Wynalda tell hime Rome to suck his ****!

OOP, it isn't about there being a "boom" or some big divesting of interest. It is about taking the piece of pie that exists and making it consistent.

I would say that the number of people that watched the World Cup would demonstrate the interest. I would say that the number of people that pay a monthly fee in order to get Fox Soccer Channel and Gol TV demonstrate interest. The same is said for the sold out stadiums for the foreign teams that come and play friendlies.

It isn't an issue of everyone in the country waking up tomorrow to kick a ball around. It is about tapping into those already interested and convincing them to invest their time in the domestic league.

 

Surveys and statistics also show that the mainstream (which I assume to mean the majority of people living in America) don't give a shit about sports, period.

What is the rating share for FSC when they show EPL games? What about Gol TV? Then you add in Telefutura, Telemundo, and Univision showing Mexican games. Add in the ratings on RAI network showing Italian league games. Add in those that order satellite dishes so that they can get the Portuguese league. Add in those that gather at a bar to watch the Scottish league or German league.

You see, the interest is there. The interest is just divested into foreign leagues and foreign teams. Since it is so spread out, the numbers just look smaller. What MLS needs to do is get people interested and engulfed in the domestic league. They need to get all of those that follow the foreign leagues to pick an MLS team as their "second" team to follow.

 

I heard that Toronto FC has already sold 20,000 season tickets for their inaugural season. The new stadium seats 25,000.

There's lots of interest up here.

And the "soccer sucks" threads are just about as obnoxious and tiring as the "no one watches hockey" ones.

 

If only the NBA would get behind the WNBA, maybe it would finally flourish...

 

MLS has tried, people just aren't buying. Sure people get geeked up for World Cup, but after that not much except for the hardcore fan.

It may be the most popular sport in the world, but the U.S. just doesn't care. Just because the spanish-speaking stations get good soccer rating means nothing. How good are the FSC ratings? I have no idea, but I' bet they aren't that good.

And just look at the numbers that come out for pro soccer versus pro football or baseball. Or even for a high school soccer match versus football or basketball. Or track for that matter.

 

I really don't have that much interest in soccer, but I do like to watch it during World Cup.

You can get caught up in the excitement that folks have for the game.

I don't bash any sports and don't think sports writers should.

That's tiresome.

 

I would post something about this topic, but I keep staring at the thread title. Bugs me.

 

Good point. Is hime a racial slur?

 

I'm not going to write out the whole thing as I did last time, but Chuck Klosterman's essay in "Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs," I think, expresses why soccer will never take off in this country no matter how well marketed it is.
He writes that all those kids who play soccer don't really enjoy sports and are just trying to please their parents' wishes by getting involved in something "safe" until high school rolls around and they can go join the debate team or "go shop at Hot Topic."


"For 60 percent of the adolescents in a fourth-grade classroom, sports are a humiliation waiting to happen. There are the kids who play baseball and strike out four times a game. These are the kids who are afraid to get fouled in basketball because that means they're now required to shoot two free throws, which equates to two air balls. Basketball games actually stop to recognize their failure. And football is nothing more than an ironical death sentence; somehow, outcasts find themselves in a situation where the people normally penalized for teasing them are suddenly encouraged to annihilate them.
This is why soccer seems like such a respite from all that mortification; it's the one aerobic activity where nothingness is expected. Even at the highest levels, every soccer match seems to end 1-0 or 2-1. A normal 11 year old can play an entire season without placing toe to sphere and nobody would even notice assuming he or she does a proper job running about and avoid major collisions. Soccer feels 'fun' because it's not terrifying - it's the only sport where you can't fuck up. An outcast can succeed simply by not failing, and public failure is every outcast's deepest fear. For society's prepubescent pariahs, soccer represents safety ..."


"... the kind of person who loves the notion of sports (and - perhaps sadly - unconciously needs to have sports in their lives) doesn't want to watch a game that's designed for losers. They're never going to care about a sport where announcers inexplicably celebrate the beauty of missed shots and the strategic glory of repetitive stalemates. We want to see domination. We want to see athletes who don't look like us, and who we could never be. We want to see people who could destroy us, and we want to feel like that desire is normal. But these people don't exist in soccer. Their game is dominated by mono-monikered clones obsessed with falling to their knees and ripping off their clothes. I can't watch a minute of professional soccer without feeling like I'm looking at a playground of desperate, depressed fourth graders, all trying to act normal and failing horribly."

 

Not sure, it might be. And there's a subject-verb disagreement, too. A lot of things wrong with that title.

 

I doubt the author of this thread is a sportswriter. At least I hope he's not.