I like kicking the food basket on the floor towards the cashiers while on the long line at Trader Joe's.It's

Soccer basket and you lose points if you hit the person

in front of U.one gains points if you just skim the

back of their shoes without hitting em.

Americans don't care about soccer because we already have four other much more exciting sports where the contestants are allowed to use their arms and hands. As a quick reminder to all the soccer-lovers out there, those are the limbs that millions of years of evolution have designed for us to manipulate objects.

Watching a sport where you can't use your hands is like watching a cooking show where the chef can't use any knives or utensils.

Go to any park in this city this weekend and you'll find plenty of americans who care about soccer. Many of them are too brown or have accents to count as Americans to Glen Beck & Co, but their out there, playing. There's even alot of (gasp) caucasian, native born americans out there, too.

I'm bored by baseball and football. Whatever. Doesn't mean they're inherently uninteresting sports. Just means that I don't like 'em. Your argument about evolution is silly one. Did we evolve to skate around on ice with sticks? Or swing long pieces of wood? No. It basically come down to this - you don't like soccer. Fine. No one wants you to like it.

@kevd-

1. The number of people who play a sport has absolutely nothing to do with whether it is interesting to watch on TV. Take a poll of joggers- i bet most of them watch track and field only during the olympics. Go to bowlmor lanes and ask how many people there watch bowling on ESPN. Go to a bar and ask how many people there watch darts on Versus. etc. Remember, the question addressed by this post is whether we're a nation of soccer fans, not soccer players.

Also, side note- the reason so many kids in america play soccer anyway is that parents love it as a sport and push them towards it. The kids can run around, kick the ball back and forth for 90 minutes, and everybody's a winner. It's not like baseball where if you strike out a lot or drop fly balls, it's obvious that you suck. Pretty much any kid with a functioning set of legs and lungs can put up a serviceable performance in the midfield of a soccer game and feel like he's a decent athlete.

2. Sorry you're bored by baseball and football. But you're right, they're not inherently uninteresting. However, soccer is. It is the only game i know that not only accepts scoreless ties as an outcome, but has them quite frequently. That is the definition of an inherently uninteresting sport to me. Furthermore, basically the only exciting things that happen in soccer are 1. goals 2. blocked goals 3. near-misses on goal and 4. shake-and-bake plays where a player with the ball blows by a defender. And for most of the games i've seen in the world cup thus far, you could add up all four of those categories and count the total on two hands (er, should is say feet).

3. Speaking of feet, my argument about evolution does make sense. Your response, however, is incoherent. Maybe you didn't understand, so. let me break it down: Humans evolved to manipulate objects (like big sticks!) with our hands and propel ourselves around with our feet. Try driving a car, writing a note, typing a comment on gothamist or washing the dishes with your feet. You'd have a pretty hard time accomplishing anything, whatever you did accomplish would take a really long time, and you'd look like a retard in the process. See where i'm going with this? It's the same with sports, and that's why soccer is boring. it's a sport based on a completely unnatural action- fine motor control of an object with the feet.

Wow. You've really spent a great deal of time and effort coming up with reasons to not watch something. Most people would just... oh... I don't know... not watch the thing they don't like to watch.

mrguy, you and I - we do not like the same sports. That's where it begins and that is where it ends. It isn't complicated. All arguments about evolution, manipulation of objects, opposable thumbs, the value of ties, national character, childhood self-esteem, etc. etc. etc. are pointless. Because in the end baseball and football still bore me, and soccer you. I'm cool with that. Why aren't you?

They are all just past times, diversions. Absurd sets of rules established by people to enable them to compete against each other and maybe get a little adrenaline high.

(can we at least agree that the Lakers losing will be fantastic?)

Later, I got work to avoid because there is another game on. Likely a hi scoring, but tactically uninteresting game. But, those brazilians can do things with their feet that you or I will never be able to do with our so high evolved hands.

*they're out there*

I have to agree with many of the comments above. This particular post just trots out the same tired logic. Americans by in large don't like and/or understand soccer? Shocking!

MLS is still a relatively new league. Yes, it is basically a feeder league for our best young players and a place for older stars making the reverse strip. It has gotten better and will continue to do so, and eventually more fans will show up. Should 16K for a match seem bad? The Knicks and Nets, and sometimes Mets, often play to crowds smaller than that.

The biggest driver of interest happened a few years back when Fox Soccer Channel came to the US. All of a sudden, people could watch the world's best players every week in their own homes. They didn't have to go to a bar. If you don't think that has had an impact, compare the crowds this past weekend at bars watching the matches to 4 years ago. Even better, the massive number of people wearing US jerseys and cheering for our team rather than a European side was very encouraging.

Will it ever be a "big" sport in the US? Maybe not. But that doesn't matter. There are still a lot of people here who do like the sport and have made it possible for us to have a professional league and start producing decent talent to compete with the rest of the world.

If only 15% of Americans followed soccer, just 15%, we'd likely have more fans than England.

It's a source of endless annoyance for me that the rest of the world calls it "football", and properly so, and we have to give the "football" appendage to another game, so we have to invent some inane term for this game.

Why do minor dialectic differences cause you endless annoyance?

Do you get upset that we say "trunk" and not "lorry," or "hood" instead of "wellies?"

Does it bother you that Italians call it "calcio" or "kick?"

BTW - The term "soccer" is not originally american - it comes from Britain as a shortened form of Association football - to distinguish from Rugby football. As soccer (oh, I meant "football") became the more popular form there, shortening association hardly seemed necessary. So they got "football" and "rugby."

Here, a rugby football derived game became more popular that that got to keep the moniker "football" and the less popular sport had to keep the shortened form of association.

Oh, I didn't know the history and derivation of the term(s). It all makes sense now! Thank you, much appreciated.

My annoyance stemmed from the belief that the American use of the term "football" was a misnomer.

No prob.

I don't care what people call it - I just get tired of the British attitude that their word is inherently superior to any other word describing the same game.

I agree with JLRodP and SP -

Combine the two points and one should understand: soccer doesn't have a. the time and tradition in the US and b. friendly business model that suits playing it with hardly any commercials.

We're a nation that defined 'soccer mom'. It's only a matter of time for true success to be measured and achieved for our players and team.

Just wait till RUGBY starts to pick up momentum.

People... Major League Soccer is only 15 years old! Compare that to the century and a half the EPL, La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga, et al.

Give it some time. Soccer is a tradition sport where one grows up with the team, a la Yankees fan never imagining wearing a Red Sox cap because it will burn a hole.

Take for example MLS' Seattle Sounders FC, almost 40K people attend every match. They're new to the league but they aren't a new franchise. They have a 40 yr old tradition, and it has payed off so far.

Many of our best players (like Jozy) are playing in Europe, which makes our national team players better but leaves the MLB without them.

Ditto to person above who mentioned advertising. It's a real crime to show a commercial during a game. You could miss an important goal (as England's ITV did on Saturday). This used to be a no-no in Europe. Adverts were shown in the lower right hand corner of the screen.

I've seen a dramatic improvement over the past 24 years since my first World Cup in Italy in 1986 when I got hooked. The TV airing of Soccer in the United States is much better. There is less inane chatter and fewer commercials.

There was real excitement in New York last week when the first game aired. TV's were on anywhere that there was a Mexican, which is pretty much everywhere. At the bar across the street from my job, wide screen tv's faced the street, large crowds gathered and people honked their horns as they passed by.

Oh, and the Red Bulls now have a real stadium with real grass making games with teams like Tottenham possible. I believe that Astro Turf is a crime against nature. The Red Bulls don't suck so badly any more. Generally, I'm looking at a huge improvement. I'm happy with the way that things are going.

Er...MLS, not MLB. I hate baseball.

Sounds like you got picked last growing up.

The one and only reason why soccer has not made any inroads in American culture is because it is completely incompatible with our model of television broadcasting. Networks have no desire to ai these games, because they can't sell advertising the way they an with baseball and especially football, which have lot of breaks in the play durin which to air commercials. Why is the NFL the number one sports entity inth US? They designed the game specifically for TV. The ame IS television. Most innovations in live broadcasting technology have come from football. Soccer ha two 45 minute periods, plus stoppage minutes. It just doesn't work, it's a square peg in a round hole. So long as it continues to be shut out of TV, it will remain in the shadows. US sports fans would live to adopt a new sport, we're sports fiends. TV is the mainline into American culture, without that vehicle, soccer will never take off.

True, which also explained why the Olympic hockey games (except the gold medal game, I think) were shown on MSNBC and CNBC instead of NBC, because NBC couldn't bear to give up commercials in prime time.

TV goes where the ratings go.

If TV execs could sell NFL or MLB(which came before TV but also has plenty of breaks)- like numbers, the game of soccer would change to fit the medium.

But they can't because no one here cares.

Not even now, when we can watch the World Cup via cable or online.