Soccer is a Wildly Underrated Sport

     I have been thinking about this for quite a few weeks and I've come to a conclusion that soccer is not appreciated enough in America. We are dominated by football, basketball, baseball, and hockey. Those are the 4 big sports here that nearly everyone tunes in for, even the casual fans. In most other parts of the world, soccer is all they have. They have games like rugby, which is incredibly confusing but also an underrated sport, that take a secondary seat in a lot of places in the world but soccer is easily the most dominant. I got into soccer during the 2010 World Cup held in South Africa. Many of my friends played on club teams but I didn't really have a vested interest in the sport until my family started playing the, now defunct, FIFA video game. We would play for hours with my uncles and cousins and I became obsessed, mostly because I wasn't good and I lost all the time. I got so tired of the trash talk that I was receiving so when my dad bought the game for me and my brothers, it quickly became the only game that I played. The World Cup that was played that year was legendary. The South African hosts were incredible. The vuvuzelas, which are these loud plastic horns, caught fire around the world. This is where my obsession for soccer really blossomed. The World Cup really isn't a unique event. It happens every 4 years and here in America most people watch but don't really get into it after its over. They watch to pass the time in the Summer but once it's over, it's over for many casual viewers. I was not found in this category. I fell in love with soccer and started following club teams more frequently and watching games. Now I find myself fully engrossed in at least the Premier League, played in England and Wales, and watching plenty of European tournament matches as well. 

    This all leads me to the main crux of my argument--more Americans should be watching soccer. The main criticism of it stems from the fact that its boring and low scoring. I think that's a real criticism. There's plenty of games that end in a 0-0 draw and people walk away wondering what they just did with 90 minutes of their lives. But I would point to the Penn State & Illinois football game that was played last week, that just over 3 million people watched. The final score was 21-7 with Penn State winning. Sounds like an incredible game, right? Millions of people watching and a high scoring game? Wrong. Americans trick themselves into thinking that football is a high scoring game because they decided to arbitrarily attribute 6 points to a touchdown. When you only count touchdowns as 1 point, that football game ended 3-1. That's a pretty realistic scoreline for a typical soccer game. Soccer is played in two 45 minute halves and the clock never stops. Time is added on at the end of the half and end of the game to account for any time that would have stopped the clock. That typically is anywhere from 2-5 minutes. You can go watch a soccer game for maybe 2 hours of your day and then your off to talk about it with your friends or go on with your life. The average football game last for 3 hours with all the clock stoppages, coaching timeouts, and the millions of tv timeouts. I'd argue that football is far more boring than soccer is. Soccer there is a lot more strategic working of possession to put the ball into dangerous areas to score goals and that can feel extremely boring for sure, but the game never really stops. The ball is constantly moving for the full 90 minutes. It's probably more similar to basketball in that there is constant movement. 

    Taking in the major criticism of soccer, I don't really think there's much left. The fans are crazy and celebrate every goal like its the best day of their lives or if they concede a goal, the worst day of their lives. Who doesn't love that kind of passion? They may not paint their faces and dye their hair the way American fans do but that doesn't mean they're any less passionate. Soccer should absolutely be near the top of every American's favorite sports. It's not, and probably never will be, but a boy can dream.