01:04 PM March 31, 2004 | Comments (2)
If I had a dime...
for every newspaper article or TV sportscast that said soccer will — may — won't catch on in the US, I'd be rich! Rich I say! And then maybe, if I was safely happy with my windfall, I might learn to be less aggravated with the supposed experts who constantly prophesy the coming age of soccer in the US.
I've been following the sport since 1984. I'm American. I'm far from the only one. There are plenty of us in the US, plenty who have followed the sport far longer than I have.
The media needs to get over its stereotype. Soccer is more than a sport that is only played by children. Soccer is more than a sport that is only popular among immigrants. I am so tired of 20 years of the same arguments:
- soccer is too low scoring of a game, let's make goals worth more points!
- you can't use your hands in soccer so it's not a contact sport and therefore boring!
- soccer is not as popular as football and baseball so it must not be that popular!
Can someone please explain this more point theory to me? If you award a goal more than one point, it still doesn't increase the amount of action in the game. All it does is put a bigger number up on the scoreboard! If I can see that logic, can't the rest of America? What brilliant sports expert thought that would “fool” the American public into liking soccer?
No contact? Have you ever seen a game? There's contact, all right — and I don't need a hockey style brawl against the boards to enjoy a sport, thank you very much!
This latest article says — buried beneath all the naysayers expert commentary — soccer is a thriving sport in the US. Its televised ratings and stadium attendance are on a par with the National Hockey League. I can certainly see the difference now with the amount of televised games vs. what you'd have found 20 years ago.
What most sportscasters and journalists haven't yet caught on to is that there are many of us in the US who follow the sport outside of this country. There's a great big world out there, have you heard of it???
There are soccer fans in the US who follow leauges in England, Spain, Italy, Brazil, Holland, etc. Just ask FOX Sportsworld — where you can catch several world leagues' games each week. And let's not forget the English Premiere league games that are a regular feature on Pay-Per-View.
Oh, those guys? Well that's not the MSL so it doesn't count, eh? Quit trying to compare soccer's success in the US against US football and baseball. Maybe you never heard of David Beckham until the movie Bend It Like Beckham but there's a whole contingent of US fans who've loved him or hated him for years. Get your head out of the sand — US soccer does not need the second coming or a young phenom to shoot it to popularity. The sport is alive and kicking — no pun intended — despite your efforts to portray it differently.
That said, I do wish the 14 year old Freddie Abu much success. You sports journalists need to let him concentrate on his league play and being the best he can. Don't make him some soccer messiah — it's alot of pressure to put on a youngster's shoulders.
