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The UK basically has a racist society that cares about social class. There is no American dream over there as much as that idea may be more of a dream than reality. This is why the UK's most notorious pro basketball player is a gay, educated guy who sucked. John Amaechi, and no, he wasn't even an above average player... maybe if you had schools that were more integrated and rewarded athleticism and diversity as much as other countries you'd not only scare about soccer.Soccer is far more boring than baseball and basketball. It's fun to play just like any sport but unlike hockey, watching it live doesn't make a difference. People who obsess over soccer are boring.
As for Germany, basketball is growing in popularity over there. Dirk Nowitzki is one of the top 25 players ever(and guys like Sabonis, Petrovic, Duncan, Nash are up there as well.) It's bigger over there than you know. The UK is notoriously racist and elitist... and maybe there just aren't many guys who are good enough to play basketball. Sports in America rely on speed, size, strength and IQ for the game and aside from "our" football... our major sports have spread everywhere but the UK really. Spain and France actually LOVE basketball so you're speaking pretty ignorantly. I guess when you have a Queen whose sons couldn't play a real sport and are gingers who are going bald it's best to not let "real" sports get big.
And famous soccer players can come here and suck when they're major superstars who are married to *beep* pop singers who look like they're starving. How can the US soccer team hang with England and Slovenia while it's nothing but a niche sport over here? Seriously... if soccer were more popular and accessible to American kids we'd own England. Sad but true.
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Quoted for truth. Well said. Using a little humor to sweeten the bitter pill was a good choice.
No sport is more mired in racism than European football and no country more so than the UK.
As to this
Because they are solely created for ads and easy to follow and easy to play. That's why all American sports last for 10 seconds and then you have 2 hours of ad time. There was a great paper on this somewhere on the net but can't find it.
I'd love to see that paper because I wouldn't call American football or baseball easy to follow. Like Cricket I'd say an outsider would be completely baffeled if they watched a game without explanation. American football and baseball (and cricket in the UK) have extremly complicated structures of play. Baseball is the only game where the defense handles the ball, and what's the deal with 4 downs in football?, and what's the deal with the infield fly rule and designated hitters and pinch hitters and on and on until your head spins.
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Sundance-A-Kid
12 years ago
Just had to respond to these:
"maybe if you had schools that were more integrated and rewarded athleticism and diversity as much as other countries you'd not only [care] about soccer.Soccer is far more boring than baseball and basketball. It's fun to play just like any sport but unlike hockey, watching it live doesn't make a difference. People who obsess over soccer are boring."
"No sport is more mired in racism than European football and no country more so than the UK. "
A bigoted statement followed by an ignorant one. Actually both are really ignorant. The UK cannot be accused of lacking diversity. It is as diverse as the US, with a much longer history of immigration. It has also managed to integrate its' 2nd/3rd/4th/5th etc.. generations much better into society. There isn't really a black/white divide as there is in the US. Black Brits don't associate themselves as strongly with a 'black' identity and lifestyle as is very much the case in the US. A black Brit in the US gets treated with complete dumbfoundment - like some kind of alien because he/she is black but speaks with a British accent - which goes against the US idea of black identity. The same would never happen in the UK. Also the US divides it's cultures more clearly, tending to group different races and nationalities into areas of cities and states. Not that this doesn't happen in the UK, but nowhere near as delineated. There are schools in the UK that are predominantly non-white but what is more common is that class separates schools - not race. Diversity remains in the vast majority of schools around the UK with the exception of the private(confusingly called public) schools - which comprises a small minority. The UK doesn't need positive discrimination laws to try to make it integrated. It already is.
'People who obsess over soccer are boring' is such a stupid statement - clearly said to provoke. Football is played everywhere in the world in the same way as basketball is in the US. There are hoops and courts all over the US like there are fields and goalposts everywhere else. Anyone who obsesses over anything is boring. Particularly sports. Obsessing over balls thrown into hoops or kicked into nets is boring - doesn't matter what you do with the ball/puck/feather etc.. No sport is interesting unless you get into it. Football - that world sport where you actually use your feet - is no less boring or interesting than anything else. It just depends on which sport you've chosen to get into which usually depends on where you grew up or live.
And yes, European football is mired in racism but actually the UK is among the countries where the racism issue is at its' mildest. In eastern Europe there are a lot of far right extremist groups who use football as their platform for spreading their bigoted views - check the Panorama documentary: Stadiums of Hate made before the Euros. Italy has a long standing issue with racism at games and as a result have very few non-white players. But in the UK the FA has worked very hard to counteract racism. UK football recently came under scrutiny with a few incidents of racism on the pitch the resulting court cases which didn't put much faith in the work being done to avert racism. But on the whole football in the UK is not a racist thing. That was in the past.
And how many non-white players are there in NHL or swimming in the US?
Nowhere is perfect, but you cannot accuse the UK of being something that it isn't based on stereotypes created in the 70s.
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