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I think that's pretty obvious. Soccer just broke into the top 5 of youth sports. Hard to develop players if they are playing other sports.
There needs to be either the ball or 2 defenders between the attacking player and the goal line at the time the ball is struck. Offsides is called when the offending player touches the ball or influences the play.
That is not the fundamental reason.
We have 300MM people. Belgium has 11MM people. We can afford not to have our best athletes playing to be competitive.
Not to nitpick, but it's not like Iceland are historically more successful than the US. Every country goes through up/down cycles. I would agree that they are as good as, if not better than, the US is currently, but just a few years ago they were consistently ranked over 100 in the FIFA rankings. Your point is valid in that the US has a much larger youth player base than many of these countries.
So what is the reason? I’m sure this is well-worn territory, but I am thinking about it now.
On the one hand, I enjoy that the referee allows an attack to progress if it's nearing the end. But if I was a defender the arbitrariness of it would drive me nuts.
sure, I used Iceland as an example because of its exaggerated player pool difference.
Is it ok to not give a rip about it and yet let you have your fun? Is that possible in 2018?
Start with love of the game. You work harder at and have a greater interest in something you love. Love is learned. I have a good friend who doesn't care about soccer. But both of his sons played soccer through HS. It was the only sport they played in HS. Now that their playing days are over they are more interested in watching football, basketball, and baseball because those are the sports they grew up with on the TV at home and going to the games with their old man. It will take some time before the Chicago Fire supplants the Bears, Bulls, Cubs, Sox, and Hawks in Chicago sports' lore no matter how many kids are kicking soccer balls around the parks here.
Link? I belive more youths play soccer than any other sport besides basketball and have for a while.
Sure, but soccer fans don't go into the shark pool and talk about how sucky the NFL is.
Congrats? Did you want me to scour the entire internet for every single article? You asked for a link i gave you the first one that came up. I'm not trying to win some dumb internet argument. I couldn't care less what the most popular youth sport is.
I disagree - the drama involved with a team trying to equalize when no one knows quite when the game will end is fantastic
The World Cup, like the Olympics, is pervasive. You can go into a day with the intent to avoid it and still be confronted with it. Pretty much any city across the globe. You don't get that with a baseball game. So if people want to get a rant in and complain about it, it's fair game IMO.
I'm a fan of soccer - not nearly as much as a lot of you guys in here, but I enjoy watching and am loving this World Cup so far. But I think you guys defending it are better off just acknowledging that flopping and feigning injurt is just a part of the game that you get used to rather than the "it happens in football and basketball, too" argument. I mean, the sheer volume is worlds apart. The NFL and NBA videos linked earlier were highlights from a season or even across seasons, and a similar video could be made from a single soccer match (or even a half).
Does it annoy you enough to give up those 30 seconds of wonder/anticipation for constant stoppage of an arbitrary clock and a bunch of down time and comercials?
It’s obvious the clock keeps running based on who’s paying off the refs.
I love the NBA, where they play with a loose clock for 3.9 quarters of the game, then pretend they can clock the ending to a tenth of a second.
The NFL is in a down cycle, but imagine how awesome a game it would be if all our best basketball players, baseball players and golfers played football instead.
