A Yank View Of Football

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Nicked from another site!

Personlly I think they hate it because they are garbage at it and that they wouldnt be able to take getting beat all the time, I mean look at all the major sports in the US and the only country that plays them is America - the 'World Series' for example is played by solely American teams with the odd Canadian thrown in. Couple that with the fact that they have to constantly tell themselves how bad 'soccer' is to make themselves feel better and you have to question why we gave them a World Cup!

 

I think i've actually gotten a little dumber after reading this junk, what a narrowminded view of football this guy has.

My guess is that in fact he's really afraid that it's gaining more and more popularity in the US than he'd like to see. I'm also pretty sure he has never seen a match in the Africa cup or the Asia cup, otherwise he wouldn't be talking about popularity, he'd see with his own how football crazy they truly are overthere.

 

Whilst that quote was a bit ranty and one-sided, it is true that soccer fans seem to make a big deal of going on about how great and popular the sport is and tend to look down their noses on people for whom it is not the number one sport.

I like watching almost all sports when I can.

 

If people are doing that (personally i don't know any, if you don't like football, you're not being taken serious and are not worth talking to where i come from ), it's probably because you insist on calling it soccer.

 

That's probably the worst collection of arguments against a sport I think I've ever seen. Granted, people who try and push anything down your throat (be it sporting preference or anything else) are annoying, and complaining about those folks is fair enough. Or it would be, if he didn't behave in the same way himself by embarking on an irrational rant about how bad soccer is! If he doesn't like football, that's fine. But some of his points are spectacularly ignorant.

Huh? All sports have absurd amounts of statistics for fans to pore over. Presumably he's never heard of OPTA, who collate all the stats for the Premiership & Sky. Footie fans love a good stat as much as anyone.

No, as Liverpool fans will tell you, perfection is reached in a match that ends in a 3-3 tie ending in penalty kicks after the underdogs were 3-0 down at half time...

 

Well, there is something to this, in that sports like basketball and American football favor people at the far end of the human size bell curve, while soccer at least allows people to be more average sized. Actually, as a relatively short and skinny American male (now 1.77m, 69 kg), that was the only team sport I could play (up until high school at least, when we moved somewhere without soccer teams); I was far too short (given my skill level) to play basketball, and I would have been killed if I would have tried American football.

So size, both in height and mass, is often a big part of being athletic in the American imagination. Does this play differently in Europe? While size is sometimes an advantage in soccer, it can also be a limitation in terms of quickness and endurance. I wonder if there are any big European guys out there who ever secretly wished that they were shorter/less beefy, thinking they would be better athletes...

 

Over here, we have to call it soccer because the word 'football' could refer to any one of 5 sports that we might be watching.

Bion - interesting points.

 

Bion, what are you actually saying there in that big 2 paragraph of waffle?

The bit you have quoted is an absolutely ridiculous statement. I find the whole thing insulting.

 

Chill out, Barmy.

All he said was that some kids are too short or too skinny to play basketball or rugby. Plenty of mums also would rather their kids play soccer than a ‘rougher’ sport. You shouldn’t be insulted. It’s not like he said “Barmy Army is a weaner” or anything like that.

Ooh, NZ almost didn’t lose to Australia the other day, but they scored in the last minute so we lost 1-0.

Also, I see that Charlton have signed a partnership deal with NZ soccer team, The Knights to share players. I think it’s all based on the fact that NZ captain, Ryan Nelson has been doing OK for Blackburn. Little do Charlton know that virtually all NZ soccer players are only slighly better than useless. Meanwhile, some of their junior players will probably come down here and become superstars.

 

Charlton are shite anyway. As for that post, well, it's coming from an American, so...

 

Bion, there are small(er) guys in basketball as well, they are usually the better ballhandlers and play at guardpositions, remember Muggsy Bogues ? I bet noone would have thought back in college, that this guy was going to be an NBA star.

You also don't necessarily have to be huge in American football, that only goes if you're a defensive linesman, running backs have no gain in being big, strong, fat, or whatever, they only need speed, in a way the same goes for quarterbacks, speed AND a strong arm of course.

In footy, being big usually only has disadvantages, unless you have a deadly header, like Jan Koller from the Czech republic, the best players are usually the fragile looking guys. Football is about speed, endurance and witts, muscle doesn't mean much in this branch

 

Meh, American sports put me to sleep.

 

I am not a fan of football/soccer, but I much prefer Rugby to its substandard cousin American Football. American football puts me to sleep because its just 'stop/start' all the time, plus real men don't need 'body armour' to play

 

This shows that this guy doesn't have an idea not only about football but about almost all sports.

 

I guess he doesn't regard tennis, track and field, swimming, cycling, hockey, volleyball, etc.... as sports.

What an incredible bonehead.

 

I can honestly say that I agree with most of what that guy said. Now if you'll excuse me, I belive theres a pitchfork-wielding mob after me!

 

Yes, it tends to be about Skill.

 

No, wiener. As in Oscar Meyer. W-I-E-N-E-R.

I was just saying, I absolutely would have prefered it if everyone played soccer where I grew up, as opposed to american football. I grew up playing pick-up games of american football all the time (yes, without pads), and I seriously got creamed lots of times. My laundry list of injuries include a concussion, nearly a cauliflower ear (if it hadn't bled all over the place that is), a chipped tooth, broken bones in my hand (continued to play wearing a cast), and numerous cuts, bruises, and bloody noses. Why did I continue to play a contact sport with kids almost twice my size? I don't know, it seemed fun at the time. But I would have come out much better playing soccer all the time, that I know for sure.

As for Muggsy, or all the other little point guards that pop up now and then, not only are they exceptions to the rule, but they basically can only fill one position on the floor. In terms of basic ball handling skills, quickness, shooting, passing, and game awareness, a guy the size of Muggsy needs to have a hell of a lot more going on than someone the size of, say, Shaq.

And of course the sportswriter quoted above is an idiot.

 

I actually wasn't having a go at you Bion, just wondered what you meant.
The insulting thing wasn't aimed at you but at the article. But, whatever...

 

No worries.

To follow up on the Muggsy comment again, while hockey is somewhat similar in that it helps alot to be large (tho not so large as to be slow), the Great One was quite small IIRC (owing to his quickness; if he had been slower he probably would have been mashed to a pulp).