Americans have just never caught soccer fever or ‘World Cup” mania. This has lead some advocates to believe that this failure is due to some shortcoming in the American psyche rather than soccer’s lower sex appeal. Many cried over the failure of women’s professional soccer, but it’s demise wasn’t totally unexpected. Even today, there is a certain amount of drum beating to try to develop support for reintroducing U.S. professional women’s soccer, but unless they compete in the nude, it’s not likely to fare much better.
Soccer has a tough road to hoe in a country that invented or popularized many of the great sports in the world. My impression is that baseball addressed the shortcomings of cricket and American football and rugby evolved from socccer by reshaping the sport to better engage the spectators and participants.
Soccer marketeers are working hard to capture American’s imaginations. Articles about the world’s greatest athletes are soccer players or the fittest athletes are soccer players just don’t ring true to fans who watch Reggie Bush and Justin Gatlin. It doesn’t seem likely unless the criteria include running around for 90 minutes or so and not do anything interesting. The world’s best athletes are in sports that captivate the fans and pay their players like gods.
What do average Americans know about the last World Cup? They know some French guy head butted some Italian guy. It seems rather ironic that two countries that can’t win any wars would be competing for any kind of World Championship.
Soccer is not the ‘safe’ sport for kids that it is marketed. Statistics reveal that head injuries are one of the most common forms of injuries and they occur in about the same frequency in soccer as in American Football. In case you were dozing off… the quote was “In soccer, concussions make up 2-3% of all injuries. This is the same rate as for American football!” All that contact, and soccer still can’t keep me awake.
It is also not hard to understand why in many less economically developed parts of the world, locals have embraced a contest that requires only a ball. Ask any Division I AD about which sports cost the most and the least.
Continue reading “Soccer: Give them 1 point for effort… but it’s not enough to keep me awake!”