Tim Howard: The Foreign Players Didn't Have the Passion for the MNT

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21,000 per game in Miami and 15,000 per game in St. Pete. Way less than Orlando City, the other MLS teams, and even most NASL teams.

Yeah, but Florida's baseball teams are crappy. New york, Boston, and LA each average well over 35 per game and there are a lot of games.

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http://www.espn.com/mlb/attendance

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_...cer_attendance

Its not even close

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It actually looks very close. Given stadium sizes soccer is probably killing baseball.

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It actually looks very close. Given stadium sizes soccer is probably killing baseball.

What? Not even close. Total attendance for soccer last year was just over 3 million. Baseball was over 7 million. Come on. Then you have football and basketball which also dominate in attendance. Soccer is just no "on the radar" of the average sports fan and never will be. Kids with true athletic talent know this and seek out the better sports. Its just a fact.

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Those are total attendance numbers and there are many, many more baseball games in a regular season than in soccer--like ten time more.

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You f u c k i n g lost me when you put baseball as a real sport. GTFOH

Can you please name any US youth soccer player who as a high school senior signed a multimillion dollar contract with a multimillion dollar signing bonus? There were a bunch in the last two MLB drafts. Really good US male soccer players struggle to get scholarships because of Title IX and the fact that colleges don't view soccer as a sport worthy of full scholarships. Also, the best athletes go to sports that promise the biggest return. The reality is in sports like baseball, football or basketball if you are in the tiny percentage of elite players, then your reward will be far greater than what any elite male US soccer player can ever achieve in the USA.

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Those are total attendance numbers and there are many, many more baseball games in a regular season than in soccer--like ten time more.

But that's the point - baseball attracts many, many, more people to many, many more games. And the same dominance in attendance can be seen with football and basketball. It is a cultural issue - Americans just don't like soccer. We've all seen footage of Jack Nicholson and other stars sitting courtside at basketball games. We've all seen baseball players and NCAA teams go to the White House after winning the national championship. We all know who Babe Ruth is even though most of us were not alive when he played. Soccer is a foreign sport and on the men's side only the rich and upper class americans and kids whose parents are immigrants, play the sport. Its just not a part of the American psyche. When a basketball player flops everyone looks at him like a cheater - someone trying to get by on acting rather than talent. That's the way Americans think. But in every soccer league you can turn on a game and watch some tiny little guy barely get touched and then roll around on the ground fake grimacing and pretending like he's been hurt. And that's because in foreign countries that type of behavior is considered legitimate gamesmanship. We Americans just don't think that way.

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Let's be clear - the MEN'S team sucks. The Women's team has won time and again and defeated the world's best to do so. There is a simple reason the men's team sucks - and that is because soccer will never be a top tier sport here. Its for little rich white kids who can't compete at real sports like baseball, football, basketball or individual sports like swimming and track. If America's best athletes played soccer from a young age, if America supported college soccer like college football, if American sports fans generally cared about soccer, then the men's team would improve. Until then its best to play a foreign sport with foreign players.

That "other sports take the best athletes" theme is tired and untrue. We've got hundreds of thousands of boys playing soccer. It's about pay-to-play, development, identification and training. Friggin' Iceland with a national population smaller than many US cities (and many other small countries) do far better than we do. Better management from the top down, restructuring programs etc is what is needed

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MLS soccer is a blip on the sports radar. Yes there are certain groups of devoted fans, but relative to the majors in the US its fan base, viewership, attendance and revenues are pocket change. There's no doubt part of it is cultural - despite hundreds of thousands playing youth soccer, most will have dropped out of the sport by HS. Even among those who continue to play few will develop a life-long passion for it. When you grow up and your entire circle of family, friends, neighbors follow other sports it makes it very unlikely you will follow a sport no one else does. Without a fan/viewership base. big ad dollars and sponsorships won't follow. Without that clubs can't raise salaries to bring in better players to help raise interest. Yes soccer is growing in popularity and there is a much better ability to watch pro games than ever before (although part of that is the expansion of cable TV). Maybe one day it will overtake one of the Big 3, at least hockey for god's sake! But it's just not going to happen overnight.

Avg. Ratings / Avg #Viewers / Total US TV Rev
NFL 10 / 16.6m/ $7.2 b
NBA 4.5/ 7.3m / $2.7b
MLB 2.7 / 3.9m / $1.5b
NHL 1.1 / 1.6m / $200m
MLS .5 / .8m / $90m

[Unregistered]

That "other sports take the best athletes" theme is tired and untrue. We've got hundreds of thousands of boys playing soccer. It's about pay-to-play, development, identification and training. Friggin' Iceland with a national population smaller than many US cities (and many other small countries) do far better than we do. Better management from the top down, restructuring programs etc is what is needed

People have been saying that sh** for years. We've had restructuring for years, and that is still going on. ECNL, DA, etc. were all supposed to save men's soccer. Yet, the women's side is successful and are arguably the best team in the world - they won world cups and they won Olympic medals without that stuff. Why? Because the attraction to soccer for women and girls is as great as the attraction of other sports. Do you really think there are a bunch of men players who are completely awesome and capable of winning on a regular basis that are hiding from the USMT? No. The bottom line is this - the average American is not a soccer fan and never will be. The average American Dad will buy their son a football, baseball glove, or basketball because those are the sports he played growing up. No amount of restructuring will change the basic problem with soccer - Americans find it boring and just aren't interested.

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People have been saying that sh** for years. We've had restructuring for years, and that is still going on. ECNL, DA, etc. were all supposed to save men's soccer. Yet, the women's side is successful and are arguably the best team in the world - they won world cups and they won Olympic medals without that stuff. Why? Because the attraction to soccer for women and girls is as great as the attraction of other sports. Do you really think there are a bunch of men players who are completely awesome and capable of winning on a regular basis that are hiding from the USMT? No. The bottom line is this - the average American is not a soccer fan and never will be. The average American Dad will buy their son a football, baseball glove, or basketball because those are the sports he played growing up. No amount of restructuring will change the basic problem with soccer - Americans find it boring and just aren't interested.

That is the cultural piece - it doesn't mean that we can't do better with how we are developing the players we do have

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What? Not even close. Total attendance for soccer last year was just over 3 million. Baseball was over 7 million. Come on. Then you have football and basketball which also dominate in attendance. Soccer is just no "on the radar" of the average sports fan and never will be. Kids with true athletic talent know this and seek out the better sports. Its just a fact.

Well of course baseball has a higher total attendance. Did you even think before you posted that?

There are more MLB teams than MLS teams and each MLB team plays 162 games a year. So obviously total attendance numbers will be higher.

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Anyone in MLS must be looked at with a skeptical eye. If you are good then WTH are you doing in the MLS?

That's exactly what the Italian coach told Giovinco when he told him you're not good enough to play for Italy in last years EURO"s...

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Bruce Arena brought us to the quarterfinals where we were knocked out by a racist referee refusing to call a handball on the goalline.

and since that time, we have 2 wins in 11 games at the World Cup, one of them in the last minute thanks to Landycakes (v Algeria)

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Well of course baseball has a higher total attendance. Did you even think before you posted that?

There are more MLB teams than MLS teams and each MLB team plays 162 games a year. So obviously total attendance numbers will be higher.

I find it very telling that the NHL - which has a similar # of US teams as MLS Soccer (plus 7 more in Canada) - does far better.

The numbers posted above also don't take into account college bball and football which also gets huge numbers.