Plus, don't they have 45-50 men per squad, rather than the paltry 16 that make up a soccer squad?I guess I just must prefer funny-shaped balls
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David Beckham agrees to LA Galaxy move
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Plus, don't they have 45-50 men per squad, rather than the paltry 16 that make up a soccer squad?
53 players on the roster with 8 on the practice squad (not allowed to play in a game and can be signed at any time by another team) with 45 activated for each game - excluding the emergency quarterback who can only play if two QBs ahead of him go out of the game.
There are 11 players for each team on the field at any one time - the offense, the defense and special teams. Some (usually non-marquee) players play either offense or defense and special teams. Special teams is usually full of young players who fill in on offense/defense occasionally. It's relatively unusual in the NFL for a guy to play offense and defence. Troy Brown of the Patriots is the only current player who springs to mind.
The offensive line, the QB and the top 2 receivers usually play every offensive down. The running backs, tight ends and other receivers will change in and out depending on what play is being called and what skills are most required - route-running, catching, blocking
The top two corners and linebackers will usually play each defensive down. The defensive line will play most of them unless there's a clear short-yardage running down where they'll put the run-stuffers in rather than those who aim to get to the QB. The other linebackers/corners and safeties will split time depending on what play the defensive co-ordinater thinks the other team are going to play.
Thanks for explaining all that. I wouldn't like to be the person in charge of arranging travel and accommodation for that lot plus their staff...
Lets face it, Americans think soccer is stupid because we don't have scores that need a calculator to work out and we don't have to have a winner.
We (as in non-americans) think American football is stupid because they have huge teams, players can only do one job and are not on the pitch half the time and they use so much padding they could fill your average sofa shop!
I think the problem is how the game is exposed in the resective countries. In the UK the most we hear about American football is that they use loads of padding and they have players called "the fridge"! He came over to play rugby league for Bradford Bulls a few years ago and wasn't too good if I remember correctly!
And in the US they get David Beckham and all his excess baggage, what sort of impression does that give them. At the end of the day American football is a minority sport in the US for a reason, maybe they just dont like it!
We (as in non-americans) think American football is stupid because they have huge teams, players can only do one job and are not on the pitch half the time and they use so much padding they could fill your average sofa shop!
I think the problem is how the game is exposed in the resective countries. In the UK the most we hear about American football is that they use loads of padding and they have players called "the fridge"! He came over to play rugby league for Bradford Bulls a few years ago and wasn't too good if I remember correctly!
And in the US they get David Beckham and all his excess baggage, what sort of impression does that give them. At the end of the day American football is a minority sport in the US for a reason, maybe they just dont like it!
I don't think David James did too well either when he tried his hand at American Football a few years back, if memory serves...
You hit the nail on the head. The move to L.A. is so perfect for Beckham. L.A. of course has a massive Hispanic population, and DB's Spanish should be quite decent after playing in Spain for several years. We're talking a marketing bonanza here across all of Latin America.
Along the same lines, I think New York or New England should pick up Brazilian players (both have very significant Brazilian populations). African, Middle Eastern, or maybe even Italian players should also do well here in New York (you should have seen Little Italy after Italy's Cup win). Each team in the league should be able to pick up one big-name player under the Beckham rule. And if financial success follows, then the salary cap would increase and maybe the league could attract even more players.
So maybe Beckham's dream of establishing soccer as a big-time sport in the U.S. isn't so far fetched. For at least the next decade or so, though, it would primarily be a "niche" market catering primarily to immigrant communities. That doesn't mean it can't be huge, though. For example, NASCAR is a huge sport that is popular everywhere, but is definitely disproportionately popular in the South. Similiarly, I think soccer can become somewhat popular everywhere, but really have its popularity base in the West/Southwest and Northeast where immigrant populations are highest.
I'm enjoying the discussion about the popularity of different sports in different populations (both abroad and among immigrants in the states). My personal theory is that people have to play the game in order to really understand it and appreciate it. People have to play the game in order to really enjoy professional competition in that sport. If you don't play it yourself, it takes a lot of extra work to learn to love the game.
There are lots of people in the US that don't like to watch baseball. The pace is too slow (especially when compared to basketball), etc. But part of the problem is that they don't grasp the subtleties of the game or have any appreciation of the strategy involved. While many are waiting for the next pitch so they can see if someone hits it or not, baseball fans are thinking about the runners on the corners, what would they do with only 1 out (hit and run, steal, bunt, etc.) how good is the arm in right field, and thinking about pitch selection on each and every count, and on and on and on.
Very few people have that appreciation of soccer (I'm just going to keep using the American term so I don't confuse with American football) so it's hard for them to watch a professional game and appreciate the sport. I watched a lot of World Cup games this last year and I would get excited or sit in amazement at how well players could trap the ball coming from any direction, angle or speed straight to their feet. That's a subtlety that I think would escape most Americans, but that really added to my enjoyment of watching the game.
So what to do in a country where millions play the game as kids and then give it up before they really learn the strategy and tactics of the high level game? That appreciation of the subtleties, of the tactics of the game can be learned - just like it is for other pro sports in the US - but it takes some other interest to get you through the first few games and good commentators to explain the game to you.
One of the biggest benefits to American football has been the telestrator which allows the commentators to draw on the screen so that the television audience can SEE what they are talking about and where players are moving during the play. Soccer is at a disadvantage because the flow of the game doesn't allow for many interruptions to show replays or go back and EXPLAIN to the audience what just happened and why it was important.
There are lots of people in the US that don't like to watch baseball. The pace is too slow (especially when compared to basketball), etc. But part of the problem is that they don't grasp the subtleties of the game or have any appreciation of the strategy involved. While many are waiting for the next pitch so they can see if someone hits it or not, baseball fans are thinking about the runners on the corners, what would they do with only 1 out (hit and run, steal, bunt, etc.) how good is the arm in right field, and thinking about pitch selection on each and every count, and on and on and on.
Very few people have that appreciation of soccer (I'm just going to keep using the American term so I don't confuse with American football) so it's hard for them to watch a professional game and appreciate the sport. I watched a lot of World Cup games this last year and I would get excited or sit in amazement at how well players could trap the ball coming from any direction, angle or speed straight to their feet. That's a subtlety that I think would escape most Americans, but that really added to my enjoyment of watching the game.
So what to do in a country where millions play the game as kids and then give it up before they really learn the strategy and tactics of the high level game? That appreciation of the subtleties, of the tactics of the game can be learned - just like it is for other pro sports in the US - but it takes some other interest to get you through the first few games and good commentators to explain the game to you.
One of the biggest benefits to American football has been the telestrator which allows the commentators to draw on the screen so that the television audience can SEE what they are talking about and where players are moving during the play. Soccer is at a disadvantage because the flow of the game doesn't allow for many interruptions to show replays or go back and EXPLAIN to the audience what just happened and why it was important.
That was true 25 years ago when I was a kid too. I played soccer for several years as a kid. At some point I just concentrated on baseball and other hobbies instead. It's the leap from child soccer players to adults that hasn't happened.
At least they've got rid of shootouts to decide drawn games.
It could be argued that American Football is franchised and lacks relegation or promotion, and that game has flourished in spite of this. But as I mentioned in a previous football-related thread I was very surprised to hear how the ownership of clubs works, with some teams sharing owners. Outside of the States (in Europe certainly) there are regulations in place to prevent such things, but in the States it's accepted.
MLS is the only U.S. league that I know of where owning multiple teams is allowed. They made an exception because there weren't that many tycoons that wanted to spend any money on a soccer team. In the early years the league thought stability was more important than conflict of interest. And the league controls all the player transactions anyway.
Somehow all of our leagues have managed to prosper without it. From what I can tell, there are two reasons why promotion/relegation never caught on here:
1) The first organized pro sports league in the U.S. was the National League (baseball), which lost its amateur status long before most countries had professionalized. The high cost of paying players made keeping the same teams in the league important because if a costly team got relegated, they'd have to sell all their players or lose huge amounts of money. The NL was run like a cartel, and future leagues followed similar paths. Today's NFL is the ultimate cartel league.
2) The teams in US sports leagues are much farther apart than in Europe. Last time I checked, all of England was the size of a small- to medium-sized US state. Travel was a major expense 120 years ago, and a team that was much farther away from the others would have a competitive disadvantage. (This is part of the reason that baseball didn't arrive on the west coast until 1958, when air travel became more cost-effective.) If they had no control over who would join the league from year to year, they wouldn't have much cost certainty.
And if you're thinking that all this is a long-winded way of saying that the team owners here are greedy and anti-competitive, then you're right.
Not sure that's entirely true since revenue-sharing (from TV, merchandise etc) is one reason that some of the small-market teams can afford to have a successful team. Compare that to the UK where unless you have a millionaire owner and a massive fanbase, you've got little hope of competing on an even field regularly. Green Bay, for example, wouldn't be a competitive team over here.
That's true now, but it wasn't when the leagues were forming. The distance between teams isn't a factor anymore either. All I was saying is that back when pro leagues were being established here, there were reasons that promotion/relegation didn't catch on, and once team owners had their team in the big time, they worked together to make sure they all stayed at the top.
There was an article on Slate.com a couple years ago that pointed out that European soccer leagues are ruthlessly capitalist compared to American leagues, which are downright socialist by comparison. Pretty much the opposite of what you would guess.
That is exactly my point. We have millions playing the sport as kids, but there has been nothing to keep them involved as adults. I blame this on the lack of a professional league worth following. Sure, there are issues around the appeal to spectators when compared to the action of basketball, the intensity of football, and the tradition of baseball but that has not diminished scoccer's appeal in other parts of the world.
Beckham has a real chance to make an impact on getting people to actually watch the sport because the networks and ESPN will be able to get advertisers to sign up for Galaxy games and show those matches on the channels and in the time slots that people actually watch. Hopefully some of those people that tune in to watch because of the hype will stick around and MLS will continue to grow.
I agree that they need something to build momentum. There's a catch-22 here, that they can't build support unless they can spend more on good players, which they can't do unless they have better ratings and attendance, which requires better media exposure, and they don't have a good enough product to get that yet. I personally think (as I mentioned in other comments) that the biggest problem is how saturated the sports media is already. All of the other big North American sports were established before the media landscape was so crowded, so they just naturally belonged in it.
Soccer just has a really uphill battle there. I hope they can build something here, but it's just that people have said that before.
One reason that Soccer hasn't taken off in this country is that most Americans can't follow it. I have tried and honestly I am bored to tears by it. I think that is the reason that it will never become a big sport here. With all the other high energy sports here there is no room for soccer.
A lot of Europeans say the exact same thing about baseball. It's only boring to them because they don't know everything that's going on, the history between the players and teams, the strategies involved, and the pacing of the game. You haven't grown up watching soccer and living within the culture of it, and it's the same situation for them and baseball.
I've always been a casual baseball/football fan, and as usual for an American I played youth soccer for 6 years or so (I couldn't run for a whole game and was more physical so I played defender/keeper, and sucked).
I've been following the Premier league for a season and a half now, and I'm just getting to the point where I think I'm beginning to wrap my brain around all the different competitions (Carling Cup, FA Cup etc.) and positions on the field. Some of the things I like about the sport are the uninterrupted flow of the game, the promotion/relegation/league system setup, and the global reach of competition, among other things.
I've been following the Premier league for a season and a half now, and I'm just getting to the point where I think I'm beginning to wrap my brain around all the different competitions (Carling Cup, FA Cup etc.) and positions on the field. Some of the things I like about the sport are the uninterrupted flow of the game, the promotion/relegation/league system setup, and the global reach of competition, among other things.
i can assure you it's the same reversed... or even worse for baseball or basketball
and american football simply has too many breaks ... (and too many players)
i still remember in school where we had a teacher who happend to be a former basketball player and thus we played an awful lot of basketball
but we played so uninspired and completely unmotivated every single time that no game lasted longer than 10 minutes and it ended with the teacher screaming at us
(our class was 3 times football champion of our school ..in the fourth year we failed in the final)
americans like to make sports statistics which simply don't really make a lot of sense with soccer, having made most shots on the goal isn't much worth if you still lose every single game
edit:i mainly played in defensive roles as well though i never played in a club .. only in school/free time .. but we had enough good players ... later i really became a good sweeper/defensive midfielder also played more offensively over the sides
This will probably sound crazy to some of the diehard footballers here, but I think my longtime devotion to baseball makes it easier for me to follow soccer. While many sports are very complex to coach and play (American football is incredibly complicated), most don't require much effort or thinking to watch. I think both soccer and baseball do. Both are made up of nuances that the casual fan misses entirely, with small tactical plays paying off in the long run, bold gambles creating big turning points, ancient unspoken rules that fans want to preserve even when they no longer make sense.
I similarly only started following the Premier League recently. And I'm also getting a handle on all the other tournaments that are going on. (I've decided that the UEFA Cup is a loser league that should be dispensed with, like the NIT in college basketball.) One thing that regularly strikes me when I watch the games on FSC is that the entire crowd is always in the game. In most US sports, in most games, that's not the case (although college football and basketball come closest, I think.) Sure, there are many devoted fans in a stadium, but a large number are showing up just for entertainment and have to be prompted to cheer.
I've also noticed that in some ways the broadcasts are similar to ours. Some announcers are far better than others. Some have apparently made a career of pointing out the obvious, like narrating the replay as we see it. (John Madden is our worst offender over here.) They also have a dozen camera angles of every play and dissect them ad nauseum. And they also use flashy graphics and peppy music to imply that each game has the drama of life or death.
I am mildly excited by the prospect of Becks moving across the sea. I live in a Beckham-saturated country and my love of football started about 6 years ago thanks to Becks. I retained my loyalty to Manchester United after his move of course but I always had a soft spot for him. Partially because you always have a soft sport for your first sporting hero but also because I don't understand the stick that he gets.
Becks was one of the driving factors in making the EPL the largest League here and I think he has an excellent chance of doing it in the US and A. I'm booking my flights for 2008 just for one last chance to see those famous freekicks.
Becks was one of the driving factors in making the EPL the largest League here and I think he has an excellent chance of doing it in the US and A. I'm booking my flights for 2008 just for one last chance to see those famous freekicks.
I've tried several times, and I just can't get interested when nothing happens for hours. Just loads of running.
Although, I suppose it's the same with baseball to other countries... like the equivalent of me marveling at a no-hitter and someone from europe saying "that game was so boring, no one even got a hit!"
in schools around here a member of your own team throws the ball for hitting since the game would be too boring elsewise
also tennis balls are actually used since nobody has gloves
we very often used tennis rackets in the lower grades instead of the real ones since nobody was able to hit those balls (thrown by your own teammate)
and how many sports get actually tellvision coverage around here ? football and alpin skiiing (and some ski jumping + smaller amount of nordic skiing)
compared to that the MLS is doing quite fine in the US with their big competition
ironically american football actually gets some good coverage in austria because one of the sports announcers has an american father and thus some NFL games are broadcasted live at night.. and they still continue to explain all the rules over and over again
meanwhile the austrian league doesn't even get to show 1 game
Just out of interest, which country is it you live in kristiano?
Baseball has been mentioned quite bit in recent posts, and us UKish types not getting it – it actually used to be a very popular sport over here, believe it or not. We had a flourishing league leading up to the Second World War – in fact, a lot of football teams had baseball clubs attached to them, including aloofman's adopted Tottenham Hotspur. Hull's team won the championship in 1937.
wtf Los Angeles has a soccer team? never heard of the galaxies, and where did they find 150 mil?
Baseball has been mentioned quite bit in recent posts, and us UKish types not getting it it actually used to be a very popular sport over here, believe it or not. We had a flourishing league leading up to the Second World War in fact, a lot of football teams had baseball clubs attached to them, including aloofman's adopted Tottenham Hotspur. Hull's team won the championship in 1937.
Boy, the sun really did set on the old empire, didn't it?