How come soccer and tennis never caught on in the states? Also why hasn't there been an NFL team vs a Soccer Team and vice versa. Just to prove which is the better sport? Details inside.

Submitted ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Patnou@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

We take the NFL team put them in futbol uniforms and they do their best at soccer to see who is better at the sport best 3 out of 5. Then we take the soccer team put them in football (NFL) gear and play the best the states got in the NFL? That way we can finally put to rest which is the better sport. Plus this would attract a shitload of fans of each sport and each team only gets 1 month to train. Whoever comes out best the the US will concede soccer is the hardest and best sport. If the soccer team win then it will truley show which is real football

source

Comments

Sort:hotnew top

Big_Boss_77@fedinsfw.app ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I’m not dogging on soccer players at all, takes some real stamina and conditioning to do what they do… but if you put them on the field with even the worst NFL team, someone is gonna get hurt. Most people don’t realize just how powerful even the average NFL player is… then you put them up against someone like Ray Lewis (picking retired player to avoid favorites) it’s going to end bad.

To put it in simpler terms, it’s like asking why we don’t see which boat does better in the Indy 500?

source
- TheReanuKeeves@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  I agree someone is going to get hurt but nfl players on average are going to gas out long before a soccer player.
  
  source
  - Big_Boss_77@fedinsfw.app ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Right, I agree. Conditioning is wildly different in both sports. 4 seconds of sprinting and physical impact 90-120 times versus 90+ minutes of jogging and sprinting is no comparison.
    
    source
- wjrii@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  
  NFL athletes would have the conditioning and stamina to at the very least compete in a soccer match
  
  A few might not be utterly exhausted and wishing for death, but running around attempting to play soccer for ninety minutes is not the same as succeeding. Even Wide Receivers and Defensive Backs with some soccer experience aren’t going to hang with any professional team; that’s just not what they train for. Then there’s the skill issue. It would be like asking which Indy car would do better in the America’s Cup. ;-)
  
  source
  - Big_Boss_77@fedinsfw.app ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Oh yeah, sorry, I didn’t fully flesh out that thought, was cooking dinner.
    
    You’re right, obviously… but by “compete” I simply meant it would go exponentially better than the other way around.
    
    Poor choice of words on my part, apologies.
    
    source
    -> View More Comments
Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I’m not a sports person in general, but I have as much enthusiasm to watch a tennis match as I do to watch a game of ping pong. I don’t get it.

source
radix@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
IMO, professional soccer in the US is way behind because it’s less TV friendly. No commercial breaks (other than halftime) means less money coming into the sport than more commercialized competition.

At youth levels, it’s one of the most played sports in the country. Then as soccer-playing American kids get further in their “career”, they get pushed toward other sports where more money is. Colleges rake in cash on football and basketball, and lots of these kids play multiple sports until a coach makes them choose.

source
- CADmonkey@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  I played youth soccer until I was 14. I started getting good at it. But after 14 that was it, just like you say I started getting pushed to other sports
  
  source
southsamurai@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Well, I’d say that tennis did catch on. Ashe, McEnroe, Agassi, Sampras, the Williams sisters, Billie Jean King, Evert; they all had major followings as pros. It’s also a very popular sport to play at all levels of skill. It does have ups and downs, but in terms of pros, it’s a pretty consistent sport to be able to make a living at, which isn’t true of very many single player sports that aren’t fighting.

Soccer, yeah, it’s way behind in terms of draw. There’s a shit ton of opinions about why that is, but I’ve never really put any time into considering them because I’m not a team sports guy at all, and soccer/futbol is low on the list of what I’ll sit and watch for any period of time even when I’m in that mood.

As far as the thought experiment of pitting the players against each other, you’d run into three conflicting training and selection paradigms. I dunno if you’ve ever played both, but holy fuck do they take different bodies to do well at.

Even a running back or wide receiver is going to out mass most Soccer players, and most Soccer players would have trouble with the extra gear even if they didn’t get tackled. So you run into each sport being dominated by people that are physically less capable at the other one at pro levels. At amateur levels, that isn’t as drastic, but you’d see the players from the other sport gassing out early.

Besides, the argument about which sport is “better” has nothing to do with the players. They’re all peak level athletes in the pros, so that’s not relevant. People will argue about it, but people are mostly idiots that will argue whether vanilla is better than chocolate just because they think whatever opinion they hold is superior even when there’s no competition in the first place (they’re entirely different things, not opposites).

source
mortalic@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I can very slightly speak to this. But like from a beer league, geriatric sort if way. I play indoor soccer, but I also did pickup football games when I was a teenager. I am old now. Like middle aged I guess. As is most of my team. (1970’s baby’s). We are a very average team in our division. In a ten week season we typically win 5 or 6 games. Sometimes only two or three.

A couple sessions ago a team of similar aged football players made an indoor soccer team. They were larger than everyone, chopped everyone down, physically won most 1v1 battles. However, we obliterated them. Like 9-3 one game 11-4 another. We just kept passing around and they kept running at 10/10ths until they were gassed.

Now when I was playing football, you would only play me at RB or WR. Fast, quick yes. But a linebacker would wreck me. Build a whole team of guys like me and, well likely strip sacks on most plays. Diversity of si, R in the NFL is hard to see on TV, but offensive linemen are like 330lbs. Some wrs are like 180lbs. You don’t see that variance in soccer.

In short. The sports aren’t comparable.

source
wjrii@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
The NFL team would be miserable and probably have soft-tissue injuries, and eventually would not be able to stop the soccer players from navigating around them like cones, assuming they ever could. Assuming they could learn the byzantine rulebook in a reasonable timeframe, the soccer players would be instantly broken into little pieces. No one would enjoy either contest, and we would learn nothing.

As for why they didn’t catch on, first I’m not so sure they didn, as tennis in particular has always had its place in the American culture, though its association with the “country club” class may have limited its ceiling. American soccer has its issues, and it is not pressuring the “traditional” American team sports, but attendances are healthy, sponsorships are good, and quality of play is decent, with a starting 11 being roughly comparable to the bottom half of the English second division. Roster rules would mean an MLS club would quickly get ground into dirt in that English second division, but matchday 1 might be pretty competitive. Taking your question more generously, though, competition from baseball, followed by organizational disarray, followed by competition from college gridiron football, followed by competition from professional gridiron football, with the “not invented here” syndrome left it seen as a sport for immigrants and then as a safe yet cheap option for suburban children.

Televised World Cups and Pele started to erode that some, but more organizational disarray left the country without a proper professional league from 1984 until 1995, and when it was restarted it was intentionally done in a manner to control costs and favor management, which it ironically was able to do because it could always argue the players could seek employment in other countries.

source
- rumschlumpel@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  
  Roster rules would mean an MLS club would quickly get ground into dirt in that English second division, but matchday 1 might be pretty competitive.
  
  Interesting, what are those roster rules?
  
  source
  - wjrii@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    There are so many. Some highlights though:
    
    There’s a salary cap of $6.5M, which is actually more “League One” than Championship, but there are loopholes to exploit (Beckham rule and its offspring most predominant among them), and MLS is full of Americans and Western Hemisphere players who are good but would never get UK work permits so their wages are a bit depressed compared to second and third tier British players.
    
    Maximum senior roster of 30 players, of which 10 are (nominally) supposed to be on the equivalent of 1800 pounds/week. Exceptions here as well, but in broad strikes the bottom of the roster is WAAAY cheaper than even the middle.
    
    Several of them are supposed to be 24 or younger, further limiting the pool.
    
    There is an internal market to trade them around, but teams can only have an average of 8 non-domestic players. Rules slightly vary for the cc US teams versus Canadian.
    
    The league is legally one business, and holds all contracts. The “owners” are investors in the league who have a contractual agreement to manage a team. It happens much less often than it used to, but you occasionally see things that appear to be league office meddling in player movement.
    
    source
NM_Gringo@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Tennis has kind of a snotty reputation besides being slow and boring. Surprises me that it’s still fairly popular. Ended up in Palm Springs the night before a big tennis tournament and almost had to drive on to LA. Everything was booked. Pickleball is crowding tennis but not getting rid of it. Ironically, if I make it through the US Open Pickleball lottery, I would have to play Ivan Lendl…the tennis player.

source
- Neondragon25@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  I hear you, however I also want to deliberately misinterpret part of your statement. https://tennisone.tennisplayer.net/club/lessons/brown/speed/depth.php Tennis as far as the speed of the ball is concerned is one of the fastest ball sports around, with professionals serving over 100+mph serves.
  
  source
Ioughttamow@fedia.io ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Another thing might be that soccer is big now, a lot of millennials grew up playing and following soccer, but non us leagues are considered top dog. So if you watch soccer seriously, you’re watching premier league, bundesliga, serie a, la liga, ligue 1, etc instead

source
Lasherz12@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Can’t really speak to tennis, but the other stuff probably because watching a team score 0 points is kinda lame.

source
- YeahIgotskills2@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  The value of a single goal in football is immense. You just need to recalibrate and appreciate the skill and teamwork. Each goal is the cumulative result of an intense battle involving skill, teamwork, and athleticism. Conversely, some of the most boring football games are when the teams aren’t evenly matched and one team dominates, scoring several goals.
  
  source
  - Lasherz12@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    I agree. Also pitting pros from one sport against pros of another sport is gonna result in the fish out of water scoring 0. Rugby and American football might be the closest in overlapping skills, but the pros are pros because they’re pros. You don’t novice your way into success just by being fit.
    
    source
IWW4@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Soccer has caught on in the states.

The number one sport in the US is American football.

Number two and three are a tie between basketball and baseball.

Number four is Hockey.

Number five is Soccer.

source
- thisisdee@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  
  The number one league in the world is the NFL, no other league comes close.
  
  Based on what? I feel like more people around the world would know the Premier League more than they would the NFL
  
  source
  - IWW4@lemmy.zip ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Look up the value of the teams in each league.
    
    source
mystrawberrymind@piefed.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I feel like only girls played soccer and tennis growing up lol. Boys definitely wanted to play football cuz it was “cooler”

source