4 Reasons The US Will Suck at Soccer for Awhile to Come
4 Reasons The US Will Suck at Soccer for Awhile to Come
Let's not beat around the bush here, the US team isn't the best at Soccer. Well, the men that is. As far as women go the US dominates everything, so its a mute point there. But as for the men, right now they're ranked a dismal 33rd in the world behind Mali, Ghana, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Ouch, that smarts. But there are some good reasons why and we shall explore those momentarily.
1. All of the Best Players Play Other Sports
Everywhere else in the world its pretty common for the best players to throw their talents into the soccer pool. And why not, every other country has a pro soccer league with at least 2 or 3 divisions (maybe a dozen if you play in Europe or Latin America) so there's room for everyone who want's to play and pay money to watch it.
As a mental practice, imagine every basketball fan no longer watching basketball, but some type of Minor League Football. Now take all the baseball fans and have them watch some kind of Farm League underneath the minor leagues in football. Now take the Hockey fans imagine them just watching nothing but a fourth minor league level of football (it would have a lot more fights for sure). That's what it's like in places like Europe and Latin America. So it stands to reason that they scratch their heads wondering how the guys that smash them in the Olympics every four years come up with the sluggish set of kickballers they do. They all have their own theories and their perceptions shape how soccer sees America as a whole.
One of the common misconceptions around the world is that traditional American sports like Football (with a helmet), Baseball, and Basketball are ethnic sports played mostly by people who have been American for awhile, but all the good immigrant athletes are playing soccer. People erroneously believe that, yes, in Leave it to Beaver America, good old-fashioned Football and homecomings are the big deal, but in large multi-ethnic areas people play soccer. Therefore, other things are a factor like resources, funding, space, and perhaps just good old fashioned prejudice.
But as a solid member of a strong multi ethnic (read: whites minority) region of the country I can safely say that's about as true as Marodonna's Hand of God Goal.
I went to a high school where the student body was 75% hispanic, a large percentage of it ethnic Mexican, as in, "soccer is the biggest sport" Mexico. Guess what the biggest event was for fall sports? I'll let you guess, it had something to do with homecoming and pretty girls standing awkwardly next to guys in pads.
Yeah, Football and Basketball were the big sports. I know because I was ON the soccer team. We were lucky to get two dozen people to show up to our games. We also did not have the school's top athletes on the team, they went to football or basketball...or even cross country. We got the other guys. Now it is true, we got better talent than say, Wellsville, Kansas on our soccerfield, but the point is solid.
To drive home my point, here's why the best athletes in America don't play soccer.
Average Annual Salary:
Basketball (NBA) -- $5,000,000
Baseball (MLB) -- $2,800,000
Football (NFL) -- $1,750,000
Hockey (NHL) -- $1,500,000
Men's Golf -- $973,495
Women's Tennis -- $345,000
Men's Tennis -- $260,000
Women's Golf -- $162,043
Men's Soccer (MLS) -- $138,169
And I'm pretty sure David Beckham's 7 million lifted that number far above its real mark. When you can't do better than women's golf, it's time to get a day job that at least you can do for longer than a few years. I rest my case.
2. The Culture of the Sport
Want to know why most Americans aren't interested in soccer? Here's a visual.
Let's not beat around the bush here, the US team isn't the best at Soccer. Well, the men that is. As far as women go the US dominates everything, so its a mute point there. But as for the men, right now they're ranked a dismal 33rd in the world behind Mali, Ghana, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Ouch, that smarts. But there are some good reasons why and we shall explore those momentarily.
US: "Ah, come on! 33rd! We totally would have beat Slovenia
if it weren't for that Al Queda relative who reffed the game, and they're ranked 24th!"
FIFA: "But you didn't".
Everywhere else in the world its pretty common for the best players to throw their talents into the soccer pool. And why not, every other country has a pro soccer league with at least 2 or 3 divisions (maybe a dozen if you play in Europe or Latin America) so there's room for everyone who want's to play and pay money to watch it.
As a mental practice, imagine every basketball fan no longer watching basketball, but some type of Minor League Football. Now take all the baseball fans and have them watch some kind of Farm League underneath the minor leagues in football. Now take the Hockey fans imagine them just watching nothing but a fourth minor league level of football (it would have a lot more fights for sure). That's what it's like in places like Europe and Latin America. So it stands to reason that they scratch their heads wondering how the guys that smash them in the Olympics every four years come up with the sluggish set of kickballers they do. They all have their own theories and their perceptions shape how soccer sees America as a whole.
One of the common misconceptions around the world is that traditional American sports like Football (with a helmet), Baseball, and Basketball are ethnic sports played mostly by people who have been American for awhile, but all the good immigrant athletes are playing soccer. People erroneously believe that, yes, in Leave it to Beaver America, good old-fashioned Football and homecomings are the big deal, but in large multi-ethnic areas people play soccer. Therefore, other things are a factor like resources, funding, space, and perhaps just good old fashioned prejudice.
But as a solid member of a strong multi ethnic (read: whites minority) region of the country I can safely say that's about as true as Marodonna's Hand of God Goal.
In that we ignore the obvious because the ends justify the truth.
I went to a high school where the student body was 75% hispanic, a large percentage of it ethnic Mexican, as in, "soccer is the biggest sport" Mexico. Guess what the biggest event was for fall sports? I'll let you guess, it had something to do with homecoming and pretty girls standing awkwardly next to guys in pads.
Yeah, Football and Basketball were the big sports. I know because I was ON the soccer team. We were lucky to get two dozen people to show up to our games. We also did not have the school's top athletes on the team, they went to football or basketball...or even cross country. We got the other guys. Now it is true, we got better talent than say, Wellsville, Kansas on our soccerfield, but the point is solid.
To drive home my point, here's why the best athletes in America don't play soccer.
Average Annual Salary:
And I'm pretty sure David Beckham's 7 million lifted that number far above its real mark. When you can't do better than women's golf, it's time to get a day job that at least you can do for longer than a few years. I rest my case.
2. The Culture of the Sport
Want to know why most Americans aren't interested in soccer? Here's a visual.
Video: (Please watch the video)
If you seriously neglected to bless yourself by watching that video, yes, its a dude grabbing another dude's arm and hitting himself in the face with it to draw the foul. And that's the issue at hand. You see in my experience I have seen two sporting in world soccer. There's the culture that comes from the English or Germanic European traditions where players understand that the rules are the rules and you obey them or else. The enforcer of those rules is you; chaos to order if you will.
Then there's the culture of a more Latin speaking European tradition where the rules are really only rules in their enforced and it's the responsibility of the authority (the official) to enforce the rules, not the players. Order to chaos if you will.
Now this all goes back to ancient times and the Individualism of the Germanic peoples versus the Communalism of the Latin peoples. Nations that are indivualistic have players that take personal responsibility, whether to be respectful or cheat. Likewise, Latin influenced nations allow the enforcement of the community or greater culture to dictate their responsibilities and what is and is not cheating. That being said, both have positives and negatives, but that's not the disucssion.
The important question is which one do you think the United States traditionally follows? Okay, except for French influenced Hockey, the Germanic tradition. In fact, Americans are so aware of individual responsibility, we don't care one bit if the whole team does it, if you cheat, you're dirty. American's hate cheaters and the way we define cheaters is by their individual ability to obey the rules, all of them. But in Latin culture, cheating is not as much the individual but the people or community.
Many of my latin friends will find it hard to attribute guilt to single players for a situation like the one above, and will even defend him for doing what everybody else does if no one's going to stop him or catch him, but will have no problem applying the guilt of cheating to teams or countries.
And in the past few decades the Latin mindset has been slowly taking over the world. When I lived in Africa they played soccer like the English and the idea of roughing someone up because they could wasn't even a concept. You watch the most successful African teams play now and its a whole different mindset. And that's the growing case in most parts of the world like Asia and Eastern Europe. And Americans can't stand that! They hate it enough when some NBA guy flops on a play to draw a foul, or dives into a guy to shoot a basket, they laugh their heads off in disgust when a seemingly dainty Italian goes flying through the air holding his shin for no reason.
And the guy just gets up afterward and walks it off. No crying, no curling on the ground for mercy. He just gets up and looks for an opportunity to hit someone else just like that. For crying out loud, I'm a soccer fan but seriously, that point makes itself.
3. It Lacks Scoring, Closure, and Moves Slowly
To most Americans there's nothing more boring than watching two teams slug it out in an epic battle for 3 hours only to finally find out...nobody wins. In fact, nobody even scores. We all just go home and accept a 0-0 scoreline.
Screw that! We want someone to win! We want closure! You take that thing down to roullette if you have to there's going to be a winner, every game. And for the love, someone score! America's favorite sport is football where teams score at least several times a quarter. In basketball people score more than two dozen times a quarter and if its NBA its just guys making baskets and dunking while everyone watches them. As a historical case study take baseball. Baseball very well could end low scoring back in the day, although they had sense to never let a game end 0-0. And at one time Baseball was America's favorite sport. But then what happened? It lost out to games with more excitement like football and basketball. Baseball had to change the strike zone to make it easier to score just to stay in existence!
So take that to soccer and how there is simply no way FIFA (the internation governing body of soccer) will ever let any changes happen to the game and you can see where this is going. It's an uphill battle.
All of Americas favorite sports move quicky and are filled with action and scoring. And soccer just doesn't deliver that.
Okay, so Australia can come over and play sometimes.
4. Secretly, No One Wants America to Be Good at Soccer
Seriously. Americans dominate the Olympics, Basketball, Baseball (if all the pros could play they so would), and are right at the top of other sports like Hockey, Golf, and Tennis. So honestly, the world really doesn't want America getting serious into soccer. They want to keep that one.
I can't help but watch the World Cup every four years with a filter. I know in the back of my mind that official doesn't want the US to win their games, and his calls reflect that. And FIFA could care less if America wins too. One of the reasons soccer has boomed in parts of the world it wasn't in is because America doesn't dominate it. There's seriously hope in winning...after Brazil gets done with their half a dozen triumphs, but still, there's hope.
It's a game of opportunity,
in that the nations of the world have lots of opportunity to lose to Brazil.
And at the end of the day, FIFA has far less interest in the US being good than you think. They have a lot of interest in Americans watching soccer, but if the US, for instance, came out the winner of Brazil 2014, people would be pissed. There'd be a revolt. They'd charge them all with doping just to see them go the way of Lance Armstrong before giving them another and you know it.
And Americans respond accordingly. By dropping the soccerball and going to play football or something. Because, who cares. We win at so many other things, you guys can have soccer...and maybe handball and badminton too.
So in the end the big reason America will take a long time to get good at soccer is soccer itself. Being an avid soccer fan I make myself sad. But at least I won't flop to ground holding my shin over it.
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