On the Popularity of Football

In response to a lame comment that goes something like "You kick a ball around a field. Wow."

NOW, finally someone is starting to understand it!

The root of the game is its seeming simplicity. You think, "hey, this ball is round, all I need to do is kick it right?"

Here's the thing - try controlling a round object without using your hands. Sure you could pick it up and throw to your teammate and said teammate could catch it - that's what these prehensile thumbs are for - but hell, anyone can grab a damn ball and throw it...where's the challenge in that?! Try sending a ball 60 yards to a 2'x2' spot on the field. Now try it without using your hands. See where I'm going here?

Just when you think you've mastered the ability to control the ball with no hands, add 11 opposing players whose job it is to take the ball away from you.

Now, we'll give you 10 players to coordinate with as well and we'll give you 90 minutes to score - no timeouts by the way - and that's it.

There is no "direction" on the field other than the location of your goal and your opponent's goal, so be prepared to run about 5-6 miles in all directions in your attempts to get open for the ball, defend, make runs at goal, and so on.

By the way, with the sole exception of your goalkeeper (and even that is arguable) every player on the field is simultaneously on offense and defense - meaning you have to always be thinking, reading the game, understanding your leverage, testing, committing, etc.

Now imagine every nation on the planet Earth plays this game and understands these basic concepts. Billions of people. From the smallest, podunk, dictatorships to the largest democracies and everything in between on every continent save Antarctica.

So basically, aside from basic functions, such as eating bread and drinking water, football is the only connection humanity has! More than religion, language, music, cuisine - football is the language that humans speak. A Thai can explain the rules as well as a Peruvian.

So yeah, you kick a ball around a field. And it's really quite amazing.

/just my opinion of course

Great Goals Compilation Video (with groovy techno music)

Great new Nike Commerical

On Soccer in America - Part 1

What the people who suggest “soccer will never be popular in the US” are trying to say is, “soccer as a professional spectator sport will never be popular in the US”. Near term - probably, long term - maybe, never - unlikely. What most conscious people have known for about a decade or so now is that football is the most popular participation team sport (approx. 18 million) in the US and the numbers are trending upward.

You may not find a statistical correlation between participation and spectatorship in the US; but overall the game makes more sense to more Americans than ever.
The popular spectator US sports benefit from a long and storied social and cultural history that football in the states just does not have – i.e., peanuts at the ballpark, tailgate and Superbowl parties, binge drinking at your NCAA game, saturated television coverage and the commercials to prop it up, etc.

As those of us who grew up playing in the States in the 70s and 80s (and continue in adult leagues all over the US) become the coaches of our own children that play, the first challenge, the generational understanding gap, gets more and more narrow. We can all sit at the pub and enjoy a match, confident we understand exactly what to look for. Add to that unprecedented access via cable and internet to great leagues and great players all over the world and decent leagues in the US, and the sport that my father (and mother) didn’t even have the chance to play, may grow in cultural significance, albeit slowly. Finally, factor in the influence of immigration on US culture and you begin to see some serious handwriting on the wall.

If marketing revenue is a predictor of success, then the nature of the game itself may keep it from ever realizing the commercial success of the traditional US spectator sport. Because soccer is two 45 minute uninterrupted halves with a short half time break – there is very little time for traditional commercial advertising to have an influence. There will never be a two minute warning or a time out so downtime is kept at a minimum. However, the same tools that bring international sport in to the American living room are at least partially responsible for the demise of traditional commercial advertising in US sport – with the obvious exception of the Superbowl and the NCAA tournament. Soccer revenue for merchants is in sponsorships not commercials – the fan experience is the game itself, which lends itself nicely to the new media model that cuts commercials out altogether (e.g., Tivo).

So if sporting “success” in the States is defined by dollars, then I wouldn’t hold out for soccer being able to compete with the other sports – not yet – it’s not built for unlimited beer and pretzel breaks. But most football fans don’t use the event as an excuse to socialize anyway – take your eye off the pitch for a second and you may miss the play of the match (which may or may not result in a goal by the way.) With that in mind however; tournaments, teams, and leagues all over the world are not only spectacularly popular, but fiscally lucrative.

In conclusion, for all the naysayers who insist the game will never arrive in the States, look at the numbers and not the dollars. You will discover that the beautiful game has been here for quite a while. 18,000,000 players and growing, can’t be wrong.