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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?

#181

Post by scythe »

brudgers wrote: post #171
jandrewrogers wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The counterpoint to this is that, broadly speaking, Mexico is demonstrably no better at soccer than the US when it matters. A common talking point in recent years is that the US league is actually better at developing Mexican talent than the Mexican league, though that somewhat reflects different incentives. I think a core issue is that US and Mexican teams rarely have an opportunity to compete against teams signific…

The Mexican Primera favors a unique type of athlete…players who can regularly play at 10,000 feet (3000m) because many matches are played in and around Mexico City. And other clubs are also above 5000 feet. Add in daytime heat, night cold, humidity and smog and you get a very different practical reality that shapes the pace and tactics of the Primeria and soccer culture in general. In turn that shapes who succeeds as…

This is an interesting theory. But do Mexican soccer players do much better at home games?

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

#182

Post by musictubes »

neves wrote: post #164
surgical_fire wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is that the US team sports you can think of such Baseball or American Football, have nearly no popularity outside of the US. Maybe Baseball in places like Japan or Venezuela. Maybe the only parallel to soccer I can think of is sports like Rugby in UK and some English-speaking countries, Cricket in India, and some sports endemic to countries (such as GAA in Ireland). The best way to compare the US to other c…

Baseball appeal in a country is always a history lesson. You can measure how a country was fucked up by USA based in their love of baseball: - Cuba - Japan - Panama - Venezuela No other country can like a sport this boring.

Korea, Dominican Republic, Mexico all have pro leagues as well. There are more leagues growing in places like the UK and Australia as well though fully amateur at this point I think. Suffice it to say fans across all of these countries find it thrilling enough to play and watch.

I don’t understand the casual sniping against baseball. There are plenty of sports I have no interest in but I don’t call them out because nobody cares what I think of them.

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

#183

Post by lostapathy »

musicale wrote: post #144
Detrytus wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, nfl/nba are focused on big guys, 6’3 and above. In soccer your height/mass doesn’t matter much so the talent pools don’t overlap. And baseball is the old man’s game that does not require any athleticism at all.

As you indicate the most popular (and generally highest paying) professional sports in the US are football, basketball and baseball. This includes college football and basketball, which are part of the career path for those sports. Women's soccer is relatively popular, however.

> Women's soccer is relatively popular, however.

This may be a function of the fact that no other women's team sport is at all popular in the US?

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

#184

Post by ricree »

Qem wrote: post #102
harrall wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has also strangely invented a lot of sports (Americans football, basketball, baseball, volleyball, lacrosse, skateboarding, snowboarding, and so on). Soccer has major competition in the US. Because these sports started in America too, America usually dominates them.

> The US has also strangely invented a lot of sports (Americans football, basketball, baseball, volleyball, lacrosse, skateboarding, snowboarding, and so on). It appears the sports industry in US skewed local preferences toward hardware-intensive sports, that sell lots of gear. Poor children can start playing soccer stuffing crumpled paper in plastic bags to create a makeshift ball, and using spaced sandals as makesh…

>It's harder to play baseball or football without all assortment of costly bats, helmets, gloves, et cetera

In practice, casual football isn't any more resource heavy than soccer. Most non-league games of football are going to be "touch football", which only requires a ball, a field, and some sort of end marker (as a kid, it was usually just "from that tree to that other tree").

Obviously, organized league play has a ton more equipment, but the sort of informal casual games that kids or young adults play requires much less. It's one of those things that doesn't really get talked about a ton compared to league play, so it's easy to miss for those who didn't grow up with it.

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

#185

Post by rdtsc »

rauljordan2020 wrote: post #141
rdtsc wrote: post #23

> The United States is not exactly lacking in athletic prowess, as our women’s team and our success in other sports show. That's one of the answers: it's seen as a "women's" sport mostly. In school boys play football and girls play soccer in rough general terms. And because football, basketball, baseball is already there there just isn't much demand for another "ball" sport to care about so to speak.

This is hilarious because we think the same about any sport that isn't soccer (football) in much of Latin America: "basketball / baseball is what girls play" is the tagline folks said growing up

Absolutely. It's funny how that works in a way. And then we end up with articles like "how come such and such a sport isn't popular, it's obviously such a great sport".

Some of it may be just adversarial, Americans wouldn't like soccer because well they want to feel special and different than Europeans. And likely Europeans or say Brazilians just wouldn't like American football, it just looks goofy to them.

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

#186

Post by jandrewrogers »

musictubes wrote: post #177
surgical_fire wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing about basketball is that it is typically not a sport where it's a primary interest. Go to places where you find good Basketball players. Germany, former Yugoslavian countries, Spain, Argentina... All those places are primarily Football countries. You will find a few people interested in the sport, some youngster might be playing it for fun, but still very much behind football. It's just not comparable.

Aren’t the ideal bodies pretty different for basketball and soccer? Are 6’6” guys a good size for soccer? How about taller? I’m sure European basketball players grow up playing soccer but at some point they end up playing to their strengths.

The tallest soccer players are right around 6’6”. Outside of positions like center back and striker (and keeper), they rarely exceed 6’0”.

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

#187

Post by ma2kx »

SamBam wrote: post #19

I don't think the article really tried to answer the question, though maybe that wasn't its intent and the author was genuinely asking. I think an answer would need to look at the difference in how kids and teens play soccer in the US vs other countries. In the US soccer is mostly a younger kids' sport, and is generally highly structured, with kids playing on teams once or twice a week. Compare to Europe, where many…

I don't think the unstructured format directly contributes to the playing strength but rather attracts more player to play in a local club. Even in the town where I life with less than 100'000 people there are 10 clubs, 168 teams and nearly 3000 (mostly semi-professional) soccer player. Of course not all of them are young anymore but extrapolate this numbers to the population of a country it becomes a huge talent pool available for the major clubs.

And compared to the US there is a far more dense competition as any state has its own national league and on top are the Champions, Europe and Conference league. So every major soccer team plays in a national and a europene league at the same time and thus the players get of course much more routine.

But hey, we suck at baseball and basketball.

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

#188

Post by osullivj »

jppope wrote: post #78

The comments here are wild. Uh the answer is football/basketball/baseball. We send our best athletes into football, basketball, and baseball. They don't play soccer. I would argue its more shocking that we are as good we are considering the talent pool.

This comment is wild :) In Europe we send our best athletes into athletics, not sport. Athletics is track and field, which reduces to speed, strength and endurance. Sport - football, cricket, tennis - is about technical mastery first, and only secondarily the speed strength and endurance to support it. Lionel Messi and Sachin Tendulkar would both have been deselected by any athletic selection procedure. The emphasis on athleticism over technical mastery is what makes American sport boring.

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

#189

Post by lostapathy »

bitmasher9 wrote: post #92
jppope wrote: post #78

The comments here are wild. Uh the answer is football/basketball/baseball. We send our best athletes into football, basketball, and baseball. They don't play soccer. I would argue its more shocking that we are as good we are considering the talent pool.

I don’t think this is fully correct. Athletic skill is not universal across sports. A athlete that can be trained to be a star football player may not be able to be trained to be a star baseball player.

This is probably less true than you'd think. Freak athletes are great athletes no matter the sport.

There's kind of a soft cap on NFL player height at about 6'5" or 6'6" - hardly anybody is taller than that. But the NBA is majority guys 6'6" or taller. That split isn't because all those kids got sorted into the right sport when they were kids. It's because if you're enough of an athlete to go pro and tall enough to make a living off basketball, that's a lot easier life with a longer career than playing football.

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

#190

Post by lostapathy »

cortesoft wrote: post #12
hackerbeat wrote: post #3

Didn't read the post, but the problem is that in most top soccer countries, soccer is the number one sport, light-years ahead of everything else. In the US, several other sports are more popular, which drains the talent pool. Kids grow up immersed in soccer culture in places like Brazil, Argentina, Germany or Spain in a way that simply isn't as common in the US.

I get this argument, and it is probably partially right, but is soccer really competing for the same athletes as basketball and American football? Basketball players are mostly too tall for soccer (other than goalie), and a majority of football players are way bigger than great soccer players. Baseball and hockey might compete for the same athletes, but a huge percentage of baseball and hockey players also come from…

Perhaps the kids that could be soccer superstars stick with basketball until they figure out they aren't tall enough for the NBA, but are too old or just never developed enough interest in soccer to become a pro at that. But if they didn't have that NBA dream growing up, they may well have become a soccer superstar?
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