- 2 days ago
Will there be a real bump in soccer in this country after the World Cup?
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00:00if you want those tickets.
00:01Danny, the World Cup ended yesterday.
00:04It was a blast by all accounts.
00:05I think people thoroughly enjoyed it.
00:07The question is always, was there legitimate growth?
00:10You're going to get a bump for the Spirit, for United,
00:14for some of the teams over the next couple of months
00:16because soccer fever set in.
00:18But is it going to sustain?
00:20Did people fall in love with the game,
00:22or are they more like me where every four years,
00:25I'll get all in for the World Cup?
00:27It's one of the great events that we have.
00:30I get soccer obsessed for those few weeks,
00:32and then it ends, and I say, see you in four years.
00:35I'll see you in four.
00:36I'm like a military commitment or a college obligation.
00:40Every four years, your boy's showing back up for orientation
00:43at the World Cup.
00:44Let me find out about the players this time.
00:46Yeah, it's hard to quantify this, right?
00:49But let's say there's 100 out of 100 interest in the World Cup,
00:53which I think there was, right?
00:54If we use that as the baseline, how will that transit?
00:57So our guest, Jamie Watson, who came on, the Odyssey Insider,
00:59would come on all the time.
01:00How did he always close off?
01:02If you enjoyed it, go see DC United.
01:03Go see The Spirit.
01:05Go see Loud and FC.
01:06Go see...
01:07I don't know how many people are going to do that.
01:08Some might.
01:09Out of the 100 units of interest for the World Cup,
01:11maybe you get two, three, four, five,
01:14seven units of renewed or increased interest
01:16for Annapolis FC or whomever your local soccer club is.
01:20And nothing wrong with that.
01:21There's a bounce.
01:22There is an increase.
01:23But is it enough to now go,
01:25we're catapulted.
01:26It's a rocket ship.
01:27It'll never go away.
01:28No.
01:28This is a different, unique event.
01:30Which I think is true and obvious.
01:31But was this better than normal?
01:33I think it probably was.
01:34It was because it was all here.
01:35Because it was here, right?
01:36Yeah.
01:37Was this growth more exponential or more permanent?
01:41There was a jump after 94 for sure, right?
01:43When I was a kid.
01:43I was a teenager.
01:44And there was just a larger swath of interest.
01:47And it really helped catapult the MLS and things like that.
01:51So there had been a bunch of soccer leagues that had tried
01:54and had never been able to maintain.
01:56It was like, let's go get Pele at the end of his career
01:58when he's 40 and put him on the New York Cosmos
01:59and try this and that.
02:01And they still do that stupid crap.
02:02A star player that you've heard of, you've seen on TV,
02:05way past their prime is kind of a gimmick.
02:06Wayne Rooney here or Terry Henry there
02:09or David Beckham somewhere or whatever.
02:10But you're able to have a sustainable league now
02:14that's not quite up to the four major sports,
02:16but it's got its own pretty good following at this point.
02:19The other question, I guess, would be,
02:21and we can open up the phones on this at 800-636-1067,
02:25800-636-1067.
02:27I wonder how many people are like me
02:29who thoroughly enjoyed the World Cup
02:31and did find themselves obsessing over
02:34at least the American results,
02:35really thoroughly enjoying when even the United States
02:38wasn't playing in these games like the final yesterday,
02:41but are completely okay now checking back out.
02:45And why is that?
02:46That's kind of interesting.
02:48Even something I think about
02:49and kind of self-reflect on as often as I can
02:52after these World Cups.
02:53It's like, well, if I had so much fun with it,
02:55why wouldn't I watch the EPL?
02:56Why wouldn't I enjoy, you know, a game?
02:59And the EPL season, for what it's worth,
03:00runs through late August through May.
03:03So the momentum could pick back up here shortly.
03:05I mean, we're only about a month away, I think, right,
03:07from the Premier League starting up.
03:09Yeah.
03:10Which is great soccer,
03:11a level that far exceeds that of the MLS.
03:14I'm not trying to change soccer.
03:16Soccer fans always get so upset
03:18anytime you talk about things you don't like.
03:20I'm just offering what keeps me
03:22and prevents me from really, really caring about the sport.
03:25For me, it's really two things
03:27that I just can't quite grasp.
03:30I can't wrap my arms around.
03:32The first is the flopping.
03:34And I know that that's almost become cliche
03:36because it's such a big talking point.
03:38But it doesn't work for me.
03:40It doesn't resonate.
03:41I am turned off by it.
03:43I have a venom and an animus toward it.
03:45And you could say, well, there's flopping in every sport.
03:47And you're right.
03:48And I hate it in those other sports.
03:49And luckily, by the way,
03:51it's not as big of a deal in the other sports
03:53as it is in soccer.
03:54It's not as prevalent.
03:56And we do what we can to get it out of the game
03:58in those other sports
03:59where it's almost treated like a feature,
04:01not a bug in soccer.
04:02But the amount of...
04:04Like, if you watch 10 minutes of World Cup soccer,
04:06you will see, I don't know, 17 dudes dive, right?
04:10Of the 17 dives, like,
04:13six of them are, like, zero contact,
04:15completely ridiculous acting jobs.
04:17And then of the rest of the 11,
04:19I'm making these numbers up,
04:20but my perception is, like,
04:22eight of them are completely over-the-top,
04:27added, worse than it should be,
04:30give me a break,
04:31you were exaggerated, right?
04:34There are the occasional, like,
04:35damn, that's a bad tackle
04:36where a guy's actually hurt
04:37and he takes off his cleat after the game
04:39and he's bloody or whatever.
04:41I get that there's pain,
04:42but that part I'll never get past.
04:44And I just...
04:45That will keep me from really enjoying the sport.
04:48And I'd imagine for the EPL,
04:50for the MLS,
04:51it's not that different.
04:52I mean, I don't think...
04:53Is there the same amount of flopping
04:55in Major League Soccer
04:56as there is in the World Cup?
04:57I would imagine no in America.
04:58So I couldn't tell you
04:59I'm no MLS expert.
05:00I really do not watch it.
05:02I'm not interested in it,
05:03but it's ingrained part of the sport
05:05because you see it's such an outsized thing.
05:07A penalty is...
05:09It's really hard to score
05:10and that's your best opportunity to goal.
05:13So the slightest bit of contact,
05:15and, you know,
05:15if it's a borderline foul,
05:17you're incentivized to go down.
05:19You're incentivized to draw yellow cards on people
05:21because, again,
05:22it's such an outsized, influential thing
05:24and it's part of the structure of the sport.
05:26It's to a degree unavoidable.
05:27And there's not enough pushback
05:29against the people doing it.
05:31A, the fans aren't mad at you.
05:33It's just part of the fabric.
05:34But B, there might be penalties occasionally
05:38for exaggerating or flopping or whatever.
05:40I've seen them called, like, in the NHL.
05:42They have them.
05:43I don't even know.
05:44Do they have them in international soccer?
05:46Yeah, I mean, there was a penalty yesterday
05:48where the guy was like,
05:48no, no, no, you flopped.
05:50You know, it's a kick going the other way.
05:52So he stopped,
05:53but, I mean, there's no, like, yellow card for it.
05:54I think you can.
05:55Yeah, I think there can be.
05:57So I didn't see those.
05:58They need to do more of those.
05:59I think if you're down
06:00for more than X amount of seconds,
06:01you need to get your ass off the field.
06:03And if that means you have to be able
06:04to come back into the game
06:06and when you go out,
06:06you're not out for good.
06:08Or, frankly, what they should do
06:09is just you're off the field
06:10and nobody can come on.
06:12And there's some of that,
06:13but it doesn't happen enough.
06:14In football, when you're down
06:16and they have to tend to you,
06:17you have to miss a play.
06:18That's just the rule.
06:19I think that's a bare minimum.
06:20Like, as soon as we are waiting
06:24and you're not getting back up,
06:26you're coming off.
06:27And I think that'll get
06:28a lot of guys up a lot faster,
06:29but they don't have enough
06:30of those rules built in.
06:32And then the last thing I'll say,
06:33and again, soccer people
06:34hate this complaint,
06:35and that's fine.
06:35I can't do the clock.
06:36I just can't.
06:38The running clock,
06:39the amount of minutes wasted,
06:41left in the ether
06:42that never get played
06:43because we're celebrating goals
06:45or we're faking an injury
06:47or we're, you know,
06:49just waiting to throw it in,
06:50trying to run out the clock.
06:52The fact that the only person
06:53in the entire stadium yesterday
06:56that knew when the game
06:57was going to end
06:57is the official,
06:59that is absolutely irresponsible
07:01and unconscionable to me.
07:03And he has the discretion of like,
07:05well, they're on a rush,
07:05so we'll just wait.
07:06Like, look, let's let the Wizards
07:08finish this possession here,
07:09even though the clock's at zero.
07:10I hate that.
07:12Soccer people seem to love it,
07:14and that's fine.
07:14But I'm just telling you
07:16the things,
07:16the study that was done,
07:18it was either a World Cup
07:19or two World Cups ago
07:19that we talked about on the show
07:21where this guy went through
07:22all the games
07:22and how many seconds
07:23were actually not played
07:24and then made up in stoppage time.
07:26It was basically
07:26almost completely arbitrary.
07:28Like, it was not in any way
07:30that they played the minutes
07:31they were supposed to.
07:32It just does not work for me.
07:34So those two things
07:35will kind of always keep me
07:37from really getting in on the game.
07:38Which I can understand that,
07:40but the counterexample
07:41I would offer is
07:42one of my best buddies growing up
07:45he's English
07:46and his 100% English dad
07:48emigrated to the U.S.
07:49lives here now
07:49and he's like,
07:51I cannot get into basketball.
07:52I recognize the skill.
07:53It's incredible.
07:53He goes,
07:54so the purpose
07:55at the end of the game,
07:55you purposefully break the rules
07:57in order to have an advantage.
07:59I was like,
08:00what do you mean?
08:00He goes,
08:01this bloke's fouling that bloke
08:02on purpose.
08:03It's a purposeful foul.
08:04I can't.
08:05And he simply could not
08:06get over that fact.
08:07We're to stop the clock,
08:08you're fouling.
08:09And there were no repercussions
08:10other than,
08:11yep, okay,
08:12this is just a run-of-the-mill thing.
08:13He could not get on board
08:15with basketball because of that.
08:17Everybody's got their things
08:18about individual sports
08:19that I get.
08:20Yeah.
08:21I don't know if those two
08:22are analogous,
08:22but for him,
08:24maybe for this random British guy
08:25that you know apparently?
08:26Yeah.
08:27That was his deal.
08:28So the sport that is globally
08:29played by a billion people,
08:31he couldn't do it
08:31for those reasons.
08:32You've got yours.
08:33Yeah.
08:33And I just think
08:34those things will make it harder
08:36for Americans
08:37to completely buy in.
08:39But I think there will be growth.
08:40I think the fact
08:41that the United States
08:42is getting better at soccer,
08:43I think the fact
08:44that the United States
08:45has a chance to go deeper
08:47into some of these tournaments,
08:49all of this will help.
08:50And this being a tournament
08:52that was held
08:52in the United States,
08:54there's going to be
08:54a little bit more staying power,
08:56I think, this time.
08:57Like my kids,
08:58I'll just say,
08:59have been playing soccer
09:00in the basement.
09:01We've never played soccer
09:02in my basement.
09:03Ever, ever, ever.
09:04We play hockey,
09:05we play baseball,
09:06we play basketball,
09:06we play football.
09:08We've never played soccer.
09:09And now we're using
09:10the hockey net
09:10to play soccer
09:11in the basement
09:12the last few days
09:12after we're watching
09:13these games.
09:15My daughter said
09:16she wanted to sign up
09:16to play soccer.
09:17Like, that's a win.
09:18Yes, it is.
09:19Yeah, that's something.
09:19Now, the next day
09:20she wanted to sign up
09:21to do a dance camp
09:21and I think she kind of forgot.
09:23But you get what I'm saying.
09:23Yes, I do.
09:24Like, that is not
09:25a conversation
09:25we probably would have had
09:26if it wasn't the World Cup.
09:28But we'll take calls on this.
09:29Do you think
09:30there will be
09:30some sustainable progress
09:31made for the sport
09:32in the States?
09:33And if you're like me
09:35and you get in
09:36every four years
09:37and then you take
09:383.75 years off,
09:40why is that?
09:41And is there anything
09:42that can change that?
09:43G&D on the fence.
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