h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The British are good at sports, just the wrong ones. Ie the not famous ones, we seem to be world champions at things like tiddliwinks, shooting, rowing and the like. Unfortunately the average person isn't very impressed with that, they just like the football and cricket.

SallyM

Here in the US, we've discovered the formula for international sporting success:

1) Make up your own game
2) Get really good at it
3) Let the rest of the world fall in love with it
4) Beat the crap out of them

Now you know why we've started the NFL Europe league of American Football.

Of course, the Idiots That Be sent the Chicago Cubs (baseball) out to Japan to play their all-stars, and now we have the first American pro team to ever get beaten by another country. Way to go guys, let's send the club that hasn't won a title since 1906, that'll show them...

We did that but they got better than us
see cricket, football, rugby, boxing!

It always eventually happens that way.

Besides, the American football team (soccer) was on TV the other day, and having been to a game in England, watch Match of the Day a billion times and more football than I ever thought possible on the TV in England, I can say this with the utmost authority:

The US male soccer teams suck big time. I mean, they are really really pathetic. The game I saw last Saturday was painful to watch.

Now our female team kicks that same ass that the male team sucks. The female team is definatly worth watching.

The chicks are definitely worth watching... especially when they strip off their tops in triumph...

In the US, there's an extreme lack of interest in soccer. It's a very physical game, but it has a 'Nancy-boy' assosciation here, because the boys who play it in school are the ones too small to make the football team. I recently thumbed through my old high school yearbook, and had a laugh at the puny pipsqueaks in the soccer team picture. I think the average height was 5' 4". It makes poor viewing on TV, too, because it goes on so long between anything remotely interesting happens. Hockey hasn't caught on very much yet, and they have the problem with low scores and ties, but at least they beat each other up between power plays. And soccer is the only sport where the attacker is required to slow down and wait for the defense to catch up. That's just silly. I used to enjoy playing pick-up games of soccer in my youth, but we never enforced the offsides rule. In fact, to a man, we were completely ignorant of it.

If soccer ever was going to catch on, it was going to have to have a shining moment at home in international competition. So the US hosted the Men's World Cup a few years ago, but the team was, predictably enough, an early ejection. So we hosted the women's competition just last year. Among chicks, soccer is the toughest sport they can play (unless they live in the north, in which case they can play hockey instead... yet another sport our girls kick ass at, they won the gold medal at Nagano), so the biggest and grittiest girls play it. So our girls made the final, and they met steroid-enhanced China in the Rose Bowl. Media went nuts. Everyone in the country watched the game. Soccer would never have another moment like this. People who never had any interest in the sport were going to be watching intently, and if they could see a good game, and if the local girls could win in dramatic style, then soccer would become the obsession here that it is in the rest of the world.

The result: 120 minutes of scoreless doldrum. If you ask anyone who saw it if they remember anything, they can only say that the girl who scored the winning penalty kick took off her top. I can actually remember three things. One is that China nearly scored a goal during regulation, but an American other than the goalie headed it out. All the analysts carped on about what a brilliant defensive play it was, and how it saved the game. All I saw was some poor girl who just happened to be standing in the wrong place, looking the other way, who got a ball in the face for her carelessness. The other thing I remember is that the REAL hero was the American goaltender, who got very agressive and finally managed to stop ONLY ONE penalty kick, thus setting the stage for the winner, and the fashion show that followed.

I went to a different sort of high school. Our football team was pathetic but our soccer team never lost. And they were the yummiest and the fittest ones.

My little sisters have played soccer all their lives. They are very agressive AND impressive on the field and I love to watch. The youngest is a goalee for indoor and outdoor and the older one is on the state team as a striker.

I don't know about it being the toughest sport girls can play though. We DO have rugby in this country. A girlfriend of mine still has nail scars behind her ears and cleat scars on her shins from vicious scrums. She was also knocked out cold several times...

I'd never heard of rugby teams in schools, men's or women's. I'd always figured that the only schools who had such teams were of the Finishing School For Children Whose Parents Are Too Filthy Rich to be Bothered to Raise Them Themselves type, like the one in the movie 'Dead Poets Society.'

To say that there are periods in a soccer game (a good soccer game) when nothing is happening is to be unaware of strategy. I'm talking about good teams, mind you, in a well-matched game. Watching a team build up toward a goal attempt, testing their opponents, working into position is just terrific.

The problem for Americans (disclosure: I'm one) with soccer football is that it doesn't fit our commercial-break-oriented attention spans. American football, on the other hand, could have been designed with TV in mind. And American football doesn't require you to concentrate on what's happening on the field for more than a few moments at a time, and there are fleets of officials with strange devices to keep the attention-challenged spectator updated.

It's possible to have an emotionally satisfying experience watching a soccer football game whose final score was nil-nil. The joy and the skill were in the playing. Maybe this attitude contributes to the malaise which is the subject of this article.
Lil

Most schools here (Wales, UK) have at least one rugby team. Although you probably wouldn't believe it when you see the national side play!

Americans CAN appreciate strategy, and we're not all victims of Attention Deficit Disorder, as everyone else in the world likes to believe. Otherwise, we would have no appreciation of hockey, either. It hasn't generated as much success as baseball and football, but it does manage to draw sellout crowds, and it generates a good bit of television revenue as well. Hockey has low scores, and 0-0 ties on occasion, but they are much less frequent. 2-2 ties would be more commonplace. Hockey is also poorly designed for television, since there is no telling when the whistle will blow. Often times, the play can go on for half a period before a stoppage becomes necessary, and most of those stoppages are too brief to allow much in the way of commercials. But during those ten minutes, they'll generate much more excitement than I've ever seen in an entire soccer game. Basketball is also poorly designed for TV, because it is non-stop action. The whistle only blows for a foul, and then, the players just step right up to the line, toss the freethrows, and then get on with the game. It requires constant attention. The only difference is, it constantly rewards that attention, which is why it's the #2 sport in the country.

I've already railed on about the offsides rule, so there's no point in developing that further. Another problem with soccer is that the ball carrier is MUCH slower than the people out to stop him. So you almost never see a breakaway (the most thrilling moment in hockey). Mostly its all just a bunch of people turning over the ball anytime it gets near them, and not much in the way of passing, either. They just take it away, kick it as hard as they can back toward their own goal, and watch as their two forwards get swarmed by the three defensemen, lose the ball, and kick it toward the other end again. The only scoring I've managed to see is on corner kicks, and those are about as unplannable as a heart attack. Drop the ball in the middle of the crowd, and hope your guy can make good contact with it. It's a manifestation of the Hail Mary pass in football (so dubbed because, if you have to resort to it, all you can do is heave the ball downfield and pray). I watched a few games during the World Cup, both '98 and the previous one in the US (was that '94?), so, even though I know I'm slightly mis-representing the game, this is still what I saw of it, and my impressions of it. They don't necessarily represent the impressions of everyone, but they definitely represent the typical American reaction. If we'd have thought soccer was so great from the start, we wouldn't have decided to flatten the ball, pick it up in our hands, and start running headlong into each other.

Soccer hasn't caught on in America for very good reasons. We're not ignorant of it. We're not incapable of appreciating strategy (football is ALL ABOUT strategy). We don't have soft brains and limited attention spans. And I resent those implications, especially from an American, who should know better than to spread false stereotypes. Sorry if I seem to be coming on a little strong there, but I have a thing about stereotyping.

My comments were somewhat in the spirit of the article to which I was responding, which is to say, quite generalised and somewhat jovial. Of course not all American are victims of Attention Deficit Order. What do you take me for? What was the question again? (joke)

But the two counter-examples you cite are ice hockey and basketball. In my opinion, what these games have going for them to capture the American attention is speed. You don't have to wait long for something to happen. And of course in ice hockey there is the added frisson of incipient violence.

From what you say, you've had a poor experience of soccer, and have been unfortunate enough to see mediocre playing. But let me ask this: when you were watching these international games, was the course of play interspersed with commercials?

I too watched some World Cup football (soccer) games when I first moved back to the US from England. The game started, and I was just getting into the game when there was a commercial!! I was speechless with outrage! I felt as if I had lost my connection with the whole rest of the game. How could I appreciate HOW a goal was achieved if I hadn't seen all the buildup?

I wound up switching over to the Spanish channel (one advantage of living in Florida) and watching the game with absolutely no interruptions, save small streamer ads across the bottom of the screen from time to time. I couldn't understand the commentator, but I sure understood the intonation contours of his rising excitement or disappointment as play progressed.

When the next World Cup comes about, I pray it will be on pay-per-view, unadulterated with ads.

Now, MY idea of a game where nothing happens for long periods, for no apparent reason, is basebell.
Lil

btw, although I am enjoying the discussion, the Great Wall of Jello is upon me, and I probably won't be able to get through to h2g2 easily, except by luck, till tonight my time, which is another 7 hrs away. This is how the gods force me to leave my computer and have a life, I guess.

So please be patient if I don't respond immediately to further comments.

See y'all later.
Lil

I don't care for baseball, either, but I still monitor the success of my local team (or complete lack thereof... they're the Angels ). I was quite a fan in my youth, but I think that had more to do with the fact that we used to watch the games together as a family (we didn't do much as a family in those days) and yell and scream and jeer at the television at the top of our lungs. They're another game that takes strategy way too seriously... you have to be able to hit the ball first, before any of those strategic elements can be brought into play.

Anyway, I think the root of the problem is that soccer was the first major team sport to be played in most of the rest of the world. In the States, we made up our own games, so our fondness for football, basketball, and baseball are grounded in who we are as a people. Hockey has had slow going in the US, since it is Canadian, but it's successful now, and I am a huge fan (been to see the Kings twice already this season, and hoping I'll get a chance to make a playoff game). Then soccer came in, and we looked around, and decided we liked our other sports better. In Mexico, however, the closest competition is bullfighting. Any poor street-kid can play soccer, but playing at bullfighting isn't for kids, so soccer has a manic following there. Most of the small kids that I was laughing at in my yearbook were Hispanics. Any American street kid can pick up a stick and a tennis ball and play baseball, or they know a kid who has a football or a basketball, so this is the stuff they play. Anyway, my point is that foreign sports take a while to take hold, except maybe in Japan (sumo being pretty easy to compete with). Baseball is international now, with the East Asians and the Caribbean nations getting pretty good at it (the Dominicans are going to kick our ass at it soon). Basketball is also international, being very popular in Eastern Europe and Italy. And of course, hockey is huge internationally, in the US, Canada, Scandinavia, and Central and Eastern Europe. The East Asians are getting involved as well, and they must be getting pretty good, because, if memory serves, it was China that our girls defeated for the gold in Nagano. I was actually suprised to discover that there are a pair of Englishmen that are in the NHL as well. Goaltender Byron Dafoe of the Boston Bruins is a rising star, and wingman Steve Thomas of Toronto is no slouch, either. He's got a couple of 40 goal seasons in his career.

As for commercials, since I was born and raised here, I'm used to them, so they wouldn't have struck me as odd, except that they ran them over some of the action. But if memory serves, they did do that commercial-free thingy during World Cup coverage, but they ran their ads center screen, superimposed over the action, which I found annoying.

I'm an Amercian and I LOVE soccer. I find English and other foriegn soccer games to be fantastically engaging and I found American games (I'm speaking of only the men's games) inept.

I also love baseball. (I live a block from wrigley field). My sweetie loves LOVES Association Football (soccer) and also cricket... for different reasons, just like I like soccer and baseball for different reasons.

Heck, I just like sport(s).

I would argue that our American football has a lot more in common with rugby than it does with soccer.

You're right - American football has a lot in common with Rugby League, which is one of the two codes of rugby football in the UK.

The other code, Rugby Union, has slightly different rules, but as time goes by the two codes are getting mor and more similar.

You know...........us Aussies are bloody good at cricket

Hmmph. The England Soccer team aren't that bad at the moment, but we needed a Swedish coach to become decent. Let's put it this way,when we're good, we're really good, (5-1 against Germany) when we're bad, we're really bad. (I think 1-1 draw with Macedonia. (no offence to Macedonians BTW.)
Now club football, that's totally different, our league is, in my humble opinion, the most interesting league in the world, mind you, the Italian league is good, anyway I digress... Try saying Manchester United vs Arsenal earlier this season was boring.

Rugby (Union). Its the only team sport us Brits are any good at. But we are consistently among the top four countries in the world, and with home matches at Twickenham its been about 20 games since we lost. With the Rugby World Cup coming up, we really might stand a chance. Apaqrt from the fact its in Australia...

It's always interesting when a long-dead forum is suddenly re-awakened.

Update: The US men's soccer team is playing rather well. And a couple of Americans are starting to trickle into the English Premier League.

Bob: How many countries compete in the Rugby World Cup?

20 countries, four pools of five...
The USA is in pool B with France, Scotland, Fiji and Japan
Canada is in pool D with New Zealand, Wales, Italy and Tonga,
And us English are in pool C with South Africa, Samoa, Georgia and Uruguay.

The teams entered for qualifying are:
Ivory Coast
Madagascar
Morocco
Namibia
Tunisia
Zimbabwe
Argentina
Canada
Chile
Uruguay
USA
England
France
Scotland
Wales
Czech Republic
Georgia
Poland
Ireland
Italy
Netherlands
Portugal
Romania
Russia
Spain
China
Hong Kong
Japan
Korea
Chinese Taipei
Australia
New Zealand
Cook Islands
Fiji
Papua New Guinea
Tonga
Samoa

But the core teams get automatic qualification...