Women versus Men's soccer in the USA

[alexalonso]

the USA women's soccer team won a Gold medal beating Japan, they are considered the best team in the world for the last several years, going back to Mia Ham. Why is the US mens Soccer team so mediocre?

[punamusta]

Men's football is way, way more competetitive sport in the world. I don't know if that's the right word, but I mean that there's way more male players than female players. Female football is still kinda small sport in a world scale. For a female player it's easier (not easy, but easier) to be on top simply because there's not that much competition. Unlike in men's football, where basically every country in the world practise it professionally and everyone wants to be a professional player. And I'm definetly not down-playing the women - it just comes down to sheer numbers. There's so many countries where female football is basically inexistente, while they still have professional men's leagues.

Another reason is that I've understood that in USA, the female football has long roots. Your women's team is obviously very well managed, and the players play in the world's top leagues and teams. Unlike your male players. Ultimately it comes down to the football culture. In females, you got that, but in men, you don't. I've understood that in USA, men rather do some other sports than football, which is seen as a "women's sport".

[Cold Bear]

Male athletes in the US are drawn to Basketball, Football, and Baseball before Soccer from a young age going forward. It's true that soccer is becoming more popular at a youth level - a coworker of mines son runs a competitive youth league out of Brooklyn that draws a lot of latino kids, but it's nothing compared to basketball and football, even though the New York area is not known to produce NFL candidates

A lot of immigrant communities in the US embrace soccer from Central and South American to West Indian and African, but the majority of youth that show extraordinary athletic prowess are going into typical US sports, then track & field and even swimming before soccer

The difference with women's sports is that soccer is much more of a draw and more competitive on a high school and college level I think

[alexalonso]

Both Cold Bear and punamusta bring up two separate but important points, and not sure which one could be more influential.

1. How many male professional soccer players are in the world versus females. If the issue is just numbers, I expect the number of males players to be more that double the female players.


2. On the other hand, the US has so many other sport to play that not all young boys will choose soccer. Brazil, Italy, Mexico, England and many other countries probably focus on Soccer / Futbol more than any other sport.

Which one is it?

[punamusta]

Both Cold Bear and punamusta bring up two separate but important points, and not sure which one could be more influential.

1. How many male professional soccer players are in the world versus females. If the issue is just numbers, I expect the number of males players to be more that double the female players.

"The 300,000 soccer clubs worldwide are comprised of 240 million players, 30 million of which are women.", says this site http://www.loc.gov/rr/business/BERA/issue3/soccer.html but it doesn't say that how many of them are professionals. But I'm guessing the male vs. female player ratio is about the same also in the professional level.

[punamusta]

2. On the other hand, the US has so many other sport to play that not all young boys will choose soccer. Brazil, Italy, Mexico, England and many other countries probably focus on Soccer / Futbol more than any other sport.

That's definetly one of the most important reasons.

Here's a map showing the number one sport in all countries around the world. In soccer there's just a crazy competition going on as so many nations have it as their main sport.

[punamusta]

I guess the map was too big for the site, so it cut the Asia in half... Here's a link to that map showing the whole map:
http://www.rantapallo.fi/kaukokaipuu/fi ... sports.jpg

[alexalonso]

you can see the image better when you upload it into the forum