Will soccer ever catch on in the United States? The World Cup, a month-long festival of spectacle and drama, is evidence it will. The World Cup final, a two-hour slugfest filled with yellow cards and histrionic flopping, is evidence it won't.
Soccer has a Jekyll-and-Hyde personality. Landon Donovan's goal is Hyde. The comical injury faking in the final--one guy got brushed on the shoulder and collapsed to the ground, screaming--is Jekyll. Right now, Americans associate soccer more with the latter than the former.
I don't think the 2010 World Cup changed that dynamic. You need proof? I watched the final game with some fellow interns. These were serious soccer fans, people who had followed the tournament from the start, people who had seriously advocated invading Ghana after Team USA lost. And even they thought the final game was terrible. They jeered the big lunkheaded ref and mocked the floppers the way Duke fans mock Carolina players.
A sport can't survive when the people who should be its biggest fans dismiss the players--all players, not simply the guys who play for teams they don't like--as whiny babies.
Does the low scoring in soccer make a difference? There seems to be a link between scoring and popularity; high-scoring basketball and football are popular, low-scoring hockey and soccer aren't. Why? Is it because Americans demand concrete proof of athletic dominance, while Europeans and other soccer-loving peoples are more willing to enjoy the aesthetic experience of the game?
Some people argue that soccer is socialist. And Thomas Friedman could spin a decent column out of a comparison between the soccer-watching experience and the football-watching experience. Soccer, at least on the World Cup level, is watched in massive open-air plazas, a communal experience that brings people together. Americans watch the Super Bowl cloistered in their own homes, alone or with a few family members and friends.
Hell, maybe soccer's just a stupid, boring sport, and we Americans are more discerning. After all, we gave the world basketball and baseball. We know sports.
In conclusion, I leave you with this YouTube clip, a summation of why basketball remains more popular than soccer in America.
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