Why is soccer so friggin popular? Is this a sign of mankind's inevitable downfall?
366716
Soccer is popular because of the tension that builds up during play.  Scoring a goal is like winning at chess.  The intricate strategy required to beat the offside trap and score while not being fouled or committing a foul is incredibly difficult.  So when someone scores, it's an incredible release and when you watch it you just go nuts.  Plus, the atmosphere at matches is incomparable.  Fans go crazy!  You just have to experience it to understand it.
274371
Soccer has to be played world wide there is no country which does not play it at some level and more people follow soccer then any religion in the world its mankind's favorite pastime....what do you think?
1183378
Tell me when and where!!!!!  American football is the most ridiculous sport I´ve ever seen!!  I think that the people who think that soccer (football for everyone outside the US) is boring have never sat through an entire World Cup match.  I don´t know how anyone could think it´s boring!\n\nAmen, brother!
642610
People like soccer because it is exciting. Goals do add to the excitement but the class, the skill and team work of the players is what makes soccer so attractive. You can have a game with lots of goals but the quality of the play is poor and that is not interesting. \n   90 mins is just right and is not the cause of crowd frustration. Crowds do not like to see their team lose so they riot, or they may disagree with the refs decision and in one case 2 countries in Central America went to war over a soccer game because of national pride.
1143839
Im an american girl.  \nThere is no sport better than soccer (im american, sorry.)\nThere is NOTHING more pure than a players excitement and joy in scoring a goal.  The celebration has no ego in it as other sports encounter.  its a happiness that now the players team has a point..on their way to winning.  I see it as more of a team sport than most.  Great skill and physical form in each player.  \nnow put the worlds greatest teams together...its good matches all around.  \nWhy do the fans get so obsessed with who they support?  lol dont know that.  im not a face painter.  yet.\nThats a sociological question.  but i love it!\nIt very much feels like being apart of something BIG when watching EVERYTHING leading up to the final.  If i could see the preliminaries or the friendlies even that would be great!\nJust ENJOY what you do watch!!!  i hope you become a face painter too!!!  :D
1124588
Several reasons.  One of the more entertaining that I heard is that since we cannot be the best at it (although we weren't the best at baseball in the world baseball classic, despite it being our "pastime") and so we aren't interested.  Although, wait until we do become the best, and then we'll give the world another reason to hate us.  Another reason I read about was that the sport in our country is put on the back burner, as far as fans see it.  While it doesnt receive the same attention as basketball's finals right now, the fan base is growing, and more and more stadiums in this country are being built just for soccer.  And there is a rumor that we might get David Beckham to play for the LA Galaxy in a couple or years...Another reason i have read about was that our youth leagues havent gained enough steam.  However, I would argue that youth league soccer is the second most popular to baseball in some or most parts of this country.  However, when you see kids playing in the playground, they arent playing soccer, they play touch football or something else.  But with the youth participation on the rise, I think this country will start to pour out some better and better players in the next decade.  All we need is to import a good coach for our national team (maybe we should steal a brazilian, like the portuguese did for this world cup).
1036987
soccer/football....over 2 billion people can't be wrong
1068886
I totally agree. People that hate soccer hate it cause there's not enough scoring and getting rid of offsides would allow more goals and therefore more people could enjoy futbol.
930535
People don't think that football is a popular sport.  IT IS THE MOST POPULAR SPORT IN THE WORLD.  That's a fact.  You must be an American to ask a question like this.
444103
what i think is, soccer or so called football mostly is quite easy to understand, play and it is really exciting too. no matter, if you don't have a ball to play, i have seen kids esp. kicking this clothes wrapped up round in a sock and playing it.. so its amazing !!\n and its not always necessary that you have to have 11 players a team..except for the tournament.
1091724
I think it's stupid to make your argument "soccer is not popular in the US because of shootouts."  If that was a reason for soccer to not be popular, then it wouldn't be popular not ONLY in the US but in other parts of the world as well.  Why is it that US fans exclusively can't like soccer because of that?  I'm not saying that shootouts are good or that Americans should like football, but it's absolutely ridiculous to limit this reason to why Americans don't like it.  There are many other plausible reasons for why the US is not a soccer-dominated country.  We have other "American" sports (football, baseball, etc.).  It's like why Canada's hockey is so popular while hockey's not so hot in say, France.  Also, you can't compare two sports; as the cliche goes, it's like comparing apples and oranges.  Baseball and soccer both have their good/bad points, but they are completely different sports played different ways.  Baseball is definitely less physical, because you don't see the players running around every single minute of the game; most of the time they stand there and then when making plays, they run around and throw the ball.  I don't claim to be a great expert on either sport, but once again, not liking shootouts and thus not liking soccer is not a reason exclusive to American fans for not liking soccer.\n\nOkay, now to answer the other part of your lengthy question lol.  I think shoot-outs are a clean-cut way of determining the winner in a match.  You shoot goals; make them, you win.  Miss some, you lose, go home.  They test the individual skills of the players and while I do regret that they don't test the strength of a team as a whole, they do eliminate one major problem that people have with soccer matches: biased refs.  Here, the ref can't call fouls where there are none and if a goal goes in, fans can't complain that somehow the ref was paid off to look the other way.  In a sudden death match, the winners' fans would celebrate and the lowers would always see something wrong or corrupted about how they just weren't lucky.  While the argument could be made that in a normal round, this happens all the time, so why not just have that determine the end, you have to realize how difficult it is to play such a physically challenging sport as soccer for such long periods of time lol.  What if the game went on for a whole day without an end, like in Harry Potter's Quidditch?  That may not seem plausible, but it certainly would be possible.  Lastly, I think it's only fair that each team knows how much time they have to score a goal rather than just seeing who scores first.  In such a case, I can definitely see the match getting increasingly dirtier as each team must not only score/defend, they know that under no condition can they allow the other team to make a goal.\n\nxexect - About your message, sorry if I seemed harsh :/.  I'm not trying to insult you yourself, but rather, I felt that your argument was flawed.  However, judging by what you have written and your analysis on the other part of the question, I would definitely say that you're not stupid!
69408
I thonk the maine problem of soccer in USA that's the big company didn's support this games when we get all the magazin radio and TV talking about football, and we found big poster on the road, then the game will start be famos and known by peoples, but if we still waiting that peoples love by magic this games we will never arrive to be popular games.during 1994 world cup we get a chance make it popular but because the steps didn't continue by a big supprot later , the result is that most of peoples don't know about it
1017742
I've yet to understand the popularity of baseball myself but hey to each there own.  When I ask my family about world cup and I have to tell them it's soccer. They roll their eyes and yawn.  To those that never played the game it is rather boring and you can catch all the action on the highlight reel of the late night news.  When you get down to it, when one doesn't know someone that's actually playing it's hard to spark interest.  Baseball players, basketball etc...have become household names and hence an increase of popularity.
355933
pitiful. in Europe, their futbol is as popular as our football, baseball, basketball and hockey combined. Fans have both killed, and been killed over the game. the entire professional entertainment world revolves around the Premier League scheduling. In the US? name 5 of the professional soccer teams in the US.....
1021912
In the USA, football (soccer) isn't one of their major sports - it's a shame cos if it was they would be brilliant at it as they are a huge nation.  It is getting more popular though, so in time who knows.
1083128
i agree with so many other major sports to watch.. no one going to care who running up and down a greenfield.. theres no action in soccer.. it makes me wonder why it affects a country's situation so much
538832
It´s the best sport because you don´t need sophisticated stuff to practice it, just a ground, a ball and improvised goals. More than a half of the world loves it. I respect all the sports but you can read here to intolerant people offending just because they ignore the skills, intelligence, resistance and speed that soccer has.