Letter to the editor

John Tierney’s “Kicking the Soccer Habit” (New York Times, June 24) is at times tongue-in-cheek, but he is nonetheless quite serious in arguing that soccer, or football as the rest of the world knows it, is a boring sport and one which America would do well not to embrace. In short, it is a defense of American parochialism.

Tierney points to a Pew survey which shows only 4 percent of Americans name soccer as their favorite sport to watch. Yet, a staggering proportion of Americans play the sport at some level, be it youth or amateur or professional. Is it not possible that the true spectator potential of the sport in America has not yet been realized? After all, the world’s premier leagues, games and players are practically unavailable to viewers of mainstream networks.

It is, of course, a self-reinforcing cycle. With few viewers, soccer attracts few television advertisers. And with small advertising revenues, television networks have little incentive to promote the game. I wouldn’t be the first observer to suggest that mainstream American viewers watch what they’re told to watch by that great monolith, the American advertising industry.

Tierney, sounding like a neocon espousing the need to spread democracy, then suggests that “the rest of the world could learn from us. Maybe they love soccer because they haven’t been given better alternatives.” Is it really likely that the rest of the world just aren’t as sophisticated as American viewers? That while the Americans can enjoy those flowing games of non-stop excitement such as baseball and American football, the rest of the world puts up with the tedium of the soccer game? I’m sure Tierney is aware of the existence of financially viable professional basketball, hockey and American football leagues throughout Europe including European-wide ‘Champions League’ style competitions. And yet Europeans still, in the vast majority, tune into soccer.

Perhaps Tierney’s complaints about soccer are motivated foremost by another peculiar American trait—an inability to accept that this superpower is, when it comes to the one sport of global significance, only mediocre.