By William Corden
Let’s face the facts, Soccer in North America will never, ever have the allure of the mainstream sports of Basketball, Baseball and Football.
Despite all of the media hype for both Canada and the US teams, the great unwashed have only marginal interest in the world’s most popular game. Hardly anyone I know could name the line ups of either squad.
You could walk both teams down the main street of any major city, in both countries, and hardly a head would turn, whereas in the rest of the world there would be hundreds of thousands craning their necks just to get a glimpse of their heroes.
I have a nephew who grew up in New York City and I asked him what he thought of the US Men’s team ? “Who’s that ?” he replied.
Get that same kid on the New York Knicks and he knows what every player has for breakfast.
Our “past their best by date” European cast offs never last too long in MLS, not because they’re not good enough but because they don’t like the setup in the States. They don’t get worshipped in the press, they don’t get recognized in the streets and, worst of all, hardly anybody has heard of the team they play for. So after a season or two, they want to go home.
As far as the standard of play is concerned I must say that the skill levels of both the Canadian team and the Americans is right up there with just about every other world class teams, but what is missing (to my mind at least) is that razor sharp killer instinct that only comes from playing in systems where your teams gets relegated if it doesn’t perform.
Have a lousy season and you get demoted to a lesser league, in North America you just re-rack the table at each new season.
If I could put the difference in a nutshell it would be that Football, to give it its proper name, is all about passion in Footballing nations, it’s in their blood. In North America it’s driven more by commercial/media interests, teams can be moved from city to city or even renamed under sponsor pressure.
I know this point of view will infuriate die-hard North American fans but I calls ’em as I sees ’em.
One Response
I don’t care about the World Cup. I don’t care about soccer in the United States or anywhere else.
I don’t care about red cards and I don’t care that Trump made the FIFA people break their own rules. (Ok, I do care a little about that – and laughed about it.)
I do care that European visitors were shocked to discover that Americans are generally friendly and welcoming and that America is a great country which is all quite the opposite to what they’ve been told by their lying commie governments and fake commie media.
Hosting the World Cup was a brilliant public relations move by the president.
Just to reiterate this important point and I am confident that most Americans concur as pointed out by the insightful author – I do not care at all about soccer or the world cup no matter how much over saturation in the fake press this boring sport gets.