Considering how their team fperformed in the World Cup compared to England, I don't think we have the moral authority to make fun of their strange football lingo, to be honest.Like with everything else, the US will overtake England in football sooner rather than later: it's inevitable. So we'd better get used to 'endzones' and 'three point conversions' becoming standard fare.
Oh please, take it from one who lives here and witnesses the growth of grass roots 'Soccer" on an almost daily basis, the US will be a real force at international level in the next ten years or so. Seattle Sounders are getting 60'000 fans at home games. If David Beckham gets his team of the ground in Miami, watch the sport thrive even faster here.
It's happening here and as an expat Londoner living here for ten years now, the development of the game here has been nothing short of astounding to watch. Yes I find all the bizarre terms and phrases irritating, but watch out because they will be a force to be reckoned with. Go Soccerball!
Oh please, take it from one who lives here and witnesses the growth of grass roots 'Soccer" on an almost daily basis, the US will be a real force at international level in the next ten years or so. Seattle Sounders are getting 60'000 fans at home games. If David Beckham gets his team of the ground in Miami, watch the sport thrive even faster here.
It's happening here and as an expat Londoner living here for ten years now, the development of the game here has been nothing short of astounding to watch. Yes I find all the bizarre terms and phrases irritating, but watch out because they will be a force to be reckoned with. Go Soccerball!
This. I live in Canada, so whatever happens in the US filters through to us here in Ontario after a while, but interest in football is picking up massively across the place. Whenever TFC travel to the US, they're usually greeted with packed stadiums and relatively fierce home atmospheres, and reciprocally there seems to be more passion here at the BMO Field these days when teams come to play. TFC's picked up on this too: they're forming embryonic rivalries with the likes of Montreal and Sporting Kansas City, and for the first time I can genuinely feel a 'football culture' permeating North America whenever I flip ESPN on and watch the pre and post-game nattering when the over-enthusiastic commentators hype up routine challenges and fairly mundane skills to an outrageous degree.
As a nation, the US has always been one that constantly strives to overtly dominate at whatever endeavour it takes up: as a people, Americans tend to be fiercely nationalistic and competitive, and as individuals they're some of the most enthusiastic and accepting people you can find out there. All that together means that the US usually takes a long time to get into sports where it feels disadvantaged relative to the rest of the world (preferring to remain insular and committed to sports it regularly excels at), but once it picks up an overseas sport (Ice Hockey, or most of the Olympic sports) it pursues winning with a fervour rarely seen in more laid-back nations. Via a combination of the 'soccer mom' phenomenon following the 1994 World Cup, the unexpected run to the quarter-finals of the 2002 WC, and the post-2000 influx of Mexican and Latino immigrants from the South/football-loving immigrants from elsewhere in the world, the United States has finally started turning its attention to football. And as K.D.D.D.Soc and harr1984 have mentioned, the advantage of football relative to the other sports the US plays and the huge marketing potential of the game in the North America means that, sooner rather than later, it will become a fully-fledged national past-time, up there with American football, baseball and hockey.
And when that happens (coupled with the effects of the wise investments American football administrators are making in grass-roots football across the country coming to fruition), the sceptered isle will probably have to make way in yet another sport as the US goes barreling past.
This. I live in Canada, so whatever happens in the US filters through to us here in Ontario after a while, but interest in football is picking up massively across the place. Whenever TFC travel to the US, they're usually greeted with packed stadiums and relatively fierce home atmospheres, and reciprocally there seems to be more passion here at the BMO Field these days when teams come to play. TFC's picked up on this too: they're forming embryonic rivalries with the likes of Montreal and Sporting Kansas City, and for the first time I can genuinely feel a 'football culture' permeating North America whenever I flip ESPN on and watch the pre and post-game nattering when the over-enthusiastic commentators hype up routine challenges and fairly mundane skills to an outrageous degree.
As a nation, the US has always been one that constantly strives to overtly dominate at whatever endeavour it takes up: as a people, Americans tend to be fiercely nationalistic and competitive, and as individuals they're some of the most enthusiastic and accepting people you can find out there. All that together means that the US usually takes a long time to get into sports where it feels disadvantaged relative to the rest of the world (preferring to remain insular and committed to sports it regularly excels at), but once it picks up an overseas sport (Ice Hockey, or most of the Olympic sports) it pursues winning with a fervour rarely seen in more laid-back nations. Via a combination of the 'soccer mom' phenomenon following the 1994 World Cup, the unexpected run to the quarter-finals of the 2002 WC, and the post-2000 influx of Mexican and Latino immigrants from the South/football-loving immigrants from elsewhere in the world, the United States has finally started turning its attention to football. And as K.D.D.D.Soc and harr1984 have mentioned, the advantage of football relative to the other sports the US plays and the huge marketing potential of the game in the North America means that, sooner rather than later, it will become a fully-fledged national past-time, up there with American football, baseball and hockey.
And when that happens (coupled with the effects of the wise investments American football administrators are making in grass-roots football across the country coming to fruition), the sceptered isle will probably have to make way in yet another sport as the US goes barreling past.
