Look, you can kick the ball all you want to, but if you finish a tackle that is potentially injurious, then it's a foul and a card. If you're the last man back, it's a red card. Why so many people being so thick on this?
The cup final in Greece was a hell of a game [Avoiding the Drop]
Someone named Jack Rodwell plays for Everton. He has one hot WAG in training [Daily Mail]
Porto fans knock off CR7 store in Madeira [Dirty Tackle]
Keepers of the world, please do not assume because the ball hit the crossbar that you are in the clear [The Offside]
What will American soccer look like in ten years? [Match Fit USA]
Some highlights of a TV personality watching his club go down in flames on the last day in League One [Off The Post]
Finally:
A far reaching talk with the guy who owns all things New York Cosmos [This is American Soccer]
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Tuesday Backpasses: Honk
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12 comments:
A heart lol @ the prospect of soccer becoming more popular than the NHL here. Sorry bout it, aint gonna happen. NHL ratings are actually climbing, national interest is up, and revenues are mostly up (southern and desert cities don't count). It's a local sport sure, but the cities it's incredibly popular in are Chicago, Pittsburgh, Philly, DC, New York, Boston, etc.
I've had it up to *here* with people dumping on the NHL.
And yes, I'm one of those people who think soccer will never catch on here (and frankly I'm fine with that). We've been in a freaking golden age of outstanding talent at the best clubs the past ten years and people don't give a shit. We had a supposed best player in the world come over here, nobody cared really, he didn't care, and there's a good argument that he did more harm than good.
The only thing that would get Americans caring is if the USA got to the semis of the WC, and then they would only care about national tournaments. There is brand association with national tournaments, it's the same reason people enjoy the olympics. Joe six whatever doesn't care about the Houston Dynamo or Stupid Fucking Bolton, and he never will. Let him continue watching six seconds of NFL 'action' followed by three minutes of beer commercials.
hey Georger, where do you buy your soapboxes?
(lame) jokes aside, I agree with you. there simply isn't money for a fifth 'national' sport, and people aren't giving up on any of the first four anytime soon. all the lockouts and labor issues have proved that beyond a doubt.
"southern and desert cities don't count."Why than does the NHL keep plonking teams down in the south?
The difference with the NHL's limited success compared to the success of soccer here in the USA is that with the NHL, it's the highest level of hockey played in the world. That's just not the case with the MLS.
Georger, if you love hockey so much, move to Denver. The University of Denver's hockey team consistently sells out it's 6,000 seat arena. It's insanity
Plus, Fletcher deserved that red card and it shouldn't be rescinded. Imagine if Song had made that tackle on ronaldo what whiskey-red-nose would have said about it
I believe a few years back a Nascar rain delay - yup, idling cars sitting on an oval waiting for the sun to come out - drew better ratings than an NHL game. May have even been a playoff game. I am not sure what this indicates other than there are a lot of rednecks with TV's - I am just sayin'
I don't really care that soccer stays un-popular save for the lack of being able to watch my choice of games every week. I imagine/hope this will eventually be remedied by the internet getting on board with better/legal streaming. A mass of fans can be more annoying then they are worth regardless of the sport.
I think soccer might be more popular than we realize, in that the fans are there, they just aren't the same kind of fans. I wore a Barca shirt to Chipotle last night, and two different people struck up conversation on the upcoming game; I once stopped a guy in a Liverpool shirt to ask if I'd like the end of a Champions League game I hadn't watched yet, and he just smiled and said "you'll see" (it was the first Real Madrid game).
Part of the problem is that it's impossible to gauge popularity because of internet streams. What's the rating going to be for, say, today's CL game? There'll be an official rating, and then there'll be the actual number of people who watched it, and that second number's going to be way higher. Hell, I watched an illegal stream yesterday because it was two full minutes ahead of ESPN360; I want to actually watch the goals, not have a match report from two minutes in the future telling me what's happening.
Yeah the best rating for a Champions League game on ESPN was like 1.1 million for last years final. With two of the most popular teams in the world.
NEXT BIG THING!
All those questions I asked, and you guys focus on the hockey thing?
Hockey is niche. Soccer is niche. There's not debating that the NHL is much bigger than soccer, but I don't think it's completely wacky to think that soccer might make the leap by 2019.
The funniest part is that one of the respondents is Canadian, and even he said the NHL.
The CL Final last year was 1.1 million people in the middle of a Wednesday afternoon with virtually no advertising outside of soccer-specific shows; that's really pretty good. More telling, the Euros a month later saw a 60% increase in viewers; that's fairly substantial, especially when you consider that there weren't any Americans involved (not counting Rossi, of course). Those early rounds were seeing half a million people tune in, and again it was in the middle of the day.
Another part of the problem is ESPN's complete lack of interest in promoting the sport; if you didn't know what the Champions League was (and, this time last year, I didn't), than you didn't know ESPN had it and didn't know to look for it. I always know when the World Cup's coming, and would watch then; there's no soccer advertising during, say, the NBA playoffs. If you work a 9-to-5, it's completely possible that you're interested in watching but are completely unaware.
My wife's a good example. Last night she asked about how the Browns draft went, and I explained the wide receivers, and the center, and the trades. After that, she told me that, even though she's watched football her entire life, she still really has no idea what's going on. With soccer, she understands what's supposed to happen. I bet there are more people like her out there who are fans but don't realize it.
Now, I don't know that everyone would be a diehard, live and breathe footy fan. I do think, though, that more people are coming to the game than talk about it. The ratings increases kind of bear that out. I also think that, regardless of all that, you're just not going to see the numbers of people going to or watching a match here that you would in Europe. I do think, though, that there's untapped interest here.
The only problem I have with soccer getting more popular in the states is that a good chunk of these new fans will probably become Man U supporters.
I don't know how many more of those I can stand.
I have noticed more coverage of yesterdays shit show, er, game today. A guy reading the NJ Star Ledger on the train this morning showed a nice big headline and two, foot long columns of type. Morning Joe shot over to their guy in London for a look at the European markets this morning and he had a quick wank over C Ronaldo, complete with highlights. My wife even commented last night that it must of been a "big deal" because she saw online that Arsenal got killed - thanks wife, "L" is for love.
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