In the US soccer is a sport for the suburban rich, but it's a sport for the poor in all other countries.

NotPC wrote:

Why is soccer considered a sport for the rich, but football and basketball are for poor people in the USA? The reason soccer is popular in other areas is that all you need is a patch of grass and a ball.

There are probably a million reasons. A few off the top of my head:

1) Soccer in the US is not highly publicized and the players are not paid crazy amounts of money. A kid growing up poor is not going to be dreaming of playing for DC United and getting a meager Adidas marketing contract. He is going to be dreaming of playing in the NBA/NFL where he will get multi-million dollar contracts for both playing and for marketing.

2) The urban poor in the US don't have patches of grass or dirt. They have cement and basketball courts.

3) There is a high cost of entry to play youth soccer (cleats, uniforms, travel team fees, etc.).

4) Soccer is barely televised. Who won the MLS, UEFA Cup, or Premier League championship last year? Ask 50 kids in a poor, urban area and there's no way one of them will know two out of the three. Ask them who won the NBA championship and/or the Super Bowl last year and I guarantee at least 75% know both.

I don’t think that’s necessarily true. A lot of the USWNT came from poor backgrounds eg Hope Solo, Megan Rapinoe

It's why we have such a hard time developing international caliber players.

NotPC wrote:

Why is soccer considered a sport for the rich, but football and basketball are for poor people in the USA? The reason soccer is popular in other areas is that all you need is a patch of grass and a ball.

This isn't even close to true. I take it you have never played soccer at a high level in the US.

Not PC answer wrote:

Not the PC answer, blacks are genetically better athletes. See Jimmy the Greek comments. And they culturally in the US prefer football and basketball as opposed to white sports that white people do.

Using Jimmy the Greek as your source? That is so damn funny!

NotPC wrote:

Why is soccer considered a sport for the rich, but football and basketball are for poor people in the USA? The reason soccer is popular in other areas is that all you need is a patch of grass and a ball.

This is a question that has been asked for a while. One thing is that clubs have convinced people that kids need to be in a club with a formal program and intense training starting at a young age. Also, along those lines, that they need to play year round and travel to a lot of tournaments.

Soccer should be just as easy as basketball to play. Both require little equipment and can be played with any number of players. (Small sided games are great for developing players---more times touching the ball). You can make a "goal" out of just about anything---two trash cans.

Football is largely funded by schools and booster programs because it is the #1 sport in the US.

Re: #2 plenty of big cities in other countries have kids playing in the streets. US cities have parks. Central Park is HUGE.

Re: #3 It does not have to be that way, but for some reason it has because people realized they could make a lot of money off well-to-do parents who think that soccer will get their kid into a prestigious college or a grant-in-aid. Odds are long though, but club coaches convince parents even the back up player will get $$$$ if they play year round and travel to "showcases".

Not PC answer wrote:

Not the PC answer, blacks are genetically better athletes. See Jimmy the Greek comments. And they culturally in the US prefer football and basketball as opposed to white sports that white people do.

It is more complicated than your overly simplistic post.

The four most popular team sports in U.S. have male participants who are larger than the average man: baseball, Am. football, basketball & hockey. White males in U.S., 6'3" to 6'8" 225 lbs. to 325 lbs. tend to gravitate to Am. football as frequently as do blacks. There are a lot of white males playing college football at all levels of college football. One cannot gauge by who makes it to pros, the level of popularity of a sport for general public.

-Its televised enough. For some reason not promoted well here. Intentionally or non-intentionally. Well, if they want to become a $500 million world superstars then those little poor kids better start expanding their horizons.

This is not necessarily true. Some of the best teams I have coached against were filled with children of immigrants. But competitive sports in general (yes even track in this country) have a high cost of entry without fundraising or sponsorship. I coach competitive soccer and my kids ran junior olympic track this year. The junior olympic track was far more expensive due to the travel (we live a couple hours from the main population center where most of the JO meets occur) and the regional meet which required air travel, hotels, etc. The thing soccer has going for it abroad (and the thing track has in places like Kenya) is there are large numbers of children all pretty much playing one or two sports in a tight community. I lived in a cheap apartment in a building with a large immigrant population and every night (outside of the winter) they would play soccer at a small park across from the development. To them it was a community activity.

Luv2Run wrote:

Re: #2 plenty of big cities in other countries have kids playing in the streets. US cities have parks. Central Park is HUGE.

I grew up playing soccer in Central Park (and Riverside Park when I was younger) and I agree with the previous poster.

-The area around Central Park is expensive. There is some low-income housing nearby, but most of the people that live near the park going to be wealthy.

-Most of the fields in Central Park require a permit. That means you can't just go out there and play pickup, you have to join a club of some sort and have an organized game. I used to see a group of guys playing pickup around east 102nd street, but now it's not allowed (the latest google street view has a sign there that says the field can't be used for "organized sports").

-Even though the park is huge, kids aren't going to walk two miles in search of a pickup game somewhere (and there are only so many places where one can happen).

-Likewise it's a lot easier to play sports on the playground at your school. That usually means handball (against a wall) or basketball. Even if you're only two blocks away from the park, it's still a 10-20 minute walk to a field where you can play and getting a bunch of kids to do that is like herding cats.

When I played AYSO there were a bunch of Nigerian kids who were really good at soccer. I think they went to MLK (a local public school). I have a bunch of nice stories about them. They were the nicest group of guys and I always wonder what happened to them.

The suburban rich are PBS-watching liberals who feel good about themselves for doing what other countries do. That's why they got into soccer and noone else did.

David S wrote:

[quote]Luv2Run wrote:

Re: #2 plenty of big cities in other countries have kids playing in the streets. US cities have parks. Central Park is HUGE.

-Likewise it's a lot easier to play sports on the playground at your school. That usually means handball (against a wall) or basketball. Even if you're only two blocks away from the park, it's still a 10-20 minute walk to a field where you can play and getting a bunch of kids to do that is like herding cats.

/quote]

Kids can play small sided soccer games just as easily as a small sided pick-up basketball game, or a game of over the line, can be made.

Also they get way more touches with just a few kids. Most practices are run small sided. My kid and his friends play soccer at lunch and in any free playground time at school and sometimes after. He has been doing it since Kinder. Another school in our area doesn't allow it though.

A lot of the kids who come from AYSO are too raw by the time they get to high school , don't know the team formations or how to be coached by a real coach. they have been good for AYSO but lack important development. That's too bad because the ability to manipulate the ball is there early on

So, anyway, yes the kids who get to play under the regular club or Academy umbrella pretty much are middle class and better. They are really getting started at 12, because that's when they drop other sports. By that time, or shortly there after middle class parents are already deciding that school is more important than soccer. So, commitment is often ending just as it starts.

The kids may stay on clubs , but it is actually just a better organized and coached recreational league. The value hierarchy says doing well on HS placement tests , Honors and AP classes and other things colleges want are more important.

NotPC wrote:

Why is soccer considered a sport for the rich, but football and basketball are for poor people in the USA? The reason soccer is popular in other areas is that all you need is a patch of grass and a ball.

I’ve long told these parents and kids who pay upwards of 20k a year for a “select” travel team that their best competition is the Mexican pick up game at the park. In fact that high school in the poor neighborhood regularly beats the private school and their club players. The excuse? “They don’t know how to play. They are too rough.”

Reality is no club team teaches speed or conditioning. It’s all touches. 5 min into the game they are tired. Meanwhile the multi sport poor kid who walks to school and played outside dominates after the 10th minute.

Sadly even with these lower socioeconomic schools kids would rather smoke out and eat than play soccer. As for other countries... it’s thrir way out the ghetto. Same as basketball and football are viewed here.

Bad Wigins wrote:

The suburban rich are PBS-watching liberals who feel good about themselves for doing what other countries do. That's why they got into soccer and noone else did.

Although it has started to shift some in recent years, rich suburban areas have typically leaned Republican.

#factsmatter

qaoaoqa wrote:

-Its televised enough. For some reason not promoted well here. Intentionally or non-intentionally. Well, if they want to become a $500 million world superstars then those little poor kids better start expanding their horizons.

When is the last time you saw a non-World Cup soccer match on primetime on a major network? Saturday showings of Chelsea vs. Man U at 10a on NBC Sports doesn't really count.

If/when NBC/CBS/Fox/ABC start showing soccer in prime time on Fri to Sun nights, then we can talk about it be televised enough. Until then, it doesn't even compare to MLB, NBA, or NFL.

I played on a local youth team for under-12's that was just kids from the surrounding towns. I think everyone paid $20 so we could have uniforms, never traveled more than 40min for a game, practiced maybe 3x a week. Anyways, one of our better players left to join one of those fancy travel teams, and we ended up playing them in some random tournament and whipped them 3-0. They were soft as a new pillow.

Frankly no one cares about USWNT. On the world stage women's soccer is a joke. Only rich countries are good at women's soccer.

Frmke wrote:

I don’t think that’s necessarily true. A lot of the USWNT came from poor backgrounds eg Hope Solo, Megan Rapinoe

In Norway there are facilities for football everywhere (of course just where people live, the population density is very low).

This includes a lot of ballbins, small and big grassfields, it is everywhere.

If you zoom in on the map, just see in Oslo for instance.

https://www.fotball.no/tema/om-nff/kart/