So where have |Zach| and all the Soccer fans gone?

[Deberg_1990]

These guys were out in force last year.

I thought Sporting had surpassed the Royals in popularity?


Dissscustt please......

[loochy]

Originally Posted by Lonewolf Ed

20...16? How did you manage that? And am I still posting in 2016? My docs think I could be dead by then, so any info you can share would be most appreciated!

They are doing qualification matches now to get into the 2016 tournament. Think of it like qualifying for the Olympics.

[Lonewolf Ed]

Originally Posted by loochy

They are doing qualification matches now to get into the 2016 tournament. Think of it like qualifying for the Olympics.

Ah, so no peek into the future for cancer boy here.

[memyselfI]

I'm here and last year in retail terms Sporting DID outsell the Royals. They almost did the year before. Sporting continues to be one of the biggest merchandise sellers in MLS. Now the Royals can claim the same title in MLB.

Sporting is still selling out, still selling tons of gear, still in the playoffs and looking to repeat as champions. They also support the Royals wholeheartedly as at least three of their players were born and/or grew up in KC. Andy Gruenebaum, their goalie, being one who was in my store on Saturday looking for new Royals gear. Twitter and Instagram was full of pictures of Sporting players at the Royals/Angels series.

Thankfully we finally have two teams doing well in the same season and hopefully the Chiefs will make it a trifecta.

[Sweet Daddy Hate]

Frankly, I don't want a bunch of new fans. The league is in it's "pre-Arrowhead" days right now, and can stay just like that.

Fan friendly, reasonable pricing, good product; WIN.

[KC native]

Originally Posted by CoMoChief

That's silly as hell. i bet my 60 yr old father is more athletic than Danica Patrick.

conditioning your body to take on the G forces that comes w/ racing does not equal athletic ability. A fat ass could race a car if he wanted but you can't get them in the damn car and it's just more added weight to the racecar.

Yet another addition to your long line of "wrong about everything" posts.

[CoMoChief]

Originally Posted by 'Hamas' Jenkins

If a kid can't play any defense at all in basketball, he is going to be picked on mercilessly. If he can't dribble, they will descend upon him like a swarm of locusts. If a kid can't cover, that's where the ball is going over and over. If he can't tackle or if he isn't big enough to stand up to a blocker, that's the side they're running to, over and again, even at the youngest levels. Same thing obviously happens in soccer, but not at its youngest levels.

Oh bullshit Hamas.

In youth soccer there's usually 1-2 players on the team that's far and away better than everyone else. Guess who always has the ball and guess who's the one who's always scoring the goals? In youth soccer everyone is chasing the ball on the field and there's hardly any structured actual play...same w/ any youth sport really at a young age. But in youth soccer, everyone's usually chasing the 1-2 really good players that have the ball all the time, the ones that actually understand the game and are fundamentally sound/better than anyone else on the field.

That's the way it was when I played youth soccer and that's the way it is now.

[Eleazar]

Originally Posted by CoMoChief

That's silly as hell. i bet my 60 yr old father is more athletic than Danica Patrick.

conditioning your body to take on the G forces that comes w/ racing does not equal athletic ability. A fat ass could race a car if he wanted but you can't get them in the damn car and it's just more added weight to the racecar.

If people who are 40, 45, 50 can win races, it's hard to call that an athletic competition. A competition sure, but not an athletic one. The guys in the pits are more athletes probably.

As far as Danica goes, from what I hear if she ever wins a trophy it's going to be for wrecking the most cars.

[WhawhaWhat]

Originally Posted by CoMoChief

That's silly as hell. i bet my 60 yr old father is more athletic than Danica Patrick.

conditioning your body to take on the G forces that comes w/ racing does not equal athletic ability. A fat ass could race a car if he wanted but you can't get them in the damn car and it's just more added weight to the racecar.

If sitting down for 3 hours and using your hands to turn and hit buttons is athletic, then I may as well count myself as an athlete while sitting on my couch in my underwear playing Xbox for 3 hours.

[CoMoChief]

Originally Posted by Cochise

If people who are 40, 45, 50 can win races, it's hard to call that an athletic competition. A competition sure, but not an athletic one. The guys in the pits are more athletes probably.

As far as Danica goes, from what I hear if she ever wins a trophy it's going to be for wrecking the most cars.

of course...she's a woman.

But yeah the pit crew guys go through actual weight/strength and conditioning training. Many teams will get ex NFL guys, and will teach then how to do the same shit pit crews do, and they'll use these guys because they're bigger stronger and faster and can carry heavier shit with no problem.

['Hamas' Jenkins]

Originally Posted by Baby Lee

Then he has very limited insight into youth psyches or the level of skill even young kids are capable of.

I played soccer and tee/baseball both from 7-11, and after one summer where an injury sidelined me [dog attack, not a sports injury], I continued on exclusively in soccer.

I, and I sensed a lot of my teammates, were a lot more competitive in soccer. Roving bands of rando kicks and slip and falls were for 5 and 6yos. By age 8 you knew who the effective players were and who you needed to hustle to provide support for because they weren't going to win the ball.

By 10-11, there were kids playing soccer whose only ceiling was body size. I wouldn't be surprised if one were to have you assemble a group of your own cohort adults, Team Udinese under-12 would give you a heck of a match. At the least, their ball skills would almost certainly provide for some memorable moments for embarrassment.

With tee/baseball OTOH, I never felt any shame or discouragement, even though I wasn't the most outstanding player. I wasn't bad, probably among the upper 10% at recess, middle of the road in organized league. Maybe I wasn't invested enough to care, but I certainly never got a sense of being judged or criticized, certainly not STEAMROLLED. We all ran around and tried to hit/field, etc. then we went to the concession stand and gathered out post game sodas.

Klosterman may have fancied himself some youth achievement guru berating a bunch of children and playing favorites with the high performers, but most youth small ball is about developing skills and deciding if you're having fun on the base paths, not arriving at the yard with fully formed wunder-skills to wow some op-ed writer with a God complex. I rather imagine those 'tragic' underperformers shared plenty of chuckles out of his oversight at that strange man so obsessed about a bunch of kids playing a game.

Bottom line, ages 4-7/8 is a period sports wide for kids to learn skills and decide if they're enjoying themselves. 8 on, again sport-wide, is when competitiveness and serious skill honing kicks in. All sports, of all ages, even 40-45-50 yos, whether duffing around a soccer pitch, or playing beer league softball, have 'underachiever' or recreational divisions.

Chuck hasn't unearthed a fundamental dichotomy between a 'Merkin sport and a Communist sport. He just spouted off not knowing enough about the breadth of sports participation on the larger scale.

Again, you're conflating elite-level soccer with entry level participation, and you're claiming that he's speaking dispositively for me about what sports should be.Furthermore, your butthurt over the issue has blinded you, again, to the extensive troll job he pulls in this piece. Do you think that he really thinks soccer is the equivalent of the Khmer Rouge, or is he yanking the chain of people like you for effect? In your breathy defense you don't even realize that you've been 'Penzed.

Ultimately, a cursory look at the math of the situation supports his point.

You mention that in late childhood is when competitiveness ramps up. Well it just so happens that Soccer is the #1 youth participation sport overall, yet fewer people play soccer once they are adolescents



So, if other sports have rising participation rates during ages of greatest competitiveness and soccer has a declining participation rate during the same period, who is leaving soccer?

Maybe they're just kids who moved exclusively from soccer to football, but the growth curve of football is too sharp to justify that alone.And again, I feel the need to add this disclaimer because you can't seem to differentiate between the two worlds he's talking about:

I'm saying nothing about the comparative competitiveness and desire of your 13 year old soccer peers. What I am saying, and Klosterman is as well, is that there is a higher likelihood that your seven year old soccer peers were playing the game because it was the least objectionable alternative, and once they grew to an age where non-participation was more acceptable, they dropped out.

['Hamas' Jenkins]

Originally Posted by Baby Lee

Bullshit. Both my sister and I were 3 sport competitors [until I bowed out of small ball]. I was exclusively soccer by JHS/HS. Between music, school plays, and offseason travelling soccer teams I just didn't have time for basketball, though I skipped lunch every day to play pickup. My sister travelled soccer as well, lettered in mens/boys soccer in HS, as well as in basketball, and she switched to track, lettering there as well [certainly much more of an individual scrutiny sport than any of your supposed apexes of sport].

All sports, except track, had teammates cognizant of weaknesses of teammates and adjusted to cover for them, and nobody was scorned or outcast for their lagging development. MoF, I recall a girl on one of my sister's team who sucked on ice, but they put her out there in her regular shifts all season, not because they had to, or because everyone was just a participant, but because she paid to play and worked hard in practice. And one of the loudest cheers all season was when she stole a pass and launched up a 3-pointer toward the end of the season.

Yeah, that's just a pollyannaish look at sports. We were routinely criticizing our peers in 9 year old little league for missing throws and blowing plays.

[WhawhaWhat]

Originally Posted by 'Hamas' Jenkins

These numbers are from a study between 2006 and 2010. Adolescent football participation has increased since then, however the lower pop warner level has dropped by 9.5 percent.

"USA Football, a national governing body partially funded by the NFL, said participation among players ages 6 to 14 fell from 3 million to 2.8 million in 2011, a 6.7 percent decline."

[Baby Lee]

Originally Posted by 'Hamas' Jenkins

Again, you're conflating elite-level soccer with entry level participation, and you're claiming that he's speaking dispositively for me about what sports should be.Furthermore, your butthurt over the issue has blinded you, again, to the extensive troll job he pulls in this piece. Do you think that he really thinks soccer is the equivalent of the Khmer Rouge, or is he yanking the chain of people like you for effect? In your breathy defense you don't even realize that you've been 'Penzed.

Ultimately, a cursory look at the math of the situation supports his point.

You mention that in late childhood is when competitiveness ramps up. Well it just so happens that Soccer is the #1 youth participation sport overall, yet fewer people play soccer once they are adolescents



So, if other sports have rising participation rates during ages of greatest competitiveness and soccer has a declining participation rate during the same period, who is leaving soccer?

Maybe they're just kids who moved exclusively from soccer to football, but the growth curve of football is too sharp to justify that alone.And again, I feel the need to add this disclaimer because you can't seem to differentiate between the two worlds he's talking about:

I'm saying nothing about the comparative competitiveness and desire of your 13 year old soccer peers. What I am saying, and Klosterman is as well, is that there is a higher likelihood that your seven year old soccer peers were playing the game because it was the least objectionable alternative, and once they grew to an age where non-participation was more acceptable, they dropped out.

I don't care if he's 'penzing people or not. He's providing authorial support to those who DO make those arguments. The upshot of his piece in the culture is 'see? even smart people say soccer is a commie pillowbitergot sport.'

And soccer still suffers compared to soccer at the higher echelons because there remains the fact/stigma that basketball and baseball is the path for talented athletes to become wealthy adults, not because kids outgrow soccer's limited charms. There are tons of professional athletes that are avid soccer, if not players due to contracts/insurance, fanatics.

I'd gainsay a noticeably higher percentage of professional athletes are soccer fans, and a lower percentage are soccer haters, than in the general population.

[Baby Lee]

Originally Posted by 'Hamas' Jenkins

Yeah, that's just a pollyannaish look at sports. We were routinely criticizing our peers in 9 year old little league for missing throws and blowing plays.

Maybe I just grew up in a better community. Eyerolls, sure, muttering, certainly. Open criticism and belittling of players we knew we'd be playing an entire season with regardless, not so much.

['Hamas' Jenkins]

Originally Posted by Baby Lee

I don't care if he's 'penzing people or not. He's providing authorial support to those who DO make those arguments. The upshot of his piece in the culture is 'see? even smart people say soccer is a commie pillowbitergot sport.'

And soccer still suffers compared to soccer at the higher echelons because there remains the fact/stigma that basketball and baseball is the path for talented athletes to become wealthy adults, not because kids outgrow soccer's limited charms. There are tons of professional athletes that are avid soccer, if not players due to contracts/insurance, fanatics.

I'd gainsay a noticeably higher percentage of professional athletes are soccer fans, and a lower percentage are soccer haters, than in the general population.

Well of course a higher percentage of people who play sports for a living and who have played them all their lives are more likely to care about other sports. That's Madden-level insight.

And of course our best athletes don't play soccer in part due to the perception and reality of market pressures in our society (it killed boxing from the opposite end).

You're not really formulating an argument as much as you are exposing butthurt.