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

US soccer wrote:

NotPC wrote:

2. white suburban kids can't athletically compete with black athletes in fball/bball, so they turn to soccer as an alternative.

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This game me a chuckle. So in America people think football/basketball draw the best athletes? In the rest of the world it would be the opposite.

In America football and basketball draw the best athletes.

I guess you are foreign, but in the USA the best athletes are generally herded to either one or both of these sports. They garner the most attention and on the pro level some of the bigger contracts.

Sprinters are usually guys that couldn't make it as WR or RB. HJs are guys that couldn't make it on the court.

You guys don't have football so of course the best athletes gravitate to what you do have-soccer.

run more miles wrote:

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

because they're your archetypical "fiscal conservative/social liberal." They're torn between two parties, but in the end their money matters most to them.

#politicsiscomplicated

NotPC wrote:

In America football and basketball draw the best athletes.

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Football and basketball most definitely don't have the best athletes. If I am an athlete in the US I am going for MLB.

Overall, I believe NHL has the best overall athletes in the US. Any one of those guys can be a top decathlete, boxer, and wrestler all in one.

The real sport of the suburban rich kids is lacrosse.

I don't even know how to respond to this....

I agree. I referee soccer at the high school, college and adult amateur level. I've refereed Mexican teams, Peruvian teams, Guatemalan teams, Ethiopian teams, German teams, English teams, Iraqi teams, Bosnian teams, El Salvadoran teams, Korean teams, Japanese teams, etc. I think your perception of soccer as being "for the rich" is based on out of date information. I see pickup games (never a 'pick up' track meet!), unaffiliated leagues of Hispanic players, where teenage sons are playing on the same team with dad, and your standard suburban organized teams that usually have two or three really poor Hispanic kids so the team can be competitive.

Football? At the grass roots, football is dying. I see leagues shrinking because parents won't let their kids play because of concussions. Anecdotal argument: We have high school in our area that used to be very competitive in football. But the school went from almost all white farm boys to maybe two-thirds Hispanic farm boys. The last five years, their football team hasn't won a game. All the athletic talent in playing on the soccer team. Baseball? Baseball is beating itself up because African-Americans aren't playing baseball anymore and MLB attendance has leveled off, at most. The average age of those attending MLB games is now in the high 50's. Oh, and Hispanics are now the largest minority group in America. Basketball? For those of us under 6'2, well, we were never going to make the team anyway.

And there's lots of soccer on television, far more than there is of track & field.

Most kids who play travel are way fitter than the random kid who plays pick up soccer. My daughter at 12 ran 65 second 400m off soccer alone. Ran 61 and 2:25 800 after track training.

The suburban soccer mom stereotype has a lot to do with that image. I believe it was created for political reasons, to stereotype a certain class of voters.

I coach and referee in a primarily recreational and development program (AYSO) in a southern California city. I do not have good data on the economic status of player families as compared to the city as a whole, but I suspect they are about the same, or perhaps less wealthy for the player families on the average. More parents whose jobs I know of have had blue collar jobs than professional salaried ones. At older ages club soccer gets the best players, and club probably skews toward somewhat wealthier families.

A huge fraction of the players are Hispanic, a higher fraction than the city as a whole. Korean family players are represented above city demographics; African-American, Filipinos and Chinese less.

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.

Not sure where you get your "Fake News" from but you're very misinformed.

Soccer compared to most sports is less expensive and is fully accessible to all walks of life. Yes, there are some fees required to play in certain leagues and or clubs. The elite club system is somewhat costly, approximately $2500.00 per year (12 months) which includes uniforms, tournament entry fees, and coaches salaries. Travel is not included in that numbers and can run an additional $2000.00 Most elite clubs have hardship scholarships for lower income families and all elite MLS cities have academy teams which are free for elite players who qualify. Elite clubs for basketball, baseball, volleyball are very costly but somewhat similar. Soccer is the ONLY sport of which these fees are for 12 months.

Running by far is the least expensive of ANY organized sport. I will say that soccer is a great game which requires not only endurance but also strategy.

Nonsense. Affluent countries the world over have strong youth basketball programs, and poor communities across the US host soccer leagues. Actual rich-people sports include sailing, equestrianism and skiing.

Strategy? Um, no. See the eloquent post above by Bullet_Proof on why strategy in soccer is a joke

I played for an academy team growing up and the cost of me playing was crazy compared. Looking back I have no idea how my parents did it. We’d have state cup games three hours away on weekdays. I can’t imagine a single parent household or families whose parents both work 50 hours a week having time to get there kids to events. The top level of soccer in the USA is very much for people with high income. However, MLS clubs are beginning to dive into the urban areas for their academy teams. That’s where Europe and South America have an advantage in that their academies will pull kids from low income areas to play on their academy teams. As a result, you see these success stories of kids making it big from slums and very improvised parts of cities and countries. Another factor may be that the aforementioned continents do not value college athletics the same. If you are playing on a college soccer team in either Europe or South America you will have likely already missed your chance at going pro or being able to play in the top flights of your country. Here in the USA, the MLS still scouts and signs college players, however, that is going down fast as the clubs with academy players are just pulling from them or are signing better talent from other countries around the world. College soccer here in the USA I believe will be the worst path a player can take during the next 10 years. The trend is starting to go away from college soccer and to the academies and abroad so players will need to re-evaluate the risk of playing in college. If the MLS and USL clubs begin to scout players in the inter cities for their academies then we could see the gap close on only having kids from the suburbs making it big in soccer in the USA.

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.

Because Americans have a freakish name for it and the game they call 'football' isn't primarily played with feet, the 'ball' isn't ball-shaped either. WTF is 'soccer', a game played in socks?

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.

They should play cricket, instead. Its the worlds most popular sport!

Exactly. Specialization at a young age and club teams lead to this. It's the same with girls softball. If you leave in a rural area you have to travel hundreds of miles every weekend to play in these expensive tournaments and equipment is expensive af.

Soccer has been the number one sport in these "poor countries" that op mentions. I'm sure there are rich kids playing there too. It's just here it's not nearly as popular. Most poor athletic kids tend to go towards football and basketball as a way out.

aoxomoxoa wrote:

[quote]NotPC wrote:

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

This is at least as true in Sao Paulo, Madrid, or Rome.

NotPC wrote:

You guys don't have football so of course the best athletes gravitate to what you do have-soccer.

Almost no top tier professional footballer in Englad, Spain, Italy, Germany, France, Brazil, etc. is large enough to play in the NFL, so this argument is complete nonsense.

A very small NFL player is 6' and weighs 180. That's a footballer on the large end. Not to mention that the physiques and athletic talents required are very different. The small NFLers are cornerbacks, whose most fundamental skills are incredible vertical leap and 10-20m speed bursts. Those are skills that do translate to football, but most of them don't also have the balance and coordination required, and they are still on the big side.

Soccer will never be a major sport in the US. I remember when everyone was saying it was about to explode in popularity and take over. That was in 1979. Forty years later, we are still at that “almost” point. In other words, it’s already peaked here.

Bad Wigins wrote:

run more miles wrote:

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

#factsmatter

because they're your archetypical "fiscal conservative/social liberal." They're torn between two parties, but in the end their money matters most to them.

#politicsiscomplicated

Look up Dave Foster Baskwills twitter rants to get an understanding of the identity crisis.