Why Soccer Will Never Be Popular in America

EURO 2008 has been one of my favorite daily fixations of television over the past few weeks, and for good reason. The best European soccer players all come together, on the same stage and the action is very good. This tournament has inspired me to come up with some of the reasons on why the average American will never follow professional soccer.

In one of the EURO 2008 games, a team went up 2-0. The commentators then said, with 25 minutes left to play, that game was over and the team trailing had no chance of coming back. Here in the states, we love a good comeback or thrilling finish. As of June 20, only one team has had a comeback victory in EURO 2008, and that is Turkey. What that is basically telling the casual fan is that whoever scores first, wins. For me as a diehard sports fan, there is nothing better than seeing an underdog in the NCAA Basketball Tournament come from ten points down in the 2^nd half and win it. In soccer, comebacks similar to that are a rarity.

Another reason why Americans don't get into soccer is because of the 'acting' that the players perform. A football fan, American football that is, loves to see Julius Peppers or Michael Strahan bust through an offensive line and rattle the quarterback's cage from behind. In soccer, players trying to avoid a tackle will fly into the air, and act injured. Now, I'm not trying to generalize an entire population of athletes, but I do see this sort of thing a lot. It frustrates Americans because they see wide receivers get laid out over the middle by an opposing safety and get right up, but watch a midfielder get tackled and have to be taken off on a stretcher.

Penalty kicks are something else that doesn't make sense to many Americans. After 120 minutes of intense, passionate play, the game is determined by players standing 20 feet away from a giant net and trying to score. Penalty kicks have no relevance to the game, and therefore are not a good thing for the sport. What if Mario Chalmers buzzer beater in the NCAA Championship for basketball sent the game to a free throw shooting contest. It would be very exciting, just like penalty kicks, waiting to see if Chalmers can follow up his game tying shot with a made free throw. However, it is even more entertaining to see the game continued and won with a miracle fade away jumper, or a walk-off home run in baseball.

Here are some other reasons why soccer will never be popular in America:

Stoppage Time

Stoppage time can change the outcome of a game. In the EURO 2008 quarterfinals, Croatia was leading Turkey 1-0 with just under a minute to play. Although there were very few stoppages in the extra period, the referee added several minutes to the clock, which allowed Turkey to score. They eventually would win it in the dreaded penalty kicks. The ref estimates stoppage time. There is no clock that determines how many stoppages there were or how much time should be added at the end of the game, so there can be cheating involved.

Off-sides

I do realize there has to be some sort of off-sides, but every time a team gets a break-away it gets called back and the other team can boot it down the field.

The Money

David Beckham doesn't have to do much, yet he gets paid millions of dollars a year, and that is just taking salary into account. On top of that, he has his own line of cologne and is a pop sensation. He plays in the worst soccer league in the world, and makes more than most athletes in the world.

The Fans

This sentence should pretty much sum-up what I was going to say in a paragraph: A fan from South Korea actually lit himself on fire, which killed him, because he wanted to be a ghost on the field and play as the invisible 12^th man for his home country. We do some stupid things at football games, but I've never heard of anyone in America light themselves on fire to become a ghost and play for their favorite team in the Super Bowl. Another frustrating thing is all the riots that are started. I don't understand why thousands of people feel the need to climb onto the field and start beating the living crap out of each other over a friendly match two years before the World Cup.

I am not trying to bash soccer, because it is a fun sport to play and watch, sometimes. However, Americans will never be into soccer because of those reasons.