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How Soccer Is Destroying America

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CrazyDude

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For most of the 20th century, when so much of American culture was being adopted by others, Americans were adamant about not reciprocating by adopting the world’s sport. Now things have changed.

When I was 17 I spent the summer in France on an exchange program, living with a family in an idyllic town in Normandy, parlando the language of Napoleon and Camus (OK, so my conjugations may be a bit off, it’s been a while) and doing my best to avoid eating cheese, which wasn’t easy seeing how it was both a national and regional obsession. My French “parents” seemed to think it was incroyable and pas possible that someone would come all the way to France for a summer and not eat cheese (my attempts to explain that j’aime pas le fromage everywhere fell on deaf ears).

But away from the dinner table, I had a far easier time assimilating with the natives than most of the other American kids in my study program. That’s because I played and shared the French kids’ obsession – le football. Not only could I make friends by playing in the park, but also, as a result of having grown up in Mexico, I had a reservoir of shared knowledge binding me to French kids that my American classmates simply did not have: the World Cup.

The World Cup has provided a tidy punctuation to my life every four years, and in the summer prior to my Normandy adventure, the most memorable match of the Spain 1982 World Cup was the French semifinal overtime loss to the Germans. Even a year later, by pretending I had been rooting for the French and grousing about how dirty the German team had played, I could fit right in.

Soccer (like religion) remains one of the few non-American narratives binding the world together. When it comes to global pop culture, if it isn’t the latest World Cup or European Champions League, the only things kids in France, Mexico, Ghana, and South Korea share in common are U.S. imports: Hollywood blockbusters, American TV series, music, video games, and the English language. The NBA and NFL have followings overseas, but sport still remains the weakest link in America’s hegemonic control over global culture.

In fact, global soccer culture is changing the United States, thanks to the interest of both affluent white suburbanites and immigrant groups. Today the United States boasts a highly respected national team that easily qualifies for the World Cup every four years; a decent domestic league established as a legacy of the 1994 World Cup played here; and armies of youth soccer players.

Far more people in the United States watched the Spain-Netherlands final of the 2010 World Cup (24.3 million) on TV than watched the decisive fifth game of Major League Baseball’s World Series that year between the Texas Rangers and San Francisco Giants (15 million). Heck, only 4 million more people watched Game 7 of the Celtics-Lakers NBA Finals that year than the World Cup final. Remember, the match we’re talking about pitted Spain against Holland. Kicking a ball around.

Equally impressive, and more important in the long run, is the proliferation of media outlets for international soccer. NBC airs English Premier League matches, and a number of cable channels serve up games from the German, Italian, Spanish, and Mexican leagues every weekend. A generation of young gamers is hooked to FIFA’s soccer on their Xbox or Playstation. I console myself that when my kid is seemingly lost to the hypnotic powers of the video game, he is actually learning about other countries. (The other day I caught him playing Dortmund against Valencia).

It’s hard to exaggerate how much soccer’s incursion into American life threatens to erode American exceptionalism, not to mention our traditional geographic illiteracy. American kids now routinely wear the jerseys of teams in places like Barcelona and Munich, much like their counterparts in the rest of the world. Soccer offers American sports fans a sense of global, not just national, connectedness.

For most of the 20th century, even when so much of our culture was being adopted by others, Americans were adamant about not reciprocating by adopting the world’s sport. The prevailing culture was suspicious of the game, which at times could seem futile. Imagine going an entire match without scoring! Or, worse, tying! It seemed the duty of patriotic Americans was to avoid soccer, and even ridicule it, as much as it was to refuse measuring in centigrade or meters. We compensated for our sports provincialism by calling the champions of our domestic sports leagues “world champions.”

But all that is changing. With the World Cup in the Americas for the first time in 20 years, the United States will experience this year’s tournament in a big way, and the exciting narratives that spin out of it will help bind young American fans to cheese-eating kids in Normandy, and elsewhere.
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http://time.com/2857626/how-soccers-growing-popularity-undermines-america/
 
jaguars-fan-gif.gif
 
The tone of this article is all over the place, I can't tell if they're being serious of facetious or what the fuck are they even talking about?

It’s hard to exaggerate how much soccer’s incursion into American life threatens to erode American exceptionalism, not to mention our traditional geographic illiteracy. American kids now routinely wear the jerseys of teams in places like Barcelona and Munich, much like their counterparts in the rest of the world. Soccer offers American sports fans a sense of global, not just national, connectedness.
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This paragraph in particular, this is satire right?
 
I respect the hell out of soccer but let's be real...

Americans don't care that much about it because they invented two sports that are more fun to watch (football/basketball) and another for people who like chewing tobacco (baseball).
 
It blows my mind it isn't big in America. Why is that?

Btw doesn't MLS put commercial breaks DURING the match? That's stupid.
 
Thug Waffle said:
I respect the hell out of soccer but let's be real...

Americans don't care that much about it because they invented two sports that are more fun to watch (football/basketball) and another for people who like chewing tobacco (baseball).
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Basketball is a Canadian sport (or well invented by a Canadian).
 
"Now that the tournament is in the Americas"

yeah, I don't think anyone in the US has felt more close to the World Cup because its in "The America's". That would be like saying the Australians would feel close to the Beijing olympics because it is in "Australasia". We're not even in the same continent! If this article is satire, the author was an Onion reject.
 
Seems like the incoherent ramblings of a guy who's excited that soccer is becoming more popular in the US and is trying to find some way to write an article about it.
 
No child should be forced to wear a Bayern shirt. For just $2 a month you can help a child like Aiden receive an education and give him access to appropriate clothing. Give generously.
 
TIME is fucking garbage now, literally a minuscule step above Buzzfeed. incoherent clickbait garbage.
 
Thug Waffle said:
I respect the hell out of soccer but let's be real...

Americans don't care that much about it because they invented two sports that are more fun to watch (football/basketball) and another for people who like chewing tobacco (baseball).
Click to expand...

Football is horrible to watch, so boring. They spend more time in commercials than they do actually playing the game.
 
perfectchaos007 said:
"Now that the tournament is in the Americas"

yeah, I don't think anyone in the US has felt more close to the World Cup because its in "The America's". That would be like saying the Australians would feel close to the Beijing olympics because it is in "Australasia". We're not even in the same continent! If this article is satire, the author was an Onion reject.
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And the World Cup actually was in the US in '94 and nobody gave a crap.
 
it is kind of sad that we choose to largely ignore a global party of sport, but we also call our preferred sport winners World Champions anyways.

People have been saying soccer would rise in the US forever. Everyone plays it as a kid in youth leagues, we just move on to football, basketball, baseball, instead.
 
I'm watching the World Cup right now. It's the first time I'm really sitting down and watching some games The excitement builds when a goal occurs and you don't know if it was real or not.

There some exciting ass things that happen in American Football too and I'm not much of a sports guy. I appreciate both sports though.
 
People should be supporting America, not these other random countries people don't even know where they are
 
Take away America from the World Cup and people even give less of a shit. If we were sending an MLS championship team to face the best clubs of the world to play soccer for the World Cup no one would give a damn. The only thing that causes any interest is the fact that USA is on the team name. That's the only reason why I care (as little as I do). America winning would be the biggest troll to the world ever.

Affeinvasion said:
What's this guy's problem with cheese?
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Smells bad and doesn't taste good.
 
bkfount said:
People have been saying soccer would rise in the US forever. Everyone plays it as a kid in youth leagues, we just move on to football, basketball, baseball, instead.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that true?

From the stuff I've read, it certainly is.
 
Too long to read but is this about how NBA has incorporated flopping? Or the amount of fake Brazilians that pop up every 4 years?
 
It isn't satire but the author isn't going to connect the dots for you.
We compensated for our sports provincialism by calling the champions of our domestic sports leagues “world champions.”
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Always found this hilarious.
 
The title is weird (and probably wasn't chosen by the author) but I think the rest makes sense. I'm not sure why people think the article is so confusing or weird. The author is saying that soccer is getting more popular in the us and with it we're seeing the eventual disintegration of our nationalist and our pride in being ignorant unworldly.

I wonder if people assume that author thinks this is a bad thing and THAT confuses them or makes it seem "all over the place"?

I mean, they may be wrong, but it seems like it pretty clearly isn't trying to be satire or anything remotely tricky... It's just a bad opinion piece with a bad title.
 
PeskyToaster said:
I'm watching the World Cup right now. It's the first time I'm really sitting down and watching some games The excitement builds when a goal occurs and you don't know if it was real or not.

There some exciting ass things that happen in American Football too and I'm not much of a sports guy. I appreciate both sports though.
Click to expand...

the game right now is propably not the best example.
horrible referee desicions..
 
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