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Mike Francesa complains about soccer coverage in Sports Illustrated
- Thread starter TTalkradio1
- Start date
“I know I get accused of knowing nothing about soccer because I don’t,” he said. “I know absolutely zero about soccer, and that’s more than I want to know about soccer. I have no interest. Sorry, I’m just being honest.”
Spoken like the typical trump voter. This character is an 'authority" & blabber on sports -yet seems proud to know-nothing-care-nothing about a game that dominates nearly everywhere outside the U.S.
Oh well. Legacy hosts on legacy media.
LCG
Spoken like the typical trump voter. This character is an 'authority" & blabber on sports -yet seems proud to know-nothing-care-nothing about a game that dominates nearly everywhere outside the U.S.
Oh well. Legacy hosts on legacy media.
LCG
You shouldn't be discussing the election or making comments against a candidate.
This has nothing to do with politics or Trump.
Soccer talk is a major tune-out on US sports talk shows. Francesa is just doing good radio, as lots of his listeners will say, "Yeah, man, soccer sucks".
It does not matter whether the sport is Popular in Bulgaria or Bolivia or whatever.
If you notice, there seems to be some kind of cross-national movement going on to force soccer on Americans, while at the same time the NFL is attempting to force football on Europeans. The goal is more money, because both sports have grown as far as each can grow within their own boundaries. So the question is will this work? Personally, I'm not interested in soccer. Way too slow for me.
That "force" is called; capitalism.
I'll spare you the drudgery of doing your own research by linking these two, easy-to-find pages:
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/fifa-corruption-scandal/soccer-numbers-look-game-u-s-n365601
https://www.umbel.com/blog/sports/10-data-points-prove-soccer-has-made-it-in-america/ These people have an agenda, but the stats are OK.
Now, tell me how a major sports gasbag, on a leading venue who proudly professes ignorance of this growing sector of -his- industry comes off as anything more than an angry, old white guy, bitter about what has happened to 'his" country.
This isn't the America of 1976. There have been radical changes in the demos and taste influences.
Right now, sports blab is the one bright spot in an otherwise deteriorating commercial talk landscape. Comments like Francessa's are not helpful.
LCG
The sports guy was doing what he does best, which is to be simultaneously outrageous and to reflect the feelings of nearly the entirety of the audience.
The demos of the sports radio audience are overwhelmingly bored by soccer and they will be overjoyed when they hear a host they like expressing like opinions. The host has expressed a widely held feeling, and created additional bonding with the core audience. The chances that they lost even one listener are minimal.
The stats you linked conveniently don't mention that a huge percentage of the adult viewers and listeners to soccer broadcasts are Hispanic... folks who grew up in nations where the national sport was soccer. Those are not listeners to highly Americanized "guy talk" sports stations. And a similarly large percentage of those who played soccer in their youth are either Hispanic or immigrants from places where soccer is played as the principal sport.
I'll give a personal anecdote which is essentially the same thing but in reverse: I grew up on soccer, and I find American rules football to be highly tedious. Any mention of it, whether on the radio or in a news show, will cause me to change station or channel. Turn that scenario around and you have what happens when stations don't serve the core audience's interests.
The same would happen if a sports station in Mexico started talking about American rules football... the entire audience would be gone almost instantly.
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Funny. I have an identical opinion, but about football.
And that illustrates the point that lifetime fans of certain sports are not going to adopt a new sport easily, if ever.
The "soccer movement" has been going on in the US for over a decade with very little traction. The sport is simply too boring for American viewers. Nobody wants to sit there and watch a bunch of people run around for hours and maybe see 1 or 2 goals if you're lucky. American sports viewers like to see dramatic moments - a big home run, a slam dunk, a buzzer beater win. None of this is possible in soccer, and to top if off, they just randomly add time to the end of the game. Baseball is bad enough with the average age of viewers now being over 55. With soccer being even more boring than baseball it will remain a niche sport.
The issue here is not that one sport or another is boring or not. The issue is one of national culture and even local preferences. Even within the US you have differences such as basketball in Indiana and football in Texas (to demonstrate extremes).
While soccer is a growing player sport among American youth, it is not as big a deal among sports viewers and listeners. Our national seasons are Baseball, Football and Basketball. Soccer is not one of them.
However, to someone who comes from a different background, football consists of waiting five minutes, including commercial breaks, and then watching a bunch of grown men jump on top of each other for a few seconds. Very tedious, complicated and practically no action while there is non-stop action in soccer which is has only the most brief of pauses in play.
Which brings up a major point in the broadcast area: soccer is not friendly to traditional advertising 30" and 60" units and requires an advertiser paradigm shift to name mentions rather than spots. And that is not an easy shift for most sports organizations to make.
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What this also points out is how outdated it is for one magazine to attempt to cover all sports. Of course, magazines themselves are outdated, and the fact that Francesa even mentions it demonstrates his age. Most people aren't even paying attention to things like Sports Illustrated, unless it's their swimsuit issue. Today, people are only interested in what they're interested in. Anything outside their interest is dull, boring, and useless. There are lots of channels on my cable system I never even see. Same with magazines and newspapers. Just not on my radar at all.
If "speed" were the main issue then hockey would surely become the most popular American sport quickly. But it isn't. No. The most important thing to a baseball fan is the strategy of the game: who plays what position and where on the field does he play, who bats 1-3 and who is the clean-up hitter, when does the batter attempt a bunt (depends upon the score, number of outs and runners on base etc.). Soccer is a very simple game compared to baseball and for those who just want the thrill of a breakaway without a lot to think about soccer will always be their game.
Soccer also has two valuable advantages considering it is played in many different cultures and some of those are really poor - All you need is a ball. No expensive gear and a nearby street will serve as a pitch quite nicely. And players all speaking different languages can understand the rules and plays without much communication. Try that using American football rules.
I will say this again - soccer is a great game played by children. Cheap. Lots of exercise. Learning team play. Developing skills. Once it reaches the high school level it becomes a defensive struggle which is deadly boring to most Americans. In fact, we have a name for it - Boomball (imagine tennis played with field cannons).
World Cup is more like the Olympic Games... infrequent, and tightly wrapped in national pride.
Using the Olympics as an example, how many people regularly follow shot-putting and javelin throws day-to-day? But, for a few brief moments, it is all-important at the Olympics.
There is a place down the street from my house called The Vine. It specializes in bar food and beer and flat screen TV's with all manner of sports being shown at any one time. It also has great food. Yet when I am there I look around and very few people seem to be following the game intently. Most are either eating, drinking or talking with their table mates. About the only time a ton of attention is paid to the screens is when something like a major motor race or playoff game is being shown.
And at the risk of getting too far off course, what is a "liberal-leaning" bar?
Actually, breakaways in soccer are usually -- and rightly -- ruled offside.
I've come to appreciate soccer over the past few years, especially the English game, but it's not a sport for Americans as a whole to fall in love with. While the concept is simple, it is devilishly difficult to score goals or even create scoring chances. The penalty for fouls close to goal is draconian -- a free shot at the keeper from point-blank range -- and encourages play-acting by the offensive players in their efforts to draw fouls. NBA players also dive to get to the free-throw line, but two points out of more than 200 is generally insignificant, and the divers in basketball don't feign mortal injury every time they hit the floor.
And the situation you raise is exactly why the higher levels of soccer are defensive struggles. If soccer had the same off sides rule as does hockey there would be more exciting goals and many more of them. The off sides trap is an abomination to the flow of the game. The other, as you mentioned, is the player faking an injury upon any contact. It is called flopping and should result in an immediate ejection for the offender. Another major improvement would be a public clock. The game time now is kept by the referee so no one watching can have an accurate idea of how much "injury time" need be added at the end of play. Like every other game worldwide soccer should have stop time for injuries.
But if you look at where soccer is played professionally around the world there is a common denominator and that is cooler weather. Under present rules you cannot have a competitive contest played outdoors in most of the USA during summer months simply because it is too hot.
You have it backwards. The US professional leagues play a March-October/early November schedule. In Europe the season is August-April/early May. While the UK, France, Spain, Netherlands, etc, play right through the winter, leagues in countries with extremely cold winters, like Russia, build a mid-winter break into their schedules. That would be unacceptable to American TV networks, which demand steady streams of programming, week after week, to sell to their advertisers, who don't want to stop reaching a lucrative audience for a month or more in the middle of every season. And because soccer here is operating with a small fan base to begin with, operators of franchises in cold-weather cities don't want to have to try to sell tickets to December, January and February games.
Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Mexico, Perú, Honduras, El Salvador, Spain, Italy, Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, all but two countries in Africa... and so on making a list of dozens and dozens of tropical, subtropical or desert nations where soccer is played.
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