Why do people hate Soccer/Futbol? (Topic 4 years old)

Hooliganism and twisted loyalty are common by-products of vs. sports. Picking, or feeling like you belong to one side. It's war to those types of people.

I am a person with strong moral values who very much enjoys football and doesn't entertain those aspects. I'm not a weird egotist with disgusting tendencies. A lot of the footballers I have respect for are also clearly very nice people: Ronaldinho, Kompany, Totti, etc.

It differs from person to person. I would never, ever allow myself to have such judgmental opinions about people based on whether they like a sport, but based on their behaviour, beliefs, ideals, opinions on important issues, etc.

Baseball and cricket were my favourite to actually play, though, because smacking a ball cleanly with a bat, or slinging balls quickly at fools, are the most satisfying feelings IMO.

@cikame: "Not all" applies for everything in live just replace football fans with Muslims, you get my point. And British tabloids are the worst.

There just isn't enough happening minute-to-minute for football to be interesting to watch, in my opinion. Games can stretch for 90 minutes without anyone scoring; unless a team is wracking up injuries or yellow/red cards, you could have started watching that game an hour and a half late and not missed anything. Compare this to a game where teams consistently earn points (like basketball or baseball); even if a game is low-scoring or slow, there's a sense of consistent progress where every quarter/inning has an inarguable effect on the final outcome of the game.

I'll give football credit, though; at least the clock keeps moving. US Football is the absolute worst spectator sport. For every minute of play, there are like 10 of downtime for some reason.

Why I hate it? Because there is so *bleeping* much of it. I live in Norway and just tend to call it soccer to annoy a few of my British friends who are into it, but on tv here the sports news might as well just be called Soccer News as there's 90% soccer and maybe 10% other sports at times. It's also spread out across like 10 different channels because of national leagues, British leagues, German leagues, UEFA cup or whatever the hell all of those cups and leagues are called, so at any given point there is almost a guarantee that some regular show I want to watch is taken out because of some damn soccer game that has about zero relevance to any Norwegian other than some fringe fans.

I also find the fans and the players just obnoxious, at least here the players come across as primadonnas who roll over in pain as soon as a gust of wind hits them too hard in the chest before faking a limp off to the side if they don't get someone on the opposing team a yellow or red card from their obvious over acting.

So, yea, soccer is a sport that oversaturates everything the same way Nintendo oversaturated their Direct during E3 with Smash stuff. If you're not a fan of it you just end up getting, at best, annoyed by how bloody much there is of the crap.

I can't say that I can relate since the sport itself is pretty innocuous outside of what it represents for people that are really into it. So, people who hate on soccer/football just seem lake crazy "a hamburger is a sandwich" people.

As an American, here is my take on soccer/football:

Other have mentioned this, but soccer/football is incredibly popular with school-age children in the US. Anecdotally, in the various places that I have lived in the US, it was by far the most popular sport, with the most clubs available. I think this probably has much to do with the lower barrier of entry regarding cost.

Having a son who plays soccer/football on the school team, I was surprised to learn that most of his teammates do not have any interest in watching soccer on TV, or even playing FIFA or PES. Having said that, I have heard that attendance for MLS games in the US as increased in recent years.

Personally, through my son's involvement and passion for the sport, I have come to enjoy watching soccer matches on TV. We follow Manchester United. I also really enjoy watching the World Cup. Admittedly, I probably get more into watching the US women's team, as they are usually in the in the mix for the championship.

Growing up, I did not know any fellow Americans who hated soccer. As others have stated, most were just ambivalent towards it. However, I knew plenty of people who "hated" American football or basketball or baseball. The only "American" sport I like to watch is basketball, and that was actually invented by a Canadian.

I don't hate soccer, i dislike every sports genre equally. That doesn't answer anything but i can't get behind any of it.

@kadaju86: You could always point out to them, that Soccer is the proper British term for it, distinguishing association football from rugby football. Or Soccer and Rugby for short.

@dodobasse: I’m actually aware of that myself, I just use it to annoy them though. :p

In my workplace people are increasingly annoyed with all the theatrics or "filming" in modern football/soccer, of how widespread it has become.

The same with the ugly shirt-pulling and tripping. We all agreed there should have been far more red cards in the World Cup than there were.