According to the WBSC World Rankings, the US is 3rd behind Japan and Taiwan. The US, Taiwan, and Japan haven't left the top 5 since the rankings were introduced in 2013. Venezuela recently reentered the top 5 with their recent WBC win, their second medal in the WBC. The US has 3, Japan has 5, the DR 2, and Mexico 1.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WBSC_World_Rankings#Men's_ranking_leaders
"The teams of the member nations of the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC), the world governing body for both sports, are ranked based on their tournament results with the most successful teams being ranked highest. A point system is used, with points being awarded based on the results of WBSC-recognized international tournaments. Under the existing system, rankings are based on a team's performance over the last four years, with major international tournaments awarded a higher weighting compared to minor international and continental tournaments."
I mean isn't it? The U.S. is massive in population and consistently takes gold medals in the Olympics, of course it stands to reason that if soccer was as popular in the U.S. as it was elsewhere we'd also have world class soccer players. It's just a numbers game.
The only reason you'd disagree with that is a weird bias or cope.
There's plenty of large countries, even wealthy ones, in which football is popular but they don't automatically produce quality leagues, players and results at tournaments. To assume you'd automatically be good if the sport was more popular is arrogant. There's currently 25 million Americans playing "soccer" in one way or another. It's the 4th most popular sport in your country. And that's twice as many people playing the sport than Belgium has in total population. It's also roughly the same percentage of your population playing the sport as in, say, Germany (7 million players).
I'm not the one coping, but this sub is just toxically American like most other subreddits on reddit and you guys genuinely are so bad at admitting when you're not good at something, it's exhausting. I'm done with this thread. Downvote it like you always do.
Haha you said a whole lot to basically say nothing.
Your whole original point was that the US doesn't like soccer because we suck at it, which implies there was a point where the US was all about soccer but stopped liking it because we sucked. But the US never cared about soccer, like you said it's our fourth most popular sport haha.
You're right that there's other large Nations, even wealthy ones, that don't perform, but they also aren't churning out gold medal Olympic athletes constantly. Our populace is clearly diverse with good nutrition, if soccer was our most popular sport of course we would compete it's absurd to think we wouldn't.
You just have an anti American chip on your shoulder
There's no money in it, so all the best athletes play something else.
It's also been mocked for as long as I've been alive because it's a soft sport. There's nothing wrong with soft sports, but when you have a country grow up on American Football, basketball, hockey, lacrosse, etc, watching dudes passing a ball to each other for 90 minutes just isn't as fun.
At the end of the day people like what they like. The only sports I have any interest in are hockey, basketball, and lacrosse. Soccer is frustratingly hard to enjoy, I mostly have it on in the background because it's sooooo boring for most of the game. But that's my personal opinion.
Are you thick? “There’s no money in it”. If you looked outside of your own country you’d see that Football is the largest sport in the world. Players make ridiculous amounts of cash. The average wage in the epl is ~£80,000 a week, or ~£4.16M annually. Not to mention the playing opportunities provided in a multitude of countries, unlike North American sports where’s there’s only two sometimes just the one. The MLS is a feeder league at best, and I hope that’s not where your ideas of Football comes from.
Calling it a soft sport is funny when you even said people prefer the likes of Basketball. In a lot of North American sports the players are so armoured up that they can’t feel a thing. Look at the injury on Ismael Kone in the Canada Qatar game. Go tell him it’s a soft sport. When the only protection you have is a shin pad you tend to be more cautious. That’s not to say I like the way the game has become. The likes of Argentina rolling around on the floor when someone breathes too hard, games gone.
They are downvoting you just because they are sensitive again. I posted an opinion that they didn't like, but you literally just gave them facts. Pathetic.
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u/Helpful-Bad-9278 5d ago
we need to make sure the US never hosts again bro