Soccer is overrated! This is what some people – that probably know little about the sport – say.
To be honest, I don’t blame them, simply because this is a question of preference!
However, I believe that my job as soccer ex-player and fan is to highlight what makes this sport one of the best out there if not the best!
So, is soccer overrated?
In a nutshell, soccer is not overrated because the game promotes and rewards pure individual skills, techniques and team tactics! This makes the sport not only fun to watch, but also interesting for those in to formations and different possible tactics.
Not to mention that we are talking about the most popular, watched and played sport in the world.
Below, I breakdown even more reasons …
9 Reasons Why Soccer is Not Overrated …
1. Goals are meaningful!
In many sports—with basketball being a prime example—scoring is so frequent that a single point or even a series of points is not likely to singlehandedly swing the outcome of a fixture.
In soccer, on the other hand, one goal can and frequently will be the sole difference between a win, draw or loss.
Yes, soccer does take criticism for a lack of scoring, even compared to sports with lower scores including ice hockey and baseball. Yes, a 4-3 match is more exciting than a 0-0 result.
But lower scores mean few possible score combinations, heightening the chance of a close match in the final minutes.
A mere goal or less is far more likely to separate two sides late in a soccer match than a point or less is at the same point of a basketball game. And no other game has an equivalent to the classic stoppage-time winner seen in soccer.
2. Creativity and innovation and Highly rewarded
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Attackers must think on the fly. A manager must tactically adjust on very short notice. And unlike sports like American football or basketball, a book of set plays cannot determine player movements, only the players themselves can dictate their movements, with the exception of set pieces.
“Adapt or die,” they say in the capitalist and business world!
In soccer, the same holds true. There is no blueprint for success; managers and players must write their own blueprints.
That’s why each league and or country has its own style its own school and its own teaching methods!
3. Soccer is so Simple
Baseball and cricket have a number of similarities. Ditto for rugby and American football. But while those sports may be easy to understand for longtime-hardcore fans, they can be tough to pick up on in large part due to complicated sets of rules.
Soccer is extremely simple and therefore easy for billions of fans to learn!
While understanding offsides has a learning curve and some set pieces can take some time to pick up on, the lack of confusion for the most part makes the sport universally marketable.
4. You need little to no Gear to Play
Many popular American sports require heavy and expensive pieces of equipment. That’s Not the case for soccer!
One can play the game with just the clothes they would normally wear, with a simple ball and a couple pair of humble sticks to serve as the goals as the only necessities to start a pickup game.
This one of the reasons why I also think that soccer is one of the best sports ever!
5. Skill is more important than Size/Strength
Lionel Messi stands at just 5”7 and his nicknamed the “atomic flea.” Yet, even with a case of growth hormone disorder, the player has gone on to became arguably the greatest of all time.
This is the most obvious example of an obvious truth …
… that soccer players don’t need to be physically massive in order to play at a high level.
American football athletes have to be enormous to play certain positions, and in the NBA, most players defy normality in height.
Soccer on the other hand is a game that anyone can succeed in regardless of size if they are skillful enough to play at a high level.
6. The Language just doesn’t matter
In many sports, the terminology is a huge part of the flow and understanding of a contest and must be heard to get a complete grasp of what’s visually at hand.
In soccer on the other hand, a fan can hear commentary in another language and still be able to follow the match closely.
With the game so global, it’s likely that most serious fans have watched at least a match in a language other than their mother tongue.
But with drawn out “goooooalllllllssssssss” carrying universal meaning, watching the game is a great opportunity to have fun and also learn a new language for 90 minutes.
7. No commercial timeouts except during halftime.
The constant interruptions of other sports are frustrating at best for fans!
Unlike any other game on the planet, soccer stops only at halftime and for nothing else (except for short water breaks in very hot weather).
This is a major detail for the flow of the game. In basketball, for example, the leading reason a coach will call timeout and send a game into an advertising break is to break the momentum of the other team.
I say that a team should have to dig themselves out of their own hole. Consumers should not have to bear the consequences for a team not playing well.
8. Very high action-screen time ratio!
In American football, there is less than 15 minutes of real action per game, in spite of there being 60 minutes of running clock time and over 3 hours of real time.
Other international sports also are time consuming, with grand slam tennis matches going past the four or five-hour marks on occasion and cricket lasting for days.
When they say a soccer match in 90 minutes, that means 90 minutes of real action. Not standing around due to an injured player or commercial timeout.
The clock doesn’t stop, so fans will get their money’s worth each at every match.
9. Robust and Entertaining International competitions
Soccer competitions at the global level are more intriguing than any other global sport’s highest events.
Because of the sheer supply of soccer players from all corners of the globe, three is simply more competition to reach an elite level.
That, in turn, leads to the best teams and competitions featuring talent unequaled in any other sport.
There is a reason that the World Cup and the Champions League is more popular than Olympic Basketball, the NBA or even the NFL.
When you take the best talent from everywhere, put them on an even playing field, and let the whole world watch, the stakes and the magnitude are unmatched by anything else in the realm of sports.
Final Thoughts …
All the above are equally important reasons why soccer game is not overrated!
My main goal here was not to make other sports (American football, basketball …), that you probably like, look bad! No, Not at all …
… My main goal was to simply highlight what soccer brings to the table, as not many people are aware of that.