Quote Originally Posted by Jack Lambert View Post
What I don't get is when soccer comes up the pro soccer guys feel they have to go out of their way to defend it. When someone says something negative about soccer they get all offended. Just look at some of the post in this thread.

In the US soccer will always be viewed like the Olympics. Every four years everyone will get excited and then they forget. It will never change. I am indifferent about it. I will watch World Cup when the US is in it. Just because I can. Got something to pull for. After that the only soccer I will see is from the road passing by the soccer field.

If someone likes it fine and if not that is fine as well. There is a lot of sports I don't watch and to be honest I would watch Soccer before NBA, NFL and MLB if that is all I have to choose from. You know I don't like volley ball but will turn the channel every time to watch women beach volley ball. "That gives me something else to pull"
I think a lot of it is where you are and your exposure to it. If you grew up around a larger city, you were exposed to more soccer and began following at a younger age. I grew up in the First Wave of Metro Atlanta youth soccer - late 70s and early 80s. Everyone I knew played. We went to weekend clinics with NASL players. We played 11 v 11 full field games from age 6 up (not this 3v3 or 7v7 small field crap you see in a lot of youth leagues now). Everyone had a team they got interested in from it - Atlanta Chiefs, NY Cosmos, Chicago Sting, Minnesota Kicks, Tampa Bay Rowdies. When the NASL folded shop we got the Atlanta Ruckus/Silverbacks, went to international exhibition matches at Atl-Ful Co Stadium, or Grant Field, and then got pissed off and stayed pissed off that after MLS formed Atlanta never got a team (that shows the long running stupidity on MLS's part). Now they are seeing 70,000+ at United games in Atlanta.

So yeah, those of us who are pro soccer defend it because contrary to some anti-soccer opinions its not just some fad invented for soft millennials so they all get a trophy. It's been a part of our lives - just like MSU, the Braves, or any other team we follow.