question for Australians and North Americans?

Question

Is Football really taking off in your countries or is it media hype. Would love to hear from you. try to Honest please.

Answer 1

Here in the USA, from a professional perspective, the growth of soccer appears to be incremental, but with an attention bump given by Beckam's signing. I have attended 2 MSL games this season, both in 80-90% empty NFL stadiums. At this point, soccer is kind of a small niche thing, in the overall sports landscape less significant than golf, tennis, and hockey, perhaps bigger than wrestling (the real kind), track and field, bicycling, and arguably boxing.

I reside in a small town in the midwest and have never seen professional soccer articles in our local newspaper. The media in the nearby medium sized town seldom to never includes MLS in news casts and the newspaper seldom has more than brief articles about MLS games.

From a participation level, there are people that play soccer in nearly every locality. Playing quality is very uneven. Even in regions where soccer is perceived as being a strong sport most of the top physical specimens do not choose soccer as their top sport. Many young people are exposed to youth soccer in elementary school but those males who choose to stick with soccer through high school are often considered to be "sissys", there seems to be an effort by some to make soccer only a women's sport here. In rural areas the playing quality is very low as most of the league organizers, coaches, and referees never played, they don't really know what proper skills are.

Of course there are many Hispanic immigrants for whom soccer is their passion. Of the non-immigrants in this country, soccer is largely a game for people in the suburbs who are economically of the upper middle class, children of people who are professionals (doctors, lawyers, college professors ...). For most people playing in the USA, soccer is largely first generation, dads did not play and can't really go out into the yard and show sons and daughters how to kick a ball correctly. Children in upper middle class families often have paid coaches, this has become a status symbol kind of thing for many families. From this group, soccer is probably competitive with many other places in the world however this group of people is not really that big.

One must remember that in the distant past, the national past time in this country was chicken fighting, that eventually faded out. In a different era, boxing seemed to be a dominant sport, that too faded. It is entirely possible that American Football could have the same fate. The violent nature of the game could lead to the loss of life for players. There are many NFL players who demonstrate idiotic criminal behavior. American football is very expensive too. Schools could eventuall choose to not fund it (most developmental leagues for American football are tax funded through school systems). If indeed American football went into a decline, soccer could move up in stature and become a dominant sport. Kind of a "Hundredth Monkey" kind of thing (if you aren't familiar with that metaphor, I recommend that you read the book). Perhaps in a generation soccer in the USA could be on par with anyplace in the world.

If the rest of the world would like to assist in speeding up the development of the MLS, perhaps helping the MLS by watching it on TV could make the league stronger. If there were TV contracts to watch MLS games during the off seasons for European leagues, the MLS could become financially strong enough to attract strong European and Latin American players.

Answer 2

In australia, football (soccer) has always been the number one participated sport - however due to historical reasons we used to lose a lot of youth players through disillusionment. The clubs used to be run primarily from ethnic based clubs so it was very hard for young players not of those ethnic groups (and for fans as well) to follow a senior team. Take the old National Soccer League - the three teams in sydney were Marconi - Italian, Sydney Olympic - Greek, Sydney United - Croation - and primarily juniors were chosen from those ranks - so we lost a lot of players. The new Australian Football Association disbanded all the teams and made a new competition - which was just as important than making the World Cup. Crowds are up and so is junior participation.

One thing though is there are currently 180 australians playing professionally overseas. This means our top players do not play here and we basically have to watch a "reserve" grade or "up and coming" league. Imagine in England taking their top 180 players from the EPL - no Rooney, Gerrard, Lampard, Rio etc, etc. We can not afford to keep them here due to the small population and lack of money - but it is improving and it will will beat at least Rugby Union for crowd attendances this year - so that leave Cricket, Rugby League and Australian Football. The Australian Football has already named football (soccer) as being its number one threat in the next 10 years - so that is a good sign.

Answer 3

I think Beckham is a bigger story than soccer. Really, soccer doesn't have that much hype surrounding it - it's just Beckham. I can't speak to Australia's football popularity, but here in the states I'd say the attention soccer is getting in the media is 90% hype surrounding Becks.

Once American Football/Gridiron/Football starts you're going to see Bechham fall off the front pages. But I think his impact is going to be a lot more clear in 5 or 10 years. He's going to influence the kids playing soccer now to keep playing soccer and in 10-15 years you might see MLS competing for the sports dollars that it's not getting now.

Answer 4

Grumbles has summed up Australian A-League football quite well. However, one thing he didn't mention was that the crowds at home games of Melbourne Victory have been at an average of 33,000. This is higher than most AFL (Australian Football League) clubs, meaning that the sport is more supported in that city.
Queensland Roar and Sydney FC have also been having large crowds with attendances between 15,000 and 40,000.
Other clubs in the A-League are still averaging between 8,000 and 14,000 people to games.
Australia's world cup appearance has helped immensely with the growth of the game. More juniors are now interested in playing football, and in ten years is likely to be the biggest competitive and watched sport in Australia.

Answer 5

Well, it's not going to be as big as American football, baseball, or basketball anytime in the foreseeable future. That said, I think it could pass ice hockey as the number 4 sport here, because nobody cares about hockey anymore. Soccer, even though it's not mainstream, has a real solid foundation here. Some facts:

---1994 World Cup in the USA is still the best attended World Cup ever.

---USA has qualified for 5 straight World Cups.

----USA has won 2 straight Gold Cups

---USA women's team has won 2 world cups, 2 Olympic Golds, and is ranked #1 in the FIFA world rankings.

Yes, soccer is here to stay. It's definitely on the way up.

---

Answer 6

In North America more people are playing football than you would think. The number of people who play the sport, if counted, would at least number in the hundreds of thousands in the US alone. It is a pretty big deal; few people may watch it on TV but many play it.

Answer 7

Mexico counts as North America and ever since Mexico was country soccer or football has always been the national sport

Answer 8

scorer is very big as a youth sport in the USA other than that its media hype

Answer 9

its media hype only because of becks

Answer 10

i think its more media hype......