How long was soccer was around?
375165
The origins of football (soccer) are thought to be over 2000 years old. Indeed, in 2004, football's governing body FIFA officially acknowledged that China was the birthplace of football, when people played the sport of cuju around 200 BC. The rules would be changed over time into the sport played today.\n\nIt was widely play in england from middle ages (the origins are allegedly roman, but no one knows for sure), but it wasn't until 1848 the first set of rules resembling the modern game were produced at Trinity College, Cambridge. This is considered as the birth of modern football.
386931
I think what you said has some validity.  It's hard to televise anything with only one break.  Many networks will probably not air soccer games for this reason.  Especially because games are for 90+ minutes.  It's also because it's not considered an American past-time.  Baseball and football are considered part of "growing up".  Soccer is probably the fastest growing sport (other than Nascar) in the U.S., but it still has a very long way to go.
117934
According to wikipedia, over 240 million people regularly play soccer (aka football) in more than 200 countries.\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soccer\n\nHere is a very unscientific survey of self-proclaimed most popular sports: http://www.johann-sandra.com/popular.htm
19642
Soccer is a fairly new sport in the US.  Other countries have played soccer for decades but the US invented other sports (AKA Football).  Soccer has began to gain popularity though.
1156396
In USA they used the word soccer to make a difference with football (american football) , but the word "soccer" is an English (British),  not an  American word.\n "Soccer" was originally called "association football" during the formation of the Football Association in England in the 1860s.  And the word soccer derived from the second syllable of the word "association".\nEnglish public schoolboys loved to nickname things, they had a tendency to add "er" to the end of many words. Association Football was better know as "assoccer" and naturally evolved into "soccer" which is much easier for a schoolboy to say. The word "football", however, was more descriptive of the game (i.e. kicking a ball with the feet!) and was the term more frequently used.  "Football" is the world standard name for "soccer".
681068
The FA Cup is the oldest football competition in the world, commencing in 1872 (the Scottish Cup beginning a year later in 1873). It has been played since 125 years.
396908
The proper name of soccer is "association football".It is said that it was played before 1000 years.There is also a belief that Soccer-like games were played in China as many as 2000 years ago.And again people say that the Romans played a game called "harpastum" which was probably the origin of modern soccer.Now, soccer has been the most popular game.At the end of the 1980's, about 12 million Americans under the age of 19 (37% of them girls) were playing organized soccer.\n\nSource-SAMM
577361
Arguably soccer was invented in London in 1863 when men sat down to codify the games that they had enjoyed playing at their "public schools". An association called "The Football Association" was formed. The word "soccer" is short for "Association Football", as distinct from "Rugby Football", which was another sport codified by ex public schoolboys in the late 19th century.\nThere's a pretty clear evidence that some ancient civilizations developed a game somewhat similar to contemporary football. However, the "modern" football (or soccer) was invented in the year 1848 in the Cambridge University by a bunch of students, who were bored by other games and decided to set some rules. The game didn't resemble today's football since catching the ball with your hands was allowed. Despite that, we can say that they were one of the first people who invented the game.
1081917
NICE..ESP. SOCCER(FOOT BALL).\n\nTHE VOICE RAISED 16 YEARS BACK IN FIFA WC'90.\n\nYOU RENEWED IT NOW.
987163
Soccer has been has been my favorite for years. The rest of the games are aight but they just don't compare to soccer, and it doesn't acquire all the different components you need to play the "beautiful game." Period.
41280
American football derives directly from European football and rugby in the late 1800s and most likely, even though the rules changed over the past 120 years, the name stuck. "Soccer" is a contraction for the phrase "association football", a word I believe actually began in England, not America.
660693
The rules of football were codified in England by the Football Association in 1863, and the name association football was coined to distinguish the game from the other forms of football played at the time, specifically rugby football.\n\n The term soccer first appeared in the 1880s as a slang abbreviation of Association football, often credited to Charles Wreford-Brown.\n\nToday the sport is known by a number of names throughout the English-speaking world, the most common being football and soccer.\n\n The term used depends largely on the need to differentiate the sport from other codes of football followed in a community. Football is the term used by FIFA, the sport's world governing body, and the International Olympic Committee.\n\n\nIn the United States, the sport's governing body is the United States Soccer Federation. \n\nThis body was originally called the U.S. Football Association, and was formed in 1913 by the merger of the American Football Association and the American Amateur Football Association.\n\n The word "soccer" was added to the name in 1945, making it the U.S. Soccer Football Association, and it did not drop the word "football" until 1974, when it assumed its current name.\n\n Today, "soccer" is the standard name for the sport in the United States, with "football" referring instead to American football.
1153160
The non-technical answer: \nThe game of soccer is supposed to be non-stop and flowing.  This is one of the reasons that soccer is called "The beautiful game" by many people around the world.  The players and fans don't want the game to be interrupted for any reason and thus the clock doesn't stop unless the match is called off.  This allows for several things, including a fairly consistent match length.  A soccer game will almost always last for 1 hour and 45 minutes.  There are two 45 minute halves and a 15 minute half-time.  \n\nThe technical reason:\nFIFA, the international governing body for soccer, declares it to be the case.  According to their laws of the game, stoppage time is added for the following reasons:\n    *   substitution(s);\n\n    * assessment of injury to players;\n\n    *  removal of injured players from the field of play for treatment;\n\n    * wasting time;\n\n    * any other cause.\n\n    * The allowance for time lost is at the discretion of the referee.
353271
Mexico 1986\nThe fever of soccer was really there!!
1037697
If you're talking about soccer, good question.\nIf not, stupid question.
391304
The origins of soccer go back way further than 1620, most ancient cultures had some sort of ball game played by it's population. The Mayans for instance were playing a ball game over 3000 years ago!\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_ballgame\nOfficially though, FIFA credit the invention to the Chinese. That version however was undoubtly was very different to the modern game, which as noted above, was properly formalised into Association Football in England during the 19th Century
1180573
You need to be more specific about the type of soccer you are womdering about.\n\nGames revolving around the kicking of a ball have been played in many countries through history. The earliest documented version is the Chinese game Tsu Chu or cu ju, mentioned in military manuals from the time of the Qin Dynasty (255 - 206 BC).[3] Other ancient ball games include kemari in Japan and the Roman game Harpastum. Various forms of mob football were played in mediæval Europe, though rules varied greatly by both period and location.