Soccer's peculiar appeal.Byline: The Register-Guard By one important measure, soccer is the biggest sport in the United States United States, officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. : Eighteen million Americans play it, more than participate in any other team sport. Of course, those players are third-grade girls and boys, not professional athletes with multimillion-dollar contracts. Soccer is a game that many Americans play but few watch, whereas basketball, baseball and football - sports whose roots and branches are in the United States - are games that many Americans watch but few play. The fact that Americans don't watch soccer is being revealed once again as World Cup competition unfolds in Japan and South Korea. When the ratings are reported, the United States' opening game against Portugal won't be anywhere near the top 100. (The United States won 3-2, in case anyone's interested.) Even Senegal's stunning defeat of defending World Cup champion France was eclipsed in this country by the National Basketball Association's conference finals. While Senegal celebrated an impromptu A Windows query and reporting tool from Cognos with support for a large variety of databases. It is capable of generating cross tabs for spreadsheets such as Excel, Lotus for Windows and Quattro Pro for Windows. national holiday and France reeled in shock, Americans got ready for game seven of the Lakers-Kings series. Americans can get interested in watching soccer - it happens when a U.S. team gets on a hot streak. Forty million Americans watched the U.S. women's soccer team win the World Cup in 1999. Not only did the women beat China on the field, they beat the NBA finals The NBA Finals is the championship series of the National Basketball Association. The team winning the Eastern Conference Finals earns one of the two berths in the championship round, with the other going to the team that wins the Western Conference Finals. in the television ratings Television ratings may refer to:
But American fans' interest in soccer has not been sustained. Maybe that's just as well. American indifference Indifference Antoinette, Marie (1755–1793) queen of France to whom is attributed this statement on the solution to bread famine: “Let them eat cake.” [Fr. Hist. allows other countries to dominate the sport - its powerhouses are nations in Latin America Latin America, the Spanish-speaking, Portuguese-speaking, and French-speaking countries (except Canada) of North America, South America, Central America, and the West Indies. and Western Europe Western Europe The countries of western Europe, especially those that are allied with the United States and Canada in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (established 1949 and usually known as NATO). , with African countries coming on strong. In soccer, the rest of the world can enjoy the spectacle of the world's sole superpower being bested by the likes of Iran, as occurred in the World Cup in 1998, while in the United States such defeats pass largely unnoticed. And while the world is riveted by the competition in Japan and South Korea, girls and boys all over the United States are playing a game they have probably never watched on television - not a bad arrangement at all. |
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