OK, so I know that a lot of people, including myself up until quite recently, scoffed at soccer in the US. Why is this? Well in all honesty, soccer is a boring ass sport. However, that is just to us here in the states who are used to sports that always seem to have something going on in them, or are high scoring. Take American football for instance (my favorite sport, especially NCAA FBS Football). Not always high scoring, but every play is like watching old Roman gladiators battling it out for every single yard. Now that's fun! Or take basketball, almost always high scoring, unless you are watching the WNBA. Not so much fun to me, but I do enjoy watching NCAA March Madness or the NBA Finals. Soccer, in it's low-scoring, running back and forth, 45-minutes to a half, sheer mind-numbing at times, boring-ness, is just lost on Americans in general it seems.
Internationally, soccer, or football (or futbol or any other way that other countries spell it) holds the position of being the number 1 sport in the world. Why? Maybe because its been around for so long and the rest of little blue ball of life doesn't know any better? Or perhaps its that every time you turn on a match it seems that some player or the other is rolling around on the ground crying like a little girl because he did some overly-dramatic trip over another player's invisible foot. I don't know the real answer to this. I've started watching the English Premier League lately and find it's nowhere near as boring as I remembered it (so long as I'm not watching Manchester United that is).
What do I find so interesting in it? Maybe its the history to the teams. Some of these teams have been around in one form or another since before the United States even existed! Local FCs (Football Clubs) could be made of men who worked in a certain industry in a town or those who worked in the Royal Arsenal back in the late 1800's. And when I really think about it's probably because these guys do run up and down a field for 45-minute halves! I know my fat-a$$ couldn't do it, and I doubt a lot of people I know could either. Oh yeah, usually the only pads these guys have on is shin guards. Compare that to the 15lbs of pads that American Football players wear to run into each other. And lets not forget about the hits these guys take. Sure, a lot of people remember Theismann getting destroyed by Lawrence Taylor back in 1985. That was a freak occurrence in football, which seems to happen yearly in soccer.
So all that being said, how do I think we can make the American people join the rest of the world in embracing soccer? Well, short of putting hidden landmines on the pitch (what they call the field in soccer) and having them go off at random times during the match (what they call a game) I've only got one idea really. American's love football because we can tailgate prior to it and get drunk (pissed) and "enjoy" the game. In England this is difficult because the stadiums (as I've been told) don't have parking lots like our football stadiums do, but we make a habit of having loads of parking outside of any sporting venue we have. So, make tailgating part of watching a soccer match. Sell beer inside the stadium during the match. Soccer hooligans (where the term came from after all) are renowned for being jackasses, the fans of the Oakland Raiders should fit right in!
As usual I'm getting long-winded in this so I'll end it by saying Go Gunners! (that's Arsenal for the rest of you).
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