2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil Thread

[Bamspeedy]

Okay, so until MLS draws better than the NHL you won't acknowledge growth. Got it. That's a a unique system of benchmarks there. Personally, since I acknowledge that they started from zero and get further from it every year they are clearly growing, but that may just be my view, which may be skewed by my awareness of their television contracts, along with the fact that many leagues in other nations now have US television contracts.



And plenty of park and rec level baseball programs, basketball programs, and any other sport programs operate about the same. Those sports also have other more organized youth programs available, and hey, so does soccer...now.



This argument always cracks me up. Do you think this is a result of puberty, really? Little League baseball never saw it that way. They recognized that kids grow up and those who are really interested go play high school sports. Youth football sees the same thing. Surprise, so does soccer.



Apparently I live in a place with nothing but large high schools. Our local area has produced an Olympic track athlete, a legitimate star NBA player, a couple of made the team but not overly famous NFL players, and a handful of baseball players who made it to the majors, a couple of whom stuck for a while though they were never all stars. We have a current crop of kids going to college on soccer scholarships and I suspect we will have an MLS player in the fairly near future...because here soccer is actually as popular as the other sports, and a lot of our most athletic kids have recognized that there is less competition (for now) for soccer scholarships so they are starting to focus differently than they would have in the past.

Sure soccer has shown growth, but like has been said it's pretty slow. The headlines make it sound like soccer is on pace to be the most popular in 10 years.....but they've been saying it for decades. At this pace it will be 50 years or longer.

It's not necessarily puberty that causes the change, but there is a dramatic change in interest in soccer whether one is in kindergarten or high school. Yes, all sports see a decrease as kids get older, but soccer suffers the most. There never was a football program available for us (except pass,punt, kick competitions) until we got to high school, then almost all boys signed up for it.

Are you in the southeast? I had a cousin who lived in NC and soccer was supposedly big in his area (this was late 80s to early 90s). He eventually played on the US Olympic team.

 

[BirraImperial]

I may add that the US needs to give football the same importance as the other major sports. Plus a lot of American players should play overseas (Many already do). This would create a culture in which American children would watch their players perform abroad and look up to them.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Sure soccer has shown growth, but like has been said it's pretty slow. The headlines make it sound like soccer is on pace to be the most popular in 10 years.....but they've been saying it for decades. At this pace it will be 50 years or longer.

It's not necessarily puberty that causes the change, but there is a dramatic change in interest in soccer whether one is in kindergarten or high school. Yes, all sports see a decrease as kids get older, but soccer suffers the most. There never was a football program available for us (except pass,punt, kick competitions) until we got to high school, then almost all boys signed up for it.

Are you in the southeast? I had a cousin who lived in NC and soccer was supposedly big in his area (this was late 80s to early 90s). He eventually played on the US Olympic team.

I played in a youth football league forty years ago, so I don't think 'there never was a football program' is a universal thing...and I didn't say 'all sports see a decline', I just pointed out that youth programs outside the schools generally fall off the map at high school age because kids start playing on their school teams (or recognize they don't have the talent) instead of in youth programs, so the 'loss of interest at puberty' thing is an often cited but totally wrong statistic.

I live in a small California city (by local standards, meaning about a quarter million population), so it is true that I don't have much chance to observe any 'small school realities' and that does impact my perception. In my city we have two youth soccer programs (affiliated with AYSO and USYS, respectively) that fight over kids like two cats with a fishbone, and both seem to wind up with plenty. There is also a club team (lots of travel meaning constant fund raising issues, and fiercely competitive tryouts) with about 250 kids across all age brackets.

 

[BirraImperial]

Some World Cup humor:


Link to video.

 

[ThERat]

I am not too sure, if the many young 'event' fans that flock those outdoor screenings wouldn't be the same. E.g. you ask those girls how they felt Podolski was playing in the game against Algeria...

 

[Bamspeedy]

I played in a youth football league forty years ago, so I don't think 'there never was a football program' is a universal thing...and I didn't say 'all sports see a decline', I just pointed out that youth programs outside the schools generally fall off the map at high school age because kids start playing on their school teams (or recognize they don't have the talent) instead of in youth programs, so the 'loss of interest at puberty' thing is an often cited but totally wrong statistic.

I live in a small California city (by local standards, meaning about a quarter million population), so it is true that I don't have much chance to observe any 'small school realities' and that does impact my perception. In my city we have two youth soccer programs (affiliated with AYSO and USYS, respectively) that fight over kids like two cats with a fishbone, and both seem to wind up with plenty. There is also a club team (lots of travel meaning constant fund raising issues, and fiercely competitive tryouts) with about 250 kids across all age brackets.

When I took my stepdaughter to soccer practice in kindergarten there were probably about 40 kids there. On another field nearby was the middle school girls soccer team of about 6 students and 2 coaches.....that is what I mean by rapid decline of interest in soccer. We move to a smaller school and the only soccer programs are the summer park and rec. activities. Baseball might have 30 kids in kindergarten (tee ball), and by middle school still have 20.

Locally 250k we would not call that a small city. With higher concentrations of population that opens up All kinds of sport team opportunities.

The biggest paper around here distributes to several counties and all those counties together probably is around 250k. For football or baseball there are 6 conferences of 6-7 teams each. For soccer probably only the MVC conference consistently has soccer teams, the other conferences don't have any or only a few. And that is the girls teams, boys teams are pretty rare. Some schools have golf or tennis teams, but no soccer team.

http://lacrossetribune.com/sports/h...cle_a040c988-227f-11e3-88ac-0019bb2963f4.html

 

[Timsup2nothin]

The biggest paper around here distributes to several counties and all those counties together probably is around 250k.

Well, the point is that it takes a large population with a heritage of soccer and early exposure opportunities to produce a quality national team. The US can get to that large population without necessarily dragging everyone along. No disrespect, but Wisconsin's participation isn't a make or break thing.

In Los Angeles county the LA Galaxy are very popular. I doubt you could find a single high school that doesn't field a soccer team. Most 'parenting age' people who were raised in LA county had at least some childhood exposure to the game themselves, so they have at least a little something to pass on to their kids. And LA county's population is approximately the same as Wisconsin and Minnesota combined, with the population of Iowa living in the Orange county suburbs.

I would guess that other major population centers are in a similar situation, absent the influence the Galaxy has. Just those major population centers provide a huge player pool. However it takes time. I would guess the first generation of US kids who have widespread soccer influences among their parents are still just kids, even in LA County. They are growing up fast though.

 

[Kyriakos]

Nice hair But can Belgians really play football against serious teams?

And is Colonel Gaddafi a good player?

 

[Bamspeedy]

Well, the point is that it takes a large population with a heritage of soccer and early exposure opportunities to produce a quality national team. The US can get to that large population without necessarily dragging everyone along. No disrespect, but Wisconsin's participation isn't a make or break thing.

In Los Angeles county the LA Galaxy are very popular. I doubt you could find a single high school that doesn't field a soccer team. Most 'parenting age' people who were raised in LA county had at least some childhood exposure to the game themselves, so they have at least a little something to pass on to their kids. And LA county's population is approximately the same as Wisconsin and Minnesota combined, with the population of Iowa living in the Orange county suburbs.

I would guess that other major population centers are in a similar situation, absent the influence the Galaxy has. Just those major population centers provide a huge dplayer pool. However it takes time. I would guess the first generation of US kids who have widespread soccer influences among their parents are still just kids, even in LA County. They are growing up fast though.

LA county is the most populated county in the US. That is the other extreme to rural wisconsin. I think we need areas in between these extremes to give a better representation of the country.

But I did find some high school numbers, soccer being the #5 sport for boys and girls. The boys soccer total is higher than I would have thought but still dwarfed by football.

http://www.nfhs.org/content.aspx?id=5752

 

[Kyriakos]

Link to video.

 

[luiz]

Updated betting odds now that the quarters are all defined:

Brazil: 23.88%
Argentina: 17.06%
Germany: 17.06%
Holland: 14.93%
France: 10.54%
Belgium: 7.46%
Colombia: 6.89%
Costa Rica: 2.18%

 

[SamSniped]

Costa Rica: 2.18%

<hansolo>Never tell me the odds</hansolo> Vamos Costa Rica!

 

[J-man]

Argentina in 2nd place is ridiculous, given the way they've been playing.

 

[Mise]

Well it's betting odds so it's not just about the probability of winning, it's also about the demand for that particular bet.

 

[ThERat]

It's also the path to the final I assume.

Belgium looks like a tasty bet

 

[Mise]

Good point ^^

 

[BirraImperial]

<hansolo>Never tell me the odds</hansolo> Vamos Costa Rica!

Well, we kinda improved from being at 0.16% odds before the start of the cup

EDIT: Fun fact: Since France '98, every team that has eliminated Mexico in the Round of 16, has fallen in the quarterfinals...

 

[MacAttack]

Fun fact, no European team has won a World Cup hosted in the Americas. But Brazil won the 1958 Sweden World Cup when Pele was 17.

Will the European teams break this streak this time around? Or can Brazil, Costa Rica, Colombia, or Argentina hold them off?

What say you?

 

[Gucumatz]

Break. There hasn't been a SA world cup since the 70s

 

[Timsup2nothin]

LA county is the most populated county in the US. That is the other extreme to rural wisconsin. I think we need areas in between these extremes to give a better representation of the country.

No doubt. Again though I don't think we need a 'nationwide' view to address the problem of having a large population oriented towards soccer. Soccer is popular, and has been for a generation, pretty much everywhere in California, and California by itself can provide a bigger player pool to draw from than most countries. We just need to wait for these kids to grow up.

How many times does a hockey player hoist the Stanley Cup and not say "I've dreamed of this since I was a kid"? Our problem isn't lack of current interest, it's that our players who are of an age to play are the very exceptional people who grew up dreaming of going to Europe to play a game no one around them ever heard of. No one who grew up dreaming of playing in MLS is old enough to do it yet.

In time we will become a major soccer power, just through the same mechanisms that always apply. We have a huge pool of possible players, we throw tremendous amounts of money at recreational activities across the board, and even though generations of gluttony makes for a generally obese population it does produce the occasional freak of nature like Michael Phelps or LeBron James. Produce ten of those freaks who grew up dreaming of hoisting the World Cup and they probably will.