Orange slices for everyone, or the I Hate Soccer thread

It seems when it comes to soccer, the only columns you used to get are "Soccer sucks, here's why", "Everyone in the world loves soccer, so should you" or "Soccer, it's big with kids, so it will be big in x years, get used to it."
Now it seems there's finally a "Here's how to watch soccer and what to look for" crowd, and that is something a newbie like me can appreciate, so thanks to those out there educating and not berating.

 

The sock puppet force is strong with this one, Luke.

 

The worst part is they can't come up with anything original when they trot those columns out. They should just add an editor's note that says "This column originally ran during the 1994, 1998, 2002, 2006 World Cups. Please be advised if the columnist is still alive, it will run again during the 2014 World Cup."

 

The laziness is usually the kicker.

Ignorance exacerbated by laziness ... wash, rinse, repeat ...

 

This. I'm not ignorant, xenophobic, or racist for not liking soccer. I just don't like it. Problem is, it's not so much the sport as it is the overzealous fans or the freak moms.

 

It isn't?

 

I hated soccer growing up. But when I got my first writing gig, I soon realized it can be just as enjoyable as basketball or football, the sports I enjoy most.

To me the problem is that it's excitement doesn't translate well to TV. It loses more than baseball does on TV. I can't get into watching MLS, like I did baseball, which was the last major sport I grew to enjoy thanks to TV.

Part of me wishes I was into it just because there's nothing like the World Cup.

 

In this country, I don't think soccer will ever be what it is in other countries, but in my lifetime, interest and knowledge of the game has grown.
It's on TV a lot more (of course, everything is on TV a lot more now). Most people can see the game on TV, know what it is and at least know the basic rules of the game.
When I was younger, the typical high school soccer coach was a PE teacher who never played the game (and some of them actually ended up being very good coaches). Now it's usually somebody who played in college and maybe coaches a club team on the side.
It has a place in our sports culture, maybe not the place some people had hoped it would have, but it does have a place.

 

I can appreciate a well-played soccer game.
Do not force a soccer game upon me and tell me I must appreciate it.

 

I'd like to rip the person who started this thread, but I'm the person who has started the NFL Draft Sucks thread.

My thing is this ... American soccer fans have won. There really is no need to proselytize the goodness of soccer anymore, it has arrived. I can recall having to explain to my dad what the Cup was all about and how big it was as late as 1994. No more.

Look at the World Cup and its coverage.

I watched my first in 1982 off a fuzzy feed from a Spanish language station in Chicago. Only the final was on over-the-air TV. Other than agate in the newspaper, mass coverage didn't exist.

In 1986, NBC showed weekend games (with a big Budweiser banner around the screen). That TV deal might have only been a result of the brief notion that the U.S.A. would get the Cup after it had been awarded to Columbia originally. Mexico got it instead.

In 1990, it got a little better as many (not all) matches were shown on TNT, then a brand new network that wasn't nearly as ubiquitous as it is now.

Of course World Cup '94 changed things drastically. All matches broadcast along with the fact that Americans as a whole embraced the big event nature of the World Cup.

Riding on that, all matches have been broadcast since. But the ancillary coverage -- previews, coverage of the national team -- has progressed and become much, much better and more sophisticated. So have the fans themselves.

As a result, I think it's fair to say that for most of those under 40 the World Cup is an event that ranks along with the Olympics.

Yeah there's soccer haters in that demographic too, but not nearly as many as there were 20 years ago. As the Baby Boomers, the last generation that didn't grow up with soccer in any meaningful way, get older, the World Cup and soccer will only grow stronger in the national consciousness. An increasingly viable and less regional MLS won't hurt either.

Soccer fans won. There's no need to preach to anyone anymore. The hate doesn't bother me as it would have in the 80s and 90s.

 

Not to speak for Twirling Time, but I'm thinking the answer is that it's so much fun to watch the soccer crowd flock here and whine about it.

Hey, you don't like the thread, why are you wasting your energy on it? Go to another.