How Excited About the Upcoming World Cup?

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Oh no, really??? That is SO gutting! How will the rest of us sleep tonight knowing that?!

 

The Germans look too good, they will go out latest in the quarter finals. Dominating in the groupstage never bodes well.

 

I think the Aussies are making them look good to be honest. They have been total doggers. Too slow, too old. Sometimes it doesn't look like their defence is even trying to mark properly.

 

Germany walked all over Australia this morning.

 

Heh...that just goes to show how most Americans feel towards Soccer, if changing the channel to NASCAR qualifying races over an international competition doesn't rustle up anyone's feathers.

Hmmm....could it be that a country like the US (which has a large percent of the population who could really care less about Soccer) is still able to compete head to head with a country like England (where I'm assuming that pretty much every citizen is a die-hard fan) be a spit in the eye for people like Barmy?

I'd be pretty pissed off too if some international team (who's countrymen hate Football) somehow made it to the Super Bowl and won it.

 

But USA is a huge country - massive. I would have thought it an embarrassment for USA if they couldn't somehow rustle up 20 decent players at any sport, even if they weren't actually born in the USA. Look at that guy Cacau from Brazil who came on for Germany this morning - hardly a born and bred German. USA should easily be able to put together a half decent squad from their population - there are plenty of European and South American immigrants living there that could form the base.

 

You'd think so wouldn't you? But no, a sport needs the full backing and undying love of its fans across the entire nation, which Soccer lacks in the US. I will say this, Soccer in the US is trying, and they're trying hard.

A few years ago, they built a professional soccer stadium in the greater Salt Lake City metro area - home to REAL Salt Lake...They are the current MLS Cup champions, but come game night, the stadium is usually half-empty. Hell, Utah has the #1 team in the MLS, and there is an RSL player on the US World Cup team, but they can't fill a stadium?!?! I've been to two REAL Salt Lake games and in both games RSL won, but there was ample room in the stadium to sit where ever we wanted...and it's not because the ticket prices were too high. I think RSL gives away more tickets than they actually sell.

The interest just isn't there. The LA Galaxy bought What's His Face Beckham to help invigorate the sport...but after RSL beat the Galaxy, I doubt that Becham is doing much for Soccer in the US. When RSL won the MLS cup, most people were all, "Oh? Good for them. Utah rocks and all that. WooHoo..."

To compare, look at the Utah Jazz (NBA)...even though they choke whenever they play the LA Lakers, the Jazz have the undying love of pretty much the entire state (except for me). When Deron Williams and Carlos Boozer were selected to represent the US in the Olympics, Utah as a whole s**t a brick of sheer happiness and joy.

 

But you don't need an awesome domestic league to have a great national team in soccer. Most of the good soccer players play in leagues outside their home country. Look at Brazil - consistently the best international team in the world, but how many of their players actually play in Brazil? My point is really that it can't be that hard to have a dozen or so good American born soccer players playing in Europe. So it's not that surprising that USA regular makes it to the World Cup finals

 

Considering i study sports at uni you'd expect me to say more than " Oh, so it's a football world cup. I was wondering what sports it was about".

But... no.

 

It's popular, but not THAT popular.

 

I heard somewhere that the US took more fans to this world cup than any other nation. 100,000+ I heard. So noone can tell me it doesn't have popularity. End of.

 

That supports my point, Barmy. Whilst USA has a much lower support per capita than most other countries, even 2% of 310m (the 3rd most populous country in the world) is still more than the ENTIRE population of some of the other countries at the World Cup. Yes, USA has sent the most fans to World Cup of any other country, so, yes, soccer is big enough in that country to sustain a semi-decent team, which is currenly ranked 14 in the world.

Although my carefully crafted argument falls apart somewhat because that logic doesn't seem to apply to the massively populated China (ranked 84th) and India, (ranked a pathetic 133rd (worse than Fiji)). Which actually leads to a separate discussion about whether soccer really is the most popular sport in the world when the two countries that make up a third of the world's population clearly care even less about the sport than USA does. Maybe the most popular sports in the world are whatever China and India play (table tennis and cricket?).

Anyway, go the All Whites - only 15 hours to go until we get smashed by Slovakia! I wonder if we can keep the score to less than what Australia lost to Germany by.

 

Yeah? Well, I heard that there's a flying pig that s**ts out gold nuggets on the 3rd full moon of October...I also heard that Santa Clause ran over the Easter Bunny with his sled on purpose.

All smarta$$-ness aside, one of the many reasons that the US is so awesome, is that different parts of it are completely different from any other part. I've never been to the eastern half of the US...so for all I know, they might all be Soccer die-hards. Probably not, but they could be. You have to remember; from where I live to the East Coast of the US is about 2,000 miles away. That's like going from London to Cyprus. Sure, in the US, there's a lot of empty nothing-ness in-between, but that's still a long way.

Point is, the US is so big and diverse, that my opinion is based on everything I’ve seen, heard, and lived during my time in California, Utah, and frequent trips to Nevada and Wyoming.

 

Kitrax - time for you to get out and start exploring. Sounds like I've been to more parts of your great country than you have!

From what I have seen there is no one part of the country that likes soccer more than others, more like pockets of communities, mostly anything made up of recent European immigrants.

Only 18 hours to go before New Zealand's first World Cup game in 28 years.

 

Heh, I have to say Harbs' enthusiasm is catchy. Good luck, NZ!

 

Well, first off, I'm going to NYC for a few days, and then upstate NY for a week, and finally NJ for a day. That's probably the limit of time that I can stand to be surrounded by those awful accents.


When I was growing up, I was in the AYSO for 3-4 years. Back then soccer seemed to be HUGE! There were hundreds of teams in LA and Orange Counties. But as I grew up, I learned about life and my surroundings...I grew up in a city named Buena Park, and even though the area I lived in was predominantly white, the rest of the city (and most of inland Orange County) was, and still is predominantly Hispanic. In high school, the soccer team was ~95% Hispanic, to compare, the Water Polo (an extremely violent and a F***ing awesome soccer like sport in water) team was ~90% white.

I'm not saying that love for soccer is based on race, but it's more of a cultural thing that parents or the students themselves brought over the border. When RSL needed a stadium here in Utah, it faced some *very* heated opposition, and almost didn't happen several times during the 5 years prior to its construction. If a MLS team wanted a home (or new home) stadium in Orange County, CA...there wouldn't be any real opposition, no funding issues, nothing but the full backing of the majority of the population.

Also, I just had a chat with my pseudo-roommate (the dude is living in my parent's basement) who was born and raised in NC. He told me that he was on an AYSO team as a kid, but in middle school, high school, and community college, soccer was for the guys who didn't make the football cut.

Anyway, the point of all that gibberish is that, yes, there are indeed parts of the US that love soccer, and there are parts that don't.

 

So I would have thought there would have been more than enough Hispanics to make a decent team. But, this discussion is a bit moot, because USA are the 14th ranked side in the world, so they DO have a decent team, and they showed it against England.

Hmm, the NZ game is on at 11:30pm. What an annoying time. Too early to go to sleep and get up for, but still late enough to make me tired tomorrow. Stupid time difference. Oh well, go the All Whites! You're going down, Slovakia! Or at least, you're going to have to tackle us if you want to score lots of goals against us!

 

I have said it before - the reason the USA is not a dominant team in international soccer has nothing to do with funding, population, culture or anything else like that. The reason is far simpler: In the USA, soccer players get paid significantly less than athletes from any other sport.

Thus, our best athletes are almost always going to play some sport other than soccer. They will play football, or baseball, or basketball - or heck even tennis or golf - where they have the potential to make millions of dollars per year. Most pro soccer players in the USA are living comfortably with salaries in excess of a couple hundred thousand per year - they certainly aren't hurting financially. But that's less than the league minimums in a lot of the sports I listed. (For example, the league minimum in the NFL is $300K per year. That's for backup players that rarely see any game action.) I imagine if the average soccer player in the US got paid on par with sports like baseball or footbaall, our athletes would be incentivised to play soccer.

Yeah, and 100,000+ Americans go to the Super Bowl every year too. That doesn't mean that the sports are equivalent in terms of popularity. All that statistic tells me is that there are at least 100,000 fanatical soccer fans in the US. Of course, that represents about 0.03% of our population. Or one in every 3,000 or so Americans. I'm telling you, ESPN did a poll of people's favorite sports in the US last week, when you'd imagine soccer popularity would be at its peak. They listed the top 10 in the results, and soccer did not make the list.

 

Doesn't matter. You're big enough that you can still rustle up a dozen reasonably good players. And they don't have to play in USA - that's the big point - they can play in Europe and make mega-bucks.

Meanwhile... GOAL New Zealand!!!!!!!!! New Zealand's first ever competition points - now equal top of the table in their group!!!!! Woooooooooooooooooooooooo!!