Hoff
Lightnin' Hopkins
 Helping a brother out.
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Reply 1 of 44 (Originally posted on: 07-01-08 08:05:06 AM)
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I just read this article on slate magazine by Dave Eggers who tries to explain why Soccer is not and never will be popular in the US.
http://www.slate.com/id/2142554/
Decent article, Eggers cites 3 reasons why it hasn't caught on. One, which didn't seem part of his main thesis was that soccer used to be percieved as the sport of the communists. So that might explain a little bit about why it didn't catch on in the past, but why now?
Quote: Our continued indifference to the sport worshiped around the world can be easily explained in two parts. First, as a nation of loony but determined inventors, we prefer things we thought of ourselves. The most popular sports in America are those we conceived and developed on our own: football, baseball, basketball. If we can claim at least part of the credit for something, as with tennis or the radio, we are willing to be passively interested. But we did not invent soccer, and so we are suspicious of it.
The second and greatest, by far, obstacle to the popularity of the World Cup, and of professional soccer in general, is the element of flopping. Americans may generally be arrogant, but there is one stance I … stand behind, and that is the intense loathing of penalty-fakers. There are few examples of American sports where flopping is part of the game, much less accepted as such. Things are too complicated and dangerous in football to do much faking. Baseball? It's not possible, really—you can't fake getting hit by a baseball, and it's impossible to fake catching one. The only one of the big three sports that has a flop factor is basketball, where players can and do occasionally exaggerate a foul against them, but get this: The biggest flopper in the NBA is not an American at all. He's Argentinian! (Manu Ginobili, a phony to end all phonies, but otherwise a very good player.)
TL;DR
1.) Americans didn't have a hand in inventing the sport so therefore we don't like it as much as sports that we did.
2.) The whole issue about diving and how it is much less prevalent in American sports such as Baseball, Football and Basketball. And really the only sport that its really even possible to fake a dive is basketball.
What do you think about his theory or what do you think the reasons are? Isn't reason #2 kinda saying that since it is popular in europe that europeans like the diving aspect or don't find it as terrible a thing as americans do? Is that true?
From an American viewpoint I think its a combination of what Eggers said. Soccer probably didn't catch on right away because it wasn't an American thing to begin with. Then American sports would become immensely popular making there even less room for soccer. So with so many options to watch, not many people turned to soccer where there is such an obvious flaw (especially now with replay) of diving.
Thats my explanation, but it doesn't really explain why it caught on in Europe but not in the US. Also, what is the state of soccer in Canada, more popular than in the US or about the same?
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