why soccer will not become overly popular in america

On Sunday I watched the World Cup final with a couple of my buddies.  The game itself was ok, and I have been much less enthusiastic about the World Cup since the U.S. was eliminated by Ghana in the Round of 16.  As a life long fan of soccer both at the international level and at the highest professional levels in Europe, I was extremely excited about this World Cup in general.  The U.S. had received a favorable draw, and this was potentially their chance to make a big impact on the biggest of stages.  TV ratings for the tournament have been excellent back here in the U.S., leading many to conclude that soccer is poised to break into the stranglehold the big three sports (football, baseball and basketball) have on the American sports fan.  Like I said, I am a big soccer fan, but this type of talk is a little premature.  In fact, I have come to the conclusion that soccer will never become overly popular with Americans unless there are some fundamental changes to the game.  The reason for this is simple: the current rules and ruling body is fundamentally at odds with what American's consider the most important attribute of a sport: fairness.

Now don't get me wrong, soccer supporters will claim that the game is extremely fair.  However, depending on the source "fair" can mean quite different things.  Americans, very rightly and justly in my mind, believe in an idea of objective fairness.  They believe that fair means 'consistent with rules, logic, or ethics, or having or exhibiting a disposition that is free of favoritism or bias; impartial.'  This objective form of fairness means that you craft rules that are as objective as possible, and wherever possible ensure that conduct conforms to those rules.  This sense of fair would find it abhorrent if the results of the game were not justified based on the current existing rules.

For instance, this is why american football employs the use of instant replay in order to correct calls.  Americans demand that the flow of play be as consistent with the rules as possible.  If a situation occurs where a judgment call seems to be at odds with what the rules say should be the outcome, the ruling is changed to more accurately present the outcome that is consistent with the rule.  Obviously, this type of review is not as possible, feasible or even desirable in all situations as many sports include inherently subjective rules that cannot be altered with significantly changing the game itself.  However, one mark of the progression of sports in the United States is a move away from these subjective rules towards more objective ones.  Look at pass interference in football.  The rule, as defined by the NFL, is "There shall be no interference with a forward pass thrown from behind the line." This is obviously extremely subjective.  What constitutes interference could be drastically different from person to person.  However, as can be seen from the link to the NFL website above, the NFL tries extremely hard to characterize the rule in as objective a way as possible. The rule digest lists no less than nine specific acts that constitute the foul, eight acts that do not and five notes for officials to consider in borderline situations.  They have taken a subjective judgment call and made it as objectively fair as possible.  This is the essence of what American's consider fair.

However, fair can have another definition as well: 'just to all parties; equitable.'  This is what I consider the European definition of fair, and this type of fairness is the underlying rationale of many of the rules of soccer.  Rather than believing in objective rules that lead to predictable outcomes, European fairness means everyone should have a chance, regardless of skill or ability.  To them, it is more important that any and every competitor have a chance of success than rewarding the best teams that are most able to prosper under an objective set of rules.  Several soccer rules illustrate this point such as the running clock, refusal to entertain instant replay and the completely subjective definition of fouls/yellow cards/red cards.  For instance look at the Maurice Edu goal that was disallowed in the game with Slovenia.




As anyone who watched the goal will tell you (even an Slovenian who doesn't have his head up his ass) there was absolutely no reason to disallow the goal.  However, because of the subjective call of the under qualified Malian referee Koman Coulibaly, the U.S. only tied the game and had no other recourse.  The simple fact that Coulibaly was a referee at the most watched sporting event in the world is endemic of the European fairness doctrine.  Despite the fact that the best and most accurate referees in the world come from Europe and South America (because most of the high profile matches with a lot on the line are played in these locations) FIFA insists on using referees that come from every corner of the world to ensure that each region is "fairly" represented.  Wouldn't these countries be treated more fairly if the referees were competent and could apply the rules in a more objectively fair way?  And this is hardly the only example from this world cup.  There was Dempsey's disallowed goal against Algeria, the English goal that obviously crossed the goal line against Germany and Kaka's ridiculous red card just to name a few.  By moving towards objective rules that clearly define prohibited conduct and introducing a form of review to ensure that the rules are enforced in a consistent way soccer could grow in popularity by leaps and bounds back here in the U.S.

We take for granted the underlying rationale of rules in American sports: to ensure that, all else being equal, the best team on the field that day wins.  However, that is not the goal of the rules in soccer.  They want each team to have a chance, regardless of ability.  If this means that there will be objectively unfair outcomes, then so be it says FIFA.  This attitude is not only limited to soccer, but to almost all endeavors in Europe.  Thank god that is not the case here in the United States.  Until FIFA undertakes serious effort to prospectively change the rules of soccer to be more objectively fair, it will never be as popular in the United States where fans and citizens alike believe in the correlation between hard work, ability and success.