Since I am from the United States I obviously lean towards American football, especially the Green Bay Packers, but I can also appreciate soccer. Please add your opinion to the argument over American football and soccer

 

American Football........Americans love it, made for T.V. slow, ponderous, overated.

Football......................The rest of the world loves it. Passionate, tribal, born into it, every emotion shooting through your body ,all time high, heartbreaking, way of life. love. hate, loathing, fighting on terarces, pushing, shoving, shouting, swearing, screaming till your your voice cracks, at home, mid week away, team tattoed on your arm and heart till the day you die, promotion, relegation battle, cup tie, three lions on your chest, families divided, beer, pies, where you born , your religon, stand, terrace, kop, city, united , rovers, reds , blues, super whites, ..
but most of all your team,........

I,m sorry, your an American, you would'nt understand

 

Both sports are really quite similar. The only significant difference is that American football is played by heterosexuals.

 

LOL LOL.....You REALLY are an American..and you REALLY dont understand ..LOL LOL LOL:laughing::laughing::laughing::laughing::laughing::laughing::laughing::laughing::laughing::laughing::laughing::laughing::laughing::laughing::laughing::laughing::laughing::laughing::laughing::laughing::laughing:

 

funny how the americans are the ones that wear shoulder pads :excited:

 

How are we expected to compare Football with the NFL. As Chas's mate said in the second post it goes far beyond intelligence and reason it is visceral you are your team, your team is you. A loss on a Saturday induces an almost suicidal feeling, losing to your most hated rivals pushes you even closer to the edge.
The colours, the anthems, the cups and trophies, the wins the losses all make for a season baked in hell and with luck ends in paradise.

 

yeah, yeah, yeah why do people like you always use this as an argument. The first time I saw a NFL match I seriously wondered where all the motorcycles were.

 

What argument? They're completely different brands of sport; football is played with the foot, but gridiron is almost entirely played using the hands.

 

What amazes me the most about American football is the size of the teams, you have an offence team, defensive team, a kicking team, wow, there are dozens of players, all milling about doing fuck all, and it seems to go on for hours. But the stadiums are fantastic, i recently watched a documentry on the Dallas Cowboys stadium, very impresive, you know how to look after fans, the impression i get is of a family day out, which is ...nice...if thats what you want.

In a football team, (by the way only Americans call it Soccer) there are 11 players, 3 substitutes, it goes on for 90 minutes, and repeated failure is not an option, the tenure for a football leauge manager in the premership is very short without success. but, most football grounds in the U.K. are ageing, and the fans who pay top money to see their teams are herded like cattle, which does lead to problems. The crowds are still made up mostly of men ( dads and lads) but familes are now better catered for at the bigger clubs

Other than the much hyped Super Bowl i dont know of any other competition within the American football circut...we just dont get that info over here, ...in the English/Scotish leauge there are several comp's that every team ,big or small can take part in, in the early stages of the F.A.cup you quite often get part time players playing against world class international players, sometimes with unexpected results (its called GIANT KILLING) the full time players turn up , think it's going to be a piece of piss, then get totally trounced by some team of nobody's, it's funny when it happens to someone else's team , not so sweet when it happens to you.

 

Exactly.

Furthermore, it's time to put the Football(American Football to you) haters in their places. Soccer(Football to you), is the lowest major sport on the totem pole, and I will explain why. One- it is not as athletic as any of the US sports. It's about conditioning sure and ball handling but it's not about being able to change direction almost on a dime the way Football is. In football, the way you change direction or really anything you do requires you to be as athletic as possible. The only people in the world who are more athletic/athletically efficient than football players are military personnel. Soccer players on the other hand are closer athletically to the basketball/football players of the 70s and 80s, maybe the 90s. I've watched soccer, recently. I actually kind of like the sport, though I didn't used to. Point is, it's not nearly as athletic as football or any other US sport for that matter, no matter what you'd like to say.

On top of that, it's not even complicated. There are no complex offenses or defenses like there are in football. Football is closer to war than anything because it's all about strategy, which is why they have different teams for offense, defense, and ST. Football requires you to learn it as a subject, after training to be as athletic as possible. That's how complex it is. Everything that goes into it is complex. Even the most basic things like stances and positioning and route running are complex. It's a game of both strategy and pure physicality. They wear pads because if they didn't, people would die, like they used to before they had them. Even with pads, people suffer horrendous injuries on a weekly basis. Players(especially defensive players) are like weapons nowadays because they keep getting bigger, faster, stronger, and yet the protection never gets any better. Either way, the point is, soccer is simple plays on both sides, and is closer strategy-wise to hockey than anything else. Hockey, however, makes up for its lack of complexity with the sheer brutality of the sport, something that soccer severely lacks. Soccer is an extremely outdated game that hasn't been superior since people started playing more athletic, complex games. Get over it already.

Seriously, Football haters are like the spoiled kids who everybody has to baby and walk on eggshells with because they can't handle hearing the truth or being exposed to reality. Your game is what it is, no better or worse than what it is. European sports have not been on top in a long time. You constantly use opinion to back up your ridiculous claims but when talking about which sport is superior, opinion does not matter. Soccer does not stack up against the more athletic sports, like football.

For the record, I have absolutely no idea why they called it football but I couldn't imagine calling it anything else. Soccer will always be soccer in America, and football will always be football.

 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Such and interesting game to watch. I don't want to mock you but I watched the superbowl and for fuck sake a game with 80 minutes of play was on the TV for over 3 hours, It didn't look any more physical than RFU, RFL or Aussie Rules.
You bang on about it being a superior game and the participants being superior to all other sports, but it is not popular outside of the US and Canada, Baseball and Basketball as it beaten in popularity.
I'm not going to argue that it isn't a tough game to play but then again so is RFU/RFL, both of which are just as tactical as the NFL but as the game is continuous with out board meetings to decide what to do next all decisions are made on the fly.
Now I guess you are gong to come back and dismiss this because it is an opinion, but guess what, what you posted is exactly that an opinion yours which as usual you believe because you think it it must be correct.

 

Oh dear.....Tactics and strategy has a very large part in football (soccer to you) I won't bore you by going into it but it does show your lack of knowledge about the sport. But at the same time is very simple that's why its so great, any kid in any part of the world can use their jumpers for goal posts and have a game.

As for being less athletic than American football maybe, maybe not, but footballers are probably a lot fitter the American Footballers as most of the 11 that start the game finish the game. It does not matter if you a 4 feet tall or 7 feet tall you can still be a great player that's why it will never be out dated it's accessible to all.


Now if you have ever seen a game of rugby you will see why some on this side of the pond some take the piss out of the padding the American Football players use, now that's a mans game.

 

The name isn't difficult to understand really Football is the generic name then you have............

Association Football
Rugby Football Union/League
American Football
Australian rules Football
Gaelic Football

Obviously there are more and variants within these games.

I don't think that a sensible argument can be made over the numbers that play and watch Football (soccer) More than all the other types combined would be my contention, if there was something that could be classed as a world game Football (soccer) would clearly win by a mile.

If you go to.........www.fifa.com

You will find over 200 countries that are ranked at Football.

 

What I posted was not an opinion; it was an evalutation based on objective criteria. Those criteria were level of athleticism, complexity, strategy, and physicality. Soccer scores the lowest on almost every single category, and the ones it doesn't on are more like ties with the ones lower than it than anything.

Lastly, rugby or any other type of football that isn't what you call American football is nowhere near as complex as ours. Sorry, but it just flat out isn't. I've watched rugby and I've watched Aussie football and neither of them are anywhere near as complex. They have simple stategies. Football is a game of strategy with complex plays and formations and strategies and even complex ways to do the most basic things that you have to learn the same way you learn a subject in school. Rguby and Aussie football and every other type of non-US football is closer strategy-wise to soccer than anything. You devise a strategy to win and to stop the other team, and you do it, with no complexity or plays to decipher or defenses to pick apart. Football is every bit as mental as chess and every bit as physical as anything Europe has to offer. It is the most superior sport on Earth, whether you like it or not.

If you would like a ranking of the major sports(minus cricket because I've never watched that, and sports that aren't the "big 4" in the US), here you go:

Level of Athleticism: Football, Basketball, Soccer, Hockey, Rugby/other types of non-US football, Baseball

Complexity: Football, Basketball, Baseball, Hockey, Soccer, Rugby/other forms of non-US football

Strategy: Football, Baseball, Basketball, Hockey, Soccer, Rugby/other forms of non-US football

Physicality: Rugby/other non-US football, Football, Hockey, Basketball, Soccer, Baseball(it's a non-contact sport)

I would love to see you try to argue with these rankings.

 

I have watched soccer. I have completely mastered understanding of the offense/defense. It's not even as complex as hockey. It's about angles and deflections and simple passes and fake-outs more than anything. Hockey is the same way, though it's more complex. Every single US sport teaches the things that are a major part of soccer and other Euro sports, to gradeschoolers learning how to play the game. They're called basic fundamentals.

And hell no you are not fitter than REAL Football players. They are horses. Not only can they probably outlast you as far as conditioning goes, they are much more athletic/agile, and their bodies have to be as efficient as possible. That means that they don't simply run, or simply lift. They train their muscles to be the best that they can possibly be. That's a big reason why there's so many injuries because these players have to stretch their muscles and bodies to the limits of what is physically possible. There are things that only a handful of players can physically do, that the rest of the most athletic league in the world can't. People like DeSean Jackson can stop and change direction on a dime, something that causes most players to tear their legs up and really injure themselves, and something that not a single one of your European athletes could do until they trained over here for a long time.

Your sport is outdated. Get over it.

I have seen rugby. Most rugby players couldn't play on even a 3rd string of one of our football teams. They're all braun, no agility compared to football players. Furthermore, those pads don't do very much at all. Try getting slammed on your head with a helmet on and see how much it helps.

 

Bullcrap. No other sport is capable of pulling in four thousand million viewers for a single game; no other sport is even one-tenth as popular. Anyone claiming it is anything other than the top sport on the planet is showing themselves to be certifiable.

 

The games are not interchangable at all.

I could say that your best 15 players from your Pro bowl would not make any impact in an average Rugby club side.

As you rightly say the conditioning is completely different.

I have never understood the problem I mean would you expect a Quarter horse to do the same job as a Clydesdale or vise versa, of course not they are bred for different work, still horses, yet they might as well be different species.

 

Read the rankings. You can't dispute them.

This we can agree on. They might've been alike when US Football was first started(because US Football was started because rugby was illegal) but they haven't been alike in many years.

Rugby players are like fullbacks/TEs or linebackers/D-Line or something similar. They're less athletic than the secondary(safety, cornerback), as well as the skill positions on offense, but they're usually more physical than both of them. It's like you said, two different breeds.

 

i'm a big fan of water polo myself

 

Yes, an ideal game for the urinary incontinent.