Breaking down the Beautiful Game
In pretty much every country except America (and Canada), football……er, soccer, is the biggest and most popular sport. And that many people can’t be wrong, can they? Here in America, soccer is barely an afterthought, usually a punchline in mainstream sports culture. Soccer rarely gets coverage on SportsCenter, and on the off chance that it does, it usually comes at the expense of an anchor butchering players’ names or poking fun at a ridiculous flop (which they have a point – flopping and flailing in soccer is a problem).
I think one of the main reasons why soccer hasn’t caught on in the US is the fact that it’s so hard to get involved. The number of leagues, competitions, teams and players is downright overwhelming to John Q. sports fan, as opposed to the NBA, NFL or MLB, where everything is pretty much straightforward, everything is played within North American borders, and the best players in each respective sport flock to the US to play at the highest level there is. Not so for soccer. Sure, the English Premier League is probably the top league in the world, but there are dozens and dozens of other leagues. Nearly every single country has its own league, with most countries having several leagues. That said, the talent is spread more thinly, competition is tighter, and in addition to competing against teams in your own league, soccer clubs around the world have the added difficulty of competing for players against teams and leagues in other countries, something that doesn’t happen in the US. The world’s best players don’t flock to one place like they do with the Big 3 Sports in the US (although most all of the world’s premier soccer players either play in England, Germany, Italy, Spain or France).
Americans view soccer as boring, tiresome and pointless, and judging by the quality of play of the MLS, which sadly is the only soccer most Americans see on a somewhat consistent basis, it’s not that hard to blame them. But everyone knows the best soccer in the world is played outside of the US, and it takes some work to keep up with it. There are rarely highlights on SportsCenter of soccer overseas and you’re not going to be reading about them in US papers. So, in order to follow soccer, you have to do a little dirty work, and in this attention-span-challenged society, it can be too much work for some people.
I’m going to try and tackle the monumental task of breaking soccer down into more sizable chunks for the “average” fan. I think once you get into soccer, and understand its intricacies and details, it sucks you in and never lets you go. The problem is taking that first plunge into the icy waters.
In part one of my soccer primer (coming soon), I’ll break down the various leagues and competitions in its most basic form. I’ll also take time later to look a little deeper at the biggest and in my opinion most appealing (at least to American) league to follow in the world – the English Premier League.
As the old adage says, knowing is half the battle. When it comes down to it, the reason most people don’t like or follow soccer in America is because it’s not readily available, we didn’t grow up with it, and a person has to go out of their way to follow a team and learn what makes the soccer world tick. (other than MLS teams, which you’re probably better off ignoring anyway). Stay tuned for part one of my primer, which will hopefully break some of the basic parts of the game down for an American fan.
