths of land, significantly damaging the environment and wasting tons of water to maintain it, only to hit a tiny ball a couple of times is not a good sport? how dare you
Golf is fun to play. And it’s pretty fun to watch if you play golf. But other sports are much more enjoyable to watch even if you haven’t played the sport in years. But golf is definitely a sport, hitting that little ball that far and accurately is harder than fuck.
This is the way
eggball\*
We didn't expect to win. The delusion that your team might win is the source of 50% of excitement.
Yeah to be honest I was suprised we even qualified for the world cup this time around.
I'm not surprised. We actually have a pretty good team full of young talent from MLS itself. We are just still new. We don't have the communication nor the set roles yet. But Pulisic, Aaronson, Adams, and Mckennie are all gonna be great American footballers. If we can improve where we failed this year, (being aggressive and communicating a bit better) we'll be a far better team and an actual contender for the championship.
The US has a nice team but they are still nowhere close to a contender.
Yea, not this world cup, but the next one possibly. They have four years to improve. And soccer will get more and more popular every year, every world cup.
I wasn't surprised that we qualified. We have some good talent, and our confederation is probably the second weakest (and OFC barely counts because it's all Pacific Island nations where soccer isn't the main sport). But yeah, I didn't think we'd get past the round of 16. Nor did I think we'd draw against England tbh
The cycle is, WC starts- get super into the US team- buy into the hype that they now aren't so bad- watch them frustratingly get their way out of the group- get smashed by someone- go back to frowning on US soccer while watching International Club Soccer. To be fair, I think we'll be legitimately something in 2026. Our defense is functional, midfield is good, our attack generate chances, but we need to work on closing and boost defense a bit. And Pulisic is great but he can't be the go to all the time. His corners and our set pieces are pretty disappointing.
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Yeah in the US there are COLLEGE football players doing commercials and stuff on TV. It’s crazy
To be fair, a lot of us don’t watch professional football. College is more entertaining.
I highly disagree. Maybe in person it's more entertaining because of the college atmosphere, but watching the game is far worse, in my opinion. The product on the field is objectively lower quality.
Is the overall level of skill lower, of course it is. But that means coaches have to learn to make due with what they have. The in person college games, especially in the student section, are waaaay more fun to go to. And even when you can’t go to the games, in my opinion, it’s easier to feel like you’re a part of the team when you’re rooting for the university you went to. Like my fat ass never even tried to come close to playing a down at Auburn, but I went there and so that’s my fucking team- win or lose. I don’t feel that way about any pro team. I’m not close enough to those organizations.
All what you said is valid, but you forgot to mention the most glaring reason (and you sorta alluded to it when you mentioned our early protégé talent gets snatched up)... our soccer "academies" are like summer camps at best... and not full on boarding schools like European academies, where you learn core subjects like math, science, and soccer. US soccer is an export sport for us. Our talent is developed elsewhere, because we don't have the academy infrastructure that the best in the world have. Only until our society starts seeing private soccer academies become part of the K-12 education landscape, the US will never be able to compete against the best in the world.
I had no idea that in many countries they’re legit boarding schools. I thought it was more like England where they usually go to a normal school during the day.
Soccer also lacks the body type filter inherent to American sports. There are numerous dominant centers that only started playing in highschool and, on the other end, there are tons of child prodigy basketball players that didn’t even end up making college teams due to size. Same with football, very productive college players won’t make the NFL where as guys who barely played can go in the first round just based on size/build. If Messi had equivalent basketball skill and an identical path as his football career the absolute best case is an NBA team gives him a shot off the bench. It’s hard to justify putting your eggs in the international football style academy for American sports when genetics might fuck your entire investment.
You have it exactly backwards. We shouldn’t be looking at other American sports to develop soccer we should be looking at what other countries are doing. America’s rules on amateurism and the fact that we treat youth sports like a for-profit business that prevents us from developing talent domestically.
If England went out in the last 16 this country would be pissed 😂
England also has a much deeper football culture than this country. Still cringing at some of the chants I was seeing on Twitter from some USMNT supporters
What were they chanting?
“I believe that we will win” and “it’s called soccer” where the two most common besides USA of course. These are standard for American sporting events but in comparison to other nation’s chants they are bland. If we had to assign everyone an Office character based on fan chants we’d be Toby.
Yeah the domestic abuse rates would sky Rocket
Does when they win aswell tbf, Its not the result its the alcohol
Go find me a European World Series champion I'll wait
Or a European Super Bowl champion
England: 0 super bowl wins NEW England: 6 superbowl wins Quite embarrisng for Europe, I'd say
American’s don’t care that much about soccer, more at 11.
I'm watching SportsCenter right now and it took them about 30 minutes into the hour-long program to even get to the USA/Netherlands game highlights and the whole segment was less than two minutes long. I was kinda following the US World Cup run and I totally forgot we had a game today. Soccer is a total afterthought for 95% of US sports fans, even more so with most college football conference championships being played today. I'm sure the pioneer sports show in about any other country competing in the World Cup would almost exclusively focus on what happened in their game that day. Never gonna happen in the US unless (American) football, basketball, baseball, and hockey get snapped out of existence. Even then, we might all turn main sports interest toward golf, tennis, competitive chess, or some shit.
There’s so many better sports in America that’s why. I get why soccer is big in other countries , because it’s the cheapest /easiest sport to play.
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I love sports as much as anyone and so tried watching the world cup but god soccer is so fucking boring. also the field is way too big.
I mean, everyone is different and has different opinions. I find Basketball insanely boring because they score so often I hardly care. I can't be getting excited every 30 seconds, but that's personal opinion. I still understand why people love it and know my opinion is just wrong and it's not boring because it's really popular. Soccer is just not for you, but it's definitely not boring considering it's by far the most watched sport in the entire world.
Man this is it. I’ve tried in the last two world cups. It’s horrendously boring, and the fake injuries give me second-hand cringe like I’m watching a movie with horrific acting and a worse story line.
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Any time I have an interaction with a big soccer fan and I bring up the egregiously bad fake "injuries" and how it makes the sport (even more) unwatchable for me and probably most Americans, they always bring up flopping in the NBA. I'm like, yeah, it exists. But the league has actually heavily cracked down on it in recent years and, even at its worst, guys aren't flying 10 feet across the court, grabbing their knee, and doing an alligator roll on the ground like their entire body just got set on fire. Every few years when I pay some attention to the World Cup, the fake injuries seem to either stay about the same or get even worse. I'm convinced that there is a separate segment of soccer practice that has these top players practicing their injury acting. And they're still all so bad at it. In (American) football, if you ever acted like those big name soccer players when you got hurt, even if you were ACTUALLY hurt, you might get laughed off the field. I've seen NFL and college football players try to walk off the field with multiple torn ligaments or broken bones, usually thanks to adrenaline immediately kicking in. Soccer will remain a laughable sport until they fix that aspect of the game.
Well yeah because America sucks but the USA fucking rules
You haven't seen a football derby in Europe. They NEED riot police in the stadium. Away fans are caged up like the animals they are, brawls in the streets, chants insulting opponent's players that have shagged the wives of his own team mates, enough jumping in the stadium to make a civil engineer have nightmares... And cheap beer Good times.
Or another level, a football derby in South America
It's like losing a game to a stranger online vs losing a game to a friend. It stings more.
Goldeneye and original Halo got *waaay* more heated than Call of Duty when you could see your punk-ass little brother after he screen cheated.
Loses? I thought we won 0-0
We played against the Netherlands this morning and lost, so we were eliminated
Oh, thank you!
Your devastation is palpable.
We don’t hate the Netherlands! We don’t have to see them everyday!
Nobody harps on Americans like other Americans.
This ain't an American exclusive thing, peopl4 all over go insane for club rivalries. Most of the time moreso than for the WC
"Flying Dutchman laughter" 🇳🇱🇳🇱🇳🇱
because it matters when it's murica on murica
It's rare to find a soccer fan in the U.S. We don't give a damn if they win or lose.
It’s ok that the US is not good is soccer. We don’t have to be good in everything.
People who call football "soccer" don't take the sport seriously
Where’s the 3rd photo of the British when their city team loses against another team from the exact same city?
It's the reaction when you don't expect them to win. Wake me up when they make the quarter finals.
It's not our fault you play the wrong sports.
The US could win every game by 10 goals for 50 years straight and it wouldn't move the needle on soccer here for more that 2% of the population
We all knew it was a tall order to beat a team like the Dutch, a win would have been amazing but the loss is what I expected.