Soccer in America: Why World Cup Enthusiasm Won't Translate to the MLS

If the rest of the world calls the NFL “American Football”, then does that make soccer Un-American?

Every four years, the World Cup gets American attention to focus on soccer for one month. The U.S.’s Round of 16 match against Ghana pulled in almost 15 million viewers, the most for a men’s match since the ‘94 games were held in Chicago.

The World Cup is a phenomenon though. Just like pole vaulting or swimming, it’s something I really only want to see about twice a decade. To counteract the hype, I’ve created a countdown of the top five reasons professional soccer will never achieve mainline success in the States.

5.  Counting Up to 90...ish

This is a countdown for a reason. When you count down, you build up anticipation, drama. The same is true for sports. At the end, every play matters that much more because you know when the game is going to end. This certainty is what allows American Football to have the hook-and-ladders and Hail Mary’s we remember forever. 

Yet in an era where we have stopwatches capable of measuring time to the millisecond, soccer has decided that instead of tracking the length of the game, they’ll just guesstimate.

“Hey, when’s they game over”? 

“Oh I don’t know, 3 minutes-ish”. 

What? Seriously? It’s time to keep time and count down to zero.

4.  Penalty Kicks

During penalty kicks, world-class goalies literally just have to guess a side and dive. I know I explained above that soccer likes guessing and we all know just how much they like diving, but come on—make it at least somewhat fair. Winning a game by cutely tapping a little lob right up the middle while the hopeless goalie just prays you miss doesn’t really do it for me.    

I liken taking a penalty in terms of ease to shooting free throws. However, in a sport where the winning team averages less than two goals a game, that’d be like awarding 25 points for each free throw. Do that and everyone but Shaq will pass Wilt’s scoring title in week.

But don’t get me wrong; I love the idea of a penalty shootout. I'm frankly in favor of eliminating the entire match and just go straight to PK’s. But let's move it back a few yards or something and make the keeper relevant. Hell, if it’ll make the rest of the world happy, we can move it back a few meters instead.

3.  No Commercials

For fans, one of the best things about soccer is that its not interrupted by commercials.  Economically, one of the worst things about soccer is that there is no good time to interrupt it with commercials.

Think about the impact of commercials in sport.  Not only do they provide funds and profits, but they have become entwined into the fabric of the sports.  On the Monday after the Super Bowl, more than the game, the water cooler talk is all about the commercials. 

“Did you how good Peyton Manning was last night?” 

“Yeah, but did you see his new MasterCard commercial, that was hilarious.” 

(Seriously, they are good... see for yourself, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6mfDJ02VCY).

But more to the point, ad revenues make free television, max contracts and well, the American dream, possible.

The Super Bowl’s ad revenue in particular looks more like the GDP of a small nation than a three hour event. Seriously, at about $213M it was bigger than the GDP of both Kiribati and of São Tomé and Príncipe (no, I’ve never heard of them either, but Wikipedia told me they’re nations and that’s good enough for me). Bottom line though, without commercials, networks won’t carry professional soccer, and without networks, professional soccer is untenable in America.

2.  It's F*#*king Boring

There is a reason that Englishmen get stinking drunk before heading out to the pitch to watch the game.  To find a full soccer match entertaining, you have to be that drunk.    

To put this in perspective, the first half of the Spain/Germany semifinal was so boring that I actually contemplated doing my work instead (of course I didn’t, but that’s really another story for another day). So stop changing the ball, remove a couple guys and open the game up. No one wants to see a 0-0 tie. 

1.  Ties

Speaking of ties, I hate them. The only thing worse than a tie is a 0-0 tie. I can hear the naysayers in my head right now saying, “Wait, you’re a hypocrite, football—American football—has ties too”. Yeah, that’s true, but they’re so rare though that All Star quarterback Donovan McNabb didn’t know they existed just two years ago when a game he played in ended in a tie. To contrast that with soccer, America played in two ties in the three game group stage. That’s at least two too many by my count.

The worst part is that ties aren’t necessary in soccer. Penalty shootouts (as hopefully modified as described above) can solve the dilemma. FIFA can then just award the team losing a shootout the one point they would get for the tie anyways and then give the winning team two points. I never understood why teams only get a third for a tie what they get for the win.

The beauty is these are fixable problems. However, unless the MLS is open to making some of these changes and probably more, I don’t think it can capitalize on the World Cup excitement and is probably doomed to end up with fewer fans than the WNBA.