Why is soccer so popular?

[The Masked Poster]

I have just seen some of the Korea-Ghana game. Ghana were winning 2-0 then Korea scored two goals (beauties too) to make it 2-2 in the space of 3 minutes. Apparently the same thing happened in the Cameroon -Serbia game too. 

And now Ghana are ahead 3-2!

I'm not a supporter of either team but it's probably drama like this that helps it cement it's position. 

[The Hallucinating Goose]

45 minutes ago, The Masked Poster said:

I have just seen some of the Korea-Ghana game. Ghana were winning 2-0 then Korea scored two goals (beauties too) to make it 2-2 in the space of 3 minutes. Apparently the same thing happened in the Cameroon -Serbia game too. 

And now Ghana are ahead 3-2!

I'm not a supporter of either team but it's probably drama like this that helps it cement it's position. 

Both games today have been good ones and I imagine we've got another couple of decent ones to come as well given who's playing. 

[graveyard johnny]

same reasons polo leagues have never taken off in schools around the north - there's simply no where for the kids to park their polo horses during lesson time in between PE sessions - but they can fit a football under the desk 

Edited November 28, 2022 by graveyard johnny

[meast]

7 hours ago, JohnM said:

That, though, is the inverted snobbery that has made English rugby league what it is today, in my view.

 

Why is it inverted snobbery?

It's my opinion that's all.

I don't find top level football enjoyable at all.

What's that got to to with English rugby league?

[JohnM]

Of course it's your opinion, just as mine is mine.

Rugby league is full of prejudicial terms like " money men". Some people on here vigorously defend "traditional" stadiums. 

Some oppose any rule changes.

Some want to "bring back the biff".

And so it goes: "the past is a foreign country and it's better than the present."

[The Mighty Trin]

13 hours ago, Hopping Mad said:

I'd agree lower or non-league football is generally a better watch. Although, the 'tippy-tippy, apparently going nowhere, non-contact' style of top-level football, not to mention 'simulation', is creeping in lower down the pyramid. Problem is, all managers and coaches now go on the same FA courses, which preach the virtues of deadly dull 'take no risks, possession is everything, we'll take a 1-0 win' football.

Starting a new job a week today, thought I would take a couple of days North to Inverness. Cought the Brora v Clachnacuddin game and witnessed a belting 4-2 HL game. Having watched England/USA and Belgium/Morocco I'd take lower league football anyday, it was really to tick off the ground but W/C has been dreadful. I just don't know what fans see really. Enjoyed meeting new people and visit a new ground but the football standard today is terrible. Give me Rugby League anyway - roll on 2023.

[Young Blood]

To be fair all you need is a ball to play Rugby League I used to play with s tennis ball at school on cement lol. 

 

[hw88]

10 hours ago, Young Blood said:

To be fair all you need is a ball to play Rugby League I used to play with s tennis ball at school on cement lol. 

 

True. The problem is that if you get 16 random people and split them up equally you can have a pretty fair football game but a rugby game would be totally dominated by a couple of people - usually the biggest and/or strongest.

[JohnM]

16 hours ago, graveyard johnny said:

same reasons polo leagues have never taken off in schools around the north - there's simply no where for the kids to park their polo horses during lesson time in between PE sessions - but they can fit a football under the desk 

Even worse for water polo!‍

[pahars]

A lot of it has to do with actually trying to be a global sport. 
 

Cricket was represented by the Imperial Cricket Council and was more about Empire politics then a genuine governing body-which resulted in areas in Europe where cricket was once very popular like the Netherlands regressing through neglect. 
 

In Rugby Union the IRB was very similar to the ICC and only interested in the Empire. It was the French who developed Argentina, Romania and Georgia. 

Basketball was only really interested in developing the game in the US. The reason for its mass popularity in parts of Europe is mainly down to Harlem Globetrotters tours. 

Its noticeable that most of the countries where football isn’t number one are part of the anglophone world. 

Football quickly took a lot of power away from the British in Europe which aided development in the continent while ironically spreading rapidly through South America due to the British building the railways. 
 

By the time the other sports got their acts together football was already the biggest sport in the world and developing at a far greater pace.
 

 

[Young Blood]

50 minutes ago, hw88 said:

True. The problem is that if you get 16 random people and split them up equally you can have a pretty fair football game but a rugby game would be totally dominated by a couple of people - usually the biggest and/or strongest.

We were playing touch not tackle it was concrete 

 

[daz39]

Modern top level football is about not losing games and getting high stats rather than trying to win them, it's slow, boring and has very little exciting action these days, it's like Chess on grass!

Give me proper non league football anyday.

[The Hallucinating Goose]

47 minutes ago, daz39 said:

Modern top level football is about not losing games and getting high stats rather than trying to win them, it's slow, boring and has very little exciting action these days, it's like Chess on grass!

Give me proper non league football anyday.

Chess is riveting. 

[JohnM]

2 hours ago, daz39 said:

Modern top level football is about not losing games and getting high stats rather than trying to win them, it's slow, boring and has very little exciting action these days, it's like Chess on grass!

Give me proper non league football anyday.

That's as far from the actuality as is possible to be.

However, I can also understand why you might prefer non-league football.

[MattSantos]

It's not been mentioned so far and it's not the root cause behind football's popularity, but it's the reason why it's still growing. It's a soap opera.

It's everywhere. Podcasts, TV channels, Old Media, New Media. Everywhere.

Over a decade or so, the 'better' journalists through firstly niche podcasts and now mainstream media have even managed to evolve the language we use to talk about the action on the pitch, which for people like me has been brilliant, but the soap opera still exists and exists in all languages in all countries. It's almost comforting that it's there...

The NFL knows this and this is why it dominates the US market ahead of baseball etc; it pro-actively dominates the media cycle even in the off season with the purposeful scheduling of the draft and free agency etc. 

So many lessons for Rugby League.

 

[Futtocks]

Football certainly had a more bizarre first World Cup than Rugby League!

[redjonn]

On 28/11/2022 at 11:43, Bostik Bailey said:

Marvelous isn't it, small boys on the park jumpers for goalposts, rush goalie, time for tea -next goal wins,

Yep, you have reminded me of our street versus the next street games. Each side had varying players depending on time of day as they went virtually all day/all afternoon. 

The older big kids as well as us younger kids, we younger ones tended to play in defence delighting in taken the ball off the bigger older kids. We were long streets and games may have well over 20 a side at peak times more sometimes. In fact we had a park at end of street in which the inter street game was played at least one a week and more during school hols.  We played on field side of tennis court and sometimes when a large number of us the pitch became L shaped using the other side of courts to fit us in.

Somebody always kept score, 40 goals to 30 odd not untypical... but as you say at the shout from mums got more insistent to come in for tea it became next goal wins.

No matter size or skill everybody got fun from playing.

Thanks for taking me back to great memories... as we grew from being the smaller kids playing to being the bigger older one...as the previous oldies went to work  rode motor bikes, focused on girls and music and other things to do in the sixties...

Yes football was and is so simple a game to play...whether on your own or with few or many... and so many ways whether using a stick as the target/goal and a tennis ball, or tape wrapped rags as a ball or a proper full size ball...  or even adapting the game to only being allowed one or two touch passing, or only a designated scorer  or many other adaptions,

No matter what Park you went to you could always join in a football game with other kids you had never met before.

[Harry Stottle]

Why is Soccer more popular, simple it can be played on any surface from a very early age and soccer does not require the tenacity and both mental and physical toughness of the handling games more people will 'give it go' than decide having seen the handling that it isn't for them.

Edited November 30, 2022 by Harry Stottle

[Dave W]

On 28/11/2022 at 05:46, Young Blood said:

 Look at the big 5 European Leagues and its the same teams winning it essentially, unless for a Leicester City miracle a supporter of West Ham, Torino or Hertha Berlin will never win the title unless they are bought out by a rich owner how depressing knowing you know your team can never win.  

RL is exactly the same except we have only one international team that dominates and domestically there are only 4-5 teams that win everything. 

Why do supporters of the other teams continue supporting, despite knowing your team can never win?

Hope!

[Harry Stottle]

At the beggining of the tournament I told myself to forget all my previous contradictions of why I dislike football and so I made a concerted effort to watch it, but I must say that with each passing game I observed that gamesmanship is still the predominant tactic of every team, and the refs allow it to go on time after time after time, to see the close ups of incidents that is just plain cheating when no contact has been involved whatsoever or player's falling over and rolling over in agony (how does one roll over if you are actually hurt?) at nothing more than the weight of a cigarette paper pushing them down is laughable.

I suppose each to there own and if you are excepting of it then fine, I actually managed up to 55mins last night, before switching over, but that has not always been the case at one time I loved football in the days when it was a 'contact sport' and played in a manly fashion when each team seemed to have the 'entertainer' the Best's, Marshes, Bowles, etc, then came the Butch Wilkin era about possesion football and falling over and to me it has never recovered it's just progressively got worse.

[HawkMan]

26 minutes ago, Harry Stottle said:

At the beggining of the tournament I told myself to forget all my previous contradictions of why I dislike football and so I made a concerted effort to watch it, but I must say that with each passing game I observed that gamesmanship is still the predominant tactic of every team, and the refs allow it to go on time after time after time, to see the close ups of incidents that is just plain cheating when no contact has been involved whatsoever or player's falling over and rolling over in agony (how does one roll over if you are actually hurt?) at nothing more than the weight of a cigarette paper pushing them down is laughable.

I suppose each to there own and if you are excepting of it then fine, I actually managed up to 55mins last night, before switching over, but that has not always been the case at one time I loved football in the days when it was a 'contact sport' and played in a manly fashion when each team seemed to have the 'entertainer' the Best's, Marshes, Bowles, etc, then came the Butch Wilkin era about possesion football and falling over and to me it has never recovered it's just progressively got worse.

The problem is that in the days of Best, Bowles etc,  defenders were allowed to tackle from behind and take out an attacking player along with the ball. That WASN'T a foul. Contact with man  BEFORE ball was okay. That caused skilful players to be kicked out of matches. The rules were changed,  no contact now before ball at all. This has led to the skilful players like Messi, Ronaldo etc being able to shine, for the good of the game,hence incredible increase in popularity.  However it means if a player is running on goal with ball, knows he is unlikely to score, defenders in his path,  but feels contact,  a stud on his calf, or hand on shoulder,  technically it is a foul, he goes down.  I've  refereed and it is just impossible to see these minor  infringements , you have to be guided by the movement of the ball. Did it change direction? Did the defender get any piece of the ball? 

Would an attacker go down on goal if there was no contact? Straightforward cheating is wholly clamped down on, but players do feel if they don't go down when genuinely fouled they won't get the decision.

As a TV viewer it's amazing the number of fouls VAR has revealed that otherwise wouldn't be given.

Edited November 30, 2022 by HawkMan

[Harry Stottle]

8 minutes ago, HawkMan said:

The problem is that in the days of Best, Bowles etc,  defenders were allowed to tackle from behind and take out an attacking player along with the ball. That WASN'T a foul. Contact with man  BEFORE ball was okay. That caused skilful players to be kicked out of matches. The rules were changed,  no contact now before ball at all. This has led to the skilful players like Messi, Ronaldo etc being able to shine, for the good of the game,hence incredible increase in popularity.  However it means if a player is running on goal with ball, knows he is unlikely to score, defenders in his path,  but feels contact,  a stud on his calf, or hand on shoulder,  technically it is a foul, he goes down.  I've  refereed and it is just impossible to see these minor  infringements , you have to be guided by the movement of the ball. Did it change direction? Did the defender get any piece of the ball? 

Would an attacker go down on goal if there was no contact? Straightforward cheating is wholly clamped down on, but players do feel if they don't go down when genuinely fouled they won't get the decision.

As a TV viewer it's amazing the number of fouls VAR has revealed that otherwise wouldn't be given.

Thank you for the reply, but as I said in my post "if you are excepting of it then fine" apparently millions are, I found the game much more enjoyable from the period I mention other than today's showing.

[The Masked Poster]

In defence of some football players, (not all as there are plenty of divers) it must hurt if someone gets you in the shins with a pair studs, it will really hurt and I bet you might roll around yourself. 

It probably looks fairly tame in comparison with RL but all the same, I bet it's not fun. 

[The Masked Poster]

Edit: double post

Edited November 30, 2022 by The Masked Poster

[redjonn]

1 hour ago, Harry Stottle said:

Thank you for the reply, but as I said in my post "if you are excepting of it then fine" apparently millions are, I found the game much more enjoyable from the period I mention other than today's showing.

I would guess fans of the sport don't like it either but grown to accept it but at least it tends to be highlighted by the many angles and over years the administrators tried to contain it - we don't tend to have the Kinsmen esq diving because of such focus. just as we RL fans dislike the gamesmanship/cheating that is in our senior level sport.  Whilst sympathetic of your viewpoint lets not pretend we don't have it in RL and just as in football it is damn annoying.

Plus a problem in Rugby of both codes is the more subjective aspect of some parts of the game and players learning to adapt to individual ref's interpretations or blasted instructions/warnings, something that is not common in soccer at the highest levels.