Comments on: Why the Yanks hate Football (oops..soccer)

By: Joe AMerican

Joe AMerican — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 18:39:28 +0000

I’m an american and I like soccer/football. I watched the last Euro Championship. It was a blast although there wasn;t a single american playing.

By: Maes

Maes — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 06:45:15 +0000

I’m a European and some of your arguments are complete shit, like ‘the offside rule is just too damn hard’, oh come on, American sports are like 100 times more complex than European sports, the amount of little rules in American Football is dazzling, and it’s only because I play it myself that I know all of them, ’soccer’ basically has 2 rules; don’t get offside, don’t tackle people too hard.

By: Aaron

Aaron — Fri, 23 May 2008 00:27:02 +0000

Arguing over an opinion. How f***ing futile… and stupid. All sports will have different fan bases, some much larger than others.

By: ABuuzek

ABuuzek — Thu, 22 May 2008 22:07:55 +0000

i am a “yank” and i LOVE football… AND american football. those points are only valid to the (sadly) large percentage of ignorant americans.

By: Angela

Angela — Thu, 22 May 2008 18:37:59 +0000

As an American, I grew up on American football. It is my childhood, and first sports-love. However, against seemingly all conventions, I have become a huge fan of football, aka soccer to us Americans. It is possible to be fans of both am. football, and football, as my friends and I have proven. I avidly follow both seasons. I would love to see more coverage on our tv stations. ESPN only shows Champions League, one game per day. Currently, I have to go to a local pub to catch any action in the EPL. It’s impossible to see any La Liga or Serie A games. I personally do not enjoy watching MLS games. They seem boring, and almost staged when compared to a European game.
We yanks have not exactly thrived, but have at least managed to get a footing in the EPL, with players like Brian McBride, Giuseppe Rossi, DaMarcus Beasley, and Jonathan Spector. I hope that the American fanbase for soccer/football will continue to grow, and that American tv companies will realize the potential for showing live games, even without commercials every five minutes.

By: Goody

Goody — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 19:45:39 +0000

It’s not that Americans hate soccer. It’s just that we don’t care for it. We like to see action. In soccer, to the majority of us, it’s a bunch of guys running around, back and forth, for 90 minutes without a stopping clock, on a field or pitch or whatever the world calls it that’s way to big, without even a guarantee that any points will be scored. Snoozefest. Also, draws. We don’t want to see any draws. That’s why in our sports we abolished tie games long ago. Other problems are fake injuries, the game being labeled as foreign, and yellow/red cards. In the USA, we are fueled by capitalism. Soccer won’t ever be a major sport alongside the NFL, NBA, MLB or NHL, because there is no break for commercials. Also, us Yanks see uniforms as sacred. There are no logos on our unis from sponsors like “Carlsbad”, “Toblerone”, or “Vodafone”.
Soccer is the world’s game, yes. America’s? No. It never will be. I grew up on American Football of course. In some regions of the US, it’s a right of passage for young men; especially in the Rebel South. Just as soccer may be in most parts of the world. It all comes down to boredom. Americans don’t mess with boredom. We run on action. We don’t care for what we don’t understand, and quite honestly we never will. We all know that soccer players need endurance, speed, skill, etc. But when a player gets kicked in the hand, flops down on the ground like he was just prison-shivved, and gets back up like nothing happened, when Yanks see that, (I don’t mean to piss of the soccer world) what immediately comes to mind is “What a f**king pansy.” Now I know at least one of you, will quip back with “but you Yanks wear pads!” Thing is, we need to. Getting blindsided as a 68 inch, 156 pound man, by a 82 inch, 280 pound beast, is not exactly fun. You won’t see that in soccer. Another thing we can’t stand is if you slide tackle in soccer, you’ll get carded. Sorry, but Yanks want to see collision, bone-crushing hits, delrailments. Not someone kicking another person in the shins for 90 minutes. So when it all comes down to it, we have the World…well (American) Series in baseball, the Super Bowl in Yankball, and the Finals in Basketball. You have the World Cup. We’ll stick with what we’re good at, and you stick to what you know and love. Besides, why would you want to see us in the World Cup anyway? We’re horrible. We only participate because there are people in out country that actually care enough to. But most of us don’t. Sorry.

By: God

God — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 07:58:55 +0000

It stems from the very self absorbed nature of americans. They create a sport, become good at it and then call themselves world champions. However, its gone to a stage where the rest of the world has caught up that they can no longer claim to be world champions in certain sports.

Americans from my interaction with them hate to embrace mediocrity, unless its from their children(you don’t want to hurt the kids’ self esteem). It has reached such ridiculous extents that they filter out games they suck at.

By: Lucas

Lucas — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 07:56:08 +0000

Just as cricket is given much more coverage by the media and that’s where all the money is in India, the U.S. gives much more importance to its own sports like American football, baseball and NBA. They fear their traditional sports would take a severe hit (commercially, at least) if a global sport like soccer is promoted. Otherwise, how would one justify ESPN showing poker matches while interesting soccer matches are on!

By: Z

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 07:46:28 +0000

Why are people taking this post so seriously!

By: zeke

zeke — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 19:57:27 +0000

Hmm, interesting comments. Here’s my 2cents. I think American’s hate soccer for 2 big reasons:
1. They play not to lose rather than playing to win (to us)
2. Every soccer fan loves to show disdain for anything American (ok, “every” is a stretch)

Personally, I don’t see what the big deal is. Why does it matter to everyone outside the US whether we like soccer or not? Does it bother you that we don’t care about your sport? It doesn’t bother us that you don’t care about ours. We always hear about “Why American’s don’t like soccer like the rest of the world…” but you very rarely hear about “Why the rest of the world doesn’t like football like american’s…”. Are you gonna keep trying to force feed us soccer?! For the most part, I’m indifferent to soccer. I love playing, but you’ll have to shoot me before I watch a match again.