Why Soccer Hasn't Caught on and Probably Won't

I grew up playing soccer - two seasons every year, indoor & outdoor. I played through high school and tried out for my college team - didn't make the cut. I went on to coach a boys' high school team. Clearly, soccer has long been a part of my life.

Through all soccer my experiences I found an ever-deepening appreciation for the game. But it took me years to learn to love the game as I imagine Europeans do. Soccer, it turns out, is a slow game. Slow to watch and slow to learn.

For this reason, among others, soccer has not caught on in the USA as other sports have. Certainly, the game of soccer has been around for a long, long time - longer than American football. Yet it remains a niche sport, unable to break through to the mainstream as football and basketball have.

Due to soccer's simplicity, the game is accessible to all people. You don't have to be rich to play and be good at soccer. Unlike skiing and golf which require specialized (expensive) equipment, soccer requires only a ball. Equipment-wise, soccer is the cheapest and therefore most accessible of all team sports. It's even easier to get a pickup game of soccer than it is a pick-up game of basketball, in terms of equipment.

The game's accessibility is a large part of its popularity in developing countries where games requiring more equipment are rarely played. Rugby, soccer, and basketball are some of the world's greatest games because people from all parts of the world can play despite poverty or even lack of schools.

Let's face it, polo is never going to catch on in the third world. If you don't have a country club in the country, you're not going to have country club sports.

With all this going for it, why doesn't soccer catch on?

American's prize ingenuity, speed, power, and winning. Soccer stands in opposition to each of these values. It's old, practically ancient and all its cleverness is subtle. The game is long and relatively slow, with very little scoring compared to American sports. There is contact but the camera is too far away to see the bumping and pushing for what it is. And, perhaps most importantly, we are not the best in the world at soccer. The USA is not among the top three or four nations. We've never even competed in a World Cup championship game.

1. Status & Winning.

Brazilian teams, along with teams from Columbia and Argentina in South America, have brought glory and victory to the southern hemisphere through soccer. Europe has celebrated world championships in Germany, Italy, and France. And the continent features the world's best league system - a soccer system comparable to the NBA's relationship to world basketball.

The United States simply cannot boast any superiority or dominance in soccer. With a whopping zero world championships, American soccer still has some improving to do.

We watch the sports we are good at. We like to win.

2. Scoring

Soccer is slow in at least two ways.A match lasts a long 90 minutes.AndSoccer games often end with scores of 1-0 and 2-1. That's not a lot of scoring in an hour and a half.

Compare these scores to the 100-98 final scores of basketball and the 24-14 scores in football, which last only 60 and 48 minutes respectively, and you can see the points per minute comparison makes soccer look almost like a non-game. One goal for every half-hour? Really? That's how the game goes. Every goal is all the more exciting for its rarity, but given a choice, Americans will choose a more "action packed" game.

Additionally, ties are allowed in soccer and seem to happen often.

In the USA, a tie is almost worse than a loss. You can't end with a tie. Someone has got to win.

I think I can speak for most American's when I say, tie games should not be allowed in any sport, ever. Play until someone wins.

3. Team sport - where's the individual glory?

Soccer is a team sport unlike the popular team sports in the USA. In football, the quarterback is clearly the star of the team. Even if he isn't very good, he is the focal point. The game stems from him.

In soccer, the ball moves more fluidly, in any direction, back and forth between players. Attacks on the goal are built, sometimes slowly, between several players. This requires patience and strategy and skill similar to football, but the ball moves almost randomly when compared to football. This fluidity of ball possession emphasizes the team dynamic while sacrificing the potential for individual stardom.

It's true that there are soccer stars. But even when one player is lauded as the team's best, he may not score in a game. He may not even play.

That is fine if your team wins every time out, or at least has a chance. When it comes to world soccer in America, we have no chance to win the championship and we have no super-star. If we had either one of these, maybe soccer could go mainstream.

"If soccer is a tactical game like chess, then football is like speed chess in the park. They both might be beautiful and captivating, but which one makes the better spectator sport?"

4. Television Compatability

Popular sports in America have built in breaks. Commercials don't interrupt football and basketball games, they are part of the game, part of the dynamic of our culture.

To say that we have short attention spans, as a people, is not an exaggeration, nor is it a condemnation. It is a fact.

A soccer match has two halves with no built-in stops. Half-time is the only break. There are no time-outs where the announcers can show us the stats. In soccer broadcast, it is not uncommon for the score to disappear from the screen for long periods of time. The spectator is clearly expected to watch from beginning to end. Instant replays happen mostly after scores, which, as we've said, are rare.

There is little space for highlights, despite the slow pace of scoring, the wide open play of the game, and the 90 minute game-time. There little space for camera close-ups. This means that the game, unadulterated, must fill up all the broadcast and do its best to hold our interest.

Contrast this to football where statistics are constantly displayed. The score is always on screen, as well as the game-clock. There is a semi-constant stream of lesser data shown to help us watch the details of the game with interest.

5. Because we've already got basketball, a very similar game

Finally, we don't embrace soccer as so much of the rest of world because we don't need to. The virtues of soccer also appear in another American game. The fluidity of play, the passing, the dexterity and grace are all a part of basketball.

Soccer is like basketball in many ways, only it's bigger and, as a result, slower. Basketball is like a condensed form of soccer. The field is smaller. The goal is smaller. The team is smaller. And you can use your hands, but not your feet. Otherwise, the games are very much the same.

Offense is built around the similar strategies of spacing, movement, and countermovement. There are free kicks in soccer and free-throws in basketball. The inbounds and out of bounds rules are basically analogous.

If we already have a sport that is like soccer only faster, better suited to television, with more scoring and more room for individual glory and statistics, why would we watch the slower version?