Why I quit hating soccer.....besides the soccer moms!

[PuffyC]

Youth volley ball isn't too bad. Pretty exciting, actually. There's always 1 giant kid that can jump serve and spike. Terrifies the other team.

Worst of all - multi-school youth track meets. There's 64 kids on the team. Your kid runs one event in 4 hours - the 1600, which is usually the last event, and it's your turn to bring enough bananas and water bottles for the entire team this week, too.

Sounds like a swim meet. Sit outside in 100+ degree weather for 8 hours waiting for your kid to swim 3 events that might last 40 seconds each with the obligatory relay at the end they have to stay for. And some of these go on for 2-3 days. Utterly brutal.

Volleyball is pretty good too once they get to 8th grade or so and can actually do it.

Soccer isn't bad because they're always moving and it's short. Makes me think how every World Cup the 3rd worlders trot out the "soccer is the most popular sport" and "people from the US just don't understand the game" mantra and soccer becomes relevant for a couple weeks. When you're in a country with no NFL, NBA or MLB I can see how soccer might be popular because that's all you have, but I grew up in the US playing soccer as did all my friends and the problem isn't that people in the US don't understand the game. It's fun to play but I always thought that if you really wanted to make soccer interesting for spectators you just need to get rid of goalies and introduce lane violations similar to basketball so somebody could maybe score once in a while. Otherwise it's just an hour or two of playing keepaway.

 

[Streetcar]

Soccer, sport you are rewarded for playing bad defense. My daughter played through high school

 

[rgr33]

I can’t get into any sport that doesn’t let players use their hands.

 

[MossRoad]

I can’t get into any sport that doesn’t let players use their hands.

Why do they call football in the U.S. football? They mostly use their hands.

 

[airbiscuit]

Why do they call football in the U.S. football? They mostly use their hands.

Because Handball was already taken. That doesn't explain Squash though.

 

[CalG]

You know referees were introduced into the game long after the rules were laid down. There should be a place for integrity, and not a test to "see what you can get by with.

All three of my kids played ..I coached up to high school level.
The youngest went all the way through ODP and played in college.


The game is about skill. If you don't have it, force is second choice.

Work on the sklills, keep those elbows DOWN!

You might know that very few young people want to play the game after they turn about 13 years of age. Many high schools can't find numbers to field a team. The adults got involved and took the fun out of the game.

 

[bigtiller]

Soccer didn't come to my town until about 1978 when my kid was in first grade. Only a handful of parents would show up for the game. We sat on blankets on the sideline to watch.

What I remember the most is the extraordinary amount of effort the kids put forth to get to the ball, swarm of kids around the ball, and mostly, 8 pair of little feet in a 6' circle pounding the ground when quickly coming to a dead stop to kick the ball.

The next year it got ruff. I needed to buy shin pads because some kids would kick at anything that moved.

 

[dmccarty]

I played both football and soccer. Soccer was brutal, football not so much. I had soccer injuries that took months to heal. Football was a bruise and an owie here and there. Soccer was painful. While we hit each other hard, it is nothing like the college and NFL.

I don't watch sports, it is boring if one is not playing as far as I am concerned. Why do I care if some team wins? And their win or loss, does not make the world a better or worse place. Watching men's soccer is usually pretty boring. Just watching them kick the ball from one end to the other is right up there with watching baseball or golf. However, woman soccer is more interesting since they do not have the strength to just boot the ball from one end of the field to the other.

Once upon a time I took game photos for an all woman football team. Those teams where the most foul mouthed, dirty and cheating players I have ever seen. On team had a ringer, he was a man and never took his helmet off, but you could still see his adam's apple and he had some biceps. What those woman would say to each other would make a sailor blush.

They scared me.

Later,
Dan

 

[Steppenwolfe]

Soccer... Football to the rest of the world, is perhaps the most beautiful sport of all time; the flow, ball control, and athletic ability in it's purest form is what makes it the worlds best and most popular sport. I would give Rugby a close second.

 

[CalG]

The game is called "top bar". try it sometime?