WI Soccer Does Not Become the World Game?

..Sort of like Rugby for people scared to play without body armour, dumbed and slowed down to meet the needs of US TV stations for commercial breaks every ten minutes, I believe.

Realistically, if Merkan Futbol stood a chance as a soccer replacement then *someone* other than Americans would play it as more than a novelty.

Nah, I've played both, and wearing of pads just makes you want to hit someone that much harder.
 

amphibulous

Banned
As far as toughness goes you Rugby players might lose more teeth and get more sweet looking cuts and bruises, but the potential for big hits and big injuries is multiplied when you add that many pound of solid plastic polymers and metal to ripped out humans.

I don't think you quite understand how protective gear works...

Modern US football's safety problem probably has a lot to do with the short bursts of play that allow TV ads. These allow be-muscled giants who wouldn't have the endurance to play Rugby to hurl themselves at each while watchers who are almost equally as heavy (but not at all be-muscled) view the spectacle on television and eat fructose infused snack food.
 
From watching the 6 nations rugby recently and the superbowl, Rugby is a million times a better game than American football. BTW it was nice to see Ireland come away from Paris without a defeat for once!:eek:
 
Gridiron (both US and Canadian) and Rugby are my personal favorites, and I would love a world in which either one supplanted soccer as the main international sport.

Rugby and American football are similar, in that anyone who is familar with the basic concepts of one can fairly quickly figure out the basic concepts of the other. I've watched American football since I was a kid and occasionally played pickup rugby games while in college.

They are both excellent models of organized warfare, which makes them especially cool. But there are some instructive differences:

Rugby is more human (you can actually tell those are human beings out there). It is also much more fast paced without play stopages. But like gridiron, the team on offense must obtain intermediate objectives or have to go on defense. It's like an individual battle. Fast, violent, and great fun to both play and watch. Thank of it as a "Braveheart" battle.

Gridiron is less a war-like game as a war metaphor. Players are armored and their roles extremely specialized. Players are less people than they are specialized units. The play stoppages between downs allow each subsequent play to be planned - usually by coaches on the sideline wired to other coaches in the pressbox. There are countless intermediate goals that must be obtained as a team drives to score. I'm sure some will argue, but I consider Gridion by far the most cerebral of the team sports that stemmed from round-ball kicking football. Its rules are extremely complex, the roles of individual players are extremely specialized, and its slow place allows the spectator who wants to to revel in the decision making processes of the coaching staffs.
 
Well as much as I like to bash soccer, I find it excessively boring, and the culture that surrounds it causes me to just roll my eyes, I don't think this WI could be pulled off. The utter simplicity of the game means it was inevitable that it would become the 'world game'. At it's most basic, you're running around chasing a ball, a fun little game that kids naturally play anyway.

Now a more interesting WI would be to replace soccer now. We live in a world that is more prosperous, a world that has access to and influenced by many different cultures. What sport could conceivably replace soccer now?

My top three: hockey, Canadian football, and curling are out. Hockey is my favourite, but it is the most equipment intensive and building intensive sport, especially for those that live in warm climates. The same for curling which requires less equipment but still needs a specialized enviroment to able to play. Canadian football would need the Americans to suddenly adopt Canadian rules and field size. That's not going to happen.

Realistically baseball and basketball are the only two that have a shot at it. Both are fairly simple at it's heart, doesn't require special enviroments. Can be played year round in warm climates. I like baseball, not a fan of basketball, so I know which one I rather root for...
 
Zoomar,
Sport is warfare by another means! Look at the soccer war - Honduras v El Salvador and the Hungary V Soviet Union waterpolo final 1956.
 
With the Euro 2012 competition ( European international soccer championships ) on the way, I find it impossible to imagine that a European championship in any other sport eg Basketball, handball or volleyball could generate anything like the level of pre tournament excitement that this is doing. Similarily for the continental soccer championships in South America and Africa v the other sports!
 
More people play cricket in New York than in the UK.
I would be interested in hearing a source for this!
That sounds very odd given that the USA are not a top cricket playing nation by any manner or means, that the population of the UK is substantially bigger than New York and that while there was a lot of talk about rugby overtaking soccer as the main sport in England post RWC 2003 victory, cricket would always have been a more likely prospect however remote to do that. Though, as an aside comment, Rugby has a possibility of usurping soccer as the most played sport in Ireland!
I think before the emergence of baseball, cricket could have possibly been the major sport played in the USA as it was in Ireland before the formation of the GAA. Cricket is certainly a growing sport in Ireland today! Afghanistan are also emerging as a decent cricket playing side, a lot of their players got familiar with the game while in Pakistan. They would probably beat the USA in an international cricket match!
 
Football, also called soccer, is the most popular game on the planet. It is played in almost every country on earth. It is difficult to point out another game that can be termed as second in popularity. Games like Field Hockey, Basketball, Handball, Volleyball etc. are simple like Football, but whether they can ever get the popularity of Football is doubtful. Tennis, though popular, is not a team game. I think Cricket is a popular game, though far behind Football in popularity, can become more popular in the absence of Football.
 
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