Soccer at Heinz
- Thread starter upj87
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Certainly....average football player well over 200 pounds or proportional based on age equating to a small subset of all athletes....basketball...tall kids or highly skilled guard types with a very limited number of spots available on school teams...again a small subset......baseball...skills required glove work, hitting, pitching....Any of the kids doing these sports would only go with soccer if it was available outside of their season to stay in shape....Average soccer kid in high school about 5'8 to 5'11 who can kick and handle a soccer ball and probably falls outside of a lot of the parameters of the other sports mentioned and has been in the orange slice and juice box circuit since the age of 5 .Before soccer all these kids had nothing to do ...good for them.... ........touchy, touchy....
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highly skilled kicking and handling of a ball during 1-0 games....there...other than headers, did I miss something?....touchy, touchy...
im far from a soccer fan but I don't for a second question the skill sets needed.. My complaints about soccer are similar to hockey and im sure loyalists of each sport will mock me but both seem very "crowded" and would appease the "casual fan" and even become more mainstream if changes were made to rectify this spacing issue (eg. bigger ice like Olympic hockey and less players in soccer).
I never expect for soccer to make such a drastic move to get a few more American fans at the expense of 2 billion European/south American fans. Hockey on the other hand, should but old school neanderthals in Canada would have to swallow their pride.
I never expect for soccer to make such a drastic move to get a few more American fans at the expense of 2 billion European/south American fans. Hockey on the other hand, should but old school neanderthals in Canada would have to swallow their pride.
The easy and quick response is that it has nothing to do with athleticism any more. Kids these days are drinking the Capri suns up to the age of 8, but continue to play the sport because it's a sport that appeals due to the growth domestically. Sure, many don't stay and move onto other sports because we have many sporting options in this country. But kids are not realizing that they can't cut it on a baseball diamond and switching to soccer. Kids aren't walking off the basketball court and onto a soccer pitch because his point guard skills lack. Those kids won't succeed at soccer either. My suburban community is large enough that we have great athletes and great programs in plenty of sports. Some choose soccer, some hockey, some baseball, some basketball, some wrestle, some play football and some play Lacrosse. I have been involved in Youth soccer for 20 years. I have yet to see one kid who wasn't good enough to play the other sports play and excel at soccer. Not one.
I can respect anyone's opinion for liking or not liking a sport. I can't sit through 5 minutes of golf or NASCAR, but I recognize that these sports require a lot of skill to compete, especially at an elite level. The more upj87 posts, the more he reminds me of Ron Cook.
UPJ, where do you live? If you do not want to share I understand. But sometimes that has a lot to do with the mindset. Not to pick on a particular community, and I don't want to sound ignorant too, but I suspect at some schools, say Johnstown HS, you may have kids fall back to the soccer team for various reasons. Maybe the same can be said at Jeannette HS or East Allegheny. And you could probably check the yearly WPIAL standings to see how that works out for them.
is there some point in any of these posts that I said you did not need a lot of skill to compete I soccer? I started the whole damn thing over the fact that 44 thousand showing up for the world champions is considered historical and the soccer zealots where unleashed......
My son has been asked by multiple folks in football and baseball to play, and he sticks with soccer every time. Now, he plays a lot of goal, which gives him diversity within the game, but he says himself that baseball and football "bore" him because they are too stop and go. We took him to one of his friend's youth football games one time to see if he would be interested. He was not at all. Soccer is a great game for kids, and if it is played regularly, keeps kids in great shape. My son runs 5ks with my wife and I, and doesn't run much besides what he does on the soccer field. His fitness is predominately from playing soccer. For kids, you won't find a better sport in my opinion. It keeps them in shape. It is easy to teach the basics, but there are always more skills to learn. I used to be the "my kids will never play soccer" type. Now, I realize how foolish that opinion was.
Way off...Central Pa...Not a function of locale..function of age 50+...
My local high school went to the state semi finals last year... I went to the game to support the kids with an open mind. Big crowd. 2-1 game (aka soccer scoring slugfest) and you could have heard a pin drop in the stands for most of it....I have yet to meet a parent of a kid playing soccer and some other sport who enjoys watching the soccer games more than the basketball or baseball games their kid might be involved in...
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Serious question. If the games were usually 10-9 instead of 1-0, would you think the players are better?
Serious answer....If the games where 10-9 I might actually be awake to make that determination....Once again, where did I say these kids lacked talent and skill? It is not their fault that they play a boring spectator sport. I am sure it is competitive and a lot of fun for the participants...
Someone mentioned nascar.. I went to Daytona about 10 years ago and I can tell you, nascar is really exciting...... for about 20 minutes. I mean those first 20 minutes are really cool, especially if it's your first time. Unfortunately once you hear the engines and see the speed of the cars whizzing by you a few times, dear Lord does it get old quick. I actually have a buddy who not only watches nascar on tv but will listen to it on the radio. You guys are arguing about soccer, try listening to a redneck talk about cars turning left for 4 hours on the radio then get back to me about soccer..
true...but difference here is you will not have Ricky Bobby posting here telling you what an idiot you are for not getting it...I'm guessing though that Ricky Bobby doesn't have a kid racing for the Bethel Park Racing "Spirit" or "Wind" or some such nickname not ending with an "s" and won't be offended.....
No one is calling you an idiot for not getting it. People are calling you an idiot for making an obvious troll post for no reason, and two, making extremely ignorant posts in regards to the sport.
If you don't like it, that is fine. I really don't like the nba, nfl, and NHL for different reasons. However, I don't attack or demean people for not liking the sports, and certainly don't question the ability it takes to play those sports professionally.
Btw, I do love basketball and football, just not at the pro levels.
I don't get NASCAR. I don't enjoy it. But obviously people do. I wouldn't run to a message board the day after the Daytona 500 to tell people that I think it's boring.
Again I say--weird phenomenon with people.
25 years ago when I was college age, all my buddies and I put together a soccer team to play in a league for fun. We were all athletes (or thought we were) who didn't know a thing about soccer. We drank beer and then went to our games. Some of the other teams were made up of soccer players who only played soccer and sucked at every other sport. As it turns out, we won the league strictly due to our athleticism and perhaps the lack of it from the other teams.
That would not happen today. The sport has come too far in this country for that to happen. Today, most athletes who would attempt the same thing against soccer players would break their ankles the first time a real player went at them one on one.
That would not happen today. The sport has come too far in this country for that to happen. Today, most athletes who would attempt the same thing against soccer players would break their ankles the first time a real player went at them one on one.
We basically saw just that in the Delaware game last year. Thought I'd provide that for fodder (for both sides).I went to the game and saw the team that I rooted for score eight times while shutting-out the opposition.
We should all be so lucky to see something similar this fall......
As for me, not a fan, but never would begrudge those who are, or denigrate the players skills or effort. It definitely looks like hard work for sure.
I will submit this: the event at Heinz drew well for the novelty of it, not because of growing popularity of the sport. And while tying it to Pitt football in any way is very dubious, I did hear the requisite snide remark from a third party Co worker that they out drew what Pitt will get in our first game. Still, that ain't soccer's fault.
Selling the upper deck by row instead of yard line made it look fuller instead of that weird bell shape at some Pitt games.
Yea, I think its safe to say you can form of a soccer team at any HS with the most elite athletes in the school who DONT play soccer (ie football, basketball, baseball players) and they would be totally embarrassed by the school's soccer team. I'm talking like 10-0, maybe worse. The sport requires too much skill for anyone to just go out there and compete at a high level.
I remember when Chad OchoCinco, who apparently was a very good HS soccer player tried out for Sporting Kansas City as somewhat of a publicity stunt. They let him play in a reserve game and he was by far the worst player on the field. And that's an elite American athlete in the prime of his career who actually DID play soccer most of his life.
Yep. Give it time and the men's national team will start to catch the rest of the world, given our immense talent base in comparison to other countries that dominate the sport.
The shear number of youth soccer players now will eventually lead to a lebron James, Terrell Owens, mike trout, etc the athlete playing soccer.
That is when soccer will really explode here.
well we are waiting because, to be honest, a country of 350 million people losing to Jamaica and panama, that have a combined population less than the city of Philadelphia, is really quite embarrassing. Not gonna lie, I didn't even know panama was a country. I thought it was a piece of unclaimed land surrounding a canal. And didn't they tie Haiti? Haiti?? Im pretty sure that is nothing more than a tribe of witch doctors and their offspring, sitting around a campfire banging drums and sticking needles into dolls..
LOL! I always laugh at people who complain soccer is to low scoring, yet they have that Yinzer mentality where the prefer a 10-7 football game to a 49-45 game, because they want to see defense.
I hear you, baseball bores me so much, I have a hard time watching an entire AT BAT anymore, just too slow. lol
I actually don't see it that way as much as I hate to say it. Soccer is a "pay to play" sport. It's the kind of sport in which participation and creativity needs to be cultivated on the playgrounds and school yards of this country. But because everything is under a paid coaches supervision, the creativity will never come. We will never play the game the way Barcelona plays at the club level or Brazil does at the International level. Plus with everything being supervised in an organized league, you are not going to see the game grow in the inner cities like basketball. Baseball has recognized this same problem and has begun grassroots efforts to improve in this area. It's the unfortunate problem with sports these days.
They beat Haiti 2-1 I think? On the bright side, it does make for a better experience that these teams can compete with the USA. At least from the stand point of watching a game. I enjoyed watching the Gold Cup Tournament, and it's just USA, Mexico and Canada against a bunch of tiny poor countries, yet you can watch because it's not a slam dunk the big boys ae going to win every time.
I think this is what makes it more, not less, entertaining. The best teams still win in the end most of the time, but does an upset winner bother you? I actually like when a nobody/nothing team comes out of nowhere and snatches the crown from the golden boys that everybody expects will win. You want to make the NCAAs double elimination, but it's already the most popular sporting event in the USA, why mess with it? The uncertainty of the favorites winning is the reason why it's so compelling. That's why I want the NCAA football tournament to expand from 4 to 8 or even 16 teams, basically, I want there to be MORE of a chance that the subjectively perceived "best teams'' will lose.
wow, almost 80 posts for a silly soccer statement...geez, don't get me started on the craft-micro-brew beer snobs (birds of a feather with the soccer crowd in the take offense dept) .....touchy about their peach and tan bark infused suds they are....
I drink any kind of beer, but I do enjoy foreign beer or microbrew. And there's no beer worse than Coors Light, the "baseball" of American beers, boring and bland. lol.
This is a bingo......
They are touchier than baseball numbers folks....
I had completely forgotten about this thing and when I saw the tease leading up to it on the news that night.....thought maybe it was a Jonas BROTHER S Concert or something like that....
But it was cool Pittsburgher' s showed up to support the local...
Understand your view but as an admitted front runner fan I like to minimize (you can't totally eliminate it) the luck factor's influence in outcomes. I just perceive it to be way too important in soccer vs most popular US sports.
