How ingrained actually IS Soccer in the American cultural 'zeitgeist', I thought Americans never touched it but here is a pic of young Aaron Rodgers in his peewee soccer kit.So what gives.
>>154517793It's a game for 4 year olds to stay busy with before they start playing actual sports. A lot of time the youth games don't even keep score
It's not. The same way I had to think pretty hard who Aaron Rodgers is
They "dislike" Soccer because they are not good at it, and they have their own sports so they can publicly snob Soccer withouth seeming like sour grapes.
>>154517806>A lot of time the youth games don't even keep scoreWe don't do that either until the children turn 13 and football is our #1 sport by a huge margin
>>154518016>The focus is on mastery, learning and enjoyment of the gameThat's where it differs: in the US, they literally just throw a bunch of kids and a ball on the field with little to no organization. It's just a day in the sun for kids to tire themselves out. I know all this because it's exactly what my nephew is going through rn
>>154518197TRVTH
At the adult level, its place in the zeitgeist is the sport with the actors faking injuries. I don’t think foreigners quite grasp how inseparable soccer and flopping is in our minds.
>>154519115After years on /sp/ and multiple meetings with Americans irl, I think I do. Being an anon here is probably more than enough already, the average American here says „flopping“ like 0.9 times per post when talking about football. Even when it’s clearly not a dive, but not an instance of a 150 kilo piece of farm equipment crashing into a guy either
>>154517793It depends where you're at. The closer you are to Mexico the more popular it'll be because that's where are most of the multicultural cities with every race. Soccer in California and Texas is more popular than NHL for example. But soccer will never be mainstream in the US because it's a very basic sport that can be played by manlet. Americans are pretty tall on average thanks to their diets growing up so they tend to want to see the "big boy" sports
>>154519169Don't be retarded anon, soccer players are floppers. NBA is starting to get worse but you can't deny soccer players are floppers. Just look at a guy like Sergio Ramos who shamelessly flopped in the UCL Finals to get his opponent a red card. As soon as the ref pulled out the card he got up like nothing ever happened and attacked his opponent
>>154519181Is that really it? You are taller than Mexicans, but not taller than most Europeans. Football is a sport manlets can succeed in, yeah, but it doesn’t exclude tall people either. Except maybe the freak range of >2m. But if you are all about emulating 2.20m tall guys playing a sport almost requiring you to be that tall, it doesn’t sound that smart to me. Does the existence of 1.75m tall football players destroy how you, a people like 1.80m tall on average, see the sport?>>154519197Sorry, but if anything, you are retard here. But maybe I wasn’t clear enough: I didn’t say diving does not exist; I said you tend to see a lot of things as dives, including actual fouls. I‘ve seen it many times myself. Someone sweeps an opponent’s legs away - and some American says it’s a dive. Presumably because there is no upper body contactI don’t doubt that there is a „simulation culture“, some players are massive fags and it is a bad look indeed. And it’s good that you mention the NBA, because the argument of yuropeons being soft floppers shouldn’t leave the mouth of an NBA fan, the shit there would make many fans of infamous Iberian/Italian diving clubs feel embarrassed
>>154519274Yeah, NBA it's alot softer than the Euroleague and the Olympics.Ameriburgers shouldn't mention flopping and NBA in the same sentence to not embarass themselves.
>>154518197>they literally just throw a bunch of kids and a ball on the field with little to no organizationthis is rec league which is slowing dyingbecause of.......................MONEY GRAB CLUBSyep, private equity is coming for youth sports as an untapped market where clubs can charge thousands to rec league parents who will have FOMO because they don't know any bettert.club coach
>>154521559This sounds terribly grimSo does this have a chance of killing grassroots football? Because this feels like it could be a huge blow to American soccer development
>>154521767the whole stadium asset racket is slowly working its way into the grassroots level of sports. 5-10 year old kids dont play on like a waterlogged grass pitch or gravel field at the local park anymore, they play on a fields maintained by the nearby universities or lower level professional teams and it ends up costing over $200/year just to play "rec" league, like for fun. if you want to play in a league hosted by the whitecaps or tfc or montreal fc academies it will cost over $500 for just 3 months. just within my lifetime youth soccer has quickly transitioned away from a working class sport.
>>154517793He's from California which has somewhat of a soccer scene. Someone from the midwest or deep south wouldn't be playing soccer ever.
>>154521767"grassroots football" basically doesn't exist in america anyway because kids are thrown onto a field with a parent that has never watched a lick of soccer in his life, they kick around the ball for 90 minutes as the parents get to chat then they go home and everyone has enjoyed the cardio.the few kids who actually understand the game and want to be good at it and stick with it rather than switching to baseball/football or hockey/basketball have to find their way into specialized development programs anyway, because there's very little chance any random town or city in america will be able to provide them world-class development
>>154521767rec league is still around, just fewer kids each year because the good ones leave which causes others to leave.the way to fix it would be USSF limiting clubs to only 3 teams per age group.we have 7 [SEVEN] U9 boys teams at my club.i coach the third team and a few of our kids should be in rec league, along with basically everyone below us.that'd be 45 more kids in rec league rather than wasting parents' money.
>>154521913>just within my lifetime youth soccer has quickly transitioned away from a working class sport.it's happening to all sports, it's becoming way less frequent seeing athletes that come from a poor background.
>>154522017seems more like kids from a middle class background are becoming less common across all sports if anything. even in "rich" sports there are still stars that grew up dirt poor. artemi panarins family could barely afford a pair of skates when he was growing up and david pastrnaks mother had to work 4 jobs to pay for his youth hockey. but the type of athlete like tiger woods where his father was in the military and his mother worked as a teller at a bank is becoming less and less common.
>>154522122panarin and pasta are oldyou don't see the younger guys from poor backgrounds now, the new poor is middle class parents that threw all their money at hockey instead of college/vacations.
>>154522122This. Travel teams are killing sports period. I hate that my future kids may never get to play because of costs
A lot of american kids play soccer but it's seen as a recreation/character building activity. Nobody takes it seriously
>>154517793>How ingrained actually IS Soccer in the American cultural 'zeitgeist'Every kid plays soccer, no kids like soccer. That's it.
>>154517793Speaking to younger people (from urban areas) and visiting places like San Francisco or Los Angeles, I was surprised at how interested many Americans are in the sport. You could see it wasn't as much of a mass phenomenon as in Europe, and the average level of "knowledge" about the sport was lower for sure, but it's not like I encountered a lot of aversion or negative sentiments in general, rather the opposite. Though I am relatively sure that this can look very different in, dunno, the Deep South and with older peopleI'm far away from saying Americans all like the sport and have it deeply ingrained in their culture, but this "we don't care" or "we hate it" you sometimes encounter here on /sp/ does not seem to be the universal truth. The first statement of these is ironic in the first place, since it tends to pop up uninvited and kind of shows someone does care in a weird wayThey don't really "get" the sport, they struggle with some aspects of it. And they are fine without it. But it's not like there's no opening anywhere in my experience, and I think recent years have shown the sport can grow into less of a joke there. Though a lot of it may just be bland consumerism
>>154519197This, tall and strong also means less skilled
>>154517793no wonder he turned out to be like this.
>>154522017I hear basketball is bad now too particularly with AAU clubs being shady as hell and a cash grab. I would have thought it was the last sport that still had young stars who grew up on the black tops of school yards and inner-city courts but apparently that isn't really a thing anymore either.>>154522261The fascinating thing with Eastern Bloc countries that were good at hockey (Czech, Slovakia, Russia) is there was a massive drop off in registered players and elite players in general during the 2000s (about a decade post-communism). I remember seeing an interview with Chara & Hossa, them talking about their youth hockey days. They said when they were kids up until about u16 age group that despite being from poor families they got to play at train at an elite level and the government/community helped cover the costs but once communism fell all that shit dried up. They were old enough/good enough to go abroad and keep developing but the youthful generations behind them got left behind. There was a whole 10-15 years of poor quality nobodies available for Slovakia because of it only until the last decade or so that have gotten better. Same thing happened in Czechia and Russia too.
>>154522261nah you still see nhl players coming from russia or latvia. the media isnt going to have deep personal interviews with guys barely speak english, and i dont think there is enough of an audience to care for those types of faggy interviews even with the guys that can. the cost of travelling and other maintenance costs baked into registration fees is causing a massive divide in youth sports. you are either rich and can afford top level training and coaching or else poor with a lot of raw talent, and its the middle class kids who are going to get pushed out.
>>154525985>The average height in Peru is among the shortest in the world, with men averaging approximately 165–167 cm (5'5"–5'6") and women averaging roughly 153–154 cm (5'0").Kek imagine the skills compilations
>>154519274NBA players are seen as the same if not worse than soccer players when it comes to flopping nowadays. At least in soccer you can review shit where NBA you only get 1 review a game and the league refuses to do anything about the flopping (by design). Also bud we all played soccer growing up, don't be stupid about the diving. You're running at full speed getting slightly pushed isn't going to send you flying like you got shot by a sniper at the slightest bit of contact. It takes a lot to send you flying when you're at top speed. F = mA
>>154527004All sports in all countries are starting to become only for the elite kids. Most people in the NBA nowadays are nepo babies whose dads played in the league
>>154517793>Aaron Rodgersis this the supreme gentleman dude?
>>154527864It kind of sounds like you were insane divers yourselves and now project that onto everyone else. Not everyone plays like this, with a deeply rooted use of dives at every slight contact. The situation you are describing is not as common as you make it sound, unless you are very liberal when it comes to tactical fouls and the like. Everyone who has played the sport past 8 knows that. Again, pal (since you seem to like using these words), no one is saying it doesn’t exist. Some players dive when the opportunity arises, a lot of players embellish - usually these situations are fouls, though - to ensure something is actually called.As an elite physicist, are you capable of running at >30 km/h and not falling when someone trips you or unbalances you? You are harder to make fall, but once there is something, you fall harder. Also, a football sprint usually isn’t a linear sprint: your route, the opponents, the ball - these can make you change speed, direction, center of gravity. And in these moments, you are easier to make fall. In the vast majority of situations, players will of course try to run on for obvious reasonsBut yes, players in falling will often try to make the ref notice, and sometimes that looks weird and dumb. It’s not quite the same as players making a foul out of nothing and getting away with it, which’s not a given but still something that happens, but yes, it all can be very annoying overall
>>154529032NTA what has always bothered me is that they seem to have to fall/embellish to get calls. I'd rather the standard be to try and play through fouls but the refs don't reward that behavior it seems.
>>154529066Understandable. It’s only REALLY ridiculous in the box, though, since everyone wants that easy penalty. On the rest of the pitch, it’s not that severe in most situations. If players have a chance of getting through anyway, they will try to. Common exceptions are situations late in the game when a team that has the lead is attacking and just wants a breather. Or when a player gets fouled by someone who is already on a yellowRefs are retarded in many cases, but I have to cut them some slack, it is tough. And you can’t use VAR for everything (assuming the guys there really know better, which is a stretch)
>>154517793>peeweeThere's your answer. Most kid sports are soccer or baseball for a few reasons. There's less kit so it's cheaper, the sport is simpler, and there's less injury risk. IIRC, most people don't play organized football until high school, MAYBE middle school if they live in certain parts of the countryI'd imagine that every American athlete played soccer or baseball when they were 7
>>154525728>it's not like I encountered a lot of aversion or negative sentiments in general, rather the opposite. >I'm far away from saying Americans all like the sport and have it deeply ingrained in their culture, but this "we don't care" or "we hate it" you sometimes encounter here on /sp/ does not seem to be the universal truth. The soccer/football hate is entirely one sided. Every American I know is completely ambivalent to soccer. They might watch the World Cup, but are generally disinterested in it. Meanwhile, every time I talk to a serious soccer fan on here or IRL about football, they're completely disingenuous. They can't help themselves but use the words "stoppages" and "fluidity" every sentence. It's unironically super annoying because they pretend to understand football but clearly have never given it a fair shake
Diving isnt that common anymore now that VAR exists but players still pretend to be injured to get a yellow card, delay the game or get a penalty kick.But yeah I hated when these motherfuckers went flying withouth even being touched, that realy turnished the image of the sport
>>154529110If I could change 1 rule in football it would be that refs/VAR could still award a penalty if the balls goes out of play. It would incentivize attackers to stop falling to the ground on every counter where the defense is on the attackers hips.
>>154529181That's the gayest thing ever.
>>154529032I love football but diving is really ingrained, trying to trick the ref is part of the charm and sovl.
>>154529181Football starts in elementary school. I started playing in third grade.
Let's assume 4chan and its American posters are the real world. If it was, I'd say totally.But no, you won't find any Tom, Dick, or Harry that will bring it up at work.
