Why does Europe like Soccer (Football)

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Determining who the best athlete is is a matter of athleticism. A tautology I guess. Politics are irrelevant. If the guy is a neo nazi who runs the 40 in a 4.2 flat with a 42 inch vertical leap, a bench of 450, a squat of 650, unbelievable hand eye coordination, and an ability to simply see a playing field and immediately move into the correct position he is a great athlete. May be a deplorable human being but he is a great athlete.

BTW, MJ is way down the list of great athletes in my book. Great athlete help become a great basketball player but great athlete =!= great player. Case in point: Larry Bird vs Derick Coleman.

If you determined the 100 best athletes in America none of them play soccer. Wouldn't surprise me if you could get up to 500 or a 1000.

It just isn't important here. The most memorable soccer moment for most Americans is when the soccer babe took her shirt off, which I assume was in a championship game of some sort, but I couldn't tell you for certain. Most Americans don't know that much.

[ July 01, 2003, 00:41: Message edited by: Laches ]

 

In terms of best athletes it is also dependant on the sport you are talking about. I'm guessing that most basketball players would be terrible at soccer. However, I'm sure if you took the wide recievers and defensive backs from some football teams and gave them some training they would probably be able to embarrass our soccer players.

 

Laches,

I only brought up the WC achievements of the US football team because there is always a tendency for this argument to drift along the lines of "The US don't care about football coz they're no good at it."

The argument about athletes is interesting though. Perhaps a separate topic though otherwise we'll get off topic here for quite a while.

 

Good athlete equals not to good athlete. Some people are from the phiysical outset more suited for one sport but not for an other sport. A jockey has an advantage in being small, a basketball player has an advantage in being tall. Different sports ask for different abilities and phisical attributes. Zinadine Zidane is a football-genius, but I doubt, that he would be a basketball-genius, even if he played all his life only basketball. It's a different game with ask for different skills and abilities. Zinadine Zidane maybe couldn't have developed similar incredible skills in basketball, because it's a different game which asks for different specific strenghts.

 

I don't agree with that yago.

Your example discribes basketball, well zidane grew up in france, which isn't too known for their basketball talents because it isn't as popular as soccer. Same goes for americans, there isn't enough popularity for the game too make an influence in the many other sports. When the viewers aren't interested in the game, less money will be spent in training young athletes.

Anyway what I am trying too say is that the more popular the game is the more chance there is for talanted players.

But there is a saying in the netherland called 'balgevoel'. Which exactly translated 'feeling the ball'. It means if you have that you can pretty much play any sport with a ball (except for hockey (not ice) because hockey just plain sucks). I can safely say that Zidane has 'balgevoel' and if he was trained as a basketball player he could be a really good one. That is because the biggest strength of Zidane is when he has the ball, he sees the players, he sees the spaces, and he knows what to do. I know he could do the same as a basketballer when properly trained.

Edit: not all basketball players are really tall, there always will be the guy who has too throw the ball exactly where the tall guy can score easiest.

 

I agree with you there, that anyone who has "feeling for the ball" and a good physical condition would be a good player in any ball game. But I differ in the point, that that necesserily means that anyone can reach the same results in any sport. Zidane's genius can only come into play in the fast speeding games on a huge game field -> like football. Basketball is fast too, but is played with hands on a small field. I don't think that Zidane's abilities would make the same huge difference in Basketball like in Football. But I agree, that he's probably automaticly a good basketballplayer. But not automaticly a basketball genius.

The same would go with people who rung. Obviously, anyone who runs a lot would be a good runner, but the difference between the muscels of a marathon-runner and a 100-meter sprinter couldn't be more different. 1200-meter is a whole different thing again. Could a exceptional 100 meter sprinter be a exceptional marathon-runner if he wouldn't have concentrated on 100 m ? I doubt that. The "starting-point" of how you body IS in the beginning makes a huge difference. Some people just do not have the possibility to evelop those huge muscels in the legs, which are needed for a sprinter, no matter how hard the train, but they maybe be made for ski, because they have the suiting beginnig-conditions.

 

The best example is Michael Jordan. He was the best basketball player ever, but as a baseball player he was a total failure.

 

I woudlnt call him a failure. The mere fact that he had enough skill to even try out to be a pro baseball player shows that he was one of the top 1000 or so baseball players in the world. That is no bad achievement. Especially not considernig his age adn that he had focused so much on basketball for the most of his life. I think that is a good example of feeling for the ball. Jordan would have been a great player in any ballgame if he had started with it as a kid.

 

You see, i am taking philosophy right now. From what i am studying, it encourages me to be an ass and constantly challenge what people take for granted, that's why i asked "what defines the best athlete"

My intention was to point out that it is impossible to clearly and distinctively define "the best athlete" so the arguement of "keeping best athlete out of football" is naturally invalid.

Let's say that one athlete excel in a particular sport (for the moment, let's assume that success = winning an Olympics gold). Now this athlete cross over to another sport and win another gold in Olympics. Does this make him "the best athlete"? Well no, because the other athlete that wins 3 golds in 3 events is better than him, yes? So winning 3 golds is the best? Well no, someone got 4. Eventually we will end up in winning all possible gold in all possible sports events offered in the Olympics. So, does a person who wins all the gold in the Olympics "the best athlete"? Well no, i can find another who not only wins all the Olympics golds but also events that are not covered in Olympics. Surely this person is better than Olympics-win-all. From here, where do we end up? A person who nothing greater can be conceived. Who is such person that you know of? God. Only God, as the perfect being, can be the best athlete. Us human who are subject to imperfectness and flaws will never become anything close to the best ahtlete.

(don't mind me, i am drunk right now)

 

Perfect =!= best. My undergrad is in philosophy and I don't see any reason we can't say that the best athletes in America don't play soccer. Philosophy ain't got nothin to do with it.

I didn't say that the best athlete in America doesn't play soccer. I said the best athleteS in America don't play soccer.

I can say that. Look above, I just did. : ) Seriously, it may be tough or impossible to pick just one 'best athlete' but you can certainly look at a group and determine overall athleticism. The best athletes in America don't compete in soccer imo. Frankly, and this will fit right in with the rest of the race stuff floating around, I've seen the US team and there aren't enough black guys on it for me to believe the better athletes from America are playing soccer.

America's best athletes are black. I dunno why, but they are. Hey to Carl Lewis, Bo Jackson, Herschel Walker, Takeo Spikes, Barry Bonds etc.

 

I got my theory for that too. Clearly in sports and soccer the most, minorities are overpresented. My theory: There are to big branches in society were performance really, really counts. Music and sports.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to find a talented sportler. It doesn't need no long fuss to decide to support that talent. For more most minority-members, that's the way to go. If you make it in sports, you make it. No insecurities, no problems. The "normal" professional eduction doesn't look too often to promising for those members, like your statistics in the other thread showed. So, take the gamble and focus on the sport-talent. In Switzerland, most gifted with sportive talent chose the save way. Formal and solid education. Medicin or football ? Accountant or Ski ? Which career does look like it surely yields results ? Minorities often have not a sure second choice, so, go for it.

 

In my opinion (and with my limited knowledge on baseball), if he wasn't the famous Michael Jordan, he would never have the chance to play in a baseball team of this level. After all, I believe that the reason that this team accepted Jordan was the publicity and the advertising contracts, it would earn because of his fame.

 

Well, i didn't start with perfecttion too but the search for "better" ended up in perfection.

While comparing two athletes, (if you have a method) you can determine which one is better. Thus, this better one is "the best among" the two. If i introduce another player who holds an athletic quality that this "best among two" player don't have, shouldn't this third player be the best among the three? i can just keep on introducing new athletes that holds more athletic qualities to challenge the previous best. While keep adding atheletic qualities, we ended up finding the perfect being.

Well, of course you can say that your are finding, say, 100 best athletes. But now if i introduce a new athlete that has every qualities that these athletes have plus an addition that these athletes don't have, shouldn't this athlete be consider in the 100 best? Now, do we kick out one to keep the list as 100 or do we expand the list to 101 best? Either way, i am going to keep introducing new athletes with addition athletic qualities, we still end up with God.

Yes, you are subjected to feel that "the best American athletes don't compete in football". But this remains purely an emotional feeling. It is impossible to find the best 100, not even the best 1.

(don't mind me, i am high)

[ July 02, 2003, 11:00: Message edited by: teekc ]

 

Yeah, and i'd like to know exactly what you smoked, and where can i get some ?

 

I feel confident in stating that the best athletes don't play soccer in America.

I probably shouldn't do this, but I just saw it and it is too funny not to, an article about soccer:

http://www.nationalreview.com/04may98/moore050498.html

 

Laches, I guess you are generally fascinated by the phenomens hooliganism. By the way, Ice-Hockey breeds in my country the biggest clashes of Hooliganism, not footbal. But the roots of Hooliganism have actually nothing to do with soccer. But explanation is complicated and controversial. Mostly it's about groups consisting out of 2 brains, 6 muscels, looking for a fight. One part is hellraising, one part is nationalism. And by the way, never to underestimate is regional natinoalism, like in ethnical different countries like the netherlands and especially the great ehnical divide of Italy.

The most notorious are the Dutch and the English. But it has always very pleasant and nice side-effects when Brazil or Italy wins. At least here.

Most people just watch the game, get drunk and go home. Others don't care for the game, there are only there for the fight .

 

That was a very appropriate article Laches. I think it caught both what the main prejudices about football are and what the rest of the world think about Americans view of football. Oh and the gag about rioting becasue of boredom was used in a very old Simpson episode so the author wasnt the most original of people.
I would however dispute all of his points, well not all, the one about giving all kids a trophy and letting everyone play while they are kid is sheer decency to do anything else is just plain inhumane.

The authors inability to appreciate the sport speaks more of his lack of intelligence and appreciatetion for anything that isnt more or less a brawl. Which I might think again about since he did appreciate baseball which is a game much slower than football and where evne less happens. Oh well, he did write an amusing rant.

 

I see Yago found a site about educated people who think they found the root of the problem. What a joke.

 

ok, let's accpet that football fans riot out of boredom. So i suppose chess fans are the most violent fans in the world. They are so violent, i am not surprise that WW2 was started by chess fans.

 

ummm, it was a joke. carry on.