Why America Hates Soccer

The World Cup is set to finish soon which means it will be another four years before America starts slightly caring about soccer. Why is this so? I think the following breakdown outlines the reasons:
Not enough scoring: All American sports are very heavy quantitative affairs. Basketball scores rise up past the 100’s, football can get up to the 40’s, and even boxing’s 1000 flurry of punches gets quantified into a max of ten points per round. In soccer, whether it is the offside rule, the big field, or the defense, scoring generally does not get above 2 points for either team. This leads many Americans to be like “BORING” or “ZZZ…” and they cannot stand to watch at least ninety minutes of no scoring. A clear example of this was when Italy and Germany faced off in the semifinals. Italy did not score until the 119th minute of the match.

No Established Organization: America has the big three of the NBA, NFL, and the MLB, but no American soccer league. Sure, there is Major League Soccer (MLS), but when did it ever get airtime on ESPN? America, according to FSN and ESPN, would rather watch the WNBA, women’s volleyball, and even paper, rock, scissors competitions instead of soccer.

No National Icon: Soccer may be a sport, but America loves to personify the game. Michael Jordan brought basketball into everyone’s home, Pete Sampras made everyone think he was like a tennis God (Roger Federer then took over), and even non football fans at least know athletes like Jerry Rice and Deion Sanders. However, when it comes to soccer, it’s like…uhhh David Beckham? This may be due to the fact that we do not have a popular soccer organization in America, but in the end, it is about the game. In my opinion, Beckham is only popular because people think he is God’s gift to women. I do not know how much he scores (probably next to nothing considering it’s soccer), and America apparently does not care either. They just care about his good looks. If we do not care about his game, we do not care about the game of soccer.

Very Unsuccessful Team: If America is not good at it, we do not care. Plain and simple. Had the American team even competed just a little, we might have supported them. Unfortunately, we just continue to run commercials of some foreign guy saying, “The world no longer looks forward to playing against you [USA]” or something like that. The commercial attacks our lack of teamwork and passion, and apparently, we do not mind. It’s like we disown our own child except it’s a bunch of guys we’re not related to, so it’s not a very hard decision to make.

It may be too harsh to say America hates soccer, but it is clear that it is not very popular. Even young phenom Freddy Adu is unable to get Americans to care about the sport. As a result, it seems like America no longer looks forward to playing against the world because we simply do not care.