Soccer is certainly growing in this country. More people are starting to care about it. More people are starting to watch it. More people are becoming American Outlaws. If you don’t know what an American Outlaw is, the bug hasn’t bit you yet. But it will. Soccer’s popularity is growing at an extremely quick rate, but it will never fit in with the major sports of America. And that may not be such a bad thing.
By 2019, Forbes is projecting that the sports market in America will reach a value of $73.5 billion dollars. Think about that for a moment. $73.5 billion dollars. That’s roughly 1/10th of South Africa’s entire GDP just in the value of our sports industry. That’s absolutely crazy. But, think about it. Right now as I’m writing this, multiple outlets are reporting that courtside seats for tonight’s NBA Finals Game 7 sold for somewhere in the neighborhood of $50k a piece. For one basketball game. So maybe it shouldn't be difficult to believe the sports industry is worth so much.
Football, basketball, baseball, and even hockey are ingrained in American culture. Every Sunday from September to February, the NFL rules our nation’s collective television. NBA regular seasons last 82 games and start in October, with the playoffs wrapping up in mid-to-late June. Major League Baseball starts in April and the playoffs run through October, with 162 games being played in the regular season. The NHL, much like the NBA, runs from October to June, with an 82 game regular season. All this put together covers the entire calendar. There is never a gap in the year where a sport isn’t being played professionally somewhere in the country.
Sports are in our blood, but soccer has taken some getting used to. I imagine the rest of the world looking at America much like Bane looked at Batman in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises. Speaking about darkness, Bane mocks Batman saying “Ah you think darkness is your ally? You merely adopted the dark. I was born in it, molded by it.” They look at us and laugh at our trivial efforts to gain global glory on their fútbol pitch.
I’m speaking about men’s soccer, of course. No one outside the developed Western world gives a crap about women’s soccer. Mostly because they don’t give a crap about women. But that’s a different story for a different day.
In many countries, soccer is their only major sport. And it makes sense. The only item required to play soccer is a ball. You don’t need goals. You don’t need a field. Just a ball and some people. Any person in any country is capable of rounding up a few friends and playing soccer. That’s the global appeal. Dirt poor African countries can play just as easily and just as well (better, in some cases) as the richest European nations. That’s the appeal of soccer. It just never caught on here.
And since it never caught on, soccer became ingrained into the culture of other nations, similarly to how the big 4 of basketball, football, baseball, and hockey became ingrained in ours. And maybe it isn’t such a bad thing.
Which brings us to the real purpose of this article, if you’re still reading. Soccer fans are nuts. N-U-T-S. Nuts. We’re in the middle of Euro Cup 2016 and the group stage has already put the craziness on stage. I was watching the Croatia game late last week when their supporters threw live flares onto the field in the middle of the game. Earlier last week, the Russian fans got into a brawl with the English fans. This anger continued throughout the week as the fans have clashed more times since.
Soccer is the only national sport these fans have ever known. And for many of them, taking pride in their national team is the only way for them to get noticed on a global scale. Would anyone pay attention to Croatia? Probably not. Among extreme political turmoil in South America, many incidents have occurred between fans and game officials. Venezuela has had a fairly tumultuous political history. Yet, during the Copa America or World Cup, they are just as respected as any other opponent. National soccer teams present an opportunity for countries and their fans to have their fifteen minutes in the spotlight.
In America, we don’t need those minutes.
Soccer is corrupt. Soccer is often surrounded by violence. Soccer is fun. Soccer is entertaining. And I love it. But, maybe it isn’t such a terrible thing that we don’t love it as much as everyone else.
