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Why isn't the U.S. better at soccer?

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Re: Why isn't the U.S. better at soccer?

#51

Post by least »

radiator wrote: post #36

I find it good that US is not better at soccer. Soccer or football has gained too much importance in Europe and South America. We have seen it encourage unprecedented levels of gambling, insane amount of efforts from the youth chasing the dream of professional football, fan violence inside and outside the stadiums, corruption where magnate owners of sports clubs use their popularity to influence politics, and more.

The United States experiences the same sort of issues, just with different sports.

Re: Why isn't the U.S. better at soccer?

#52

Post by dmurray »

cortesoft wrote: post #13
bananamogul wrote: post #8

Because we have 4 other sports that originated in the Americas: basketball, gridiron football, hockey, and baseball. If you like soccer, perhaps you'd like to try our faster, more kinetic version, called hockey. It's the same sport (goals and such), and you get to watch it in air-conditioned comfort. Or if you still like the "players are fragile" model of soccer but want more goals, we also have basketball. It's the…

Basketball players are almost a completely separate population from soccer players. The shortest basketball player would almost be too tall for soccer.

This is definitely an exaggeration. The median NBA player is 6'5" according to [0]. Most top teams will have a few players around that height, even excluding goalkeepers (though heavily weighted towards central defenders and centre-forwards).

Even if it's directionally correct, the point made further up in the thread is very important: basketball players aren't a different population from soccer players at age 14, when they need to pick something to be serious about if they are going to end up in the big leagues. Lots of them choose basketball, turn out not big enough, but would have been perfectly fine in soccer.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1btj60p/oc...

Re: Why isn't the U.S. better at soccer?

#53

Post by haunter »

radiator wrote: post #36

I find it good that US is not better at soccer. Soccer or football has gained too much importance in Europe and South America. We have seen it encourage unprecedented levels of gambling, insane amount of efforts from the youth chasing the dream of professional football, fan violence inside and outside the stadiums, corruption where magnate owners of sports clubs use their popularity to influence politics, and more.

What you describe is pretty much true for every single american sport too

>unprecedented levels of gambling

Welcome to FanDuel and DraftKings

>insane amount of efforts from the youth chasing the dream of professional football

Look at college sports, it's actually even more insane than anything else in Europe

>corruption where magnate owners of sports clubs use their popularity to influence politics

Look at how public money spent by universities on sports (especially in the South) or how pro teams' funded by local taxes. And when the rich doesn't get a deal they just move the team away. The Minneapolis Lakers moved to Los Angeles where there are no lakes. The Oilers moved to Tennessee where there is no oil. The Jazz moved to Salt Lake City where they don't allow music.

>fan violence inside and outside the stadiums

This is the only thing you might be right about it... but hey it's US, land of the free guns you don't need fan violence for that

Re: Why isn't the U.S. better at soccer?

#54

Post by Mattasher »

The answer is simple once you understand that for thin-tailed distributions, the mean is way more important than population size for getting extreme results. In concrete terms, suppose that to win the olympics you need 5-sigma players (ones who are 5-standard-deviations better than the global average). Five-sigma players are extremely rare: a population of 100 million gets you about 25 to 30 of them. But now suppose you could bump up the quality of your soccer players until the average among them was raised just one standard deviation above the global mean. Now you only need a population of 1 million to generate the same number of five-sigma players. The end result: a tiny country of fanatics can compete against a huge country with tons of casual players, like the US.

You can "make" more fanatics under certain conditions. People respond to incentives, from the financial to the cultural to the brutal. I highly recommend the documentary The Two Escobars. It tells the story of famous drug lord Pablo, who used a portion of his fortune to bankroll soccer in Colombia, including the efforts of the national team. That national team included a defender named Andrés Escobar. In 1994, the soccer playing Escobar accidentally kicked in an own-goal during a critical FIFA World Cup match. He was murdered five days later, almost certainly by angry fans. That’s what a nation of hardcore soccer fanatics looks like.

Re: Why isn't the U.S. better at soccer?

#55

Post by dmurray »

RugnirViking wrote: post #30
cortesoft wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basketball players are almost a completely separate population from soccer players. The shortest basketball player would almost be too tall for soccer.

"too tall for soccer" is something of a weird statement, given the large advantage height gives in the game. Even at high levels, some teams' strategy resvolves around having a couple tall guys (and many other teams keep tall guys to deal with those same strategies). It of course isn't everything, given the need for stamina, sprinting, and strength, which are hard to have all at once in a tall person. But its not unc…

It is extremely uncommon, in fact, to the extent that the English premier league doesn't have a single player "6'8" or upward".

Lots of 6'4" players, though, which is comfortably tall enough for professional basketball.

https://www.zonalsports.com/ranking/tallest-premier-league-p...

Re: Why isn't the U.S. better at soccer?

#56

Post by dh2022 »

radiator wrote: post #36

I find it good that US is not better at soccer. Soccer or football has gained too much importance in Europe and South America. We have seen it encourage unprecedented levels of gambling, insane amount of efforts from the youth chasing the dream of professional football, fan violence inside and outside the stadiums, corruption where magnate owners of sports clubs use their popularity to influence politics, and more.

Everything you said (gambling, fan violence, billionaires who get money from cash strapped cities) applies to the US. If you substitute soccer with NFL, MLB, and NBA the statement stands.

Re: Why isn't the U.S. better at soccer?

#57

Post by borosuxks »

josuepeq wrote: post #18

My problem is I can’t stay interested for long. Yes, it’s possible that it’s a “me” problem. 90 minutes of kicking the ball back and forth across the pitch that feels too large for the task at hand, occasionally scoring, only to end up with what amounts to a pretty low scoring game. It’s just hard to watch, it seems to move so much slower than I can handle. If it works for others, that’s awesome; any sport that has t…

Football (or soccer for you) can be insanely high tempo and insanely slow and boring. Depends on the game.

But the low scoring is actually one of the most important things in soccer.

A goal in soccer is so much more precious than in any other sport. It can win you the game, as almost a third of games have one or less goals in the game. So the euphoria when the team scores outweigh any "boringness" that preceded it. It can only be compared to a sudden death win in hockey (another relatively low scoring game, though a not as low as soccer).

Those not into soccer don't really understand this, and many have tried to increase the number of goals scored. But it doesn't make the game better. An 8-2 score is much more boring than a 2-0 game, as the nerve is there all game.

Re: Why isn't the U.S. better at soccer?

#58

Post by dh2022 »

haunter wrote: post #53
radiator wrote: post #36

I find it good that US is not better at soccer. Soccer or football has gained too much importance in Europe and South America. We have seen it encourage unprecedented levels of gambling, insane amount of efforts from the youth chasing the dream of professional football, fan violence inside and outside the stadiums, corruption where magnate owners of sports clubs use their popularity to influence politics, and more.

What you describe is pretty much true for every single american sport too >unprecedented levels of gambling Welcome to FanDuel and DraftKings >insane amount of efforts from the youth chasing the dream of professional football Look at college sports, it's actually even more insane than anything else in Europe >corruption where magnate owners of sports clubs use their popularity to influence politics Look at how public…

Philadelphia Eagles and Detroit Lions fans have something to say about fan violence.

Re: Why isn't the U.S. better at soccer?

#60

Post by prmph »

reenorap wrote: post #25

The insane level of flopping with no dignity or shame, and the insane level of allowing this to happen without any penalties is one of the biggest reasons why I don’t watch soccer. Those in charge WANT soccer players to flop but I don’t understand why. It’s dishonorable and weak but the sport does nothing to stop it. Another reason is that the best American athletes will go to the sport that pays the most and soccer…

If all you see in soccer is fake flopping, that means you do not really appreciate nor understand the game, you do not understand what hard and what's easy, the incredible acrobatic feats the players do, the intricate positional maneuvers, etc

The fake flopping happens sometimes, but overall it hardly detracts from the game. It would be like me saying false starts is why I don't watch the 100 m dash.

And I'd be wary of thinking a fall is fake when the referee and the linesmen who are actually on the field think otherwise. Note that soccer is mostly not supposed to be a physical contact game. It was much more like that up to the 1070s. In fact, the infamous and relentless fouling of Pelé in the 1966 World Cup was a major catalyst for the creation of the red and yellow card system.

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