I’ve never claimed to be anything more than I am: an American sports fan with casual exposure to soccer. Someone who doesn’t hate the game, but who doesn’t love it, either. In short, I am, I think, the kind of person which soccer will have to win over, if it is to be anything more than the 3rd or 4th tier spectator sport which it currently is in the US.

So I can only give you my opinion regarding the offsides rule. And that is that during the World Cup games I watched, there were a number of exciting plays that looked like they might develop into good, exciting scoring plays, but were called off because the forward was, it seemed, an inch past the defenseman a millisecond before the ball was passed. There was one game in particular (a half, actually) in which such called off plays outnumbered scoring plays, it seemed, six to one. As someone who wants to like the sport more, I found it frustrating which made my interest wane.

All that would do is force the defense to cover those forwards, which would open up the rest of the field, which might lead to more goals.

“Anyway, every sport has its rules. In rugby you can’t throw the ball forward like in american football, and it doesnt make it less interesting”

Well, I think to the American sports fan, the fact that the offsides rules means less scoring does, for that average fan, make the game less interesting.

I disagree. It’s not the rule itself but the amount of mistakes referees and linesmen make when applying it. The rule is necessary to avoid easy goals -if a forward can wait next to the goalie for the ball, it would be way less interesting. With the rule, they can’t cross the defense line before the pass its done.
Anyway, every sport has its rules. In rugby you can’t throw the ball forward like in american football, and it doesnt make it less interesting

If soccer wants to be successful in the US, it has to address that point. If it doesn’t want to change, then it will remain a fringe spectator sport and the majority of sports fans in the US won’t notice it and will focus their attention on other things.

Maybe they’ll get mildly interested when the World Cup comes around, for a couple of weeks, like they get interested in gymnastics and downhill skiing at Olympic time, but then they’ll forget about it for another 4 years.

What I don’t understand is why soccer people seem to never accept that as an answer. You hear all kinds of nonsense about Americans having ADHD or being not interested in it because we don’t dominate at it, but they can’t fathom the fact that people who weren’t born and raised into their beloved sport simply find the game to be dull.

I kind of like soccer. Not my favorite, but I don’t hate it. But I do understand why people in the USA are pretty unimpressed:

1) Not enough scoring. It’s not about action or movement; there’s plenty of that. It is that there is too much back and forth movement without any payoff. What’s the point? The lack of payoff is why people say it is boring. Also, the offsides rule is stupid, make it seem like the game is actively seeking to keep players from scoring exciting goals. Defense is too easy.

2) Games that end in a tie.

If (going by this round of World Cup) over 10% of your games end in a 0-0 tie (5 out of 48), and 25% of your games end with a score of 1-0 (12 out of 48), that means that 1/3 of the time, only 1 single goal will be scored in 90 minutes of play. You simply are not going to attract the average American sports fan with that. If teams scored 5-6 goals per game on average, and a 0-0 tie was a one in a thousand occurrance, then you have a formula for success in the US.

Perhaps a couple of facts need to be brought forward in this regard.
Behind the host nation South Africa, the most tickets for the 2010 World Cup series were sold to the USA. More Americans are in South Africa rooting for the squad than any other nation, and more than several nations combined. I am fairly certain that constitutes liking futball/soccer like everyone else.
The average game attendance in the US for MLS in 2009-2010 is consistently exceeding that of the NHL for the same time period. One could make the claim that MLS is more popular than the NHL; though i am not one to do that. If the US makes it into the quarterfinals (round of eight), i would proffer that given the sharp rise in season prices for NFL, NBA, and MLB–the MLS next year will set attendance records.

Also #19: you do realise different sports have different patterns of exertion? Trying to compare the two is mostly useless, you could devise tests in which either athlete wins, based on what they actually train for. Not that you sound like you know anything about your chosen subject, anyway.

Saturday afternoon, Ghana. Mark it down. I usually root for the African countries. Oh, well.

In what way is the BPL less commercialized than your typical American sports league?